Good evening for those of you who don't know me, I'm Carol Tan, the head of the School of Law. I'd really like to extend a very warm welcome to all of you. I think most of you are our students, but if you're not our students then I hope you will be a student here at some point. Because we have some very exciting programmes run by the School of Law. If you're from Malaysia, well, Slamat Datang and Slamat Sajatra, as this topic tonight is on Malaysia. So, this lecture series was the brainchild of Professor Masud Badarin when he was head of the School of Law some years ago. It was conceived to inspire and encourage our students and that's why we hold it in the first term of each year. Particularly, as some of our students will be new to us and others coming back for their second or third years. Now, this year's inception lecturer is Dr Azmi Sharum. Now, he has a degree from SOAS, he has a PhD from SOAS, which he did under the supervision of Andrew Harding, who left us a few years ago and is now teaching at the National University of Singapore. Prior to his PhD, Azmi studied at Sheffield for his LLB and in what I assume was his attempt to acquire a kind of veneer of respectability, he went on to do his LLM at Nottingham University. If you're in Malaysia, you'll know that that was the traditional choice of the royal families of Malaysia. So, Azmi is currently associate professor at the University of Malaya, Malaysia's oldest university, where he teaches human rights law, international environmental law and conflict of laws. He's also head of the Human Rights Research Group. Now, typical of Azmi's versatility and commitment, he's also the person who looks after mooting at his law school. And for his colleagues, he represents them as the president of the academic staff union of the University of Malaya. Within the ASEAN region, Azmi is part of a network of human rights scholars. But important as these credentials are, I think Azmi himself would say, well, that's all the boring stuff really. Indeed, that's because there is much more to Azmi than his official CV. Like one or two other Malaysian scholars of his generation, Azmi, it seems to me, was simply born to teach. He is, as at home, speaking through a loud hailer, sitting in the square in Kuala Lumpur where independence was proclaimed 60 years ago, expounding on the finer points of the Malaysian constitution as he is teaching students in lectures and tutorials. It's a bit of an understatement to say that Azmi has wide reach in Malaysia. He has long written a regular column, in fact two regular columns in two local daily newspapers in Malaysia. More recently, he took to sitting down in a chair and speaking a monologue as part of short videos on one of the websites of a daily newspaper. Unfortunately, he tells me that due to self-censorship of this particular press, he has stopped doing these monologues. But I believe some of them are still searchable, and so you can watch those at your leisure. He's been called a rock star professor, instantly recognisable, particularly by the young in Malaysia. Indeed, his image adorned a large billboard, and I mean really large, by the roadside very close to the airport last time I travelled through KLIA. I do mean something much bigger than this, for instance. He's well known because he has felt compelled to speak out on issues such as democracy, governance, secularism and race. In other words, all the hot button issues on which rests the future of Malaysia. No introduction to ASMI would be complete without mentioning that in 2014, ending only two years later, he had been under a charge of sedition. The charges were later dropped. In speaking truth to power, ASMI forms part of a continuum of SOAS alumni who have done the same along the world and which will be connected with new generations of SOAS alumni. So, in view of earlier troubles, we are particularly thankful that you are able to join us here this evening. Thank you very much, Carol. Thank you to the school for inviting me. It is an incredible honour, and I don't say that lightly. I know a lot of people say it's an incredible honour, but they don't really mean it because they think they're really cool. But I was totally blown away when I was invited to speak here. It was very unexpected, and when I saw who was speaking before me at the inception lecture, all these QCs and judges, I was, as the saying goes, passing bricks. I'm literally just an ordinary academic, and I feel totally out of my depth. But there is one thing that sets me apart from all these previous luminaries of the legal world, and that is my relationship with SOAS. Now, as Carol says, yes, it's true. I did my PhD here under Andrew Harding, and I was assisted greatly by the generosity of the staff like Lynn Welchman. So I'm a graduate, but my relationship with SOAS is a lot more intimate than that. Many, many years ago, when my father was doing his PhD in SOAS, I was conceived and born. It doesn't stop there because exactly 30 years later, while I was doing my PhD in SOAS, my second son was conceived and born, and I told him in no uncertain terms, I said, boy, we have established a family tradition here. So when you are 30, I expect you to be doing your PhD in SOAS at giving me a grandson. Now, no matter how grand the previous speakers were, I'm quite certain that none of them have their procreation and their procreation activities as intimately linked to SOAS as I have. So I suppose that qualifies me to come and speak here to you today. Now, on to boiling the frog. Now, as you may know that if you place a frog into boiling water, it'll scream and jump out. Well, actually, I'm not sure whether it screams or not because I've never actually put a frog in boiling water, but I presume you will say something and jump out. But if you put a frog in cold water and then slowly boil it, the frog will just cook to death without doing anything because it's cold-blooded and it doesn't know that this is happening to it and it just eventually slowly dies, right? And this is how I feel. This is what I feel is happening in Malaysia. We are slowly being boiled like little frogs because the chipping away of human rights, it doesn't have to happen in a huge dramatic way. It happens bit by bit. And before you know it, it's all gone. And that is my fear about what's happening in my country today. So for this lecture, I shall be examining a few key cases in the last 10 years, just the last 10 years that to me best illustrates this erosion of our human rights. I'll also be looking at some pretty scary legislation as well. But first, a bit of context for those of you who may not be that familiar with Malaysia. Can I have a show of hands, please? How many Malaysians are in this room, actually? All right, about half of you. Now you can just turn off, play with your phones, do your tweets, whatever it is now because you'll be bored with this. For the rest of you, just in case you don't know, Malaysia is a federation of states, 13 states to be exact, and three federal territories. Now don't worry, I'm going to be brief. I'm just going to talk about the legal points, governance points which I think are relevant to my talk. So we are a federation of 13 states, three federal territories, and we follow Westminster parliamentary system because we used to be under the yoke of the British. Except the difference between us and the UK is that we have a written constitution which is supposedly the supreme law of the land, and it has a section called Fundamental Liberties which are supposed to be our rights. I keep saying supposed because you will see that it doesn't really mean very much. Lawmaking is divided between the federal parliament and the 13 various state legislatures. Now what feels can these two legislative bodies make law in is determined by Schedule 9 of our constitution, and there's a list of the areas where parliament can make laws and where the state legislative assemblies can make laws. So it's quite clearly divided. You can make laws in this, we can make laws in that. So that's an important point. Oh yes, one more thing. Article 3 of our constitution says that Islam is the religion of the federation. Now I mentioned this particularly because it's very important. It's a rather controversial provision in the constitution. For some, it justifies their argument that Malaysia is actually an Islamic state, whatever that might mean. I argue there's no such thing. And the reason I say that is because if we look at the preparatory works for our constitution which can be found in the Read Commission report. The Read Commission, by the way, was the body of men who were appointed to help draft our constitution. And in their report where they introduced this article 3 that Islam is the religion of the federation, the key political players of the time, the three political parties which were going to be the rulers at the time who were going, the government in waiting. They specifically said that just because this provision is in the constitution, it does not mean that the constitution is not secular. So that was very, very clearly stated in the preparatory works to our constitution. So for me, the country is a secular country. But we will talk about this a bit more as we go along. Right, any questions? Excellent, just like my class at home. And now on to the lecture. There shall be three main themes. I'm looking at three main themes. The first is democracy as a human right and how it is being disregarded by our judiciary. The second, I will be looking at some internal security laws. And finally, I shall be looking at how religion or more accurately the use of religiosity is eroding our human rights. So these are the three main themes that I shall be looking at. Can I have the next slide please? I've only got two slides. Oh, do I turn it? Oh, sorry. Oh, there you go. There you go. I don't normally use slides. Now, because this is a lecture, I thought it would be useful to have the actual cases which I'm going to be talking about and the laws in case you want to take notes. You know, I live in hope always. But these are the cases and these are the legislation which I shall be looking at. So the first case that we're looking at, remember the theme is democracy. So in the first case, it's public prosecutor and Cot Wah Kwan in 2007 in the federal court. Now, in this case, what happened was there was a child. He was just under 13 years old and he was convicted of murder by the High Court. In the Court of Appeal, they argued that his sentencing was unconstitutional. And this is the reason why. He was sentenced according to section 97 of the Child Act 2001. And according to this section, his sentence was that he was going to be incarcerated at the pleasure of His Majesty the King. That means his jail time will depend on when the king says he can go. Now, he was argued in the Court of Appeal that this is against the separation of powers because the king is part of the executive. And the power to sentence is a judicial power which is something which, in other words, it's something which the courts do, not the executive. And in the Court of Appeal, they accepted this argument. They said, yes, there was a breach of the separation of powers. This act is actually, this particular section in this particular act is actually unconstitutional because it's giving judicial power to the executive. Case went to the federal court, which is the highest court in the country, and they reversed the decision of the High Court, sorry, on the Court of Appeal, and they reinstated the decision of the High Court and the boy was put in jail again. Now, I want to discuss the reasoning of the federal court here and it scares the living daylights out of me. The grounds for the decision was made by Justice Abdul Hamid Muhammad, and he had this to say. He said, Article 121, brackets 1 of the federal constitution states that judicial power of the federation shall be vested in the High Courts. And the High Courts shall have such jurisdiction and powers as may be conferred by under federal law. So they argued that, look, the child act is a federal law and it's given this power to sentence to the king. So tough, right? So the question then arises, what about the separation of powers? How do you argue this when there's this concept of separation of powers? Well, Abdul Hamid states that our constitution is unique and should thus be judged on its own merits and not based on some legal principle like the separation of powers. Separation of powers applies in Malaysia only in so far as it is provided for in the constitution, right? Separation of powers, and I quote, is not a provision of the Malaysian constitution. This