Senedd prde Ómd사eth Al格on has said that, due to the worsening in security in the country, where the nation's corporate existence has come under threat. Speaker of the House of representatives Femeig B Glückhewr Biamila, likes him said that Nigeria is under attack. The two principal officers of the National Assembly spoke as President Muhammad I Mah�커 lamented that insecurity and other social voices are challenging Nigeria's quest towards nationhood and threatening the desires to achieve his ambitions for the country. Well joining me to discuss this is Dr Law Mefful, his director of public affairs, Ibu Leadership Development Foundation and also we have Uche Tute, he is a social commentator. Thank you very much gentlemen for joining us. Thank you for having us on your show. Felly, Gweithio'n wneud hwnna'n wneud gydag hynny. Mae'r gwrs Nagorol NYST, y Prif Weinidog Feneru Ffemig bydd cyflwyno yma, phobl eitthod y pethau gweld bod nawr o'r gwendigaethau ar y dwyllgor i'r bydd hynny ei ddim yn weld cwestio a symud hynny'n gwneud, gan hynny, yn gallu ffaintgen iawn i ddim yn gymrydol ychydighaffi. Ond o'r hyn, os yw'r cyfun yw'r gweld o'r twfynnol ac mae'n dweud i'r ysgolion yng Nghaerhau Niddo yn gweithio arall, mae yng Nghaerhau Llangwyd yng Nghaerhau Lleid Gweithio yn ystod o gweithio'r Gweithio, ymgyrch, ymgyrch, ymgyrch, ymgyrch, a'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gwaith, oes mae'n gweithio ar y ffazor, y ffazor yw Borg Passing, a'r ffazor yw Cwlllun? Fy oedd y ffazor Cwlllun, rhai'r ffazor Cwlllun, Rydyn ni'n gallu Iwiwyr nawr wedi'u ffordd hwnnw. Rydyn ni'n gallu bywyr yn ffordd y bydd y bydd yn ymgyrch.  Mae'r hyn sydd wedi'u cyfrif iawn yma. Mae yma i ymgrifio barach a fyddai'r cyfrif iawn. Yma yw'r ffordd ffyrddion, mae'r cyfrif iawn wedi'u cyfrif iawn yn ei ddweud i'r cyfrif iawn. Mae'r cyfrif iawn yn gallu'n cyfrif iawn. yw'r sefydgliad dylun i'r eich syniad. So dwi yn cael ei… Mae thysgwyl wedi weld beth iddo i ddim yn nhw'n ddigwyr. A y sfaithbeth yma i'r bydd, a'r prosesoedd sy'n ei wneud wahas fyrwyr. Mae ymddir i'r Nicoledau Syaf, mae'n meddwl i'r Nicoledau Sysaf. Roedd yr ymddir yn gweithio yn gweithio'r cyfrifetysgol ac'r ysgwrdd ac yn cyfgawr a'r prosesoedd. Fy edrych yn gallu'r prosesoedd o'u cyfrifetysgol. Ond iawn. Mewnmingau Cyngorau, cyngorau cysylltu, cyngorau nifer, geranau'r wahanol ymwiel, yn odd o'r ddylch ym wythnosau i ysgu sagell o'r newid ac ar gyfer nygirion, ac rwy'n bwynt eich gynul o gychwynwyr. Rydyn ni'n holl bwaith cyngorol, i chi'n mynd i chi'n hyn, ond yma, rwy'n ddefnyddio'n mynd i chi'n cyfrif. Rwy'n cenderill, ychydig yw weithio, ychydig i'r ddiolch â'r ddisgynniad, that the soutners should have been, as the chief of army staff and all of that, but is it really about where the president is from? Is it about the zones? Is it really about the fact that people have said that the president has double standards when it comes to dealing with people from certain other regions of the country as opposed to the people in his region? Or is it just about just people doing their jobs? Whether they are from the North, the South or the East or the West? I'm trying to understand should we just solely put it there and say well that's why we have ethnic tensions is it does not go beyond that. I really wish that was the issue like you know we've given the president six years already to just say you know we've given the benefit of that out appoint competent people. We don't care where you're from or where you're from the south north. For the past six years we've got a nepotistic appointment after appointment and each of these appointments have been incompetent people. Borotai was appointed was incompetent in every formal manner and he managed to stay there as chief of arms himself for six years. The new guy came in and he barely spent like six months on everything and now he's passed away. We've never addressed that issue and no security reports have told us exactly what happened to him. And now we have someone else who is coming and the only reason for his appointment is not necessarily his qualifications because God has shared his resume and there was nothing on the resume. The highlight of his resume is that he spoke Spanish. Do we speak Spanish in Nigeria? Is that our problem right now in Nigeria? There are more qualified, more competent people who are supposed to be appointed who are his senior who were passed over for the job. So what are you saying? You're not appointing the best person for the job. You're not appointing someone because he's from a certain part of the country and he's from a certain religion. That's unfair. That doesn't help. It doesn't help our situation. We need the best person who can provide secure lives and property right now. We are facing attacks from several places. The north east will go around with icewap and all those different things. The north west is banditure and kidnapping. The south east now we have unknown gunsmen. This is in addition to the clashes between the headsmen and the people in the south east and the south west. The south south they have the Niger Delta militants who are still there. They're still revving their guns and waiting to explode at any given chance. So we need someone who can handle the situation on the ground. And we don't have that. I keep asking every time when I talk about the issue of insecurity in Nigeria, I keep asking if really what we're seeing and the responses that we're getting is a show of failure on the part of the president or on the part of the leadership of this country. And I'm talking about both the upper house and the lower house, the governors, the state houses of assemblies. Because of course yes we know that the president is the president of this country and then it's the power at the center thing. We've seen the southern governors take a stand when it comes to banning open grazing. But is that at the heart of Nigeria's problem? Because we have agitations in the south east and that is not necessarily at the heart of the problem of Nigeria. We have several other issues. We have ethnic tensions. We're on the toes. I just finished a conversation with a group of people or talking about a group of people who are asking for self-determination and they are in the southwest. And this is not news, of course. But what is really at the heart of this issue that we are seeing brewing today? Because of course we know we have, like you have named all of the issues, peculiar in the different segments of the country. But what really is at the heart of this issue that we need to address before we start with the other ones? The heart of the issue really is the constitution, the Nigerian constitution which we raised in 1999. It's the big problem. For example, it puts in too much power with the commander-in-chief. He's the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The governors have no control over police, over army, over no one. They can't do anything. A commissioner of police with orders from Mabuja can refuse to listen to the governor of a state and nothing will happen. So the constitution is not right. It's not working. That's why you're going to have all these nationalism claims, things about state policing. It's too much a responsibility for the federal government and they can't longer handle it anymore. It's beyond that. So we need to talk about this. I'm happy that we're going around the nation talking about the constitutional review right now. People are getting input from all zones, all geographical zones across the nation. Hopefully we'll have something. We can have some kind of amendment so we can have a working solution for us. So we all feel part of Nigeria. It's a secure Nigeria whereby our lives and property are guaranteed. So the constitution is a big problem. Meffo, Lord, thank you for joining us. I want to quickly push you on this same thing. A lot of people still are saying that the presidency and leaders of this country need to address the core of the Nigerian problem before we can deal with other issues that has turned into a hydro-headed monster. What do you as a person think at the core of the problems that Nigeria is facing today, did it start under the Bohari administration or did it just get worse under him and why is it taking so long for it to be dealt with? Thank you for hosting me. I think the problem Nigeria is passing through now is a minority from two essential factors. Number one is leadership. Number two is structure. We don't have the appropriate kind of leadership at all levels because if you have proper leadership in place they will be able to address even the structural problems. We are not able to have this sorted out because the leadership has continued to show a gross level of ineptitude, if I may use that word. Structure is also a big issue because Nigeria is a federal environment. Nigeria is made up of at least 250 ethnic groups speaking about 527 distinct dialects, if not languages, 200 million people. Now you have a constitution 1999 even after amendment, still keeps the federal government with 68 items as exclusive to federal and only about 16 to states on concurrent basis, which means that the federal government can also legislate. Beyond this also, the constitution provides that where the laws made by the states are various with the ones made by the National Assembly, that is the federal government. The laws made by the states are declared incompetent in advance, null and void to the extent of inconsistency with the provisions of the federal law. That's where the problem is. What this means is that we are running a unitary system in a federal environment. When you talk about insecurity, it's expected that there will be insecurity because to secure a place, you need very local content. You cannot bring somebody from Boronau State Canary and expect him to perform wonderfully in a local village in Anambra. I'm by it's not far. These people don't fly in and out of those spaces. They live there. They become a part of that society. They integrate. It should be easier for them. We're not talking about integration here. That's what happens. Our police officers are posted to places and then they finally integrate, even though sometimes they're not allowed to stay for too long, but they find their way around, don't they? Let me tell you. For you to integrate yourself into a place, there are psychological and sociological processes that must take place. You have to learn the language. You have to learn the culture. So you don't just integrate like that without having mastery of the language, mastery of the culture. That's the problem. Now, in all federal environments, everywhere in the world, security is local. You have to have local police, state police, even institutions have their own police. So you do not expect Nigerian police force to effectively police Nigeria from Abuja. It's not possible. That's why we were there, Boko Haram terrorism grew under our nose. Now they are metamorphosing to Banditry. There are other fault lines or government spaces are growing. Go to the southeast, which until two, three months ago was the most peaceful part of Nigeria, is not the home of unknown gunmen. Go to southwest. Go to middle belt. See what the heads men are doing. See, you need to allow people to take charge of their life and destiny. You must allow people to secure themselves. How do you do this? I'm sorry, we do not have so much time, Mr Law. But I'm just curious because we need a solution in the interim while we plan for the future. In the interim, we have pockets of violence almost everywhere. We have governors who have decided to regionalize themselves and take decisions at that level. What do we do in the interim? I'm going to ask my other guest the same