Dear Father, would you just take our dear brother today? Thank you, Father, for Brother Finney. For his commitment to you, his zeal for your truth, his gift to communicate your thoughts to our hearts. And now would you just take this, dear brother, this offering that he offers to you, and just put fire upon the offering of the altar, O God. So the incense goes up to heaven and the fragrance fills this place and the light and truth of your word blesses our hearts. And Father, may commitments be made here this morning. May this sermon, this mass meditation result in changed lives here. And may, O God, there be a commitment to identify with the everlasting kingdom of the Lord and of his Christ. We pray this today in Jesus' name, amen. Amen, for each brother. Thanks, Brother Dale. When I was younger, we would travel all across the country so that my father could speak about missions in India. We would go from Florida to California, urban and rural all over the country. We were often on the road. The experiences that we would have when we would walk into the church buildings, though, were often amusing. Keep in mind that my father did his master's degree in India. He was born and raised in India, but he did his master's degree in India and he taught English back in India. He's a very intelligent man. When I was in high school studying for my SAT, college entrance exam, there's a vocabulary portion to the SATs. And I would, in the car, when he would drive me to school and back, I would ask him and I would give him the hardest words that I could find out of my study books. And I could never stump him. The most difficult vocabulary words, he seemed to know them. My younger brother and I were born and raised in Southern California and we attended public school. We skateboarded, we played basketball, we watched a lot of TV. In many ways, it was a fairly typical American upbringing. There was one time when my dad walked into a church building and someone approached him holding an orange. And the person, presumably not sure who exactly my dad was thinking maybe he was fresh off the boat, held up the orange and yelled out, do you know what this is? My dad had lived in the US for about 20 years and as I said, was very skilled in English and culture. My brother and I thought it was quite funny. Once, many times actually people would walk up to my brother and myself who as I said, were born and raised in Southern California. And again, it's funny how people yell when they're speaking to someone who they think is a foreigner, how do you like America? How do you find our country? Or sometimes you would get things like this.  Funny that people think of pizza as an American food. The problem was an interesting one. People couldn't tell my citizenship. They saw the color of my skin and they wondered. Now, of course I was born in the US and so I was an AMA US citizen, but they had an expectation from the context of the meeting that I was a foreigner. You can't always tell when you first meet someone what their citizenship is. There's no sign that we wear. You have to tell by their speech, their dress, the way that they think. I was raised in a fairly patriotic home. I was raised in a home where we talked a lot about being grateful to be in America and I have to admit that pride was stoked in me over the years. There are many, many people, there are millions of people who would love to be citizens of America. From all over the world, some people, I was reading an article a couple of years ago, do something called Tourism Childbirth. I don't know if you've heard about this. Tourism Childbirth is where the woman is expecting and they time it, they get a tourist visa just right so that they're in the US for a short time for their tourist visa, but then they have the baby while they're here in the US and any baby that's born in the US is automatically a citizen. So everyone goes back home, they wait till the child is 18 years old and they put that child on a one-way ticket to the US and they just show up and they say, I'm here, you gotta take me, I'm a citizen. People have come up with all kinds of tactics to gain US citizenship and everybody knows that citizenship is better than a visa or a work permit because it's permanent. It carries rights and privileges. You share in the wealth, the protection and the laws of the United States. So after a while I figured out that I didn't really wanna be in these conversations, I thought they were funny, but I was not so interested in them because this was pretty much a weekend occurrence and every weekend occurrence for us. And so I figured out that when a person would approach me and I saw them, they have that look on their face, sometimes they'd be holding an object or got this wide-eyed look on their face and what I figured out was with just two or three words, I could convince them that I was a US citizen. I would just say, what's up? Or I would say, how's it going? Those two or three words would make the person stop and they say, wait a minute, that's American slang and you're talking like me, you must not be a foreigner. I cracked the citizenship recognition problem with a slight adjustment of my speech. The question that I have and then I'm going to unpack this morning is how do people know that you are a citizen of God's kingdom? How do they know? How long does it take? What's involved in that? Now you might answer dress the way I dress and that's a valid answer, but it's only part of the answer and in fact, I believe that it's a small part of the answer for how God's citizens are recognized. There's a marvelous verse in Philippians that says, for our citizenship is in heaven. It's Philippians 320. The Bible tells a captivating story of citizenship about a country far greater than the United States. Indeed, the story of citizenship is woven throughout the whole fabric of the Bible. It's related to the concept of kingdom. Kingdoms have citizens, right? Don't all kingdoms have citizens? And all kingdoms have dominions. Dominions is simply a reference to the range or the scope of the rule of a king, that's his dominion. In Genesis one, Adam and Eve were told by God to exercise dominion over the earth. They were supposed to subdue the earth and to enlarge God's kingdom. Eden was their home base. That's where God's kingdom was touching the earth. The magnificent royal Adam and Eve, however, made a horrible mistake. Something went terribly wrong. These beautiful image-bearers gave their dominion away. What did they do? They gave their dominion away to an unemployed homeless angel. This lying angel's name is, of course, Satan. Imagine a prince giving his rule, his authority, his palace away to some unemployed, homeless person who's part of the enemy side. This is what Adam and Eve did. They were created to subdue the earth, but instead they were subdued. Instead of exercising authority and dominion, Adam and Eve came under bondage. I wanna pause for a moment because many people struggle to understand why in the Bible it says the wages of sin is death. That seems way too harsh, especially to our modern years.   That just seems way too harsh. Well, in fact, if you understand sin in a two kingdoms framework, it makes perfect sense. The problem is, see, most people, when they think of sin, they think of something like breaking the rules of a board game, like Monopoly.  Like, who cares? But did you know that for most countries throughout most of history, they have agreed that the penalty for treason is death? It's an almost universal, in fact, even in 2018, I didn't research this thoroughly, but many countries, maybe most countries today, certainly in the US, the penalty for treason is death. They will execute you. Why is it so bad? People recognize, you sold your country out. You helped that other side. You gave away something valuable and precious when you committed treason.  That's treason. What Adam and Eve did is they took God's dominion. They took God's authority, and they gave it right to the devil. They gave it to the enemy. That's treason. I want you all to think about sin in this way. It's not merely breaking the rules of bingo or Monopoly. It's giving God's power and authority to the devil. Now, when Adam and Eve sinned, there was a tight connection between heaven and earth that was ruptured. Humans and the earth were plunged into death, decay, disease, and disaster. What will join heaven and earth again? Or perhaps better, who will join heaven and earth? We'll come back to that again. Now, I wanna get a little bit more specific as to how our sixth citizenship is going to be recognized. I'm gonna give you five points. I'd like you to write them down. The first point is that our citizenship is to be marked by our boldness. Our citizenship is to be marked by our boldness. When I was preparing this message, I kept thinking. My mind kept going back again and again to the book of Daniel. Daniel is, of course, a book that is about four young boys who were put into a foreign nation, the nation of Babylon, and we see them go through various tests and trials. And I was thinking about this. Was there any doubt among the Babylonians where Daniel and his three friends, Hananiah, Michelle, and Azariah, or Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, was there any doubt as to where their citizenship and allegiance resided? Did they wonder, like, hey, this Daniel person or this Shadrach person, I wonder where his loyalty really is. Of course, there was none because there were four tests in the book. The four tests were eating the king's food, bowing down to the king's idol, interpreting the writing on the wall, and then praying to God after the decree had been made to pray only to the king. Now, let's think about this for a moment. Let's think about the first trial. The first trial was eating the king's food. These are a group of teenagers. They're all teenagers. They've been forcibly abducted from their home country of Judah or Israel and they've been brought to Babylon, and they have a conscience problem with the food. They could have said this, hey, you know what? Let's just plant a garden in our backyard and let's secretly grow some vegetables in that garden and we're just gonna get our food from there. Or let's just be a little sneaky and get some leftover foods or food out of the kitchen and we're just gonna, we're gonna make it because, hey, we're under persecution here. This is a heavy time for us.  Is that what they did? They boldly went to their supervisor and they said, hey, we wanna put you to a test. We wanna put our God to the test. You give us vegetables and water and we're gonna prove to you that our God is able to nourish us. That's pretty amazing when you think about their alternatives. Let's think about the second test. The second test was bowing down before the idol that Nebuchadnezzar had made. These four young men, they could have said, you know what? We're going to bow down with our bodies but not with our hearts. When everybody's bowing, we're actually gonna be standing up in our hearts because, and I've heard this a million times, it's the heart that matters. That's all that matters. It's all about the heart. We can do whatever we want with our outside so long as we're bowing down, not bowing down in our hearts. But of course they didn't do that. When everybody was bowing down, they saw these four young men standing up defying the order of the king. And then the speech they make, they say, you know what, Nebuchadnezzar? Our God is able to deliver us. But even if he doesn't, we don't care. We're not gonna bow down to your idols because we're gonna be faithful even to death. The third trial, interpreting the writing on the wall. Nobody could read this writing, right? So picture the scene. There's a bunch of rowdy, drunk, powerful people. And all of a sudden the writing goes on the wall, basically saying, you've been weighed, you're wanting, you're not.  