is kind of really weird because if you look at our constitution, you know if you have nothing better to do and you Google it, you will see that we have three separate chapters. One called the legislature, one called the executive, and one called the judiciary. And in each one of these chapters, the powers of these three bodies, separate powers, different powers are listed very, very clearly. You would have thought that's enough to indicate that we have separation of powers. But he says no, there is no separation of powers because it's not stated in the constitution. For goodness sake, what do you need? Do you need it written in crayon and neon lights that we have separation of powers in Malaysia? It seems to be that you have to have this blatant statement that we have separation of powers before we can have separation of powers. Even though our constitution, by any reasonable person's reckoning, clearly separates the three branches of government and separates their powers. But that's not all. He says that look, he justifies himself. He justifies himself and says look, look at subsidiary legislation. subsidiary legislation is made by the executive. That proves there's no such thing as separation of powers. Although of course everybody understands the separation of powers. The subsidiary legislation comes from a primary legislation which is made by the legislature. Empowers the executive to make subsidiary legislation as and when it is required. But that's not the most frightening thing. This is the scariest part of the judgment. I quote here verbatim. The constitution provides for elections, which is a democratic process. That does not make democracy a provision of the constitution. In that where any law is undemocratic, it is inconsistent with the constitution and therefore void. So we have elections, but it doesn't mean we are a democracy. It's crazy. This does not make democracy a provision of the constitution. The next case I want to look at. This is a little bit of historical background here. In 2008 we had elections and it was a tremendously meaningful elections because for the first time in about 40 years, the ruling party, the Barysau National, the National Front, how apt, did not get a two-thirds majority. They still won, but they did not have their two-thirds majority. So there was a huge number of seats won by the opposition. And not only that, but the opposition also won five of the different states. So they won five of the different state legislative assemblies. One of these states was a state of para, which is a northern state south of Penang. Penang is, of course, the best state in the whole country. Well, it's true. All the best folk come from Penang. But the state of para was a very narrow victory. So the opposition won 31 seats, whereas the incumbent, the Barysau National, had 29. So it was a very narrow majority. So this was in 2008, March 2008. In January or February 2009, in those two months, three opposition state legislative assembly persons suddenly decided to be independent. So they left their parties and now they were independent. By independent, it meant that they were leaning towards the Barysau National. On the 4th of February, the chief minister of para, whose name was Nisar, he approached the sultan because now, of course, there was a problem, because he didn't have the majority of the house anymore. So he approached the sultan of para, who has the power to dissolve the legislative assembly. And he asked the sultan to please dissolve the legislative assembly so that we can have fresh elections. And the sultan said no, ostensibly because he needed time to think about the matter. This was on the 4th of February. On the 5th of February, the very next day, Najib Razak, who was the deputy prime minister at the time, he's now a beloved prime minister. I'm being recorded, you see, so I have to say all these things. It's going to go on YouTube, right?  He led a bunch of people, he led a troupe of legislative assembly persons to the palace, the 29 Barysau National folks and the three independent fellas. And they declared that they didn't want Nisar to be the chief minister anymore, and instead they wanted another state assembly person, a guy called Zambri, to be the new chief minister. And they told the sultan that they did not have confidence in the chief minister anymore, and therefore they wanted a new one. The sultan agreed and he duly appointed Zambri as the new chief minister of Para and therefore effectively dismissing Nisar as the chief minister of Para. But hold on, I mean, is this how you have a vote of no confidence? I would say, no, it's not. And the reason I say that is because of this case, Stephen Cullo Nincan and Tun Abang had you opening in 1966. What happened here? This was in the state of Sarawak, similar situation. Stephen Cullo Nincan was the chief minister of Sarawak and he was chief minister based on a kind of loose coalition, but the longer he became chief minister, he was, his popularity was dipping. In fact, he was becoming unpopular. And one day 21 of the state assembly persons out of 42 approached the governor of Sarawak who had the power to appoint the chief minister and said that we don't have confidence in Stephen Cullo Nincan anymore, so we please get rid of him. And the governor said, okay. And he wrote letters to Stephen Cullo Nincan saying you're dismissed. And Nincan challenged this in the court. And it went all the way to the highest court. And in the supreme court, in those days, the highest court was called the supreme court, now it's called the federal court. And in the supreme court, the judge said that, yeah, you can't dismiss him like this because a vote of no confidence is a term of art. It has to be done in the house. And when we say the house, we don't mean the governor's house or the sultan's house. We mean the house, the legislative house, right? So it's a term of art. And this was not done in Parra. Sorry? Did someone say something? Oh, sorry. Yeah, it wasn't done in Sarawak and neither was it done in Parra. Okay, sorry. Thank you very much. It wasn't done in both places. You confused me, right? So why should a vote of no confidence be held in the house? Well, of course. It's in a parliamentary democracy. The executive is created from the legislature. And, you know, if there's any change in the executive, it has to be done through the legislature as well, the legislative branch. This is especially true when considering the situation in Parra because the people of Parra voted in the House. Parra voted for the opposition, right? The change in the makeup of the legislative assembly did not happen via democratic means. It happened because three individuals decided to jump ship. So ideally, of course, what should have been done was we should have had fresh elections. But if we did not have fresh elections, then by all means we should have had open debate in the house. Not this kind of, like, secret meetings with the sultan. Okay? And so this, unfortunately, in the case of Dathod Zumbri versus Niza in the Court of Appeal, they decided that it's perfectly all right that Zumbri was appointed. They said it was okay. Right? The High Court did not, but the Court of Appeal said it's fine. Right? So now Zumbri is still the chief minister of Parra. Okay. I shall take a little excursion away from the law for the moment and talk a little bit about myself because this case got me into trouble. Carol spoke about my little adventure with the government of Malaysia when I was charged with sedition and it was basically about this thing. So let me tell you what happened. I was in Salaia in Thailand having a meeting with the Southeast Asian Human Rights Network and my phone kept ringing. And of course I didn't recognise the number and of course I wasn't going to answer it because it was roaming, it was expensive. But it kept insistently ringing and eventually the chap gave up and sent me a text message and he says I'm inspector so-and-so. Can I see you? And I said I'm in Thailand but when I come back home I will go and see you. So I get this message from some court. So I get home and I think it was a Monday, a Tuesday, I said okay so I'm going to go and see this policeman and see what to see one from me. On a whim I call my friend, an old friend, a school friend who's a lawyer, he's a very good lawyer actually and I said hey dude I got this call from the cops and they want to speak to me. And he says do you know what it's about? I said no. I said did you ask them? I said no. I said why don't you call them and ask them? I said okay. So I called the number and said hello inspector so-and-so. This is Azmi Sheroman. Why do you want to see me? Oh we're investigating you for sedition. He said ah. All right okay. So I called my friend again and said they're investigating me for sedition.  So you are not going there alone. I'm sending a lawyer with you and so he did. He sent me a lawyer and we went there and why were they investigating me? Because there was, this happened in Para. A similar thing was happening in Selangor. The state legislative assembly persons of Selangor were fed up with their chief minister and they wanted to get rid of him but he didn't want to go. So a reporter calls me up and he says you know could the Selangor people follow what happened in Para? That means to say go to the Sultan of Selangor and say please we want a new chief minister. And I said no they shouldn't because I believe what happened in Para was legally wrong. You know if you are going to do, if you are going to have a vote of no confidence then it has to be done transparently. You shouldn't be having secret meetings. Ladies and gentlemen I promise you that is what I said and that is seditious and I was charged and eventually the case was dropped because I think even they realised it was pretty weak but it took two years out of my life and this is the thing about using laws like the sedition act. Even if you are not found guilty it takes a lot out of you.  It stresses you, it stresses your family. It is quite a big deal. I was lucky because I had friends who represented me. Both my lawyers were school friends. One was a friend since I was in kindergarten. The other one was a bit younger than me. So in secondary school I was in fifth form and he was in the first form so he was very small. Of course being very small we did what all fifth formers do. We bullied them. He grew up to be this six foot tall giant of a man and a tremendous lawyer and everything but he was representing me. We were friends until one day I was in court and I was sitting there in the dock and he comes up to me and he says, remember the time when you bullied me? Your life is in my hands now. He said that the buzzer goes off and the court rise and he turns around and goes to the front. I'm going to come back, I'm sorry. So friends can be useful and they can also be a pain but that's what happened. So those three lines was enough for me to be charged for sedition. Right, so we have these two cases, the Wakwan where it says there's no separation of powers. The Datozambri case where it appears that they don't care that you could have a vote of no confidence by not having a vote of no confidence. So does that mean that the Malaysian government does not care about democracy? No. Well, you know, they say they care. They care so much that in the year 2012 they amended our Pino Code which is our criminal law to include a section called Activities Detrimental to Parliamentary Democracy. So now it is a crime to participate in activities which are detrimental to parliamentary democracy. This is section 124b of the Pino Code. So whoever by any means directly or indirectly commits an activity detrimental to parliamentary democracy shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 20 years. If you print, publicise, sell, issue, circulate or reproduce any document which is detrimental to parliamentary democracy, that's 15 years. If you import such publications, that's 5 years. So this is a new law. But then what does parliamentary democracy mean? And what do you mean by saying an act which is detrimental to parliamentary democracy? The Pino Code does not help us at all. There's no definition as to what detrimental to parliamentary democracy means. So I have a student who was arrested because he was behaving in a manner which was detrimental to parliamentary democracy. What was he doing? He was taking part in a protest demanding the resignation of the Prime Minister. Here I was thinking that peaceful protest is part and parcel of parliamentary democracy. Obviously I was wrong. So it would appear that parliamentary democracy means that once