question in closing. What do we do to deal with these issues in the interim? We need solutions for the now. The solution is relatively simple. We need to have a national dialogue so that we understand what people really want out of the Nigerian federation. You need that now and it can be done in the next three months. Very, very fundamental. Uche, you just heard him. He's talking about the national dialogue and we've had many. I mean, we've had one under the Barsinger Administration. We had one under the Good Luck Administration that was also tossed. We even have had a national dialogue that was led by the governor of Kaduna State. It's been tossed. It's gathering dust somewhere. We're calling for another one so Nigerians can tell you what they want. What's the guarantee that we can move forward with this? How do we solve what is your solution for this moving forward? My solution is that the present government right now in place cannot do anything. They don't have the lack of capacity, the competency, the intention, the wherewithal. So, even if you give them a blueprint of what to do, they won't do it because it's almost as if it's in their interest that this insecurity pervades our nation. Almost as if it's very deliberate to create a sense of a state of insecurity for them to further their agenda. But I'm sorry, this government actually campaigned because under the Good Luck Administration, they did say that they were going to bring us some sense of security and deal with what's going on. And if you're saying or implying that it seems like they even enjoy, almost enjoy what's happening, that seems to be an opposite of what they actually intended for us in closing. Yes, it is. At this point of time, we speak of the House and the State President should please be honourable men and do the right thing and begin impeachment processes against the President at this point of time. He's in capital of power. He's in capital of security in this nation.  All right, Wcetuta and Law Meffo. Thank you very much for speaking with us. We appreciate it. Thank you very much. All right. Well, thank you all for staying with us. We will take a short break now and when we come back, I will give you my take. Here's my take. Here we are again. Talking and jaw-jawing about the issue of insecurity in Nigeria and people asking for good governance. This is the major thing that everyone in any entity called a country is asking for. The reason why people line up under the sun in the rain to make sure that they cast their votes there, they want a better life. And the most constant thing in life is change. And the change that Nigerians are asking for from its leaders is that we stop leaving under some form of a dictatorial rule where only what our leaders want for us should be king. Nigerians are asking for a better life. In other words, they do not want to be wallowing in poverty anymore. They do not want to be living a terrible and hard life.  Nigerians are asking that we have free, fair, credible elections, that we do not have thugry and ballot box snatching. Nigerians are asking that the basic amenities that every person on the face of this earth deserves should be given. They're asking for their rights to life. They're asking for their rights to associate. They're asking for their rights to be able to speak up and demand the dividends of a democracy because that's what we think that we're running. But all of this just plays out like water on the back of a chicken because it seems like our leaders no longer hear us. So where does this leave us? Where do we go? Who do we call to? America and the UK cannot help us because Nigeria's problems need Nigeria's solutions. How long are we going to keep calling on the UN and calling on the UK and the US? They have their own problems. Do you see them calling us to come and do it for us? So if we have competent leaders, if we have people who really have Nigerians at heart and they promise to lead us, all right, these people need to feel those shoes and begin to act like they really want to push Nigeria to the best place that it would want to be. We cannot keep referring to Nigeria's problems. I mean, I'm looking at history books and some of the things that our leaders complained about 25 years ago were still complaining about it in 2021. Does that not shame us as a country and shame the people who we call leaders? It's time for us to awake from our slumber and do the right thing. I am Marianna Cym, thank you for watching.


I'm a little busy right now. Turn off the radio. Yes, it does. OK, there it is. ImagineX, aka Jesse Kremz. You may know me from such popular things as introducing everyone else. And head speaking again. This time I'm speaking, so it'll be a little different, crazy. I'm the acting operations manager slash president of the Hacker Foundation, which will be a real body in later today. In about six, I'm going to be building D. Feel free to come on up. I'm Nicholas Farre, acting secretary-treasurer of the Hacker Foundation. Can everybody hear me better now? I'm Nicholas Farre, acting secretary-treasurer of the Hacker Foundation. Also, there's a guy that looks just like me, who was a speaker during this room. I have nothing to do with him. The whole point behind the Hacker Foundation is to serve as an umbrella organization for people doing any kind of service, technological research. Any organization that would be at DEF CON is somebody that we can help serve. The point behind it is to take care of all of the paperwork that you don't want to take care of. This is really what it is. It's very simple. You have good ideas. You want to formalize them, maybe get some grant money, maybe fund some money from your great-rich uncle.  Maybe you want to go into Kosovo and run telephone lines, and you need UN sanctioning, and you need to front it through something that exists. Boom, this is how you do it.  It's a very simple process. What we provide is immediate IRS 501c3 status for any projects that would normally operate under a 501c3 umbrella. Specifically, projects that deal towards humanitarian relief, freedom of expression, free flow of information, anything that would operate under those auspices. So you're looking at things like open source mine detection robots. There's a shitload of mines in the world, and they're blowing people's legs off all over the place. We've got players that shoot things down. They cost lots, but it would be great if we had a little robot that could go out there and find mines, dig them up, and remove them. Other things, think about using VoIP technology and eating in unique ways, such as making it possible for people in, say, the slums of Honduras to call their buddy, working here in Vegas, send them money. Other projects include rural and banking systems. If you want to start up a credit union in a foreign country and you need some banking software, remember we're talking micro amounts of money make a big difference in these places. We're talking really bad poverty. So you can get some licensed and approved credit union operations software from the World Banking Association from your $5,000 plus a $1,000 fee per terminal, and it runs in DOS on $46, sort of. It's that bad. You look at lots of stuff like that, and you want to make little changes. They're very easy to do. I mean, as soon as you sit down and write banking software to run a credit union that used MySQL, SSL, PHP, something advanced, you'd definitely be making a big impact. That's also a great way if you want to destabilize the global economy. We also provide institutional support for your research and service projects. If you have ever applied for a grant, usually grant funders do not like to give money straight to individuals. They like it to be administered through a university, through some kind of non-profit organization in NGO. We realize that a lot of the people who attend DEFCON and would be eligible for that grant funding who, through just hobbying outside of their professional work jobs, don't have access to an organization that they can apply for grant funding through. That's why we're here.  So one of the big projects that we started with, and this is what happened, here's a short history of why this is here.  And we said, you know, it would be great if we could do something like that with our skills. Unfortunately, you know, we need sanctioning and all this other stuff to get in there. So we had a meeting with some other people and we said, we want to do this thing called Hackers for Humanity. And everybody had these totally different ideas about what that meant. So what we decided to do instead was create an umbrella company, an organization that covers all those issues. Hackers for Humanity specifically is an NGO that goes into crisis areas in the world and does tech support. We set up networks. We'll do sub-radio nets. We'll do other things that NGOs aren't very good at so they can concentrate on their core competencies. And we're also thinking about getting into rehabilitation and training for crisis areas so that when... So essentially bringing real phone technology into places that have been torn by strife and war for years and years, like Afghanistan and Iraq. There's no reason that Halliburton needs to make all that money. That money can be recycled back into the economy and do a lot more good. And the fact of the matter is that people who are in this room and attending this conference know exactly how to do these things for far less money and manage to make them far more resilient than for-profit corporations can. And they're wasting my money, your money, everybody's money, so waste of our time. And we also provide the administrative support for groups that are doing this research. Anything that's related towards the organizational mission, a lot of the things that we've been mentioning. And a couple of the things by extension that we haven't, we can provide all of that support that we won't find in a network. So tax deductible generation status went away for the project, specifically open source crowding to be a good example of this. So hacktivism projects will be a good example. We aren't actually... We have no political interests, but we understand that some of the activities that we support may have political impact. We're not trying to read elections, but if people can read The New York Times in China, that may change some things. Uncensored. Yeah, censoring issues. Also, if you have an open source coding project out there that you believe has some sort of charitable aim, a lot of people have PayPal donation buttons. But corporations and other people who would be likely to film those projects seem kind of leery about donating to just a random PayPal account. If you believe that your project has a charitable aim, you can come talk to us. And all donations through your project under our auspices could be tax deductible. And that's a really big thing for corporations that are using the software that you're writing to support the projects that you're writing. We wouldn't take anything off the top of that. Basically, people donate to that PayPal account. We send you the exact amount of money that they send us. One of the things to remember is that we're not a money-wandering front. Though it does sound that way. He's going to be a CPA, so we'll take care of that. We also don't want to end up funding cyber-alkaida. So we will be doing some oversight with where the money goes and what it's spent on because that would be really bad if we did that by accident. Also, the organization is a whole of the people who... The people who run it, the people who spend their time helping you out. Also do things like hosting events, maintaining online forums to help all of the projects that