It's the breakfast in Plus TV Africa time for us to take you through the pages of a national dailies and we call it off the press. And as always we have Ezeko and Yaetouk who joins the conversation. The essence is he takes us through analyzing some of the top stories on the papers this morning. It's good to have you join us. Ezeko and Yaetouk, good morning. Always a pleasure to be with you on Plus TV Africa. Thank you. Let's start off with a daily independent newspaper and looking at the daily independent, of course the focus would always be on top stories and the banner caption is what we start off with always. Federal government to increase borrowing to fund 3 trillion Naira 18 month subsidy bill. That's what the daily independent says, to ask NAS for amendment to fiscal framework 2022 budget. Amend PIA to accommodate 18 month subsidy from 6 months. That's a right underneath the board caption, I mean that's a lot. And you also have 2022, BC Kuala Wale Wins, AKT PDP, Guba primaries and you have 183,000 APC members to elect a Guba candidate today. Court declares deductions from federal accounts for police trust fund unconstitutional. Federal government to refund river state. And Nigeria records 26 Lasser fever deaths, 115 cases this year. Sean will lose flags of road projects to link, or Jota link breach. You also have APC not zoned presidential ticket. Others says Boonee 2023 elections will push away foreign portfolios investors and constitution review reps creation of 111 additional NAS seats for women. Well, it comes at a time when we're talking about the cost of running governance, I mean the cost. The fact that the national, we're spending so much with our legislatures and we're thinking about 11 more additional NAS seats. Well, that's interesting. Let's move straight to the leadership newspaper with these headlines. The leading headline there, Phil subsidy, of course, taking the attention yet again, it's probably been about three days since the papers have been paying attention to this. Heat turns on NNPC as governor's NLC, a query consumption figures. And if you remember, sometime last week, the Senate president, Ahmed Lamon, who went to see President Buhari and was the first to announce that the president was not in support of removal of fuel subsidy, was questioning the daily consumption of petrol in Nigeria. It's hovering between 70 to 72 million trillion liters a day. Sometimes it's gone as high as 100 million liters a day. So this is an interesting headline. Fuel subsidy, heat turns on NNPC as governor's NLC query consumption figures. The following writers to that headline. Others want to 411 Naira pump price, say three trillion Naira subsidy, not sensible. Another writer to that headline. Federal government has wasted $10 billion on refinery's rehabilitation labor. It's worrying times as far as that sector is concerned. Another headline on the front page of the leadership newspaper, court stops FG seductions from Federation account to fund its own agencies. We have a law of worry meets PMB over NNDC's board for ports 2023 stop endorsing as parents ACF warns members 2023 stop endorsing as parents ACF warns members. Ghandu J. Shekharov feud, Boone leads APC reconciliation team. Ghandu J. Shekharov feud, APC leads Boone leads APC reconciliation team. That story talking about the former and present governments of Kamu state as far as the leadership tussle for the APC in that state is concerned. At the top of the front page of the leadership newspaper, FG reverses EFCC NFI use retention of 10% of recovered loot. FG reverses EFCC NFI use retention of 10% of recovered loot. NNDC budgets $6.7 billion for rebuilding of North East. Those are stories coming on the front page of the leadership this morning. All right, away from the leadership, we look at the nation newspaper this morning. The banner caption reads government to fund petrol subsidy with 3 trillion error in one year and the federal executive council or case 2.55 trillion error supplementary budget. APC will borrow to meet obligation. Reaver's fault ex-commissioners defends on dumped plane and Sun Walu will deliver Oqbebi or Jota Bridge next year. You also have the 2023 Sarakee or Khoracha 6 presidential ticket. Faiwashi's man, Kola Wale is APC PDP candidate and APC adopts direct primaries to pick APC candidate. This is some of the headlines you find on the nation newspaper. It was a back to back action as far as the APC PDP Gooba prime minister took account of it to talk about it. Let's go over to the punch newspaper this morning and of course these headlines on the front page of the punch newspaper. Governors NLC doubt fuel consumption. NNPC demands a 3 trillion error for subsidy. With the following writers to that story or to that headline rather, there is a lot of fraud in consumption and distribution figures, Faiyemi, reps race, 28 member panels to probe daily fuel consumption refineries and the last writer to that headline, Nigeria risks bankruptcy as fuel subsidy continues, experts warn FG, really, really a warring. Also on the front page of the punch newspaper, PDP primaries 150 political thugs arrest, raises tension, fireshakes candidate clenches, governorship, ticket. WIKE LIDE claimed abandoned aircraft stolen in 2015, WIKE LIDE claimed abandoned aircraft stolen in 2015. This is coming from the current transportation minister, former governor of River State. It's now a back and forth between the current governor and former governor of allegedly abandoned plane in Germany. Mr. Assault or sexual assault, Baba Ijesha drops no case submission, opens defence February 17. Accordia Plans World Conference on Presidential Bid seeks Senators' prayers. Accordia Plans, we should say, World Press Conference on Presidential Bid seeks Senators' prayers. That story can be found on page 13 of the punch newspaper. Overwhelming majority of Igbo don't believe in secession.  