you elected your leaders then they become sacred cows and you cannot say or do anything to challenge them. So we have this crazy law, this amendment to the Pino Code which has introduced this thing. But the Pino Code does not work in isolation here. These are known as security offences and we have certain internal security laws which are used to help with a substantive law. The internal security laws of Malaysia are not substantive. They are more procedural. They don't create offences. Instead they provide the means to investigate the offences that are provided for in other laws, for example in the Pino Code. So let's look at these national security laws. They are the Security Offences Special Measures Act, SOSMA. The Prevention of Terrorism Act, POTA. And the Prevention of Crime Act, POCA. I'm not sure whether they did this on purpose but it sounds like Japanese coffee that you buy in a cat. Have a can of POTA before you go to work. But these are our internal security laws. We used to have one big law called the Internal Security Act but that was repealed. So now we have these. So I'll just be looking at the first two. I won't be looking at the third one. SOSMA is ostensibly to prevent acts that can cause fear or violence, disaffection against the king and prejudice to public order or national security. So those are the Security Offences Special Measures Act, SOSMA. And what does it empower the government to do? They can arrest you without a warrant and you can be detained up to 28 days while investigations are conducted against you. And this is, I like this, Section 43 of SOSMA says no person shall be arrested and detained solely for his political belief or political activity. So that's supposed to make us feel a little bit better because they're very clear. If it's just for your political belief, they're not going to arrest you. They never arrest you for your political belief. It's never the reason, even when they used to have the Internal Security Act, it's not because, oh, we're arresting you because you're in the opposition party. You can make out the reason. So it's not a particularly comforting thing. And I'll give you an example. Actually, you're very good, aren't you? None of you are looking at your phones. They use SOSMA against a lady called Maria Chin Abdullah, who was organising a peaceful protest against the government. And on the eve of that particular protest, suddenly they arrested her under SOSMA and detained her. She was never charged after that, but she was detained without trial and it was convenient. And not only her, there were other people who were the key members of Berset. Berset is the organisation which organises these things. And they were also detained using SOSMA without trial and it was a convenient way of getting them off the streets just before a particularly big rally. So when you have time, please google Maria Chin Abdullah and you will see her face and that is a national threat to security. POTA, the Provincial Terrorism Act, is created to counter terrorist activities and terrorist activities are defined by the Pino Code. Again, you can be arrested without warrant and you can be remanded and for up to seven days where your case will be referred to the public prosecutor. The public prosecutor then suggests to the magistrates that there is enough evidence to warrant the holding of an inquiry. The accused is then held for another 30 up to 38 days while an inquiry is being held and this inquiry is conducted by a person who is known as the inquiry officer which for some reason reminds me of Monty Python and the Spanish Inquisition. You never expect the Spanish Inquisition, you never expect an inquiry officer and this inquiry officer, he then makes a suggestion to the Prevention of Terrorism Board and it is this board which then decides whether they are going to detain you. Not a court, a board they will detain you for up to two years and at the end of two years they can detain you for another two years and another two years and another two years. So this is basically detention without trial. No legal representatives and no judicial review and this is what scares me as well. In obtaining evidence, the inquiry officer does not need to bother with the niceties of existing law on evidence. What on earth does this mean? What about coercion? Is that okay to get a confession or torture? Incidentally, Malaysia is not party to the Convention against Torture. So these are some of the things that are quite blatant. Cases which I think are anti-democracy. We have laws which are clearly against our human rights and our right to a fair trial. But this is another thing which I want to talk about and this is the one that worries me the most actually and this is the suppression of human rights in the name of God. There are a couple of cases I want to discuss. The first is a case called the Titular Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur versus the Minister of Home Affairs. This is 2014. Now what was this case about? The Catholic Church in Malaysia publishes a newsletter called The Herald. In The Herald, it's mostly in English but there's a Malay section as well. In the Malay section, they use Malay words to... because it's in the Malay section. So the word God, the Malay word that they use for God is Tuhan. For the word Lord, the word that they use is Allah. Now, a bit of context. Article 3 says that Islam is a religion of the Federation but all other religions can be practised in peace and harmony. Article 11 says that everyone has freedom of religion but there can be laws controlling the propagation of religion to Muslims. Now, the publishers of The Herald are aware of this. Therefore, on every copy of The Herald, there is a very clear statement saying that this is not to be distributed to Muslims. So they cannot be accused of propagation. However, the government took offence to the fact that they use Allah as the word for Lord and so they banned the publication. Of course, the Catholic Church went to court and they appealed against this ban. Their argument was we're just practising our religion in peace and we're not using this to propagate anything to Muslims. It's very clear. Our newsletters very clearly says that this is not for Muslims. The High Court agreed with them, said that yes, you know, you've done nothing wrong and you shouldn't be punished for this and so the High Court overruled the banning of The Herald. But in the Court of Appeal, they didn't agree with that. The Court of Appeal did not agree with The High Court and the reasoning of the judge in the Court of Appeal is very, very questionable. He interpreted Article 3 of the federal constitution. Remember, Article 3 says that Islam is a religion of federation but all other religions may be practised in peace. He interpreted Article 3 as beyond the ordinary understanding of those felly straightforward and simple words. The judge held that it is my judgement that the purpose and intention of the insertion of the words in peace and harmony in Article 3.1 is to protect the sanctity of Islam as a religion of the country and also to insulate against any threat faced or any possible and probable threat to the religion of Islam. It is also my judgement that the most possible and probable threat to Islam in the context of this country is the propagation of other religion to the followers of Islam. Okay, fine. The propagation is already in the constitution. If there's laws against propagation, you can't propagate. The Herald also says, no, we're not propagating, we make it clear. This is not for Muslims. But this whole business of expanding this simple term that Islam is a religion of the federation but all other religions can be practised in peace and harmony means the protection of the sanctity of Islam, etc. This is constitutional activism beyond a reasonable human being's thinking because the provision in Article 3 is very, very simple and very, very clear. So it's a submit that this leap of logic on the part of the judge to take a straight forward provision that protects the rights of non-Muslims to practice their religion in peace into a provision that is meant to protect the sanctity of Islam from any threats is taking constitutional interpretation a bit too far. He goes on to say, it is my judgement that based on the facts and circumstances of the case the usage of the word Allah, particularly in the Malay version of the Herald without doubt, do have the potential to disrupt the even tempo of the life of the Malaysian community. Such publication will surely have an adverse effect upon the sanctity as invasage under Article 3.1 sanctity which he interprets which is not actually found anywhere in Article 3.1 therefore the minister's decision was reinstated. I mean this case is so unjust on so many levels because no one knew about the Herald until the government actually banned it. I think most Catholics didn't know about the Herald until the government actually banned it. It did not become an issue until they made it an issue. And suddenly you're saying, you can't have this publication anymore and historically the Christian community of Malaysia has been using the word Allah to mean the Lord at least since the time of Munshi Abdullah who first translated the Bible into Malay and that was like 100 years ago. So that's one case. Another case I want to talk about is a case of Zi publications. In this case, Zi publications is a publication company and they had translated a book by an author called Ershad Manji who is a Canadian and a book is called Allah, Liberty and Love and it was translated into Malay and in Malay it's called Allah, Kebebasan dan Cinta and it's the Malay version which was banned. But here's the thing. It was banned by the religious, the Islamic Department of Selangor. Now, this is an important point. The religious department of Selangor, the Islamic Department of Selangor gets its powers from the Sharia offences law of Selangor. That means this is a state law. The constitution is very clear in article 10. Only federal parliament can make laws which restrict the freedom of expression. Only parliament can make laws that restricts the freedom of expression. But here we have a state legislature making a law to restrict the freedom of expression. So it's as clear as day. It's unconstitutional. The state legislation which allows this body to ban books is unconstitutional because if you ban a book, it is restricting the freedom of expression. Case goes up all the way to the federal court. And in the federal court, it was held that, well, you know, it's not really about expression, is it? It's about protecting the precepts of Islam. And this book goes against the precepts of Islam and therefore the state legislature has the authority to make laws to criminalise any activity which is against the precepts of Islam. So this is a particularly frightening case for me because it means that these different state religious bodies can ban books on the guys, on the pretext that it is against the precepts of Islam. Again, ladies and gentlemen, what is the precepts of Islam is not defined anywhere. It's what they say is precepts of Islam. And we lose the protection which article 10 is supposed to give. Why do we have article 10? Why does article 10 say that only Parliament can make laws that restrict our freedom of expression? Because surely it makes sense that our freedom is the same wherever we are in the country. It doesn't matter if I'm in Penang, it doesn't matter if I'm in Johor or in Sarawah or in Trunganu, my freedom of expression remains the same. But we allow this to happen where states can restrict your freedom of expression, then our fundamental liberties will differ from state to state. And something as important as this surely should only be dealt with by the highest legislative body of our country, which is Parliament. But all these arguments just doesn't matter because there is this literal streak in our courts where they say, look, it says this therefore is that. There is no effort on our courts to look beyond the words of our constitution, to look beyond the words of the law, to look towards some sort of aspiration towards human rights or democracy. And that's frightening to me. Now, banning books is something which happens a lot in Malaysia, by the way, just to let you know. There are two books which are banned right now which I have chapters in, so I've been banned. We have about 1,600 books banned now, approximately. And the banning of the books are done under the Printing Process Publications Act 1984. And I just want to talk a little bit about the most recent round of bannings. So generally speaking, book banning in Malaysia