Done. Now if I'm Daniel, I'm reading this thinking like, huh, do I wanna break this news to a bunch of rowdy, drunk people who could kill me if this news doesn't please them? Many of us probably would have said, you know what, let me just think about it for a while. I can see it. Let me just go home and think about it and spend some time to think about exactly how to explain the translation. It's a little bit complicated. I need some time to get out my concordance and my dictionary. Is that what Daniel did? Most of us would have stalled, but Daniel was bold. The fourth trial, of course there's an edict that is given where nobody's allowed to pray to anybody but the king. And you know, again, think about the situation. Wouldn't it have been the most natural thing in the world to say, you know what, I'm gonna keep praying, but I'm just gonna close my window. God can see through the window. No big deal.  I could see Daniel saying, God put me in this position of authority. I'm a big shot now here in the Persian Empire.  Is that what Daniel did? He prayed with his windows open. Still, even though the law had been passed, again, defying the orders of the king. Amazing. Four powerful tests met with remarkable boldness. So how is it with you? We live in a day where people are ashamed to even say grace with non-Christians. And yet we ought to be humbled by the example of these four men. They showed boldness, courage, bravery from the time they were teenagers until the time they were in their 80s. So if I asked you right now, show me your citizenship by how you have shown me boldness. How do you answer? How do you answer? Second point, our citizenship is expressed through representation and dominion. Our citizenship is expressed through representation and dominion. In the book of 2 Corinthians, the Bible calls us ambassadors. It's a wonderful term. It's a nice, easy term to understand. We all know what ambassadors do. They represent the interests of one nation to another nation. Now, which nation do we represent? We, of course, represent the kingdom of heaven. Consider for a moment the wide, undescribable gap between the kingdom of heaven and the nations of the earth. I'll read to you a quote from Spurgeon. He says it very beautifully. He says, there can be no comparison between a soaring seraph and a crawling worm. Christian men ought to live that it were idle to speak of a comparison between them and the men of the world. It should not be a comparison, but a contrast. No scale of degrees is possible. The believer should be a direct and manifest contradiction to the unregenerate. We should compel our critics not to confess that moralists are good and Christians a little better, but while the world is darkness, we should manifestly be light. While the world lies under the wicked one, we should evidently be of God and overcome the temptations of that wicked one. Wide as the poles asunder are life and death, light and darkness, health and disease, purity and sin, spiritual and carnal, divine and sensual. We do well to remind ourselves when our days begin that we are ambassadors of a kingdom that simply cannot be compared to the kingdoms of this earth. All nations, every nation on this earth will be destroyed in the last day, except for the unshakable kingdom of our God. I believe that many of our problems come from the fact that we forget this mandate. We forget that we are supposed to represent heaven's interests down on the earth. I want you all to regularly hold this idea in your mind that we are on temporary assignment. We live in heaven, commanded actually that we keep our thoughts even in heaven. We live in heaven, but we are stationed on earth to bring heaven down to the earth. Many of our problems come from, come because we have forgotten this mandate.  That would be a terrible reflection on us, on the US. In the same way, when we as ambassadors of the heavenly kingdom do not reflect the beatitudes, the values of our king, what does that do to his honor? When we think about it in this way, when we pray the Lord's prayer, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Doesn't that bring more light to the picture? We are trying to join heaven and earth. That bond that was ruptured when Adam and Eve sinned at the fall, Jesus began to reforge that connection and we in his path follow. We are supposed to bring heavens perspectives and heavens priorities to all the decisions and all of our situations. Do you do that? When someone cuts you off when you're driving, this happens to me all the time in Boston, not a good place to drive.  When you face temptation, how does heavens priorities change how you act? When you're looking for a spouse, how does heavens perspective manifest in your decision making? When a child is disobedient or irritating, how do you bring heavens perspective down? In Colossians it says, set your minds on things above, not on things on earth, for you died and your life is hidden with Christ and God. There are certain countries, South Korea is one example, where it is a requirement that every single male serve in the army. Every single male has to serve in the army. Guess what? In God's kingdom, every single male and every single female is required to serve in the army. No one is exempt. There's a couple countries that are actually even like that today. The modern nation of Israel requires that. Both men and women have to serve in the army. So why is this? Why is it that every person who was called a citizen of the kingdom is required to serve as a soldier? Well, it is simply because God has put us on that mission, that mission that began in Genesis one to take dominion of the earth. In Genesis one, the very first chapter of the Bible, God told us to fill the earth with people. In the last chapter of the book of Matthew, Jesus says, fill the earth with disciples. Many people miss the connection between Genesis one and Matthew 28. You all know Matthew 28, the great commission. Jesus begins by saying, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples. Don't read over that first part quickly. The word authority is very closely connected to the word dominion. Jesus then mentions heaven and earth again. Another reference to Genesis one. He's restoring that broken bond between heaven and earth through the great commission. Jesus is going to reign through us as the last Adam. Now, I think this is why, I know this is why, when you go to the book of Acts, it seems like the disciples, the apostles, they are attracted like magnets to the great cities of the Roman Empire. They look at Ephesus, where one of the wonders of the ancient world was, a huge temple to a pagan god called Diana. And they said, we want that city. That'd be a great city. We want a capital city for our king. And then they, Corinth, another great example. Corinth was the capital of Ikea, one of the great trading cities of the day. And Paul's licking his chops thinking, I'm gonna take that city for Jesus. It's not gonna stand, no way.  I want Rome, the capital of this whole empire. I'm gonna go there and I'm gonna, I wanna flag for Jesus in Rome. Now I admit, whenever I hear about the great cities of our world today, when I hear about Beijing or a Dhaka or a Tokyo or Cairo, Buenos Aires, whatever the city may be, my heart swells with desire. Because I think I want you God to use us to bring heaven down to those cities. I wanna have them be conquered. I happen to live in Boston and I've been fascinated with Boston for many decades because in many ways, America was born there. Most of the founding fathers were there and all the speeches about taxation on representation and the Boston Tea Party and all that happened there. The Unitarian religion, which is not a good religion, was born there. The evangelical religion started there right at Park Street. The abolition movement started there. Martin Luther King Jr. went there and studied at Boston University and the civil rights movement was born there. The oldest college in America, the most powerful university in the world, is there. And I've had a lot of interactions in the last few years with various people in state, high levels of influence in the state because I've been working on a fairly large project. And in the back of my mind, this has often happened, I'm saying to myself, I'm coming to claim Boston for my king. So be careful what you say, official. There's somebody behind me who you don't see who I know is working. Set your sights high to take dominion for the king, whether it's Richmond, Virginia, Dearborn, Michigan, Kampala, Uganda, there are many places where we need to exercise the dominion of our king. I'm very worried when I see pew warmers. I'm very worried because if you're not bursting with desire to exercise this dominion that Jesus told us to, to fill the earth with disciples, I question if you understand the gospel of the kingdom. God's true churches are expanding. They always have been. Jesus promised the gates of Hades would not prevail against his church. He said the church would start small like a mustard seed and then fill the whole earth. In Acts, wherever Paul went, there was either riot or revival. How is it with you? Point number three, to gain citizenship, you must be born again.  I can't stand government forms. They're just they're arduous and tedious and complicated.  