would be working under our auspices to work better together. There seems to be a disconnect. That's one of the great things about DEF CON, is that it brings people who otherwise wouldn't mix together. Just the chance random encounter with somebody that, you know, a friend of a friend creates a lot of interesting synergies. If there are any corporate types out there that like the word synergies. Synergies. Did you want to talk about these? So, connecting projects with compliant goals and efforts. For example, we have some people we know who work at the open courseware program. And we know people in Iraq who want to use open courseware in their educational program. Unfortunately, there's no internet in Iraq right now. It's very stable. So, it's much easier just to get the entire open courseware load, stick it on a hard drive, stick it on a plane and send it over there. That's the kind of stuff we can help with. If you just want to help and get an interest, we can hook you up with people. And if you're somebody who has a need and you need technology help, we can do it the other way. Also, another idea that one of the people who's on our board had was the hack of benevolent society. Not, we're still working out the tax and legal implications of how we're going to do this, but the essential idea being it seems that especially after, you know... The dot coms. Especially after the dot com blah. After dot bomb, it seems that a lot of people here are living under a feast or famine sort of thing. That, you know, one year somebody will have a great job and they'll be making a lot of money. Their friend will have nothing. Next year the situation will have reversed. And a lot of the times when you've been fired and when you're living check to check exorbitantly, you suddenly have no money. You have to start selling a lot of your hardware. And then when you're trying to get back into things, you realize you have no money to buy that hardware. The idea behind the hack of benevolent society is to create a fund for people when they have money to be able to donate to and get the tax benefits of and when they don't have money to be able to pull out just to buy a laptop, just to buy, you know, a cell phone for a couple of months to try to get a job. Something so that we can all try to break, you know, the sort of feast or famine cycle that a lot of people attend this conference live under. Yeah. So public awareness.  Ooh, go boo. So we're going to deal with that on a... We're going to try and deal with that. We're going to get in touch with the press and deal with stuff like that. Specifically, negative images. EFF has really helped with this kind of stuff, but I'm doing a century advocacy on what we are. I mean, most people think that hacking is about breaking into things, but hacking is also about creating things. And that's often forgotten, facet. Hackers don't have a PR firm. There will be that. Go ahead. And again, we provide overall administrative support. If you're having trouble branding or marketing what you're doing, if you're having trouble just getting it out there as a distinct project, we can help you with that. Again, we also help with funding administration. And a lot of times people, especially hackers, have a very hard time managing finances, managing large groups of people. I'm sure you've all had some kind of problems with that. A lot of what we want to try to do is to help organize those things. Is to help give you very simple tools to help manage money, to help manage people, to help manage other outside resources to focus again on what your core competencies are. And also, being the hacker foundation, we want to be as transparent as possible.  We want to be able to make sure that all the information without compromising other people's privacy rights is out there. All funding that goes out and specifically to what it goes to is public information. All incoming institutional funding, if there are any corporate funding, any foundation funding, we want you to know where our money is coming from. The only thing that will keep anonymous by request are small donations. We want to try to be as transparent as possible so that you know exactly what's coming in, what's going out, and what's happening in between. All of our board meeting mimics are public. Our board members rotate annually. Board membership is open to pretty much anybody who has an interest in forwarding the goals of the organization. And our annual board elections are held every year here at DEF CON for your convenience. So, you should come on up and see us tonight. That's sex, executive board meeting. It's our second floor. It's up by the pool. It's that stairway you're never allowed to go up. One night it came. Just don't go in the roof. We are still planning and pending. Is anybody from the IRS here? Good. We're hopefully going to get that stuff taken care of very quickly. The IRS is a nice money with a very slow organization. So, we're taking our own sweet time on this one. All of our paperwork is organized. We are organized as a California charitable corporation. Every piece of paper, every form, every person that we could have possibly contacted has been contacted and we're expecting our positive determination whether at any moment now. Please. So, any questions? Are you ready for a long time? You're saying too much. You got to come up here and grab the mic. I have to repeat the question. I have to repeat the question. I'm not so good at that. I'm just going to make some comments on this presentation. Oh, girl, no. Okay. I'm very pleased to see this, but I think your basic problem is the word hacker has been taken and reserved, so to speak. It's almost like a trademark. You're not supposed to use somebody's trademark. If you try to sell a beverage, Coca-Cola, they're going to come down on you hard because they own the legal rights of the name. In the public mind, a hacker is a certain kind of person. It's in the mind of the public. It's in the mind of large parts of the press, of law enforcement, of corporations. There is no way that you're ever going to change a perception. The term I've heard is like boiling the ocean. Okay. I'm quite serious about that. I'm a marketing guy. I'm also in the marketing industry, unfortunately. What? I'm also in the marketing industry, unfortunately. Well, I am, too. And I'm unfortunately unemployed, but that's later. We'll talk about that later. All right, so anyway, so my point is what you really are describing is a wonderful thing. You're describing a group of independent software and hardware people who want to do projects for the welfare of humanity, so to speak. Just like doctors who have borders, in effect. That's one of our subprojects. Exactly. But the point is you need a name that more reflects doctors without borders or software developers for humanity or something like that without sounding too goo goo, so to speak. You're never going to win with hackers. You're also describing it sounds like a professional association that reminds you of the associations for aging rock and rollers. Which, actually, seriously, which include an old age home. So I was waiting to hear something about a retirement home for hackers. That was a... That's actually one of the ideas behind the British society. My name is getting bad. I know it's coming. You're not getting younger here. Every deaf con is a little harder, I know. When I look around this audience, I see most of the people younger than me. Some of you are probably young enough to almost be my kids' age or in college, one's a grad school. I'm a little older than that. But I'm not a hacker such. I'm a security marketing guy who wants to hear people talking about. By the way, I'm looking for a job in Silicon Valley. Hey, hey, hey, put the mic down now. Love you, thank you. Happy Christmas for anybody who wants it. Who isn't marketing, isn't he? I know what Nick takes this one. It's funny you mentioned it. I actually was trying to describe this to a Texas trial attorney. On the flight actually over to Vermont where we were starting to get to the IRS paperwork. And to a certain extent, I do agree with you. And the two things that I have to say sort of in response to that are one, right now we are just starting out. And the people that are going to be involved right now understand what the term hacker really means. And as we end, of course, as any small organization starts growing, they don't get known so much for their...  But based on what we're looking at as our growth model right now is to sort of use and leverage that as a name. The word hacker does stand out in the press. But yet when you see that, you look at it, you're interested in it. We know enough about the press and how to manipulate and how to leverage that term so that people see the word hacker and then see good deed. People see the word hacker and then they see good project. Yeah, I know, it will be difficult at first and a lot of people won't get it. And the other issue with this is that we're going to get called bad anyway. I actually sat around and kicked around names for days and days and days and days and days.  We're going to get sucked into it anyway. It's fine. Someone else has a question? So someone over there had a question. Jennifer has spotted you already. You raised your hands up high. There you go. No, come on up. What's your question, loudly? Yes, we do. We actually do have international members. We've had a lot of support from some of our colleagues in England. And we are looking to make more friends across the oceans. We have friends seen and unseen in all over the world. Next question? The birth rate drop-off being a problem or being a plus? Are you talking about just how to get phone lines in there fast? We should talk after. There's a couple solutions. I don't want to just make an answer myself with some wrong ones right off the bat. But regardless of the technical implementation there, implementing telephone systems at little or no cost, they get the equipment for free and we teach them how to operate it at as close to free as possible. If they have any free time to help use it, we teach them how to repair it. We tell them how to contact us if they need spare parts or they need other assistance. It's not one of those examples that you typically see in developing societies and developing nations where people are only interested in throwing in a telecommunications infrastructure when there's money to be made on it. We saw that as a side effect of what happened in Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Yes, it was an extraordinarily repressive regime. Many of the most brilliant lines of Chile were either killed, made disappeared, or left Chile. But at the same time, he brought an environment there where people had an interest in making a lot of money by implementing a telecommunications infrastructure. Right now they have a much more liberalized government. Pinochet is this close to being indicted for his crimes against humanity, but at the same time Chile enjoys the benefits of that telecommunications infrastructure that was put there for a profit motive. What we're trying to do is do the same thing under a non-profit auspice. That's the whole point behind the Hacker Foundation to try to bring a lot of these developing nations into the world excluding the normal profit motive that comes when people throw this telecommunications infrastructure there. The other thing is that we're looking to build durable solutions with no interest in what's called t-shirt charity. We are going to build durable long-term solutions that the locals can maintain and build. And you see there's a benefit. It's kind of scary in a way. A lot of people have had their jobs outsourced from here