is done on two grounds. One is sex, and the other one is religion. And the latest round of bans happened on the 3rd of October of this year. So just a few weeks ago. 22 books were banned, 20 were related to Islam, one related sex, and one was a compilation of cartoons. And I just want to talk about two because I just want to give you a flavour of why they banned books, right? So the sexy book was called Tantra, the Search for Ecstasy. And the reason why they banned, this was the reason that they gave, the contents include drawings of sexual positions which are extreme, and in contradiction to the pure values and behavioural norms of Malaysians. So I didn't realise that we were so... So obviously, you know, we're kind of sweet when we have sex and we don't do anything extreme. Okay, but this is a book which was banned which is actually... which is also crazy. This is a book called Islam Without Extremes, a Muslim Case for Liberty. It's written by a Turkish writer called Mustafa Akil. And here's the reasons why they banned this book because the contents promote liberal ideas. And here's my favourite line. It uses logical thought. I swear to God, they're banning a book because it uses logical thought and contains insults to Islam and clearly goes against the teachings of true Islam, whatever that might be. So, you know, we have book bannings, we have courts which don't respect democracy, we have... the use of religion seems to be overriding our human rights to expression. What about the future? What does the future hold? Well, you know, there's a lot to be worried about. There's another law which I'll talk about which is the National Security Council Act. This was passed just last year. This is perhaps the most scary of the laws of the new ones. The National Security Council consists of the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Defence Minister, the Minister of Home Affairs who, if I'm not mistaken, is currently the Deputy Prime Minister, so it's, you know, he has two in one. The Minister for Communications and Multimedia, the Chief Secretary of the Government, the Head of Armed Forces, and the Head of the Police. Now this council advises, but ultimately the Prime Minister is the one with the power to declare a security area. What is a security area? A security area could be quite small. It can be the size of say a campus. It can be the entire country. Security area can be as big as they want it to be. And what happens in the security area? Now this law was made ostensibly because, I don't know, you might not know this, but there was a little incursion in the state of Sabah by some Southern Philippine militants. And so this is supposedly for to protect us against armed incursions. Although, if you look at the Act, it says that this law can also be used to protect the country against any economic issues. So what does that mean? Right? Anyway, according to this law, once a security area is declared, this area will be under the control of a director general of national security and all government agencies will fall under his or her authority. And in this area, the government via the police and armed forces, they can evict you from your homes, they can take your property, they can destroy your property, they can arrest without warrant, they can seize and search without warrant, and they can use reasonable force against you, which means they can kill you and there will be no judicial review. Now, of course, the argument is that, hey, this is only for, you know, big emergency-type situations. If we're invaded, et cetera, we might need to declare an area, a security area. Well, before this, we already have a law. We have the emergency provisions. We have laws to declare an area under the state of emergency. We already have that. All right? In our history, the Malaysian government has declared emergency four times. Once was because the Indonesians were... If there's any Indonesians in the house, I love you all. The Indonesians were kind of like threatening us. They said, you know, they're going to take over. Actually, it was saber-rattling. But nonetheless, an emergency was declared. Another time, an emergency was declared after the May 13, 1969 racial riots. Now, in both these cases, you can kind of understand it. You know, there was a threat. But emergencies were also declared because of constitutional crisis in the state of Sarawak and the state of Kelantan. That means they're not beyond using emergency powers for political purposes. So when you have a law like this, I'm sorry if I'm overly cynical, but it scares the living daylights out of me. So that's what I think we're facing with. So, in conclusion, I've been accused of taking the Malaysian human rights situation too lightly. I've been told that, you know, I joke about it too much. Because, you know, if you don't laugh, you cry, right? And I make light of the threats of human rights in my country. And to a certain extent, this is true, I do. And I confess, there's an element of embarrassment about Malaysia. It's a bit embarrassing. Because, you know, we're not Myanmar. There's no genocidal tendencies there. We're not the Philippines, where there's all these extrajudicial killings. We're not Thailand, where there's now complete and utter military rule. So in a way, it seems that our human rights problems are not as big as our neighbours. I'm not even going to go further afield. So for me to come here making a big noise, it seems like I'm making a big deal out of nothing. But then that's why I call this thought boiling the frog. We don't need huge dramatic incidences or something to be worrying. It can be small, little bits and pieces where they chip here, they chip there. And each time they do it, yeah, there's opposition. We get up, we get angry, we talk about it, we oppose it, we sign petitions or whatever it is. But it's never quite enough to cause a huge outlaw. And then it dies down. And then they do the next thing. And then the next thing. And then the next thing. Until when? And that means we have to take it seriously. I worry about the future of Malaysia because we don't seem to have a judiciary which has any higher aspirations to protect human rights and democracy. They're quite happy to interpret things literally without thinking beyond that, without thinking about the principles, beyond why we have the constitution, why we have fundamental liberties, why we are a democracy, why there has to be separation of powers. And we have laws which can curb and oppress us easily. And I add to all this the emotive element of religion because I'm telling you now that it's a political minefield. Islam is a political minefield in Malaysia right now. Even the opposition parties, all these things which happen, they don't dare mix too much of a noise because it's political suicide because they will just be branded as infidels and they're terrified of losing the Muslim vote because of such things. So, you know, so there's not much opposition against these kinds of ZRI publications, the Roman Catholic Church case. There's not much opposition in the mainstream politics against such things. So, why are we left with? You know, it seems to me that we're really on the edge and the slightest push and it will all be gone. Now, I suppose the lesson that can be learned from Malaysia is that we must never ever take human rights for granted and any erosion of any human rights must be opposed. But you know, who am I to say anything to anyone? But to the Malaysian students here, I don't know man. This is our home and I think we should be aware. And you know, a lot of your lawyers are presumed and as lawyers you are in a unique position. Not everybody can go to court but you can. And you are in a position where you can understand the laws and the final points of the laws, the final points of the constitution whereas not many can. And I suppose what I'm trying to say is that they might be boiling us but it doesn't mean that we can't fight back. So, thank you very much. So, all it leaves me to do now is to present us me with a little souvenir from us. Presents? This is why I do things. This is a collection of essays that was published some years ago but there are authors in there whose names will be very familiar to you. It's a book of essays edited by Ian Edge on the comparative law in global perspective. So, ask me. Thank you very much.


Hello, my name is Danny Rogers and I serve as the Chief Judge of the Fort Worth Municipal Court. And to have someone with me here today, Michelle Sims is our Teen Court Coordinator, which is a very important program that we do here in Fort Worth. So I'm going to ask Michelle a few questions about that so that you all can understand more about an opportunity for the young people in our community. Well, how are you, Michelle? I'm fine. How are you, Judge? I'm very well. Thank you. You are our Teen Court Coordinator. We explain to our good folks that are watching, what is Teen Court? Teen Court is a program that allows youth ages 10 to 17 who receive citations in the city of Fort Worth to resolve those citations by performing community service hours. Is there any limit on the type of citations that they can bring to Teen Court? No, there's no limit on the type of citations. There's just one every 12 months. They can only be enrolled in the program once every 12 months. So what does that program look like for the young people? So what we do is we have a mock court hearing run by teens. So every Tuesday night at 5 o'clock we meet here on the first floor of the courthouse. We have a mock court where teens decide how many hours each participant receives based on a range of hours related to their offense. So it really is a jury of their peers, then? Yes, correct. Then are they assigned to do something specific to take care of that? Once they've gone to the jury and they've gotten their hours, what are they supposed to do? Just to locate a nonprofit, government agency or school where they can complete their community service. So we suggest that they can do it at their church, their family church if they attend, if there's a community center in their neighborhood. We can also make some suggestions of some nonprofit agencies that might be looking for volunteers. So as long as the young person does their community service, do they have to turn something back into you to verify that they've done that? Yes, I'll give them a log to track their community service hours on and they'll just return that within 90 days. Once they've done all of that, their ticket gets dismissed, right? That's correct. Everything will be dismissed. And that's the goal, isn't it? Yes, that's our goal. So is there any need on the part of teen court for volunteers? Oh, definitely. If we don't have volunteers, teen court can't work. Talk to us about that. Well, we need teen volunteers to serve as our teen attorneys and to serve as jurors for our teen court program, our hearings. We also need adult volunteers to assist with anything from paperwork to greeting our families, checking the men, monitoring courtrooms. And we're always looking for community members who have legal experience so that they can assist in training our teen volunteers and serve as judges for our hearings. So teen court can also be a training ground for young people who think they might be interested in becoming an attorney someday. Is that correct? Yes. And then I know that we've also participated in teen court competition. Yes, that's correct. The City of Fort Worth teen court has won competitions. They've had just a long history of being in the top in those competitions. We're a little proud of that. Yes. Yes, we are. So a teen then can volunteer for teen court even if they don't receive a citation? That's correct. Any teen who's interested in any teen that we take teens ages 13 to 18, as long as they're enrolled in school, they're welcome to come and volunteer as a teen attorney. If they want to start out as a juror until they get more comfortable, they can certainly do that. But we welcome any teen who's interested in coming out and checking us out. Can Michelle, is there anything we've left out that we would want folks to know about teen court? I don't think so. I think we've covered most of it. All right. So we hope that you will come and see us about teen court if you're interested in volunteering. And also for those teenagers that you know, if they get a citation from the City of Fort Worth, please come talk to us about teen court because it's a great program to help them learn about what occurred, but also to keep it from being a conviction on their driving record. So thank you, Michelle, for your time today. Thank you.