But for most of us, and by the way, if you try to get naturalized and go through that whole process, it's a long, complicated process. It involves green cards and visas and all of these papers and et cetera. But did you know that for a baby, gaining citizenship is very easy? You're just born. You don't have to do anything. I didn't have to do anything to gain citizenship in America. I was just born. In Romans six, Paul says that in baptism, we died and were raised again to newness of life. There's a repeated picture, Jesus uses it in John three as well, where we are born again. We die to our old allegiances and we are born again. And when we're born again, guess what citizenship we have because we're born into this new kingdom. It's a beautiful picture. Interestingly, the word in Greek for born again, Anothin is the word. Jesus uses a play on words. The word Anothin in John three also means from above. And in fact, it's translated from above even in the King James and New King James. And so Jesus is saying you must be born again to enter the kingdom. He's also saying you must be born from above to enter the kingdom. We gain citizenship by virtue of the new birth. Now of course, the hard part is the dying. That's the hard part. When we count the cost, are we willing to put Jesus ahead of family, friends, many church members, even ourselves, or are we ashamed of Jesus? Jesus said in Luke nine for whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him, the Son of man will be ashamed when he comes in his own glory and in his fathers and of the holy angels. So many people in the churches of today are fake citizens. They're illegally in God's country because they have not been willing to surrender their lives. Point number four, counterfeit kingdoms rob us of our dominion and strength. Counterfeit kingdoms rob us of our dominion and strength. So Satan is very clever. He's a smart angel, even though he was kicked out of heaven he still has a lot of intelligence. He knows exactly when his end will come. It's a verse that I say to myself all the time it's from Matthew 24 where Jesus says the gospel of the kingdom will be preached as a witness. That means in person to all nations and then the end will come. So notice the gospel of the kingdom. Jesus could look forward 2000 years, thousands of years and anticipate there was another gospel that was not the gospel of the kingdom. But he says the gospel of the kingdom will be preached as a witness in person to all nations. The word nations is ethnic Greek. It's the word from which we get our word ethnic group. So there's about 20,000, 25,000 ethnic groups today. So when there is a kingdom church, when there's a kingdom witness in all 20,000, 25,000 ethnic groups, Jesus said the end will come. So Satan knows that. And so he has done, I think just a brilliant maneuver. The brilliant maneuver that he has done is he's created a theology where heaven is about the next life. As opposed to bringing heaven down in this life because he understands that if he could create people who are just sitting around hunkering down, waiting, waiting, waiting for some future heaven, then the gospel of the kingdom isn't gonna spread on the earth. It's brilliant. There are plenty of counterfeit forms of religion out there where you stay on the defense.  That's not the gospel of the kingdom. The gospel of the kingdom is God's nation on the move expanding, conquering. The early church had it, the Waldensians had it, the early Anabaptists had it. But many people today, many, many, many people today, when I look at them, I look at them and I see, where is the dominion here? What are you doing?  They're sitting back, not taking dominion of the enemy's territory.  That's not the gospel of the kingdom. That's the gospel of Laodicea, the gospel of complacency. So Satan has created these brilliant shining theologies that are all about deferment and postponing heaven. But he says, I gotta do more. Okay, so he creates these false theologies, but then he says, you know what? I recognize that dominion is hardwired into all of us. All of us have a desire to go out and conquer and subdue, all of us do.  So the whole world, I mean, easy example is the whole world of professional sports and college sports. I used to be deep in that world.  Like, oh, I gotta get to the struggle. I'm gonna beat this team and yeah, we're gonna beat Atlanta and then we're gonna do this and it isn't interesting that teams are tied to cities. I think there's even there a little counterfeit narrative. Some people try to take dominion by participating in movies and doing it through their imagination vicariously. Action movies, romance movies. Whether you conquer the bad guy or whether you win the girl's heart, there's always some struggle there. We're all suckers for those narratives because Satan has figured out like, hey, these are great little play pens. You've got this dominion engineered into you.  Yeah, yeah, go play. Enjoy it. Some people are in the play pen of the kingdom of cars or the kingdom of hunting or the kingdom of video games or the kingdom of parties. There's two particular systems that I'm gonna call out this morning. One kingdom or one citizenship is Babylon and another one is Paris. Babylon is used throughout the Bible as a symbol of economic power and luxury and toleration. So Babylon's a fascinating place. It's worth studying the history if you have some time. I believe that Babylon has a unique appeal to older people, to the older generation. So the Babylonians, they're not savages. They're not like the Assyrians that were these bloodthirsty warlords. The Babylonians were refined. They were wealthy. They were great builders. One of the ancient wonders of the world was the hanging gardens of Babylon. They love gardens. They love nature. Babylon is about comfort and status quo and prosperity and toleration. And I can just picture them. They would bring all these leaders, all these people. Hey, yeah, enjoy your life. Whatever gods, follow your gods. We have our gods, you have our gods. Here's some nice food. Here's some beautiful gardens. Walk around, enjoy nature. Here's a nice sight. Look at how your life will be with us. But don't rock the boat. Don't be too radical. That's Babylon. On the other hand, there's Paris. So Paris is a fascinating city. I've never been to Paris, but I've been to France. I've been to the southern part of France for a science conference. Paris is often called the fashion capital of the world. It's also a place where there's a lot of movies that are produced and filmed. A lot of people wanna be near the Eiffel Tower and see all the beautiful attractions there. Paris is more attractive to young people. When I was in my student days, a lot of people wanted to do study abroad programs and go to Paris.  And I'm gonna get all the nice French fashion and all the nice French delicacy. There's a certain exotic appeal that it has. Fashion and entertainment. Now, I wanna say that I myself was caught in this bondage for many years. When I see a lot of you, it reminds me of myself, especially the young people, reminds me of myself maybe 20, 25 years ago. I went to public school, as I mentioned, and when I was in public school, there was a certain look that I was going for. There was a certain style that I wanted to achieve. I wanted to be popular, I wanted to fit in, I wanted people to like me, and I wanted to be, yeah, just stylish. And I wanted to be looked at as a little bit rebellious, but not too much. A little bit like out of step, but like not too wild and crazy. And so I wake up in the mornings and I style my hair, I get all this mousse and this gel and I'd have my hair a certain way and I'd have these certain brands of clothes and I'd have this certain jacket that I would wear and these certain jeans and I remember just walking around campus thinking like, yeah, here I am, look how great I am. And I say these things not out of a judgment, genuinely, because this is something that I deeply struggled with for many years, but out of sympathy. I see now, clear as day, that my motivation back then was pride. That's what the Bible calls it, just plain and simple, it's pride. I wanted people to approve me, I wanted them to admire me, and that desire for admiration is exactly what motivated the Pharisees.  Some people are trying to be preppy, some people are trying to look rebellious. I get it. My friends, my dear friends, especially those of you who struggle with this, I simply ask that you kneel before God and say, if there is any pride in me, show it to me. If I am searching for acceptance or admiration from other people, expose it to my heart. David Foster Wallace is a powerful writer and he has a great line, not about the subject, but he has a line talking about an imprisonment so complete that the prisoner doesn't even know that he or she is locked up. He says, that's the worst imprisonment. It's so thorough and it's so complete, you don't even know you're in it. And that's exactly what pride is. Those years, I had no idea. I couldn't see it. I couldn't see it. Now it's clear as day. My plea and call to those of you who wrestle with Paris, who wrestle with fashion is to search your heart. What are you asking people to do with your clothing? Look at me or to follow the simplicity and humility of our savior. Look with me. I'm only gonna have us look at one passage. It's this very short familiar passage. I'm gonna wrap up this point, give one more and then we'll close. Look with me at 1st John chapter two. 1st John chapter two verses 15 and 17. This was the passage that was assigned to me in this message and I've been meditating on it. We're not gonna spend too much time on it but there's some excellent insights in this. 1st John chapter two verses 15 to 17 says, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the father but is of the world. And the world is passing away and the lust of it but he who does the will of God abides forever. Familiar verse I think to almost all of us where we are called to not love the world and it says that if we love the world, we don't love God. That's what it says in verse 15. And it says something very profound in verse 16 that's easy to read over. It says, for all that is in the world and I want you to underline the word all. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the father but is of the world. And we get this warning in verse 17. The whole system is coming down. It's gonna crash down. We're alive for a couple of minutes on this earth and all of these false systems are gonna crash, come crashing down. Do not kid yourself. Again, this is something that when you're in the prison it's hard to see but do not kid yourself. If you love Hollywood, the love of the father is not in you. If you love fashion or the world style, you love what is passing away.  They have no interest to make you Christ-like. It wants to tear you away. The earth's fashions are not sanctifying, they're defiling. The American dream of ease, prosperity, a nice big house and a comfortable plot of land will quietly pull you away from Jesus. I travel a few times a year to speak in various plain churches and when I go and I normally stay in their homes, I see the homes and the businesses and the lifestyles and oh, it just tears me up because I ask the question, where's the dominion? I see luxury and an easy life but then I ask, are we aliens and strangers? I ask all of you to search your hearts. Have you joined yourself to a worldly city? Babylon, especially those of you who are older, comfortable life, economic prosperity, nice businesses, beautiful gardens or Paris, style, entertainment, what's exotic, being interesting? Have you been seduced by either? Have you given your dominion away? Every year in the U.S. there are a number of examples where people get married purely to try to gain citizenship. Laura and I know a couple that were from Africa, that were married in Africa, they came to the U.S. Very kind, sweet couple and we heard that this couple, they didn't have citizenship here, we heard that this couple, they had concocted a scheme where he was going to marry on paper a girl, a young lady. I think there was a financial arrangement there. They wouldn't be married in any physical sense but he would be marrying her legally and then try to get citizenship for himself and then once he's a citizen, try to get citizenship for his wife. There's 50,000 of these that happen every year where people marry just for citizenship. I was reading about a story of a man who was doing this in Atlanta and it was in the country illegally and he desperately wanted citizenship and so he paid a woman $10,000 for a legal marriage with her so they got married, they got a marriage license and he got a green card but then this lady realized that she had him and so she started to blackmail him and she wanted all of his money. She, whenever he got mail, it would go to her house because that was where they had to register since he was supposedly married to her and the whole thing started to unravel. She milked him for every dollar that she had, any, whenever his lawyer would send papers she would rip him up so that he would never get them and eventually the government found the scheme and he was deported.  