Well, let's have Ezekiel Yai to share his thoughts on the stories this morning. Thank you for joining us. We do appreciate your time. Thank you for having me, as always, I'm grateful. So I was set off with this one and the Daily Independent Newspaper, Constitution Review Rep 6 creation of 111 additional seats for women. And you also have the fact that recommends six more in state assembly across the entire Federation and rejects state pleas, despite insecurity challenges. I see some good in some of the things that they are trying to do. For instance, the presentation of big men in the National Assembly is not okay. For more reasons than one, on the first instance, probably on a personal side, I've found women to be more trustworthy and more stable and more patriotic a lot of times and the process of lawmaking needs people who are like level headed and think more of the larger good and women from my personal perspective seem to have a higher affinity to achieving such ends than the men. So when you go to the national and their commitment value is usually on the very high side and they are usually very, very good nationalists. That's what I've come to know about women. And I think it's actually right because if you look at the countries around the world where they are led by women in this is show that they are much better governed than those led by men. I mean, that's that's a proven statistics. I could name those countries, you know, that is on one hand. So when it comes to Nigeria, the sort of politics we play the money game completely disenfranchises the women. So looking for an ingenious way to get the women to be on the ballot and to not just to be on the ballot because they are now to be on the ballot, but to win on the ballot. I think it's ingenious and between you and I, and one talks again, maybe a little side talk about, you know, the cost is so much, why we want to increase the cost. I say, look, if you have a hundred Naira and you have 10 people, they each go over with 20 Naira. No, no, 10 Naira, okay? If you increase the people to 20 and bring the take home to 10, you've had to take home to five. You still have the hundred Naira you're paying, but now you have 20 people instead of 10 people sharing that same hundred Naira. I believe that the take home of the National Assembly members needs to be honestly looked into to the end that even if we increase the numbers to accommodate the women, we don't need to pay more. All we need to do is to say, guys, you've got to take less and let's have the women in it. And any National Assembly member that will oppose that is somewhere that we need to look into very well. So on that score, I believe that a good point is being made, the women should be given a little consideration and so that they come in on board where there are too many men in that National Assembly, we need a lot more women. So to that extent, I agree with him or agree with, yes, I agree with the National Assembly. In the area of state police that they are rejecting, I don't agree with them. Every policing is local, there's something I put up called the National Eye. You realize that at the end of the day, the security of Nigeria is not in the hands of the police or in the military, it's in the hands of the people and the sooner we get into that mode, that mentality, the earlier it would be for us to achieve national security because we are thinking too much of security in the wrong direction. We talk in terms of state policing and we go down to municipal policing or local government. In fact, we need to get down to the world level and then we change the mentality from the first angle to the involvement of the people, to the synergy between the people, bringing in even the traditional rulers and even every village head, giving them a responsibility. The moment the people own the security apparatus, just relying on the security agencies as instruments that the network and lairs with, that will be the beginning of security in Nigeria. I have such a template that is very, very, very unconventional but is the way forward. So to that extent, we need not just state policing, we need municipal or local government and world policing in a completely different mindset from what we are having today. Thank you very much. Interesting. I would love to look at your template, Mr. Ezekiel and I took. Let's stay with the independent, the daily independent newspaper. And of course, last night, the eyes of some Nigerians who were interested in the political happenings were locked on Adoakiti. Of course, with Ta Gavna Iman Udom, superintending over that Akiti PDP guba primary. It was a lot of huff and puff from last week with the leading contenders, you know, apart from one of them going on the protest, saying that the primary was being hijacked by a former governor of Akiti State, Ayodele Faeshe. Well, Faeshe himself, being a delegate and a member of the PDP