What's up guys? I'm Brian Sakawa. You're watching He Spoke Style and welcome to the studio today I am going to be taking you on a studio tour, but not just any studio tour This is a studio tour in 360 degrees now I've been wanting to show you guys the space that we create all the content where I spend a lot of my time Working during the day and also this man cave that my wife allowed me to have in the basement of our house So before we get to any of that cool stuff We're just going to start off with some of the more boring things like for example This is where the steamer lives behind the door and Right over here Is a small bathroom that we keep stocked with some very stylish reading material On the wall have a nice picture of Kerry Grant right here and on the other side of the door is a photo of Fred Astaire Now this right here is the utility closet for the entire house but it is also the storage area for a lot of the gear that we have that we're not using at the moment and Also a lot of the packing material for the He Spoke Style shop now on the floor You can see that I have photos here and actually there are photos all over the floor everywhere I just don't have enough wall space for the photos I have so they live on the floor now You might be asking yourself what this big piece of equipment is here This is actually some of the gear that we are going to be using for the live show It's that's what it takes to do the live the way we want to do it now over here I want to point out a couple of things this little piece right here is by Adam Moore Who's a fantastic watch photographer? I have a letter here from Bill Clinton that he wrote me in 1996 my father suggested that I Write to Bill Clinton and offer him a saxophone lesson and although he did not take me up on the saxophone lesson He did send me that very nice letter, which I still have this humongous boat came from my friend Ken's menswear shop He had the best menswear shop in Baltimore and he retired about a couple years ago And he got rid of a lot of the a lot of the cool things that he had in the shop And this was one of them including all of the photos That I've showed you so far came from his shop as well, but I really like this boat So now it lives here. So let's check it out over here All right So this area should look very familiar if you have followed on Instagram for a while and saw it remember photos of the old studio Or have seen the studio tour that we did on the website just with photos So we basically just transplanted the old studio and put it right here. We really like to set up So one thing that's been upgraded is the shelving here now in the old studio We had kind of flimsy rubber-made shelves, but because this is going to be more permanent I upgraded to a nice shelving from the container store on the shelves. We have some great menswear books lots of watch catalogs Cigar boxes up at the top you can see Another photo of Kerry Grant. We got Steve McQueen there One of the earliest photos that we took when we started he spoke style a nice vintage shave soap Advertisement John Coltrane here one of my earliest saxophone heroes or one of my saxophone heroes Then this great quote from Walter Lange from Lange Hensuna who says there's something one should expect Not only of a watch but also of oneself to never stand still. I really like that quote One other thing I want to point out on the top of the shelf is this sign right here when we had the old studio This was the sign that we had outside so this is where I relax and Just when I need to kind of clear my head I'll sit here. You know if we're just going to hang out. This is where we go on the coffee table some choice books right here and Of course my Leica camera. So let's go over here now Now you can see on that side of the bookshelf and this side of the bookshelf It's book-ended by two prints by my friend tug rice. They're beautiful Dehumidifier it is the basement. We have a wet bar here a wine fridge espresso machine Water cooler. This is where we have all the conversations and Right here is a beautiful bar called the corridor bar by BDI furniture. So let me show you this real quick I have some of my favorite bottles in here some of my favorite Cocktail books well up here. We have the Waldorf Astoria cocktail book Playboy's host and bar book death and co New York Times book of cocktails the PDT cocktail book and the indispensable vintage spirits and forgotten cocktails Now I just want to point this shaker out here You know, I'm a fan of the thin man movies and in the beginning of the third thin man Which is called another thin man this shaker features pretty prominently All right Obviously right here is my Eames chair, which is a place. I really like to relax So let's go over here and take a look at this area So over here is where we keep all of the stock for the he spoke style shop.  So we keep everything right there I have this is from a trip that we did with BMW a number of years ago When we got off the plane they had the BMW sign with our name underneath So I wanted to keep that this is a table where everything gets packed on and I have a nice watch winder right here That I'm going to be doing review of very soon So let's go over to this area All right, so this area is going to look very familiar to all of you This is where we record all of the outfit videos. Obviously when we're shooting we take the Clothing rack here and roll it back over there where the mannequin is One of the challenges that we really faced when we moved into this space is that the old studio had a lot of natural light It was very beautiful to shoot in but as you can see above the bookshelf there and Right over here. We just have these two little windows It is the basement and those windows are actually Under the deck so there is like no natural light that comes in here So it was a little bit of a challenge, but we have these two big light panels here, which when I turn them on you can see that There is tons of light it looks very natural and it's very good for video shooting So we're very happy that we figured that out and we just have to bounce it off the ceiling which is pretty neat So final stop right over here So this area is going to look very familiar to you As well, this is my desk and this is where I record Most of the talking portions of the videos that we do right here Now I just want to point out a couple things over here We have a nice photo of Nick and Nora and Asta on the wall are some of the favorite Our favorite photos that we've ever made. This is a campaign that we did for Dom Perignon This photo is one from the BMW trip that we did a number of years ago with my friend John Paolo Alliata behind me nice picture of Clark Gable on The bookshelf here. I just want to point out right here is an almost complete Collection of the rake magazines now. There are some that aren't available. So I will always have those holes in my collection but Yeah, so that is the studio. It's where we make all the content It's where I spend a lot of my time working and also just hanging out I'm glad to have you guys along for the ride today I hope you enjoyed the 360 format leave a comment down below Let me know what you thought if you liked this video give it a thumbs up hit that subscribe button and until next time Thanks for watching and stay tailored


Hello. Hello. Good morning. Welcome to Multistart OpenStack for OPMF for NFB. Let me introduce our team first. This is the three players from Block. And this is Dimitri from Erikson. And I am Cao Yihuan from Huawei. In this session, we will talk about the gaps and challenges in Multistart OpenStack for NFB. And we also will talk about the project like TAG, Kimbert, and the tricycle to adjust the gap and the challenges. And at last, we will talk about how these projects can collaborate with each other in different scenarios. Let's first talk about the gap and the challenges for Multistart OpenStack for NFB. We identified, like, there are some features missing in OpenStack to support disaster recovery in multistart scenario. For example, for NOVA, currently only support single-version machine consistency snapshot. So it's not good enough to support application level consistency snapshot for disaster recovery. So we filed a spec in NOVA to support application level snapshot. And so that the snapshot could be used for disaster recovery. And the code, hopefully, will be merged in Newton. And we also identified, like, lacking the feature for volume level application in volume application version 2. We will discuss with the community after the application version 2 finished. And in NFB, we have to deploy the multiple VNF in different sites. But there are some gaps in this scenario. For example, if we deploy a V-looter in different OpenStack in different site line, the tenant's V-looter should be connected with each other. So the east-west traffic should be accelerated. But currently, no L2, L3 not working automation to accelerate the traffic. And we also identified that the code can choose for multistart admission. And like others, like IP micro space management and other resources synchronizing among multiple sites, also mission. Not only for different VNF in different sites had these issues, also for some VNF, which is designed to be deployed in different sites to achieve higher reliability. For this kind of VNF, the L2, L3 not working also required, for example, for heartbeat synchronization or state application between different components in different sites. So the L2, L3 not working to accelerate the tenant's level of traffic is a common feature liking in OpenStack. And just to mention, for example, for quota control and resource replication between different OpenStack mission. So we, in OPNF, we multi-site started these use cases and identified some feature missing in OpenStack. And started some projects to adjust these issues. For example, for identity service in multi-site scenario, how to achieve high availability VNF across different sites and geostatic disaster recovery and resource synchronization, quota control. We have projects like Kimber, Chessicle, and Multistack to adjust these issues. So next, welcome, Salipriya, for tag. Thank you. Thanks, Joe. So these are some of the gaps and challenges we have identified in multi-site OpenStack for handling the NFV use cases. So the last challenge that needs to be handled in multi-site OpenStack is the end-to-end service orchestration. As an NFV orchestrator, it needs to be able to manage multiple VNFs that are deployed across multiple OpenStack instances and change this VNFs across these sites to provide an end-to-end service orchestration. Now, these service function chaining needs to be done for both east-west traffic, across data centers, and also for the customer-facing traffic, which is the north-south traffic. In order for us to handle this kind of a requirement, the challenge does not end there. Once we deploy the service function chain, we need to modify, monitor, or heal the service chain. In case of VNF failures, the VNF goes down. We need to be able to update the service function chain to move the VNF to a different data center. And based on customer requirements or policies, we will need to modify or update the service chain, like scale the service chain for VNF high availability or any new high availability requirements that come in into the OpenStack multi-site. And finally, it needs to be resilient to the one bandwidth network delay and throughput and modify the service chain accordingly to provide this end-to-end service orchestration. So before we talk about some of the existing projects that are