They will try to offer you a way into citizenship that seems plausible, that you can be married to two people at the same time. You might think like, hey, I can be married to Jesus and I can also be married to Babylon. I can be married to Jesus and I can still have my fashion or my Hollywood or my great lifestyle. These stories don't end well. They're deceitful and they end badly. My fifth and final point is that citizens have the right to an audience with a king who is on their side. Citizens have the right to an audience with a king who is on their side. Most of us know the story of the book of Acts and there were a couple of episodes where Paul gets himself into hot water. He finds himself imprisoned and then he says, he pulls out this ticket, so to speak, and he says, I'm a citizen of the Roman Empire. I appeal to Caesar.  Really? Well, if you are, guess what? You do get to go to Caesar and so the whole voyage begins where he gets to go to Caesar. Roman citizens had a powerful right to invoke Caesar if they were on trial. Citizens are granted in the United States great rights of appeal and reaching out to authorities above us. Over the last few years, I have been going through a massive ordeal to petition the state of Massachusetts to start a new Christian institution in the state. It's been a multi-year incredibly difficult process. We finished it in 2016. What I decided to do in this is I decided to hire two lawyers to help me. So it's very intimidating when you're having to file like hundreds and hundreds of pages of petition to the state and so I hired two lawyers. The lawyers' names are Anita and Paul. And Anita is an expert in non-profit law and Paul is an expert in educational law. And so I've started a lot of businesses over the years. I used to work in venture capital starting biotech companies and I have learned that as soon as you can, get a good lawyer who knows the laws because they'll pay for themselves many times over even though they're expensive because if you know the right laws, you can use them to your advantage and you can make a case to the government for things that you didn't even think was possible but if you get the right person who really knows the law well, they're gonna do wonders for you. So I decided to get two lawyers and they're both expensive but I hired them both. There's a bit of an analogy here even in our thoughts about scripture. If you know the Bible, there's a lot in there that you can use to your advantage but if you don't know it, there's all kinds of things, there's all kinds of promises, there's all kinds of places that are gonna sit idle that can't even help you. I hope you see where I'm going with this. If you know and use God's word, it can be powerful. There's a verse in Hosea where God says, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. There's all these promises and content there and they can't even use it. I have learned, so I have six children and my oldest is 11 and my youngest is two and they're getting clever and sometimes we will have little discussions where they'll want something and most of the time they'll say, I want something and I'll just say no, you're not gonna have it but there's one thing that works. If they say to me, but dad, you said last week, this and this and this, that we would get this and I look over at Laura and I think, did I say that? Because if I said that, I gotta do it. They know that they have me if they can hook me on my word. That's pretty much the only reliable way that we have that my children have to consistently influence me. And so it is with God. If we go to God and say like, hey, I want this, I want that, that might not work but if you can hold up God's word and say, hey, you said, you said, that's a very powerful influence where God's gonna say, hey, you got me. You got me, I gotta honor my word. You're right, I gotta do that. Now, when I was going through this whole episode with Massachusetts, the way that I used the two attorneys was as follows. I kept Anita as my background coach. So she would tell me all these parts of the law. She'd say, when you go to the board, say this and that and you talk to the department and use this statute and that statute. And she would send me these emails and I would print them out. I'd practically memorize these emails because they're high pressure situations. You got one shot often in these meetings and I knew that I had to have Anita's words inside of me when I went before the ruling authorities. The other attorney, his name was Paul, I would bring him to my meeting. So Anita was kind of in the background, just giving me emails, giving me advice, giving me all these cases and laws. Paul, though, I did something different. Paul, I would bring him to the meeting with me. And the reason that I would bring him to these meetings is that he knew the people on the board and in the department. And so I quickly figured out like, hey, if this guy knows the people that I'm talking to and he's worked with them and they have a good working relationship, I'd be a fool not to bring them along to my meetings. So we'd go to these meetings and again, they're very formal and everyone's very stiff and proper. And he'd walk in and say, hey, how's it going such and such? And hey, how are you?  And so I felt such a peace when I'd walk into these meetings nervous that I had my attorney on my right hand side who knew these people, had a great working relationship. Now this setup is almost identical to what true kingdom citizens have. It's almost exactly like the setup that I had with Anita and Paul. So we have two people that have been given to help us. The first is God gives us the Holy Spirit who knows the scriptures backwards and forwards, inside out. And his job, one of his main jobs is to bring them to your mind. What about this? What about that? Pray this, ask about this, use this promise. Hey, this command applies here, right? It's like my Anita. The Holy Spirit is bringing scripture to our mind, finding promises, finding portions of scripture that will be a great help for us. But then God gives us a second person. This second person is an attorney who will directly represent us before the judge. And this person is of course Jesus. But guess what?  He knows the judge. Guess what? He's the son of the judge. And guess what? He's my older brother. The system has been rigged. God has set it up where he gave us this beautiful, beautiful system where he's gonna give us all that we want, all the petitions. Heaven's power is at our disposal. Two powerful advocates, the Holy Spirit and Jesus in our corner. What government sets anybody up like this?  What an amazing king that we have. How great a God that we have who has made us citizens, ambassadors taking dominion, but then he has set up a petition system and appeal system where we cannot lose. We cannot lose. Let's pray. Father in heaven, may our citizenship be known to all. May our citizenship in heaven be profoundly recognized by our boldness, by our exercising dominion. Father, may we die to ourselves and participate in the new birth. Father, we don't wanna be counterfeits who are married to two people at the same time and be deported on the last day. We wanna be genuine citizens of your kingdom. Father, I know right before me is a whole army of your people that you are calling for to exercise dominion, to fill the earth with disciples. May we not cower, but may we rise to the challenge. Father, bless us. Bless us as we consider this high vocation of being ambassadors on your behalf. Father, I pray that we would be noble soldiers who are not ashamed to stand for you and to take cities, to take dominion over this earth. Father, we need you. We thank you for the counselor, the Holy Spirit, and we thank you for Jesus, our dear older brother and your beloved son. And it's in his name we pray. Amen.


Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Denver, Colorado. It's our first trip actually to Denver for theCUBE. So we're excited to be here. It's DJI Airworks show. It's the second show they've ever had, about 500, 600 people here, talking about the commercial applications for drone. There's no conversation really about consumer stuff here. The spark is not here. This is really about commercial applications for drone technology, the platform, the software. We're really excited to have the keynote speaker today. He's Michael Perry. He's the director of strategic partnerships for DJI. Michael, welcome. Thanks for having me, Jeff. Absolutely, and great job on the keynote. You know, really enthusiastic crowd. I think you pretty much had their wrap attention the entire time. So before we get into today, talk a little bit about why DJI has invested in this conference. And kind of what are your kind of high level objectives in doing Airworks? Yeah, so over the last several years, we've started seeing more and more maturity in how people are using drones for commercial work. Ultimately what we found though, is that a lot of these conversations were happening one to one. And often they were coming to DJI to have that conversation, and then we'd connect them to somebody else in the network. Instead, a year ago, we decided, why don't we just connect everybody together so they can have those conversations directly? And that was a huge success. We had end users and developers and dealers all coming together to think about how we can push forward the future of enterprise with drones. And this year, it's even bigger. We've now included not just end users and developers, but also training companies and financial service providers, hardware providers, and everyone's coming together to look at what's the future of this industry and how we can push it forward. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. So really the highlight of verticals, if you will. So agriculture, energy, construction, public safety, and infrastructure, and of course media as well. But those are really, those are hardcore industrial sectors where you've already seen a lot of pretty advanced solutions. And you're really pushing the solution messaging as opposed to kind of the point products or even talking about the drones themselves. Yeah, that's right. So I think if we had this conversation five years ago, we'd be trying to tell everybody why drones are so useful. That's no longer the issue. The question is, how can we take these drones and operate them at scale? How can we move them from an R&D project where everyone understands the value proposition? But how can we make sure that it's able to use by the guys in the field on a daily basis? And that's what everybody here in this room is here to decide. Now you guys took a really interesting approach. You really broke the drone up into pieces. So you've got the actual platform itself, the thing that flies. And you guys have spent a lot of time and effort in letting it fly itself, if you will, really with instruction. And there's the sensors, whether that be a camera, the ag sensors, infrared, all tight. I mean, Hasselblad is here, right? One of the oldest camera companies around. And then there's the software. And you opened up your API both on the mobile device side, the control side, as well as, sounds like this year, even giving the raw access to the most fundamental sensor data. So that's a pretty bold kind of path to choose. How did that go down? And obviously the results are huge. You're building an ecosystem across all of those units. Yeah, when we started seeing the applications for drones in the commercial space, we ultimately realized that we can't develop into end solutions for every application for drones. It's just too big. So what we started seeing is, hey, look, there's a company that's already doing fantastic work in GIS mapping. Let's just enable them to use our platform. And ultimately, we're starting to look at how we can use the base core of DJI technology as a platform for other people to build on top of to really expand the potential of drones. And that's true for everybody here in this room. Right, so now you've got really a wide range of platforms, if you will. But the other thing that you announced today that I thought was pretty interesting, and I'm relatively new to the space, but getting beyond kind of the one person, one drone concept, and really enabling an enterprise operation. One of the guys who was talking about their customer, Kamatsu, says, we love it. Can you put 20,000 of these things in the Air Force? So that's a whole different way to think about that your aerial assets, if you will, and I think back to the early military days, right? We didn't have an Air Force, right? It was part of the Army. But to actually now have the ability to have kind of an aerial branch within your business process that feeds into your other business process, a very different way to think about the world. That's exactly right. So Flight Hub is the answer to that exact question. If I'm a business and I want to operate drones at scale, how am I going to do that? So Flight Hub does multiple things simultaneously. It allows you to see the live feeds from multiple drones, allows you to assign tasks to individual drone pilots, allows you to monitor all the drones in your fleet and see how are they performing, where have they flown, what kind of missions are they optimized for, and use all of that information to be able to operate drones across an enterprise. Yeah, and then you talked about the other side of the equation, which is there's still concerns about safety and privacy and this and that. And you've come up with another product that's really for law enforcement and airports and those types of people, so they have a better view of what's happening around their airspace, that they're responsible for managing, not really for the consumers or even for the operators, but really for more of the control and the trust, if you will, within this big ecosystem. That's exactly right. One of the barriers to broader adoption is the perception of drones, if there's a drone flying by, who's drone is that? What is it doing? What is it doing, the thing that's supposed to be doing? Is there an accountability mechanism? So with Aeroscope, we've designed an easy to implement accountability mechanism for law enforcement, for airspace regulators. And between the two of them, they can start saying, hey look, there's a category of drones that can just fly and we can make sure that they're not flying in any way that's affecting safety or security and if they are, then there's a follow up mechanism. Right, right. Okay, so I got to ask you a fun question. Of all the crazy applications that the ecosystem has delivered, what are some of your favorites that either just seem, wow, who would have ever thought of that? Or just really leveraging the power of the platform in a way that, again, you would have never thought up on your own. Honestly, every week there's a new exciting application. The one that always springs to mind though is the Ocean Alliance had a problem in that they need to collect information about whale pods in order to assess their health and their diet and how they're preparing. The best way to do that is collecting whale snot. So the previous snot. Whale snot. So previously. There's no whale snot. Exactly. So previously they would row in dinghies next to whale pods as they breach, try to collect the snot as they go out the spout. Now they're using drones to do that. It's much more time efficient, allows them to better assess the health of the whales that they're trying to conserve and also doesn't put the researchers in harm's way. Yeah, it's bad news for what's his name with a dirty job show, because really the drones are taking a lot of these dirty jobs. It's really a safety issue. When you're expecting to talk to somebody over coffee, inspecting oil refineries. You don't have to send somebody up a 200 foot tower anymore. You can send the drone, use software and even get a better indication than you could from somebody, maybe missed a spot. Yeah, you can decrease the amount of hazardous work hours and increase the efficiency. So you can not only do the inspection faster, but you can do it more frequently and get a bigger data set so that you can take that intelligence and make your business operate a lot more effectively. All right, so goals for 2018. What would we be talking about at Airworks 2018? I think next year you'll see a lot more mature applications within the different verticals that you just mentioned. There are already software providers and hardware providers trying to address them, but I think today you'll start seeing all of those solutions coming together into one platform that can easily be sold and easily scaled in these businesses. So you'll probably see a lot more players here talking about that. All right, well, Michael, again, congratulations on the show. Congratulations on the keynote. Exciting times at DJI. Yeah, thank you. All right, Michael Perry, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from DJI Airworks. Thanks for watching.


I think we will get started. I'm Rola Khalaf. I'm the deputy editor at the FT. The question before us today is, how can policymakers move beyond urgency and towards a strategic partnership between Europe and its southern neighbors? It's a question that I'm sorry to say I've been hearing for the past 20 years. My first job at the FT was as North Africa correspondent. And back then, the same question was asked mainly about North Africa. If you fast forward 20 years, the biggest migration crisis to hit Europe was from another corner of the Mediterranean from Syria. It was an external shock that was unexpected. And although many would argue that it should have been contained much earlier on, it was also the worst refugee crisis that Europe has seen in more than 40 years. Although the repercussions of that crisis are still playing out, today the focus has shifted to Africa with initiatives in Europe that are aimed at helping with economic development in the hope that young people aspiring for a better life will find that future in their home country. We've got a terrific panel for you. Paolo Gentiloni is the prime minister of Italy. Yomi Osi Banjo, vice president of Nigeria. Alexis Tsipras, prime minister of Greece. And William Lacy, swing the director general of the International Organization for Migration. But I want to do something a bit unconventional today and start not with a panelist, but with a member of the audience. Victor Ochien from the African Youth Initiative Network and also a young global leader grew up in a camp for displaced people in Uganda. Victor, can I ask you to start by telling us your story? Stand up. Thank you. My name is Victor Ochien. I was born and raised in Uganda. And I am the director for African Youth Initiative Network. And being a child born and raised in conflict, I am one of the witnesses of the first unaccounted of injustice of conflict. But that triggered in me the aspiration to do more to answer the question that I've been looking for the answer all along as a child. Through my organization, we've been working to promote peace in Africa, mobilizing children who cut up in conflict from different parts of the continent, but above all, giving them a voice. Through my work, we've moved around the continent. And last year, a story that I wanted to share with you, I got a call from a young man from Mali. He said, my name is Momo Du. Can you call me back? I called him back. And then said, can you give me your email address? I gave him my email address. And then I'm sending an email right now. And he sent an email. I looked at the email. There was a picture of two boys standing in this picture. I called him back from Uganda. And I said, what is it? And he said, in the left on the red t-shirt is my brother, who left home three weeks ago to go through Libya to Europe. When he was seen in Libya, he made a call and said, we need you to send us $1,800 US dollars, in addition to $3,200 that I came up with, because they won $5,000 US dollars for me to cross the sea. But the last one week we've been trying to reach, we're calling him, his phone is off. Since I contacted to find out if there's any African youth who understands our situation can contact somebody. We have called you if you know of any contact in Libya or anywhere you can help us find our brother. Through my network, I called contacts in Greece and then they referred to me to Libya. And I talked to this guy in Libya. And they asked me, you are from Uganda. Do you want to go to Europe? I said, no. I want to stay home, I want to stay in Africa. Say, what do you want? We don't have so many customers from Uganda. I said, I am here asking if you know of this name in the list of the people who have gone through your support. And then they looked through it, was googling about me and said, oh, I thought you were security. You are just a piece, man. When you look through it, I said, unfortunately, the guy's name is in the list of those in the boat that did not make it. Unfortunately, I cannot help you. It's normal. Wondering what to do, on what to reply to this young man in Mali looking for his brother. I asked him, do you really tell them the difficulties, the challenges they will face when they are traveling during their counties? And the guy said, yes. We explained to them that you have 99% chances of death, only 1% chance of survival. Are you willing to pay your $5,000? They pay. And I asked, have you ever troubled yourself? Said, yes, I traveled several times, but twice, I nearly died. So I do not go anymore, but I send people every day. It left me wondering, if a young African can know that I have 99% chances of death, but still up as the best option. So the question is, what is the political storm at home? The storm of poverty, the storm of injustice, that forced these people to leave home and seek to escape the continent. It comes up to the political question. The same, how many are dying in the desert every new day trying to escape home? What we are seeing in Libya is a manifestation of what's going on in our countries because across the continent, prisons in Africa are full of young people. What can we do to address this? So I thought I should share the story, because the question is, how long are we going to keep mobilizing resources to rescue them in the sea? Because that life jacket being given in the sea is good, but could have been given on land in the form of a different opportunity to help them stay home. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, sir. Prime Minister Gentiloni, do you think that we are now living through a false sense of security? The level of migration to Europe, compared to 2005, it's really leveled off. I think in 2017, the numbers are have 170,000 compared to a million two years ago. Is this a false sense of security? Is the problem in your mind still as big? Well, the problem is big. It is very, I'm not proud of this, sincerely, because I just met for other issues this morning, the Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri. And if you look to the numbers that Lebanon has of refugees and migrants, refugees mostly, you can't imagine. It's a quarter of the population. But you perfectly know that we had even relevant countries in our countries that decided to leave EU, perhaps mostly because of the debate on the risk of invasion of migrants. And this was perhaps one of the main reasons of the decision that obviously we all respect of the British people to leave EU. So the issue remains very relevant. Italy has a traditional position, for example, of actively saving human lives at sea and accepts all those that are saved in our ports. But I assure you that this is one of the more costly political decision that, in these days, a government can take. Well, it's certainly played out in Germany, it's playing out in your own elections. So at the same time, what you were saying to us is absolutely correct. In the medium and long term, what we have to do is very clear, give a contribution to the African development as far as Italy is concerned. The central, the so-called central Mediterranean route, but also the western Mediterranean route, is mostly composed by migrants, more than refugees, and Africa, more than the Middle East. There is a lot of people coming from Bangladesh, but mostly is Africa. But how long will it take to change the economic conditions in Africa to reduce this phenomenon? If you look to the story of the border between Mexico and US, decades to reach a situation that is now flat from Mexicans and Americans going from one side to the others. So we will need a long time. We should be committed on migration for the next 10 or 20 years from Africa. So we have the strategic issue that we were saying, so public aid, investment, the future of African economy. But we have also an issue that has to be tackled now. And the issue is to try to transfer the migration flow from criminality and total irregular flow gradually to regular and safe flows. Is it possible? It is possible, absolutely possible. We have to disrupt the networks of the criminals to strengthen the structure of the almost failed African states that are not able to control their own territories and to gradually accept through human corridors to systems of quotas. There are many ways to do this regular flow of migrants from Africa to Europe. I want to come back to that. But I wanted Prime Minister Tsipras to comment on how credible is this idea of a Marshall plan for Africa. So it is difficult to say how credible it is, because you know, you're asking me. So I think that it could be preferable in this panel to not be me and Paolo, but maybe other leaders from the North, from the North especially. Because you know very well that me and Paolo will try it a lot in order to convince our partners in the European Union that it is necessary to face this problem, not as a Mediterranean problem that has to do with Greece and Italy, but as a European one and as an international one. So I'm afraid that we never managed to hit the roots of the problem. We are trying a lot. We are trying, and especially Greece was in a very difficult position in the epicenter of two parallel crises, the finance, the debt crisis, but also in the epicenter of a huge humanitarian crisis that has to do with these roots, these flows, the bigger flows after the Second World War, migration flows and refugee flows. So we managed to handle this difficult situation with dignity and the same time with a humanitarian way. And the same happened with Italy and with thanks to Paolo efforts. But the problem in Europe now is that there are a lot of countries that they believe that if the problem is not in their backyards, it's not their problem. And this is an existential problem for Europe as a whole. Because if we believe that the European Union is an organization, Alacard, and somebody has to have only benefits and not obligation, this is a problem for our future, for our common future. In some ways, the issue is also deeper politically because there are a lot of politicians who are winning elections on a ticket of opposition to migration. Absolutely. It's deepened. It has to do also with the internal political situation in Europe because I believe that the result of the austerity policies create difficulties in our societies. And now the main political problem is the rise of artistic and nationalistic forces, populist forces in Europe, that they do not believe in our common goals, in our common values, and they do not believe in the idea of European Union. So first of all, we have to tackle the financial crisis in our countries. And to cancel, to stop these inefficient austerity policies with a growth agenda in order to promote social cohesion. Secondly, it is crucial to have a common migration policy. And third, I think it is also crucial, it is necessary to have an open-minded, progressive policy in relation with the African countries in order to try to solve the problems when the problems are born. So I think that the problem is not the flows. It's not these people that are trying to find a new life in Europe. But the problem is why these people cannot live in their countries. So the Marshall Plan, I think that it is necessary to finance the African countries. We made a lot of steps with these combats, combats with these initiatives in Malta, the Malta process, and so on. But it is necessary to be more brave. And of course, this is not something that has to do with Italy and Greece. This is nothing that has to do only with the southern European countries that were in a very close communication, also in the European Union with this southern summit meeting that we created the permanent communication. But it is necessary to be in front of the main agenda of the European Union and not only of the European Union. And it's necessary for politicians to be brave about it because I looked at recent data that suggested that migration is still the number one concern across Europe. And that surprised me two years after the crisis. But I want to turn to you, Vice President. There's been a lot of talk in recent years about Africa rising, much more rapid economic development. And yet, quite a bit of it has been more rhetoric than reality. President Kondev Ivory Coast talks about Africa replacing China as the factory of the world. How realistic is that? And how do you look at this Marshall Plan for Africa? Is this something that you think is credible? OK, let me begin with the Africa rising narrative and all of the possibilities around Africa replacing China as the factory of the world. I think that probably is in the natural cause of things. I mean, even now, we see that as wage costs go up in China, Africa is becoming the obvious choice for sunset industries and those kinds of things. So it's clear that that will happen. And a lot of initiatives, there are quite a few initiatives in that direction already. There are quite a few countries that I know that Ivory Coast is, Nigeria is with the development of special economic zones and all that, with partnerships coming from China. I think those sorts of arrangements will very quickly absorb labor because, obviously, we're looking at growing populations in Africa. The projections, as you know, in the next 20 years or so, I mean, we're looking at a youth population that's probably 70% of Africa's population will be young people. And Africa will probably be about the third. I think the largest population and all that. But I think that the critical thing is to see that we cannot deal with this in any quick way. There are no quick fixes to this. And I took the point that Paulo made that there really isn't any quick fix. We've got to look at this long term because, clearly, there is no way that African economies will ramp up quickly enough to be able to meet all of the expectations of, especially all of the projections around population. So this is going to be a long walk. And I think that is important for all of us to see this as such. The martial plan, the idea of a martial plan, is to me, in some senses, bringing all solutions to what really is a dynamic problem. I think that what Africa needs and what a lot of the southern neighbors of the Europeans need are fairer trade policies and a cocktail of policies that center on job creation in those locations. And I think that. You want more investment than aid. Yes, certainly, by far more investments, by far more investment. But I think more thinking through those ideas and policies that create opportunities. What you need is a real partnership between Europe and Africa. That's the way you want Europe to be thinking. Because I don't think that aid has worked through the years. I don't think it has worked. And I think that there is a bit more, and I think there's a need for possibly just much more commitment to the whole process. I mean, there have been a multiple processes sent on several others. But I certainly think that if we look at this as a major global problem, and when you look around and look at extremism, terrorism, and all of the various things that are exported along with legal migration and all of that, I think that it is a global problem. And it really does deserve a global solution. And the way to look at that is by coming together to reason this thing through. But frankly, I don't think it's those sort of Marshall plan type of the shelf type solutions. I think it's more nuanced than that. William Lacey-Swing, I'd like you to give us a critical assessment of European policy right now on migration. Thank you very much. First of all, it's an honor to be here, particularly in this very august panel here. I'm very humbled to be part of it. Thank you very much. Look, all the 28 member states, European Union are members of IOM. And the European Union is probably our largest donor right now. We have constant dialogue. We have great relationships. But frankly, I think that it's already been, I