because India, which used to be a third world country, is now a pretty high-tech place. I look at that in two ways. That's the hand of straight in action, but also, you know what that means? There's a lot more Indian hackers, and now there's a 2,600 being there. That's pretty cool. In a lot of times, development organizations will attempt to impose a certain brand of technology as sort of a cultural imperialism. The Hacker Foundation is not interested in doing that. What we're interested in doing is finding out what people want, and then figuring out how to implement it. For instance, a friend of mine, Dirk Koening in Grand Rapids, who runs the community media center there, went to a village in Africa to try to improve the communications infrastructure amongst a group of related tribes. And he went there, he had all these plans, voice over IP, wireless networking, team candidates, he got 11, that sort of thing. And then when he got to talking to the chief, the chief said, well, you know, if I had a bell that all the villages could hear so that they knew when to come into the village, that's all I need. They figured that out, and that's when I ended up getting implemented. We're not interested in anything other than helping people achieve what they want to achieve. And if a bell ends up being the technological solution that they want, and we can provide it, that's what we'll do. Any more questions? Please? Okay, if you want to talk to us. Yeah. In time, or just cash? We did all our own paperwork and filed our own stuff. It was $700. But you know what? We spent a weekend turning our brains into mush, literally, doing IRS filings. Goddamn. And... No oppress is a very good book, but if you have no experience or background in a nonprofit organization, a lot of the language and a lot of the verbiage gets to be overwhelming. You know, I've worked under universities and nonprofits. You know, my most substantive job in my career was working for a 501c3 computer recycler. I was the general manager of my college radio station and we were largely independent. A lot of the things and a lot of the terms that they use, the meaning of you really have to learn just being out in the real world. That if you're interested in starting a 501c3 on your own, that you go out there and start volunteering and start trying to help out people in the administration of another nonprofit so that you know exactly what they're talking about when they're working on other things. But the total dollar investment is pretty high. Also, what state do you live in? California. It's the most friendly states to do it, but again, friendly states typically have the most administrative overhead. We did it. It was a long time for our paperwork to travel through the system. Almost a year and that was for a $25 form. It happened during budget cuts. I've seen fees of $200 an hour. I've seen flat fees of $200 online on a little Google ad and I'm way more willing to think about it. But you really do have to look at what you're doing with there. Thank you. We're done, but we'll answer questions out in registration. Thank you very much. We hope to see more of you. Hackafoundation.org. Applications are on the DEF CON CV if you're interested.


Okay, perfect. Well, welcome everyone. Thank you all for coming for those who don't know me. My name is Eli I am founder of president of the Liberty Society and Tonight, we're fortunate to hold host dr. Yaron Brooke Yaron was born in Israel. He raised and raised the born in Israel and began his career his journey in the IDF he served in military intelligence and then began his academic career in the Technion Institute for Technology in Chaifa He then moved to the States to earn his MBA and PhD from the University of Texas He has also written many articles featuring in Forbes USA today and many other publications today Yaron is a world-renowned object of his philosopher He is the executive chairman of the Iron Rand Institute. He is host of the Yaron Brooke show and He is best-selling author Tonight, he's going to talk to us about the roots of war And the current Russia Ukraine climate. We're also After the talk we're going to have a Q&A. I will kick it off To get the ball rolling and then we're going to open up the questions from the audience. This event is also a fundraiser for The Red Cross we will be selling prints. I'm also going to be raising funds for the Ukraine Freedom Fund And I'll explain more about that later. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming Yaron Brooke. Thank you Using this also as an opportunity to raise funds for Ukraine to good cause. I will say I'm not a philosopher I am not a philosopher, although I'm a trading objectives philosophy, but I don't I don't have the pretense of being a philosopher But primarily but all from the perspective of Iron Man's philosophy objective is I'm used to be the CEO of the Iron Man Institute And now I'm I'm the chairman of the board. So one of the issues that I have written about Over the years and obviously that is very much at the headlights today when Eli contacted me to do a talk and we were considering what to do and usually I give talks on inequality or on capitalism You know, you can find them online and there's a version of them all over the place that was under consideration But then I know why not do something that's that's really in the headlines and really in the news and it's happening right now And we're all I think hopefully disturbed by And that is what's going on in Ukraine between Ukraine and Russia that is war and it's it's a little jarring I think for most Europeans because You really have had a war since World War two not on the scale not where one country's in fading another Not at the level of destruction and the number of lives that we kill In this conflict, and I think many people in the world out there many people in Europe in particular I think the question why? How do we get to the point where after these unbelievably destructive wars or one with two we now have another war in Europe we've avoided this for You know almost for 75 years How do we get to the point where we've got another one? I don't know so I think the whole idea the whole issue of war is an interesting one I think the causes of war are really interesting. I'm Rand I'll just give a plug here because I encourage you to read this essay. I remember a essay Years ago called the roots of war. So even though this talk is also titled roots of war You know, I'm not pretending to I'm not just going to deliver her talk or pretending to be as good as what she presented But I have you read the assay the essays available online for free just put roots of war I'm and and you can read it. I think it's very powerful in terms of where war comes from and hopefully it'll be consistent with What I say here today Generally, I'm hoping that you're interested enough at what I say that it keeps your interest enough to read some That's my goal, right? I try to convince anybody it's really to create some content Right, but to create some interest so that you read more of my man's and of course if if you're interested in following me I Do have a YouTube channel where I I do a show just me talking about stuff pretty much I don't know four times a week something like that when I'm actually home, which is where these days So So well, let's start with the basic fact that War is Incredibly horrific It is destructive This is what they want to prevent you the same the evil of all was the evil Property is destroyed Civilizations can be wiped out whole people's can be wiped out There's nothing more savage. There's nothing more brutal. There's nothing more destructive human experience So I can talk about music in background First time it's not I Shoot not gonna be the last time.  That's fine They should come in and ask questions that that would be the Reasonable thing to do right So I Think we have to start with the with the fact with the reality If you care about human life if human flourishing is your standard if human will be is your standard If being if being successful in life is your standard and so he is mine War is the worst possible outcome for any If you value individual life if individual life matters And at the end of the day life is they except for individual life, right each one of us is alive There's no collective life It's just no collective anything really there's individuals The question is why do you do it? You know why does a You know a species and Really war is unique to human beings of the species. Don't do it. Why is Why do we as a species engage warfare? What is it that cries? to engage in The slaughter of the human beings and the destruction of property and civilizations in mass And of course all of human history After another this is not an aberration There are few periods of human history that have seen relatively people We just live through one last 80 years you have been a period of relative people So I think it's important to study both What leads up to a war? What ultimately these do is a piece what n-force what leads us to a situation where war is People abandon the idea. It's a piece of important because I think they tell us a lot about the value systems I think they're cause so it's important to find the cause of of what's interesting is the way today and Into a chunk of our history understand The violence between individuals is wrong. You know, maybe those people out there don't quite have got a great demand Civilization about this but generally there's a certain understanding that violence between individuals is wrong Will Smith getting up on stage and slapping Chris walk as she was so that in the Academy Awards is wrong You don't use violence. You don't use force Well, we haven't yet with the exception is Deciding to use force analysis why and the question is do we really understand why violence is wrong between individuals? Why is it wrong?  There are many people on Twitter and elsewhere defending more Smith. He was insulted it's funny because You know the people who supposed to defend free speech on the right are suddenly defending will Smith's right to punch it So it's okay.  I don't know or so if the left doesn't it's wrong, but it will Smith's does it? I don't even know what it's called. It's okay. So there's generally on left and right real confusion Why it's wrong for individuals to Engage in violence against women because I am I'll just make side comments once in a while I'm trying believe me That's a bad thing Plus it'll get the people watching videos of context They're not experiencing it live. So you gotta you gotta use the opportunities given to you So what is it about individual violence that is wrong? Well, I think to know that to understand that we first have to understand what it is The human needs a good system. What is it that makes us human? What is it that allows individuals to thrive to flourish to be successful? Because if we're making the case the war is anti-human who are making the case the wars are bad for you What is it that makes you flourish in the system and what does it require and only then can we see Whether violence is for individual flourishing or violence is anti-individual flourishing We might be able to observe the fact that it's anti, but it'd be good to understand the actual causes behind it So what is it mean that makes us human? What is it that allows us to be successful as human beings that makes it as Seed as human beings. So what is it that makes us human and don't say thumbs What's the difference between us and every other species out there in in in the world perhaps the ability for empathy The ability for empathy, but is that really what you know Did we advance from the caves the way we are today because of empathy Adaptability yes, we very good at adapting but what causes us to be able to be adaptable Right adaptability is a feature the question is what is it about us that makes it possible for us to be to adapt? Judgment So critical judgments Everlasting Greed Yes, we you know depends on how you define greed We want more We want better we want to advance But the question is what makes it possible for us to advance It's not the one thing that is enough and indeed. Why do we want more what leads us to one more? What is the source of the wanting? What was your name? Edward is on the way track what makes us difference What makes us human and it's a little bit shocking that any group this is a self-evident It says something about the education system in my view, right? What makes us human is not a capacity to reason It's a capacity to think It's a capacity to figure stuff out That's the difference That's how we change our environment. That's how we get more Right that's all of that is part of the fact that we can think we can plan we can change Our environment to fit our needs we can manipulate the world To make it better for us and we do that by using our mind by using our peace Reasons man means a survival is our basic nature survival There is no humanity without a capacity to think without a capacity to reason because think of it Anybody here have the gene for hunting or the gene for agriculture? How do we hunt?  