trying to solve the OpenStack multi-site challenges, let me give a quick overview about the TACR project. So TACR project is a NFV orchestration project focused on VNF lifecycle management. It also has the monitoring and management framework for deploying and management of VNFs. We also started working on some of the new features in Metaca, like supporting the TASCA template in VNF catalogs. We have also worked on providing the EPA support for the VNFs with high performance requirements, such as CPU pinning, huge pages, and NUMA awareness. And finally, we support the auto resource creation where the operator can just specify the resources such as flavor, network, and image, and then TACR can automatically go and instantiate these resources for the operator in OpenStack. So now let's zoom into the multi-site WIM feature that we have started to work on in TACR to handle some of these gaps that we discussed, which Joe pointed to. So a quick overview of the feature, it provides a single pane of glass view for the operator to manage multiple OpenStack sites using the WIM management feature. The feature itself is easy to deploy in existing OpenStack installations. The operator can just go ahead and install TACR on one single controller node and be able to talk to multiple OpenStack instances. And TACR itself heavily uses heat and keystone services in the background. So TACR automatically talks to the other OpenStack services such as heat and keystone on the remote sites to perform the resource orchestration functionality. So a bit of deep dive into the multi-site feature itself. So in Liberty, TACR was able to deploy VNFs in a single OpenStack site and it was agnostic to remote sites within the telco infrastructure. So in Mitaka, what we did was we started supporting this multi-site WIM management where operators can deploy VNFs using a single TACR controller in multiple OpenStack sites. So the local WIM just becomes another WIM. The operator can register and use that WIM as an OpenStack instance to deploy VNFs. We also provide the explicit region support. So in case there are available regions that are provided in the OpenStack site, the feature can auto-detect these regions and allow the operator to place VNF on a specified region within that OpenStack site. Of course, in a telco infrastructure, the OpenStack sites may not be running the same versions. So the versions can go all the way back to Kilo and TACR's multi-site WIM feature is able to support each of these releases starting from Kilo. And once the resource requests come into TACR server, it can gracefully downgrade or upgrade this resource request and provision this VNFs on each of these remote OpenStack sites. So here's a bit of a zoom in on the TACR multi-site architecture. Here, we are focused mostly on the NFVO component here, the green block. So here the multi-site feature sits outside of the VNFM component. So TACR can still be used as a standalone VNFM component the operator can consume and there's no dependency on the multi-site feature itself. And this is a pluggable driver framework. So in case the operator wants to bring in a custom WIM into TACR and wants to deploy VNFs on their custom WIMs, we have a pluggable driver framework where we can write our own custom WIM driver and integrate that into the NFVO component and it should be able to talk to this custom WIM in the same way the way it talks to the OpenStack WIM. And the WIMs are shareable across tenants. So as an NFV admin operator, I could go ahead and register a WIM in the WIM dashboard and allow my users to use this WIM to deploy VNFs in their tenants. And finally, we do support the horizon and the command line support. So please check out the multi-site feature in TACR. These are some of the TACR resources we have. I would encourage you to install TACR and try out this feature and any commands or feedbacks are appreciated for this. Thanks. Right, so we'll continue with the second project which is called Kingbird. And it's a new OpenStack project that provides a resource synchronization management for multi-region deployments. So basically it's representing a reference and implementation of some of the use cases we have identified in OpenNFV multi-site. And well, our intention is to provide first an aggregated view on distributed resources. So if I have VMs in region one and VMs in region two, I wanna be able to get an aggregated list of those VMs with one single call. Second is resource synchronization, such as security groups, images, flavors to address the use cases when users wanna boot a VM in region two, let's say, with an image from region one. So how do I address that seamlessly? And last but not least is centralized quota management and that part we already have implemented in Kingbird in our first release and I will expand on this topic. So currently quotas in OpenStack are defined on a per-region basis and further these quotas are also spread across the different services, right? So Nova is responsible for the computer related quota limits, Neutron is responsible for the networking and sender for storage. So when it comes to multi-region deployments, basically it means that you have to go in and set quota limits in each region, in each service and well, that doesn't scale and when tenant reaches the maximum capacity in region one and then simultaneously having still enough capacity in region two, he's not able to reuse this capacity. So thus, there is no process for, well, automatically or dynamically synchronizing the allocated quotas across the regions. And in Kingbird we actually have implemented this centralized quota management function that allows you to dynamically adjust the quota limits and on top of that we also provide, we call it global quota limits across multiple regions so now you don't have to set your quotas in each region and in each service, you can define everything in Kingbird directly and then the automatic adjustment will happen in the background basically. So one of the most important requirements for us was that we shouldn't touch Nova and we shouldn't touch Neutron and sender. So we want to have minimal or zero impact on the existing OpenStack services and that was our main motivation for design. And Kingbird itself has a requirement on an underlying infrastructure that Keystone has to be deployed centrally. But that goes in line with our use cases in OPA and FEMultiSight so we basically take this for granted so that we have centralized authentication system. Right, like I said, minimal or zero impact on existing OpenStack services means that we are basically using existing APIs to dynamically balance quota values to calculate in real time the actual resource usage of tenants and use these values for synchronization. And on top of that, we also implemented the APIs to set and delete and update quota limits, the global quota limits and these APIs basically are similar to the ones Nova has already or Neutron or sender so if you're familiar with the structure of those APIs, there shouldn't be any problem for you to use Kingbird quota management. Yeah, when it comes to architecture, Kingbird is pretty much like any other OpenStack service. The main process here is a Kingbird API that provides APIs for managing global quotas and on-demand quota synchronization. So for example, if you have perform an action and this action requires triggering rebalancing of quotas, you can just invoke this API and it will work. And the second process is Kingbird Engine, which responsible for all the dirty work basically. So for communicating to the OpenStack services in each region, fetching tenant resource usage and dynamically adjusting those values. So like I said, we've had our first release last week. It's a minor release in that release we have the baseline for the project as well as a quota management. So we already have APIs for setting global quotas and also dynamically rebalancing quotas for Nova. In the future, we will proceed with covering the Neutron part and sender and then move on to the use cases related to resource synchronization, images, security groups and so on. So you can follow the progress of the project on Launchpad, you can check out our status, blueprints and you can download the source code from GitHub. And yeah, we invite you to participate if you have any use cases or if you have any feedback, please let us know, it would be good to hear. Hello, let me talk about Chashaka. Chashaka is a new project in OpenStack. Chashaka is OpenStack API gateway. Chashaka can accept all OpenStack API requests. And so Chashaka can work together with already built application based on OpenStack API. For example, Tycho, McNam, Mulano, and COI, SDK, and so on. Chashaka's most important feature is to offer is the L2LC networking automation across different OpenStack instance in one site or in multiple sites. And except the L2LC networking automation, also provide functionality to support, to support data movement from one site to another site and image application and so on. So because Chashaka provide OpenStack API and the manager multiple OpenStack instance work like one interconnected OpenStack. Chashaka will use the L2GateWay to build the cross OpenStack L2L3 networking. L2GateWay is a project on the Neutron and this API extension in Neutron to provide L2 connection. And currently, L2GateWay only supports from the overlay network to the physical network. But a new feature has been delivered in L2 network to support, to connect the overlay network or to provide enough work in different OpenStack instances among L2GateWay so that the overlay network can extend to different OpenStack instance. But a L2GateWay only work in one OpenStack instance so the automation between different OpenStack instances need another layer software to do that. Chashaka can finish this work. Chashaka is OpenStack API gateway. We have a NOVA API gateway, standard API gateway and a Neutron API gateway. We reserve NOVA API gateway for the reason that whenever you provision a new virtual machine, then Chashaka can be aware of a new virtual machine will be provisioned. So we can do the networking at that time automatically when the new virtual machine provisioned in a new bottom OpenStack instance. Chashaka plug-in in Neutron will create regarding NOVA API gateway will create L2 network in regarding OpenStack accordingly. And the line operates the network segment to the Neutron network. So in Neutron network, the network will be considered of different segments. If the tenant has resources in different OpenStack instance, that means they are virtual machine in different OpenStack instance connected to different network segments. For example, in this picture, network 1.1 in the left OpenStack instance and network 1.2 in the right OpenStack instance. And the L2 gateway driver in Chashaka plug-in, when detect that the network has multiple segment and distributed in multiple different OpenStack instance, then L2 gateway driver will start so we'll start a synchronized job. This job is for the networking automation. This job will call the API in different OpenStack instance to do the remote L2 gateway connection configuring and populate the IP and the mic in different L2 gateway. After the population and the remote connection establishment, L2 gateway can understand where the trafficker should be forwarded to for the virtual machine in the same network but distributed in different OpenStack instance in different OpenStack, in different sites. So leveraging the L2 network and the L3 network across the different OpenStack instance, we can move the data from one OpenStack instance to another