think, said by our distinguished prime ministers that what is lacking right now is a common, long-term, multifaceted, European Union migration and asylum policy. It's simply eluded. European Union, the commissions have worked hard at it. It's a little bit like a locomotive going down the tracks, but the wheels have fallen off some of the cars. Not everybody is on board. And the 1.5 million people who came north in 2015, 2016 is about less than 1.5% of European Union's population of 550 million. It should basically have been a manageable issue. And I give great credit and admiration to both the governments of Italy and Greece because they've had to bear a large brunt of the responsibility for managing the numbers coming in. As you mentioned, 4.5 million population in Lebanon with 1.5 million Syrians and 500,000 Palestinians. So it is manageable. And we've never given enough credit to the six neighbors of Libya and the four neighbors of Syria for keeping their borders open, what we call humanitarian border management. You keep the people as long as they need to be there, temperate protective status. So first of all, it's the lack of a policy. And I think one has to continue to work toward that objective that's a long term. Secondly, I think there's a degree of refugee amnesia in Europe to use Javier Solano's phrase. I remember 61 years ago, 200,000 Hungarians fled to open arms in Austria and former Yugoslavia. But that was the past. Our organization was founded in 1951 to take Europeans ravaged by the Second World War to safe shores and new lives. So there's a little bit of that where we have to come back and say, how do we then share responsibility? And thirdly, I think there's a real psychological issue. I mentioned this to some of the press this morning. There's a psychological adjustment. If you have peopled the world for three centuries and now for three decades, you're no longer a continent of origin. You've become a continent of destination. That's the psychological adjustment that requires political courage and political leadership. But my estimation is that the driving forces of migration are such that migration is going to remain a mega trend of our century. The demographic divide, median age in Niger, 14, median age in Germany, 47. 10 armed conflicts and humanitarian emergencies from the Western Bulge of Africa to the Himalayas with no resolution in the short to medium term in sight. And then in the middle of this perfect storm, you have growing anti-migrant sentiment. That makes it very difficult. Elections are now one or lost on the basis of migration policies. Even coalition formation is made more complex by this. And so we have to get it there. We have to find a way to change the narrative, to come back to historically accurate narrative, and to begin to manage the issue and the challenge of diversity. Because our countries are all becoming much more multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multicultural, multilingual. And the irony of all this is that a lot of countries that are building walls are trying to protect societies that no longer exist. Absolutely, well said. Prime Minister, we keep hearing, we keep talking about the fact that there is no common strategy in Europe, that there's a lot of resistance, particularly from Eastern European countries. How do you break that? How do you get over it? How do you get to a common policy? And how do you change the narrative? Well, I know this is not an easy answer. First of all, the lack of a common policy is really a serious problem. Just to mention one fact that is interesting is that as far as I know, the first meeting of the European Council dealing with migration was taken, was held in 2015 in April. It was a request of my predecessor after a terrible shipwreck that took place. But what is incredible, I was foreign minister at the time, is that after this European Council meeting came out for the first time a European agenda on migration. We are in June 2015. And even now, this issue that as you were correctly saying is fundamental in deciding frequently the result in European elections in member states is not, it has become central in our debates, but it is not central in our budgets with only one exception that was the, and from my point of view, very brilliant operation done in the relation with Turkey. A few years ago, Europe put in this bet, it was a bet, a lot of money. So what can we do? I think... The Turkish, I don't mean to interrupt you, but the Turkish deal was a particular deal because of so much pressure. So it wasn't, there was no strategy there. It was very tactical. It was tactical and it was German. At the same time, I have to say that in completely different situation, the Libyan deal, if we want to call it, is tactical and Italian. Then we have the EU Commission supporting and member states in the case of Turkey putting a lot of money on the table. But I'm telling this because I think exactly today it is exactly one year from an agreement I signed with the Prime Minister of Libya, President Seraj, who obviously has not the same control of Libya that President Erdogan has of Turkey. So perhaps it's a little bit more fragile, this kind of bilateral agreement. But in any case, around this bilateral agreement we built everything. If Bill Swing is working in Libyan camps, if H.E.R. is trying to have better conditions of human rights in the horrible situation we have in Libya is because we had this bilateral agreement that allowed us to treat Libya as a state even if they have obviously problem. But what can we do was your question and I will close in one second. One, we have the long term as the Vice President was saying and we are committed in the long term. The Vice President was in Taormina for the G7 in Hamburg for the G20. Africa was at the center of our international global debate this year. But we need more cooperation and investment than only aid and the quality of this cooperation is key. I am proud of the fact, perhaps surprising for many of you that Italy in 2016 was the third global investor in Africa. The third and the first Western, not only European, but Western investor in Africa. This means that the first was China and the second were the Emirates. So we need to invest more in Africa and to have a form of investment that leaves know-how and cooperation and not only Europe. What can Europe do? I think countries that have the same ideas, the same position should move on migration on the road. And this is something that southern countries, but also with Germany and Sweden are trying to do with the commission. And secondly, we should repeat to our friends and colleagues having an idea as Alexis was saying, Alacard of Europe, that Europe Alacard is not available. We will have a debate on the Europe budget, EU budget in a few months. And it will be a very difficult debate because we are lacking a member. And it was a member giving maybe 13% of the budget, UK. And so it will be a difficult task for us, especially the stronger contributors to Europe to fill this gap. Will we fill this gap without a real solidarity and cooperation from all the countries on common issues? And if tomorrow we have a crisis in Ukraine and if tomorrow we have a crisis in other parts of Europe, what will we do? So some countries should have a common policy together not in 28 but 10 countries, 15 countries. We have different level of commitment. It is already so and we should do so. But everyone has some minimum obligation of solidarity to respect. What about a coalition of the willing within the EU? What do you think about that? Coalition of the willing to do what? To come up with new ideas, to come up with a strategy, to go it alone, as long as you have Germany in so that they can pay. Okay, I think that I am agreeing with Paolo that the problem is huge. Maybe it is the problem of the future of Europe. So we need to find permanent strategies. And I think that there are two ways to face difficulties and problems. The first way is to wait, to keep, to wait and to cover the problem under the carpet. The other way is to try to find solutions sometimes with risk and difficulties but to take initiatives with dynamism in order to solve problems. So this is my strategy for my countries difficulties. I took the power in a very difficult time for Greece. I said before the financial crisis, the refugee crisis in a very destabilized area, fragile area all around with an aggressive neighbor and sometimes unpredictable with an aggressive military activity in the Diyan with dogfights and over flights over our islands and so on with violations of the international law with open difficulties in open issues as the Cyprus issue. And with all around my country, especially in the south in Libya, in Middle East, in Syria, open issues and difficulties. So what was my approaching in these problems that Greece has to be part of the solution and not part of the problems? This was not every time easy internally. I had a very, very difficult reaction from the opposition. I was the prime minister that I went three times and less of eight months in Turkey to discuss with Erdogan in a very difficult conditions. And I tried, Paolo remind me the first meeting for the migrations in 2015 that Mateo tried to convince our partners that we have something to do with Libya and I try to alarm that it's not only Libya that we have to cooperate with Erdogan because the flows will come also from Turkey. And this happened just after that meeting with this very difficult summer of 2015. I think that we're obliged to take difficult decisions, difficult decisions and we have to admit that Europe and the so-called West world made mistakes in the past. In the war in Iraq, Libya with the situation in Syria with the difficulties to show a decisive stance in order to solve the Middle East problem. Of course with the situation in Balkans and so on. So what we have to do now, I think that it is to take brave decisions for the future. I believe that we have to at least to decide in the European Union that the European Union is not a lacquer. So if somebody's believe that the European Union is only for benefits they have to understand that it is not. We have rules. When I was in the difficulties of the financial crisis Mr. Soeble told to everybody that rules are rules. That Pactasun Cervanta. So this is something that also my friend, very close friend Victor Urban has to understand. Rules are rules. So the problem is not a problem of Greece and Italy and Spain and I don't know from concrete countries. This is a European problem. So we need absolutely agreeing with you. We need a common European migration and asylum policy and we need to implement the agreements. The EU-Turkey agreement, it is a very difficult one. And it is a very difficult one if you want to implement the agreement with and the same time to respect the international law, the Geneva agreement and so on. So we are trying to examine it one by one all the asylum applications. Well it's also an agreement that can, it's also an agreement where Turkey can change its mind. Of course. At any point. Of course. So at the same time we have to take a decision what we're gonna do with this aggressive behavior of Turkey. And for somebodies it's