I don't know what's a well-done or you can't see it Oh You all know what a deal is right the fast You try running down a deer Biting into it slowing down or whatever If you look around the room we're good We're good sample of humanity here in this room.  We have no fangs. We have no ability to survive out there without what? Without our wits Without the ability to equip weapons Without ability to have a strategy captured here without tools without traps Hunting is a cerebral activity. It's an activity of the mind and cultures the same thing We don't know how that I mean hundreds of thought for tens of thousands of years Did we do it some genius figured it out and created a whole industry about so Every achievement the human beings have made every more every step forward Is a product of the human mind It's a product of reason as a product of rational thinking We don't emote this you don't discover truths through emotions Maybe it's about yourself, but not about the world You don't figure out new technologies You don't write your program software based on emotions. All of that is a product of your mind and of course Who thinks who has a mind?  It's the thinking unit It is the unit that matters for survival. It is what actually allows for progress and yet We are told over and over and over again our leaders political philosophical religious Then what matters is not the individual matters is the group What matters is the collective What matters is Some advocate of all these individual minds and all these individual lives We started out our lives as tribal Where the individual was suppressed? I'm sure the guy who invented the bow and arrow. What do you think happened to him? Celebrated him What's that he probably got shot with his own invention if he was lucky because the other way You know where they usually burn you at the stake is a little bit more painful than actually just dying with his own But yeah, we don't appreciate the people Who actually invented produce and create we tend to penalize them for those we don't like new ideas Nobody like Galileo when he said no no no You're negating an ancient book Put you in house arrest and he was lucky 200 years or 100 years early So we have been taught For very early on we have been taught to view the collective the group that try as fine And not the individual It's one of the reasons Then I think we're not taught the value of the human mind What actually makes us human and the contributions human beings are made through thinking to human problems. I can go in a So we've already been taught that there is a collective If it's what matters the individual doesn't matter the individual life the individual prospects the individual success Is not what matters what really matters is the group the tribe the nation the collective the proletariat Some group We know what this group wants because we're all expected to sacrifice to the group every single Human being is about how individuals should sacrifice there will be for the sake of the group that individual Will be does the agents that tell us the sacrifice for an afterlife or for The state or for the group of lives as individuals don't matter to them what matters again is this collective How do we know what the collective wants? Like again, there's no collective mind here, so I don't know what you want I can ask you all but then they might be conflicts and my disagreements and many of you might say I don't know So what almost always emerges from these collectives society to eat It doesn't emerge. It's what's imposed on these collectivist societies. What always emerges?  You don't count. Do we know what's good for the politics? We take one example of collectivism. How do we know it's good for the politics? Did the polytheism announce what's good for them? No, I mean who is the polytheism? Where are they? And do I mean we poll them? We take a survey We have a poll Whether it's Lenin or Stalin or somebody else or Mao Tung who says no, I speak for the politics And how do we know you speak for the politics? Because I can commute You know in these guys the witch doctor and the political leader who you don't want I speak because I can commute with what's truly good for the politics I know what they really want and many of them don't know this and You know because what we're trying to do is it is it's to benefit the public hearing some people have to die to benefit the Politics doesn't matter because individuals don't matter what matters is that politics or how do we know what the army and race wants? We need a leader I'll come somebody like Hitler and says I know what's good for the public for the army and race I channel the spirits of all our Here it is and right now right now as we sit here There is a leader who is channeling the spirit of the Russian people the spirit of the history of Russia The spirit of the Russian soul and to listen to his talks listen to his speeches They're not about NATO. They're not about anything. They're actually about What's good for the Russian people The destiny of the Russian people the history of the Russian people Ukraine our soul brothers They must be part of the Russian people the Russian Empire the Russian future and he speaks for the Russian And he's challenging truth from another dimension where Russian consciousness must reside To tell us what's good for them and you see once you negate the individual once what matters is the group Once what matters is the collective then who wants that's the mission It's not about human flourishing inside of an individual's success and people in the other group are always what they're always demonized They're always the bad guys. They're always trying to take your stuff They're always trying to make you or saw as a group not as an individual you might like some individuals on the other side But it's a group. They're always demonized every dictated human history. They choose others Demonized Justified so war is the product of a of collectivism It is a product of caring about groups not individuals It is the product of not valuing Individual human mind not valuing individual reason not value the pursuit of individual happiness but the value of some mystical notion and it's always mystical because there's nothing in reality of the existence of a group using mystical mysticism To define a group's goals and to find a group's motivations and to define a group's ambitions and one of the consequences of collectivism is to miss And that is Then when human beings are free And when human beings actually go out there and use their minds as individuals and solve problems and Create and build what we discover is that the world is not a Zero-sum group They still have yet to discover this The world is a value-added group That my Benefiting myself is not at other people's expense. Now. This is a lesson. We've only recently learned recently I mean over the last 200 years Fund is ideas Actually benefit everybody I always like to use my iPhone. I paid a thousand dollars. It cost me a thousand dollars Why did I pay a thousand dollars? Explain to you how much more because it's a lot The fact that I could tell a bedtime story to my kids from any way in the world by video Zero last time that look the zoom was not billing me I've got like a monthly panel or whatever I Can access every piece of music ever written and ever produced ever recorded on this thing at the marginal cost if you subscribe to one of these plans Marginal cost of what? Zero I can find this university and this building Yes Driving with max Really hard particularly if you don't have a good sense of direction like my wife She always get lost idea the day before the iPhone. I used to get regularly at least one call a day From home. I'm not because she's changed but because now she has a tool which is the beauty of these So did I and you could go on and I could I could do a two-hour talk just on the value of the iPhone, right? to me and Assumes valuable to you because most of you have the iPhone's iPhone clones of one type another and you've spent some real money to do it and The reason is it's more valuable to you than whatever money you spent on and that's for everything we bought Why do we buy it? I don't know clothes For XM dog amount of dollars because they're valuable more valuable to us than the amount of money we spent that the cash in our pockets not valuable as much as the stuff we get And if we see something we say Hmm, it's not really worth it So we don't buy it. So trade trade to wrap with one another particularly strangers is win-win It's not lose win It's not exploitative.  I care about people for artists. I care about people Things that make my lap is through the activity of the timidity a little bit plus it'll give us a good footage We think of people only as groups When we think of people only as collect That's That actually encourage Always It means my games and your expense your games at my expense. I'm going to demonize you how China was maybe an enemy of the United States not a China pilot individual rights Not because of China had baby concentration kept right down. He didn't care Even as China because they're a trade deficit with And trade from him Is a zero something So they got our cash We got this stuff that was all negative Even though I do it is a huge positive. I must have that stuff them cap Particularly the time of inflation you want stuff demonize immigrants Because it's a zero something an immigrant comes in Is at your expense? He's taking something from you instead of you in trade As we win they take collectives they take groups and they demonize that the group because they are They are somehow Taking from you. There's somehow diminishing your ability to thrive to live as a group so Collectivism is almost always leads the zoo or something Where as this individuals won't be trained I mean you have to be the right mentality, but usually if you were to sort of Focused on individualism Always ideologies that emphasize the win-win nature of the world and you see if I Value you because you are producing something that I value is making my life better I want to do you all On the contrary, I want you to thrive. I want you to succeed because you'll succeed. It's not going to be my expenses to see this actually Making my life better It's actually Sign that you are trading with a lot of people and therefore you're making the world a better place. It's so small So trade Is in a sense antithesis of war Trade is win-win. What is war? Lose lose Nobody wins in a war I mean think about Russia Is Russia wins? Let's say it wins militarily. I said one Its own people have been killed Its economy isn't a channel and counter to a lot of So-called economists out there May have to say so-called Wars that aren't produced economic activity. They destroy economic activity The u.s. Did not do well after world war two because of world war two. It did well after world war two in spite of world war two Because think about it before the war you have X productive activity producing goods that make human life better And then you spend five years destroying all of that Killing hundreds of thousands of people your own people dying That's something if you have to go to war to defend yourself, but it's still destructive. So hundreds of thousands of people die You set up the old things that make human life better.  