OpenStack instance. We just only needed to create a virtual machine in different OpenStack instance and the virtual machine with transferring tool installed. This virtual machine attached to same network or slow L3 connection. Then the transferring virtual machine in different OpenStack instance can communicate with each other. After that, we can attach the volume with the data to be transferred to the virtual machine. Then the transferring virtual machine can talk with each other to move the data from one site to another site. And one project called Conveyor is being established to provide the data movement functionality based on Chessacle. So Chessacle is one OpenStack project in OpenStack and we are planning to apply a big project. So please come to contribute and join us. You can find all resources in web from the Launchpad BP and the tools code in GitHub. We just talked about several projects I mean to adjust the multi-site issues and the challenges. All these projects can work together in different scenarios. For example, if we have multiple OpenStack instance deployed in different sites running in multi-legion model, that means no L2L3 networking automation needed across this instance line. We can use tag and a keyboard to orchestrate multiple OpenStack. And if we need the class OpenStack L2L3 networking functionality, even the automation line, we can use Chessacle to manage your multiple interconnected OpenStack instance and work like one OpenStack. Because Chessacle can process and accept all OpenStack API. So tag and the keyboard can seamlessly work together with Chessacle. This is the different scenario for different combination of this software. Okay, thank you. Question and... Regarding this multi-site support, my first question is, last time I checked, looks like there's no standard definition about the site concept in OpenStack. One way to view it looks like it's just, for each site, we will have one keystone installation and across the site, there'll be multiple instances of keystone, right? Different site has different neutral. So how about keystone? So keystone should be isolated within each site, right? For keystone, we'll be using the federated keystone or use the shared keystone. Shared keystone means all of OpenStack service, we will directly talk to this shared keystone. Hello? So one of the use cases we have seen in NFE infrastructure is they want to use these kind of multi-site projects in their existing installations. When you talk about the federated keystone service, that's a day one configuration where you want to bring up your whole OpenStack cloud, configured with a shared identity service. So that does not scale when you already have OpenStack instances deployed. And some of the operators don't want to bring down all of their sites just to implement this shared keystone service to solve the problem here when you want to have a shared keystone service across all these sites. So here the requirement we are trying to address is focused on the existing installations where they can have dedicated keystone services running in their sites. So that means if there's existing installation of keystone and existing keystone installation, it will just keep it. Yes, and you have a shared keystone service that can be configured as well where we can talk to that single keystone service and that can internally process the request on behalf of the other sites that are listening on that keystone service. Okay, thanks. Okay, let me see. So if I wanted in this diagram right here, I see Nova and Ascender API Gateway. Let's say I wanted to extend that and actually distribute heat stacks across multiple OpenStack instances. How would I go about putting in a, do I have to build something called a heat API Gateway or how would that work in Tri-Circle? For Tri-Circle API Gateway, it's a very slim web service just to receive the API and forward the request to the bottom OpenStack. But the API Gateway will catch the routing information so that in later for volume operation or for version operation operation can redirect to the correct bottom OpenStack. Okay, but so does that mean basically these are special cases of API gateways and that if I want to use another subsystem, if I want to distribute calls for another subsystem, is there any special work I have to do in the Tri-Circle? Like heat is an example. Yes, API should be processed by Tri-Circle first because so that the networking automation can be aware of when the version machine is provisioned. Otherwise, the network automation will not be possible. You need to do the networking immediately after the version machine is provisioned. This is a very important Nova API Gateway to know the version machine boot request and the line create regarding network 1.1 in the live OpenStack. Or if the version machine provision in the live OpenStack and create the network 1.2 in another OpenStack and the line ask the Tri-Circle plug-in to connect these two segments into one L2 network. Okay, so what I'm actually thinking may be a different layer than you're thinking. So let's say for a minute, I wanted to basically instantiate a heat stack on one of your lower, what are they called? Bottom, what are your bottom instances, right? The only thing I want to do is I want to do a stack create up at the, and have Tri-Circle direct that to a bottom OpenStack instance. And then within that instance, heat operates autonomously. It does its entire thing autonomously. Yes, there are some slides I'm not sure here. So maybe you have some question about that. And the process is like this, if you create a network first, line only one logical object in the Tri-Circle plug-in. And the line, if you create a version machine attached to the network, line will create a network 1.1 in the guarding OpenStack. Line updates the network 1 with the segment of this part. Line create a new port for the version machine. And create the version machine in the guarding bottom OpenStack with the port IP mic allocated in the Tri-Circle. Yeah, okay. So in my particular case, let's say I wanted you to create a heat stack in bottom OpenStack, your left bottom OpenStack instance. The only thing that's gonna come to Tri-Circle is a stack create. It distributes that and every one of your steps one through six are all gonna go on in that bottom OpenStack. Is that an easy thing to support in Tri-Circle? Okay, so it's pretty straightforward. Okay, okay, all right, thanks. That's exactly, exactly. We wanna be able to do that. We wanna be able to basically just say, execute this heat template out in region A, which actually is a bottom OpenStack instance. Okay, right, right, okay. Okay, all right, thank you. Oh, I had two questions. One of the king bird is the support for king bird done declaratively or programmatically? In other words, in your slide, you showed its integration explicitly with some of the other OpenStack services such as stacker, knower, whatever. So do they have to explicitly program to that interface or the code happens declaratively? No, that was the main requirement, right, to keep the services intact and just use the APIs for Nova, Cinder, and Neutron. So the diagram that I showed basically represents a connection, API connection from king bird to the OpenStack services. Yeah, this one. So we don't require any extra configuration from Neutron or Nova side. Was that your question? Yeah, for example, if a quota exceeds and somebody is trying to create a VM using other services, you'd be automatically honored, right? Yeah, well, we have periodic function that dynamically rebalances quotas, right? So if you have it like the timeout is, let's say, two seconds or five seconds, depending on how dynamic your cloud is, then if you put a new VM, that this will be calculated as a usage value and then we adjust the quota values accordingly. Okay, okay, thank you. The other question was tricycle. If you go to the final slide that you showed during the presentation, and the final slide you showed tricycle almost providing an abstraction for multiple OpenStack instances to tackle, right? You showed Vim1 and Vim2 and then 3, 4, 5. Yes. Providing an abstraction to tackle, right? You're not this one. If you go to the final slide that you presented. Another Java. They're putting code together. Okay, okay. The last one. Yeah, that one. So in this particular case, if the attacker has to configure VNFs in four, five and six, does it have to explicitly be aware of that or is tricycle providing a level of abstraction and attacker is only talking to tricycle gateway so that tricycle can internally talk to internal? Tacker sees tricycle as yet another OpenStack instance. Yeah, just a theory it's a tricycle as another OpenStack. Yeah, so the orchestration beneath tricycle is happening on tricycle's behalf. So basically, Tacker doesn't see the underlying OpenStack. It's just see the tricycle as one OpenStack. Okay, but if it wants to place it, so how does it decide where to place the VNF in which VM, which VM, among four, five and six? So the way, this is something we have to think through thoroughly because the tricycle plugin is, so we want to integrate with tricycle as a plugin just like another WIM driver. Yeah. So if we have the tricycle enabled and so what happens in Tacker is the default WIM driver you can specify it as OpenStack and probably tricycle will become another WIM type which Tacker can talk to and you can provide the tricycle as a WIM type to deploy your VNFs on the sites four, five, six when you want to talk to the three sites below tricycle. So is there an option that is, does the API interface that tricycle provides, does it give an option to say, okay, let me do it, default, I will decide on what WIM to place or does it say, okay, I really give an option, I manage these four WIMs, so I give an option to place which VNF, which VNF you want to place into which WIM. Well, I think, and Joe can correct me if I'm wrong. So each OpenStack like four, five and six is representing the tricycle as an availability zone. Is this on? Okay. The reason I was asking my question is about heat. So let's say I wanted to go on these different sites and I want to go instantiate VNFs on each one of these sites, right? You want to do that as a, what do you call it, an autonomous instance, right? And so the way, one way you could do this in Tacker is basically, Tacker takes, goes from, what is it called, the top level template, the Tosca template, goes down to VNF templates, right? And there'll be a VNF template for each VNF and then you take tricycle and you direct that, you do a stack create with that VNF template and that will create your VNF in a particular site. Yes, but even if you want to explicitly say that I want to put a VM, let's say on site four, site four is represented in tricycle as an availability zone. Yes. So you can even explicitly say that that VM in that availability zone make it happen and tricycle would be. Absolutely, I agree, I agree. But, and that's all even passed up through heat though, right? All that stuff is passed up through heat. Yeah, heat, I think heat resides on the tricycle level so it will basically invoke tricycle APIs for talking to a neutron. No, that's not what I'm thinking. No, I'm thinking that the heat client is at the layer of tricycle. The heat client does a stack create, the actual engine, the heat engines are in sites four, five and six. Uh-huh, okay. So that's your deployment scenario. That's what I'm thinking. Okay, so my next question, sorry. So is it all in Mitaka?  