very easy to be also aggressive if they are living in Luxembourg or in Netherlands because their neighbors are Belgium and Luxembourg and not Turkey. But it's not so easy for us. But one thing I'm going to add. The EU-Turkey agreement, it is difficult but it is a necessary agreement. Because first of all, not we decrease the flows. We decrease the debts in Aegean. This tragedy that we show every day in Aegean with people that left their life on the waters under the manipulation of the smugglers. So we have to hit the smugglers networks and at the same time we have to promote a common migration policy and this means legal flows. Not to stop the flows, not fences as happened in our northern borders. Because this is a policy that for my point of view is a policy that is not looking to the future. Well, more urgent right now are the conditions in detention camps in Libya. Médecins Sans Frontières has accused the EU of feeding a criminal system of abuse. There are deals that have been made with militias in Libya. Many of you may have seen the CNN report about slave markets. Do you all feel that values of human rights are being compromised in order for Europe to have what we're calling the tactical urgent immediate solutions? Absolutely not. I think that values of human rights are totally and continuously violated in these countries in Libya, but also in the desert route since several years. Then, in the last months, the fact that also through our bilateral agreement with the Libyan authorities, we are bringing also light to this situation. You can't imagine that this situation was not there before. So what we are doing is exactly to fight this situation and to reduce the number of deaths in Atsi and the reduction of number of deaths at Atsi as Alexis was saying about the so-called eastern Mediterranean route is there in 2017 in the central Mediterranean route and data is available in OIM, but more than this- Has been a reduction number of deaths. A huge reduction of numbers of deaths, but more relevant than this, gradually, and it is not easy, the Libyan authorities are allowing, well, they call it an office, they don't call it an international refugee camp, but a place where there are refugees that are returned in other countries. The number of returns from OIM in Libya, skyrocketed in 2017 in comparison with 2016. So this is the issue, the transition from a criminal system to a legal system. Do we discover the criminal system now? If we discover the criminals, I think, frankly speaking, that what we saw especially if there was a video about slavery was a tremendous shock for African public opinion and African governments. I'd like to hear from you as well. I remember in the Abidjan meeting, EU Africa, it was a tremendous shock, but this is the reality and one of the consequences of this shock, paradoxically, was that in some countries, without any publicity, but working seriously, the potential of voluntary and assisted repatriation augmented very, very strongly because also the African government seeing this stuff, and I totally respect the fact that several African governments doesn't want repatriation because it is unpopular and because many of the revenues in some countries are coming from refugees. And it was a problem for the Italians one century ago and then for other Europeans in the past. So we have to, the way to fight this criminal violation of human rights is to change the model. We need a transition from the criminal model to a regular one and this should be in cooperation with African countries, European countries, OIM, HER. This is the only way from my point of view. The alternative is we do nothing and we tell everyone, okay, you can come and we help you to cross the Mediterranean. We have to know that we have more deaths at sea and also we have to know that this is frequently said around Europe, thinking that you cross the Mediterranean to reach Sicily, not to reach, I would not mention other countries because it would be unfair. So we have the problem and the only way to manage this violation of human rights is to defeat the criminals and transform the irregular flows in legal and regulated flows. It will take time, but it is possible. I'd like to hear your reaction, Vice President. Yes, first I certainly agree that I was a great shock to see actual slave dealing in this century. I mean, it was just an incredible, just absolutely horrifying to see that. But I think also what we're seeing is a degeneration of criminal activity where you find that obviously state capacity out there is unable to maintain human rights, international human rights norms or any such thing. I think that one of the crucial things is that we must encourage repatriation. The Nigerian government, for example, has worked out an arrangement with the Libyan government and we're repatriating everyone who is out there in the camps. It's a slow process because sometimes, there are those who even want to claim nationality because they see a way out of the camps and there is a great deal of willingness on the part of those who are in the camps to go back. A great deal of willingness because it's entirely voluntary and there is that willingness. So I think that there might be some room there to encourage repatriation because really the pressure, especially where there is no state capacity or there's inadequate state capacity to maintain law and order and maintain international human rights norms, the pressure really is a bit too much for the Libyan authorities. So what you find is that the criminal gangs and all of these asymmetric type organizations, what is going on is that they dominate as it were, the space and we may not be able to do much without relieving the Libyan authorities of a lot of the legal migrants that are in their custody or in their country. I understand that one of the ideas that's now being discussed in Europe is for requests for protection to be reviewed in centers in Niger and Chad so that the refugees and the migrants would then submit their asylum applications there. What do you make of this idea? Do you think that's a good idea? Let me come back to another point. First, as the Prime Minister said, let me say it's rare in my long life to have one story like the CNN story on the slave trade to bring everybody together around the same position. It shocked everybody saying we have to do something. The issue here is saving life. Suddenly the AU, the EU, IOM, UNHCR, President Suriz's government, everybody said this is terrible, we have to do something about it. And I think now that the focus in Europe since April 2015 has always been on saving life. This is why when I signed the agreement with Mrs. Mogherini, the high representative, we put in place waystations along the migratory paths not to stop the migrants and we had real problems at the beginning with the African Union because they thought we were trying to, we know we're not trying to stop them, we're trying to save life. We do three things. First of all, we warn them about the risk of smugglers. Do not take that risk. Secondly, those who might have a claim to refugee status, we turn over to our traditional partner, UNHCR, and the other group, weary from the journey or maybe thinking they made a mistake starting out, we give them an opportunity to go home with money, with dignity, to reintegrate into their society. We've taken 8,000 back in 2017 from Agadez and centers like that in a modified form are being created from Senegal to Cameroon not to stop them but to try to save life and talk some sense to them about the smugglers. Now, the program that we, the program that we're doing with the European Union has helped us now. We did 13,000 in 2017 and as of November 28 when you had the Abidjan Summit, the EU and the AU said accelerate this. We did another 8,000 before the end of the year and we're now going to do 10,000 more from the detention centers between now and the end of February. So we have the capacity to do that. The problem is once you've emptied the detention centers, if we don't break the smugglers model, they'll simply refill them. But so this is our problem. So save life, break the smugglers business model, it's all about money. And thirdly, very important, keep that AU-EU partnership together now because I think that's really the key to a lot of what we're gonna be able to do in the future. Right now it's working very well. So we can do a lot more. The other one, the idea, look, I've been to the detention centers, I've been to Libya twice in March and then again in August and I'll go back in a couple of weeks and I always visit the detention centers. And I can tell you, the overwhelming majority are young males, economic migrants, the most of them are not Eritreans or others who might qualify for refugee status. But those who do have a claim, the idea of centers in Niger or Chad is a good idea and we will support UNHCR in doing that with the movements or whatever else is required. So a lot of political will in parts of Europe, a lot of resistance in other parts of Europe, still very elusive, a common European strategy. We've got two minutes left. Could each of you, just with a yes or no, tell me whether five years from now we are still going to be sitting here and having this exact same discussion? Vice President. Would you give us a chance to say I hope not? No, yes or no? I really suspect yes. But hope not is a good thing. No, no, no, no. Well, I think we'll have the, for sure the same discussion on the same issue, but I hope that with a different situation because the long-term problem will still be there. We are not solving this problem in three years, but the emergency of the criminal networks need to be solved and can be addressed seriously. So it's a half yes? Yes. Prime Minister. So the answer is I'm afraid, yes. But the issue is if after five years this problem will be deteriorated or it will be a problem that we're trying to find solutions. And this has to do with the decisions in the European Union, in our countries. And it depends on them in the actions and if the Western world will be mobilized in order to find solutions in these problems. So as the inequalities will be there as millions of people will live under prune and underwars all around the world, the problem will be there. And we will try to cover ourselves behind our finger. So it is necessary to try to be, to mobilize to find solutions for the problem. Sir, thank you. I'm not an optist, but like Desmond Tutu, I'm a prisoner of hope and my hope is based on something very solid, which is the negotiation of a global compact on migration this year to be signed in Marrakesh. If we get that and a robust follow-up and review mechanism, not where we assign scores, but there's a self-assessment to say that we all now take shared responsibility for people on the move. It's not about migration, about human mobility. We can establish the rules of the road for the free movement of capital goods and services, but the people who make that happen, there are no rules. And I think that the global compact will come closer to a sense of shared responsibility. So I'm optimistic that five years from now, we won't have this problem. It's good to end on an optimistic note. Thank you so much to the panel.