You build things that destroy rather than build things that are actually enhancing your life So yes economy could use it well after world war two, but it would be a thousand times better if there was no world war two And so we can trade it with the Germans and trade it with anybody And all who isn't together through that period, we all be much richer today without world war one and world war two So trade is a feature of peace and indeed if you look at the errors in human history which we have It's the error after the Napoleonic Wars If you look at the end of the Napoleonic Wars into a world war one that is an era of mobilization That you principle responsible for Your sole purpose in foreign policy during that period was The major purpose of foreign policy was retreating And as a consequence, there was no wars during that period Or no major wars that during that period People were benevolent towards one another for the most part And people engage in trade That was mutually beneficial And I know this is not how the 19th century is looking at trade And if you look at the 20th century post-world war two, what does they feature there? It's the united states promoting what? promoting free trade And when people trade they don't tend to go to war. Now Russia to be used And this is why I actually think it's unlikely that China will invade Taiwan anytime soon And I've said this publicly so we'll see if I turn out to be true Because China is at most is completely integrated to the global economy China is a trader with everybody China acquires foreign currency. It's how it invests. It's got trillions of dollars of u.s. bonds It's got hundreds of millions of people working to sell things to the united states It's not interested in war right now. Maybe one day It's trying to become self-sufficient. Self-sufficiency is a path to war I think The idea of self-sufficiency is a path to war. The better integrated you are in the trading system The less likely you are to go and fight and kill your trading partner Because it's one way The Chinese understand they're better than Trump ever did Russia Is not well integrated into global system It is a supply of raw materials It does not produce New innovations. It does not produce goods and services It is primarily because of that extracting stuff on the ground And selling it and then indeed it has created a dependency in Europe on those natural resources through funding The movement against far south fuels in germany against nuclear germany. They made germany dependent on natural gas from russia Why why why you guys in the uk Why do you have such high energy costs? Why are you walking about energy, you know, a year from now? Well because You have used the front There's plenty of natural gas in the uk And you won't frag it. You won't extract it from the ground So you become dependent on others to do it And it turns out that Putin has been funding these campaigns Exactly against developing domestic production of energy in order to make the west dependent on Because he views it as a zoo or some more All right What's that they are creative You're making noises not here. I'm making noises. They is the making noise like using a fist is a tool of Uh, what do they sound like? Yeah, they make the sounds appropriate in their cognitive attitude And in the debate they would come to you in the debate but that's not what they want They want you not to think for yourself They want you not to speak if they disagree with it They want silence and completeness acceptance of their position That's it And that's a free free enlightenment way of thinking All right, so peace is a product of trade Peace is a product of viewing the individual as valuable War is a product of zero-sum thinking and war is a product of collectivism And part of the reason in the 19th century we had the attitude towards trade and the attitude towards individualism Is that enough? I'll do this Installing our points and then we'll take questions for you that the 18th century intellectual Well, what's what's the name of that era in the 18th century that preceded the industrial revolution that preceded this Do you guys have a see the graph of Okay, so this is this is the famous graph This is time Except this is time, right? Doesn't matter And we're starting I don't know a thousand years ago. It doesn't really matter And basically this is Some point Everything gets better some small bodies to see and decline really have a grease and roll But generally that is what's happened. How much richer are we today than 300 years ago? Are we richer than 300 years ago? Look around Bristol and you find remnants a few hundred years ago to see how Unpleasant they were In terms of income or wealth about 300 times richer In terms of actually quality of life like that they have running water out of the tissue They certainly didn't have eyeballs How do you measure any of that pay for the water? You don't pay for the sewage And yet that's a huge addition to your quality of life. That's not captured in the numbers So with thousands of times richer than we were 300 years ago What happened in the 18th century to generate this? What's that? The death revolution but the death revolution happens towards the end of the 18th century What happens in the 18th century to make the death revolution possible? This doesn't have an accident. This is like a once in all of human history event And again The invention of fertilizer happens Photonizers are invention of relatively late. What's that? The Enlightenment So the period before this is called the Enlightenment. What's another need for the Enlightenment? The age of Reason And another word for the same thing that happens parallel to this in a second is called the age of science But how does in the 18th century we discovered what you said What the 18th century does is it rediscovers From age and Greece the idea that what makes us humans are mine That we don't have two acceptable values That we don't have to listen to the leaders religious or secular The we as individuals are thinkers and can think for ourselves Nuts and teachers are stuck. We teachers are from our physics And we can all kind of grasp it. If you can't grasp, you need to draw it. It's because you're a bad teacher It's not that hard once in a while And people in the 18th century go wait a minute I can understand the physical world Because for years decades Sensuals, they were called people They were told the physical world was inspired by the ancient art They as individuals could And then suddenly individuals go wait a minute if I can understand a lot of things It's about reason. If reason is universal as block systems others say Then why can't I decide on my own profession? Why can't I decide because What was your profession? How was your profession concerned in those days? What's that? Yeah most of the farmers, if you were in this city or that part of the old Whatever your father did to you, that was it And wait a minute what about my own white man You didn't decide that and by the way the profession of women was not Doesn't exist because you were an individual so you didn't count And if you look across all human decisions instead of somebody else making for you You're not going to make violence like who's my political leader I want to make that decision and not somebody else make that decision for me And that's why you get You know relative freedom It's why at this point you get the heart procedures or the public So when people can actually vote for their own leadership It's why suddenly the idea of a rich marriages disappears It's why suddenly the guilds fall apart and suddenly people are choosing their own professions and doing what they all want What they want It's why if you invent a scheme engine you could go off and build a scheme engine And build a whole industry around it and you don't have to get permission from the king or permission from anybody else It becomes during this period a permissionless society Individuals are left free to use their reason to pursue their life The way they want to pursue their life not the way An authority dictates to them And that leads this massive flourishing this massive success this massive creativity of wealth It's the respect for the individual that makes and reason that makes all the progress we've experienced over the last 200 years It's the exact opposite of the collectivist And indeed one of the saddest phenomena today and one that I think is going to lead us to more or not less Is the whole banding individualism We're banding a band of the idea of the individual's right to pursue his own life using his own reason To achieve his own happiness And we're back To the collectivist story where there's russian collectivism chinese collectivism or in america the different tribes The political tribes Where people don't think for themselves but are dictated from the tribal leaders what to do and what to say and what to think Or You know, it's even brazil Depends on the motivations What were the motivations of the british people to go for brazil? Was it to establish a freer england freer uk than they could under the european union Or was it to keep those non-brits out And the evidence suggests that it's a second today because You know when people go to for brexit at least the people i know who wouldn't support it brexit all said oh no as soon as we get brexit We can establish ourselves as a free trade island. We're going to eliminate all those regulations that you post on us We're going to become a beacon of freedom to the world And you've done the exact opposite you've kept all the regulations You've eliminated all the benefits of the u in terms of trade You've eliminated the benefits of the u in terms of migration. You've eliminated the benefits of the u in terms of capital flows You've not taken advantage of this opportunity to make yourself more free.  