So the three projects are already working on the multi-site use cases. So we saw the project overview of how they're trying to solve the multi-site use cases. So the thing we will be focusing on in Newton is how these three projects can collaborate together to fulfill this picture, what we see here. There are these projects separately solving the multi-site use cases, but it's now important for TACA project to interact with the Kingbird or project like tricycle to provide the end-to-end service orchestration. Okay, that will happen in Newton. Thank you so much. Yeah. Appreciate it, good presentation. Okay. So just a couple of clarifications. This driver that you mentioned for the tricycle, is it MN2? Is the driver MN2? Driver, one. The MN2. There is a plug-in that you mentioned, right? The tricycle? Yes. Your plug-in, is that ML2? Is it, is the driver MN2 point in? So can it coexist with other ML2 drivers? Not a mechanism, Java. We provide a new interface for... So she's asking about the Newton API, the tricycle, the plug-in. Yeah. So can it coexist? Newton API is the same, yeah. Okay, for example, if we have a SRIOE driver, will it be able to handle both? Another question was, since these were two different independent OpenStack instances, and you are trying to extend your ML2 or L3, how are security groups handled? The L2 network between OpenStack sites, how we can handle the security policies? Yeah, because they are independent, so how do you handle when you say extend the L2? Not a good question. So, well, firstly you can do it in Kingbird. Oh, okay. Okay, you are talking about security group, okay. For security group, we deal with it like this. You know that if you're using the remote security group, then all ports attached to this security group should be allowed in some ruler you need to bypass. But in another site, you have no support information. So in Chessicle, we have some trade-offs. So we only provide IP prefix-based security group ruler, but not based on the remote group ID, because when you have the ruler with the security group ID line, you have to look up all the ports beyond to this group ID. And currently, in production cloud, mostly the remote security group ID at a ruler is used for the default security group, so that all machine, added to the same security group can communicate with each other, so the ruler opens the port. So we have some trade-offs because when you deal with the security group in different sites, you have no support information. So we only accept the ruler with IP prefix-based ruler. I think it should be acceptable because the security group control should be based on IP prefix scope, but not based on single IP port. Yeah, otherwise, it will be very difficult to manage so many ports. Yeah. So many IP and ports, yeah. So another question. Sorry, I have a little problem in this, and maybe we can discuss after a meeting, individually. Okay, thank you. Just one quick question. I know I'm very, very close to the lunchtime. Okay, the other thing I wanted to ask you about TACR and TriCycle is the VNF monitoring because the VNF manager is not just for creating or deleting, but it has to do ongoing monitoring for scaling or recovery. So what features we have today in Mitaka for doing that? And particularly in that multi-site case where you are creating the VNFs and services through different projects, who will do the monitoring and how the recovery or scaling can be done? So right now, TACR does support monitoring framework and the way it looks is the L2 networking between the TACR controller node and the site, there is connectivity between the two instances, the TACR node and the open stack site. So TACR could just trigger the monitoring for the VNF on the remote instance in its own VNFM component based on the driver you provide. But in multi-site, there can be a complex monitoring use cases. So we could use silo meter-based alarms and we are looking into it of how we can integrate it as a plugin within TACR to manage monitoring across different sites. So that is something we are looking forward to in the Newton Cycle. Yeah, I know it's not an easy answer, but the other thing is if in future if the customer can deploy any VM, we can't dictate that this is the VNF you need to use. So are we going to define any standards for the VNF so that TACR or tricycle can monitor it? For example, SNMP or there are standards so that you can pick up the messages and monitor. So would that be... So we are having a developer session happening today in TACR for some of these questions with you. I think these are very valid questions and we plan to talk about some of the standards of how we can improvise the monitoring policies and especially for the different types of VNFs that are out there. And since we have integrated the TASCA template in Mitaka, that's something we want to work on to improvise our monitoring for some of the different complex VNFs. So you should be attending the TACR session today. You're welcome to join and provide your inputs there. Thank you. Okay, thank you.


Having the quality of life is about people. It's about how do you take care of your people. It's about, you know, once you join an organization, if you have good quality of life, it's something you want to be proud of. It's about being cohesive teams, and it takes the whole team. If you want great people to stay in a great organization, and we do, we got to make sure that they have the quality of life that when they go out and they do whatever the nation calls us to do, that they feel comfortable that their family's going to be taking care of. If their child's going to have a job, can they get their kids to some child development because the spouse isn't there to help out the kids because they're in Korea, Europe, sitcom, Iraq, Afghanistan. Then we come back from those organizations, you know, those modes, then we're going to move. So how do I get from one position, one duty station to the next? It's important. How we sponsor our families and our soldiers to a new location matter. And all those things build resiliency in the individual, builds resiliency in the family. If we can get the quality of life correct, it just makes the job of a soldier much easier because those are things you don't have to worry about. Yeah, there's plenty of things to worry about as we deploy or go to those operations. It just kind of makes a, you know, peace of mind for the soldier.


with Colored Valley Cooks. One of our viewers that's been viewing the page for years sent me a cake that she likes to make. She says she makes it really often and so I'd say to make it. The only difference I'm going to do is I'm leaving the cherry out and I'm using some cherry and pineapple juice that I had left over from last week in the refrigerator which is just gonna make it yummy. I don't personally like the taste of alcohol so if you love it put it in there by all means but I'm using the juice instead.  You use a cake mix. We'll be using that I'm using a white cake mix because that's what I buy preferably.   I'm gonna put a little vanilla flavoring in it. Three-quarter cups of cherry, cooking cherry or juice and then you're also gonna put in a small box of vanilla pudding which is the three ounce I believe yeah 3.4 ounce size. But you can get cake mixes that have pudding in the mix. This one does not. If you get a cake mix that has pudding in the mix don't add another pudding to it or it's gonna be too cakey moist if that makes sense. So omit, you don't change anything else. You just omit the box of pudding if you have pudding in the mix okay. We're gonna start out we're gonna mix all these ingredients up and I always add my liquids when I'm using a mix first and that way the powder from the cake mix don't get stuck around the edges of my bowl. So here we go. I find a really good deal on a fluted pan and the reason you're finding a good deal on the fluted pan is because most people buy them and never make a sponge cake or an angel food cake for real and that's what they're for. They're for making sponge cake angel food cake. That's a cake that you make that you mix the batter and then you fold whites beaten stiff egg whites into it and it's really a fluffy batter not a batter that would run underneath the edge of it. That's what this is. This is a fluted pan so do not think that when you buy a fluted pan you can use it as a burnt pan. I mean if push comes to shove you might put some parchment in the bottom of it and make it happen but it's best just to get a burnt pan. Now I use a burnt pan and if you don't know what this is that's what that's what this is. It's two pieces and that's why it's used for a sponge cake or angel food cake really only. This pan is a burnt pan. It doesn't have a piece that comes out it still has a flute in the middle and this is a 12-cut pan that I use so it'll hold my huge pound cake recipe like three cups of flour cake recipe but most of the a lot of the cake pans you buy in the store are only 10 cup. You can pay attention to that when you get one. I don't like to grease and flour it by hand I like to just use a spray because there's so many cracks and crevices and especially if you have those really pretty ones that have that look like a castle or something. So just take your baking spray and make sure you get all the eggs good. Okay so get all of your batter in the pan if you want information on the mixer just look in the description post go to my website and you'll see an advertisement at the top of the page for this mixer if it's something you're interested in. I also make one that's a couple of hundred dollars cheaper that's not quite as big of a I think it's a 10 cup instead of a 12 cup bowl and so if you would like one that's not quite as big you can get that one. I believe it's called the Artisan Meal. Now my nutmeg cake will taste a little different than hers because it's minus in the cherry. It has cherry juice in it but don't that sound good. Really what the cake makes you do just about anything. We're gonna get this in the oven at 350 degrees and we're gonna bake it for 15 minutes. So it should be nice and brown when it comes out and then we're just gonna dust it with powdered sugar to serve it. We'll see how in a little bit. It's time to get this cake out of the oven it smells so good. Looks good. Can't wait to get a bite. I'm gonna make a nice cup of coffee. It got good and brown now. If you want to cook it that long I like it brown. If you don't want it to get that brown you could always cook it at 325. Good boy does it look good. Okay we're gonna flip this cake out. It's dusting brown. Now when I bake a cake I know a lot of people like to serve a bunch cake this position and it's fun to cut in this position but I get so much prettier on the other side. So many times when I make a cake and a bunch I actually do it this way. Opposite than most people do. Alright and here we go we're gonna put a little pump sugar on the top of it. Add a little extra. Add a little cinnamon to it too but now this is a nutmeg cake so it's gonna taste like nutmeg. It's hot and that's the way I like it. Something like this. You can add some kind of sugar to your piece so that you're not you know getting icing. Now let's give it a try. My favorite part of the video. Yum-yum. Easy cake. So it's really good. If it were a yellow cake mix of course it would taste more like a yellow cake mix. Mine was a white. Per recipe you can use a yellow one it doesn't matter. Just remember the tips. Now if you like the taste of sherry by all means make it with sherry and if you don't then make it with juice like I did. Y'all have a wonderful day and thanks for watching. Colored Valley Cooks where we cook like mama did. Bye y'all love ya.