It's represented by right wing parties It's represented by left wing parties That it is the group of the reality to the individual And that always always always in history leads to war in a few places A few errors in downing individuals Are the errors that drive the freedom and ultimately are the errors they're looking for Thank you Thank you all for staying I will ensure you that you're all safe Just a quick update about what's happening outside. So there's security. The police have been called. We're waiting for them to come So we've been asked them to kindly move And also invited them inside if they're willing to Talk and not make animal noises They were produced So now we'll continue and we'll try and Finish this event on a positive level. So I'd like to ask you a question It's actually One of the criticisms I've heard of objectivism. So my understanding of objectivism is that it's founded on self-interest or egoism on selfishness How How do you Facilitate that in a real world of war where Sometimes there is a necessity for soldiers, policemen or sacrificial jobs to Like do objectivists rely on non-objectivists to fill those positions? That's pretty funny. We used to have a joke in our objectivist, the objectivist community in In israel that we needed at least one altruist that we gathered afterwards to watch the dishes and to clean up after us because We were all too self-interested to actually do the work But that's a joke, right? It's not the reality. No, of course not. What you rely on Is the self-interest of Individuals to fight for something that's just there's something that's way There's something that's good for them If you threaten my family I'm gonna fight for them Even if I have to lose my life. I am going to do everything I can to protect my life Because my altruists come because of people is because I love myself my life and therefore my family more than it cost I won't fight for them And if you didn't threaten my freedom If you didn't threaten my freedom I'm gonna fight for it. Why? Because I am one of them in an unfree place I don't want to live under the boot of an authoritarian So I will fight the authoritarian If you're gonna send terrorists to my country and blow up my buildings I am going to fight against you because I don't want to be in one of those buildings I don't want my children to be in one of those buildings So the military Copper and this is why if you never have a draft all military should be voluntary I think our funding of wars should be voluntary. That's pretty controversial, right? Everybody should be voluntary around wars because You should do it because you value Now the question is will they do it like I tell the Israelis like in israel I say Um, they should be no construction in Israel. It should be completely voluntary And people say well, what if they don't volunteer? What if nobody volunteers? I said then Israel doesn't deserve to exist It just doesn't and you're not going to fight for something. You don't care about it Then why should it exist? So I'm counting on people being self-interested. I want them to and you ask soldiers on the battlefield in a just war Not in any war in a just war that is a whole self-defense. Why are you here? To defend my family Defend my home Defend my freedom, but it's all mine It's not to defend some abstraction It's to defend something real to them and that's good Right, if you ask the Russians right now in Ukraine, what are they fighting for? Well, you'll get one or two answers. I don't know Because many of them don't understand it And the other answer is from mother Russia. That's sad And that's destructive If you actually clean it right now, what if like what you see this in the last few years You see this when you meet a few people and see what they're fighting for They enable it They want their family Their community They like They're being super self-interested Invaders Initiatives of force are not self-interested Never They're about some mystical car There are some weak vision which is destructive to everybody of all It's only the defenders that's only defensive if you're right Say look police, look police is a Police is a profession that you're going through knowing that what are you doing? You're defending civilization. You're defending the idea that Force between human beings is wrong This is by the way why I'm against laws that don't The criminalize activity does not involve force So criminalize activity is where this way, you know, I'll give you an example I mean here's the law at the point which works Right, why?  They should be catching murderers and thieves and cooks of all kinds and You know, they're instead distracted to you know, victims of crime where the victim is yourself Well, you want to convince suicide? I'm not going to sacrifice a policeman to try to stop you So I think these are self-intercepted activities People want to live in a society where there's no murder in the street Where people are now mocking each other, where people are now stating each other And some people like police work and they want to volunteer to do police work And they volunteer to do it You don't force people to do police And that's why it's really important that your laws are objective, they're good Then they actually involve justice It's not just random politics Okay, come forward and then because otherwise I can't hear Yeah, so at what age the self-interest innocent kick in and what responsibilities the parents have in terms of their child's self-interest I mean, that's a tricky question Because on the one hand you want to give the parents the freedom To be able to handle their kids and deal with their kids as they see fit It's not the state's role to intervene But if the if the parents are abusing their kids Because the kids are not being able to stand up for their own self-interest Then that's where the state I think needs to intervene and needs to stop it So certainly if the parents are giving the kids drugs of the parents are physically abusing the kids Or doing things like that That's where the state should intervene to protect the rights of the children What age do you get? The ability to make your own decisions for yourself and it really is a question of reason right when you have the full capacities of rationality And you know some argue that you don't get in until your early 20s, right? I'm not going to insult the people in this room It's arguing that because I think some of you are below that age but Not everybody gets it at the same time I think it's Rational and reasonable for the government to set an age whether it's 18 or 16 or whatever Beyond which you're treated as an individual adult and before that you're treated as a child But for example, if you're 16 and you believe you're mature enough to live by yourself and not Be subjugated to whatever your parents want you to do you go in front of a judge and you prove I think you can do that today you prove yourself that you want to be Emancipated I think they call it And you can be so but these are tricky legal issues that have to be sorted out in a free society and we do A decent job at that. I think today. Maybe we could do better, but it's not bad the way it's done today Right go to this site. Yeah Yeah, I'll stand next to you. I'm first First thank you so much for your talk Oh, absolutely You said About what you said, and do you not think your analysis of how collectivization leads to basically It's like the significant people given you mischaracterised collectivist societies with almost fascist societies with orthographic leaders that have zero accountability and they're a place for example With significant accountability That did not lead to And second any example They don't lead to desperately Okay No, I'm going to respond to the team that's fine. That's why I want an example the second I can And secondly in terms of going outside, of course speech occurs in a context um and What someone says down the park is very difficult someone can say a lectern and the university From your understanding What is it about me that they really upset? Yeah, I'll say I'll tell you So Let me just the first thing Not every collectivist society necessarily leads to authoritarianism and the despotism But it's also true that only collectivist societies lead to authoritarianism That is non-collectivist societies never lead to that and in the process When a society is a is a non despotic society and becomes a despotic society The middle frame is always collectivization Always But I will say this collectivism always leads to failure And then societies have to choose once it's failed how they're going to resolve that failure and if you would see my great example They can either resolve that failure through violence Or they can resolve that failure through giving up on the collectivism The people would see my great example. If you know what people would see mine as well. They're really communal living Taken to the nth degree. I mean that the original people seem the ones that were most consistent You didn't even raise your own children children were raised communally Homes that have kitchens the kitchen was communal every home looked exactly the same The television was the same size You know, everything was the same from material perspective Uh, so the uh The the whole idea came with the was the collectivization, but it was voluntary. You could leave You could enter but if you entered you had to give up all your material possessions through the keyboard Right, you couldn't keep a bank account and say you you had no material possessions You had to give them all up to the keyboard And the fact is that the keyboard team all failed All of them They only survived as long as they did because they were subsidized by The government or by which Jews overseas before they wasn't Israeli government And ultimately modern times when you're going to start subsidizing it, they all failed economically. What did they do? They didn't revert violence. That's true. But what they didn't revert is through Abandoning the notion that there's collectivization what they what they embraced as they became villagers And they've taken up private property and they split the part that you know, so they've taken it out the elements of polycapitalism And and dismissed individualism dismissed. There is collectivity. You've got countries that are collectivist, right? I don't know right now hungry is a good example of a collectivist country. It's probably not going to go to war But the only reason it's not going to go to war. I believe To the if they push this further in terms of the collectivization It's because they're too weak and there's no way to go to war with Right, the rest could do it because they believed that they were powerful So there are the pragmatic considerations that the white side was going on China is a very good society But it's it's a person in this trade. So we don't fear war too much But that's a change like that Because of the collectivization of Vietnam how they're in existence correct? It's probably not going to go to war because Who's going to fight? And again, it doesn't have enough power to actually So every war-like society in a collective society and if you want ancient history one good example is between spotter and and Spotter and average were very different spotter was a war-like society. The individual didn't matter It was spotter than matter for everything. You know, don't don't get your view of spotter from the movie 300 It's not an accurate Any respect including an idea spot. Spotter, everything was for spotter Athens was much more individualistic, much less war-like. What was at the time that Athens get built? To trade. Athens sped out and traded with the world Spotter was primarily focused on conflict So you see this over and over again in history. It's not that every time you see collectivism you will lead to war It's only collectives go to war and if the rise of collectives might fear more Now what is it that they need about you? Yeah, just to say, since you start off, do you think that a person also immediately thinks that you've been in this armor player? Yes, I'm an Islamophore. I'm a racist I'm anti-Palestinian Um, I uh, I you know, you could find quotes, take out of context, where I'm a culture You can find quotes, take out of context, where I'm a food of, uh, total war between Uh, I, I know, I support this. I, I think, uh, here's what I'm gonna say. It was one of the most immobile apps that I've ever committed Uh, in terms of the whole, sorry, the whole, here's what I'm gonna say So, uh, I respect what I thought. I don't think it's easy to go through No, no, I'm sorry.  Now hundreds of people died to achieve that, but they weren't going to die anyway. The invasion of Japan by the American forces would result in millions of people dying. American troops dying, and Japanese dying. But in my theory again, and I don't have the expected swaying of all things, if you're defending yourself, your pants start at the wall. Japan is responsible for all the poor's casualties every single last one. None of them are defending themselves, trying to end this. The US fireball, pretty much every city in Japan, before the US war, except for hundreds of thousands of people, ultimately that ended the war. All the blood, all of it is on the Japanese. What's interesting about it is that you don't have Japanese terrorists blowing up American buildings. You don't have hate to the Japanese towards America. On the contrary, Japanese are a friend of America, and when you visit America, or when you visit Japan, the Japanese are very friendly towards Americans. Why? Because what the damage that we've done did is it shook them away from us. It made them realize how about bearing their civilization happy, and cause them to change course. Indeed, they still live under a constitution in Japan, written for them by General Carter, which is based on the American constitution, which is better than the general one. So, I believe in war, you win. If you're on the right side, right, and you're acting self-defense, you act in war in order to win, and you do whatever it's necessary to win. And if you don't, you lose, and they win. So, the worst thing you could do is go to a war not win. Again, if you're the right people on the right, what would be the other issue? Am I an Islamophore? I don't like Islam. If you don't work, I don't like Judaism, and I don't like Christianity. And I'm known as a mass critic of Christianity. You can ask me why I do it. But I don't like Judaism. I don't like religion. I don't believe in religions, any of them.  Now, there are other Muslims who don't want to attack me as individuals. But I am opposed to people trying to kill me based on religion. And if there was, if Christians were trying to kill me based on religion, I'd be a Christian pho, I don't know, call me what you want. So I don't, I don't, I believe the reason why Islam, the reason, the reason why Islam is because they don't have a secular right, to stand with secularism by the Enlightenment. Judaism was secularized by the Enlightenment. Islam didn't have an Enlightenment. They had a Renaissance that died. And he argued extensively about the beauty of the Islamic Renaissance between about the 15th and more, and even going into the 1300s in Spain. It's one of the greatest periods in the human history. The science and philosophy and all the innocent, all flourish on the Islam because they were respectful of Greek ideas. And again, I've written about this, you can find it online. But, you know, I'm not an Islamist pho, I don't know what that is. I don't treat Muslims as any different than I treat any other human being, unless I think that you're trying to kill me. And then I try to kill them for zero reasons. I'm opposed to Islamist sects. I'm opposed to Christianity. So I'm opposed to religion. Religion is a forceful deal in the world, all religion. And you could reign the religion, you see, some are worse than others, right, on different issues. I think Islam is better than Christianity. I've looked at all the comments. It can be better in other respects. So you can, I mean, where can we talk about this? It's not true. But yeah, I thought about this today.  It just is. And if you hold that view of the world, you're evil.  So that's my position. There's any Palestinian question. I have nothing against Palestinians, but they've been betrayed by their leaders over and over and over again. And I think these really go on the right, with regard to the conflict. And I think about things in the wrong, because they've been betrayed by their leaders. Again, and everyone in these issues, people on and on and on. I treat people as individuals.  I keep up with your ideas. Some ideas are calling. But most of those ideas are, you know, white people's ideas, not anybody else's, right? So it's got nothing to do with race, religion.  You hold that hold ideas and they call you. If you're socialist, I'm calling you. Communist, I'm calling you. If you're fascist, I'm calling you.   But otherwise, I'm not a racist. Never have you done in the least of all in my life. Unfortunately, we only have time for one more question. Ideally, we would run this event for another half hour, but we'd have to evacuate fairly soon. So I saw you with your hand up for quite a while. So ask your question, and we'll reiterate. You can actually break in here, otherwise, so he's coming for. So, um, well, thanks a lot for the event. That's the best thing. Well, I'd like to ask you a question about war and liberty and liberty or democracy. Now, well, it looks like that if you do not prepare for the war, the coast of the war is excessive and to keep the liberty of their society. Like, for example, China in 1949, when China's home is positive for the China. And since then, at least the people has been suffering under this totalitarian regime.  So you could think of, Yorong, could you please sum up the just for the question for the benefit of the people? Yeah, so just for the question is what about liberty? What about the fact, for example, in 1949, nobody intervened. They allowed Mao Zedong to take over all of China. As a context of that, anyway, between 20 to 100 million people probably died. It was a brutal regime. There was no freedom. There was no liberty. And millions of people died. Should... I'm interpreting now, and you told me if this is correct. Should the world had a stage, because it was only superb at the time, intervene and eliminate Mao Zedong to allow China to be taken. Is that a good capturing of the question? Well, no, what I would say would be how America should have been more, you know, giving more weapons or giving more to... To change their shape? Yeah, to change their shape. Okay, so... Do you want to... So I'll just say it's a tricky question. So I don't go because I'm an egoist, right? So if you look at countries, what do countries do? I think the wall of government is to protect its citizens. It's citizens. But that means to protect their rights, to protect them from foreign force and what could be inside, to protect them from invaders from the outside. But when there's no stone of threat to the country, I don't think the country should, you know, go out of its way, to fight for other people, even if it's for good cause, even if it's for living. Now that's not the same as helping them. I think we should have helped them. I don't know how much, I don't know enough about the war, whether it would have made a difference, and how much it would have helped, and how much military... I mean, look, we tried... Europe tried, and the US actually tried a little bit to fight the communists in Russia. So the White Army was funded by the West, and I think some, even Western troops, landed in Russia and tried to fight against the communists, and we lost. So the Russians did it, the communists actually won that battle. So it's not clear that helping Czechoslovakia would have helped. Czechoslovakia was also not the best guy in the world, right? It's not like he was pro-liberal. He was just, he was a bit of a fascist, right? And in Taiwan, they didn't have liberty. It's a duck. I don't know how many ducks they have. So it's very tricky to go and support somebody in the name of liberty when that person maybe is not for liberty. So I believe Americans should stay out of these worlds unless there's a clear, good guy in bed. Ukraine, I think, right now is a good example. I don't think American troops should fight in Ukraine. Even in Russia, I have no nuclear weapons. Even if there's no risk of a World War III, a nuclear World War III, I don't think American kids should die for Ukrainians. Even though Ukrainians are just, even though the cause is good. Now, should we give them weapons? Should we give them all the support? Absolutely. Should we buy posters to support the Red Cross to help the Ukrainians? Absolutely. It's 10 pounds. You should all do it. It's matched, I think. There's a $10 match for everything. Yes, every dollar you put, I'm going to buy some. So you guys should do it because it's a good cause. And American troops should support it. By the way, Americans should be the government should. You know, it's complicated for the government to do it. You have to come and do weapons and everything like that. But to actually put American kids in the battlefield in Ukraine, who wins? Right?  For what? Not for their liberty. It goes back to my answer earlier. Not for their home. Not for their family. Not for their liberty. It's nice as Ukrainians are. That's not the job of the American government. You want to help the Ukrainians? You could volunteer. They have a foreign legion. You could volunteer and go fight for them. But the government, it says it can take you. The UK government says it can take you. Whatever it is. I assume you're going to take you. Not to take Ukraine. That's the job of the Ukrainian government. That's the job of the So that's how I would view it. Okay. Very quick then. I don't want them to win. Do you think so in your logic, if America didn't like intervene, maybe correct me if I'm wrong. But in your logic, say it wasn't an American interest to respond by properly with sanctions when Georgia happened in 2008, when Crimea happened in 2014, and those reactions have accumulated and they gave Putin an impression that he there is not going to be a forceful reaction to the Ukraine. No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying the United States should not have gone to war when he invaded Georgia.  So I would cut off diplomatic relationship with Russia. I would do a thousand times worse sanctions on what they're doing right now. I would isolate them completely. So things that do not involve sending young men to that international community to the West hasn't done enough. The international community is not the West is weak. Russia sees it as weak and as a consequence, that's one of the reasons he gave. If he thought the West was strong, the West would resist them, he thought Ukrainians would resist them as much as they have, then he wouldn't have done what he's done. The only reason he did what he did is because he views us as weak. So I agree completely. But I don't think, I mean, the United States has fought a lot of wars it should never have. It should have never been Korea. It should have never been in Vietnam. And maybe most controversially, it should have never been World War One.  The dumbest war in human history as far as I can tell. No reason for it other than, I don't know, big power politics, which don't care about the individual. It's all about collectives, the Austrian Hungarian Empire versus filling the blank. The United States never invented World War One. World War Two, it had no choice because it was attacked. And of course, the Nazis and the communists were going to come after the United States at some point anyway. It shouldn't have got you up, but that's a much more complicated question. Okay, I'd like to thank you all for coming. I hope you had an interesting and thought provoking time and again. Thank you very much for coming. And as I previously mentioned, this event is also a fundraiser. So we're all going to leave together in five minutes exactly. We're going to take five minutes for the fundraiser. So we're setting prints over there. Nicole has drawn them herself, and I believe and