was in the building at the primary center yesterday. And his anointed candidate, B.C. Kolawale, emerged as the winner of that Akiti PDP guba. Senator Biodore Lujimi herself, one of the leading contenders, had submitted a letter withdrawing from that re-citing the fact that she was being disenfranchised. But Shago Oni was still there. He was beaten by a wide margin, a wide gap by B.C. Of course, Kolawale, B.C. was a preferred candidate of Ayodele Faeshe. What do you say to this? What is your thought on the involvement and the emergence of Kolawaleas, the flag bearer of the PDP? The very first thing is that I have a personal, do I say I have a personal issue or he has a personal issue with me? Talking about my brother Faeshe, because in 2007 I contested and he told me that the only reason I lost was because I refused to involve him and make him my campaign manager. That was just on the lighter side. We're just talking about our friends. But let me tell you the simple truth. Like him or hate him, you cannot dismiss Mr. Faeshe with the wave of the hand you can't. And he has established himself without any aorta of doubt that he has good grasp, grip and control over the politics of equity. It's not surprising that the results went that way because long before then, I think it was on your station or one of the stations where he just made it very clear. Look, this is a game of numbers and I've got the numbers. He said it very well. He said he's got about 60, 70% of the numbers and he told you how he had it. So I think that what has played out in equity politics is something that was just expected. And I think the love of Faeshe is the beginning of election success. I don't know to what extent he's going to translate that to go beyond the party into the state for general elections. But I think that if places game well, it seems to be somewhere that is pretty loved, but it's for equity people to decide exactly what they want. The issue is now that we are going through with the primaries. I want the smaller parties to bring up extremely credible candidates so that the conversation, like we are changing in Aquabomb, it moves from hashtag, you know, party to hashtag person, not party. So we now start to interrogate because today nobody's talking about APC at the center. They're talking Bwari, Bwari, Bwari and that's the fact. In Aquabomb, nobody's talking about PDP. They're talking about Gov Noudom, Gov Noudom, Gov Noudom. So the mentality comes to the fact that it's about the person and not the party. So I'm looking for an extremely credible candidate to pick a ticket on one of the parties and then run that hashtag, person, not party and see if equity people would rather go for party or for a person that will liberate them. I really look forward to that conversation. You know, but the issue, you know, because of course there was a video circulating on social media showing, you know, members of the PDP going at each other with blows, even the DSS officials at the venue had to try to separate them and they also got involved in the FISCOFs.  They're saying that the list of delegates was doctored. Beode Olujimi and her complaint said that she could not even muster her own delegates from her own area. The things were taken out of her hands.  Of course he'd be expected to write the results. But it's in color, full color. Delegates went to him to show him how they voted. They showed him the ballot paper. You know, so what do you say to this? As far as internal democracy is concerned, the conversation around consensus, candidates share direct permits or indirect. And we're looking at 2023, one credible candidates to emerge and everyone to have a chance. I'll tell you this and I want Nigerians to listen and listen good. I was the pioneer national chairman of Young Democratic Party. What is going on is not a coincidence or an accident. It's a well orchestrated, you know, mechanism that allows people in power to control power and retain power. That's what it is. It has nothing to do with free, fair, credible, transparent processes, whether it is direct or indirect or consensus. It's about the power block holding onto power. Why do I say this? Look at the constitution of each of the parties and see whether they are ambiguities in the processes of selecting. Which party tells you who makes the delegates list? There are two.  And then those that you bring up through election at the lower levels, the congresses and things like that. And those lists are so subjective. It's a power game. You know, I was the world and local government congress committee chairman of the PDP to one of the states. And that is where you get the structure of the party handed over to certain people. And you discover that the people in power don't do direct primaries the way people think. People standing on the line, being counted, that transparency, accountability, it's not there. It doesn't exist until the day, which is what I started as a national chairman of YDP, until the day where every party member is mandated to register electronically. You say how about the villages? Are they not using ATM cards and POS in the villages? Forget that. They have no problem with electronics. They just know that that transparent process cannot be because the day it is, the power is removed from the power bloc and given to the people and they won't stand that. We're looking for a party. I'm in the ADC and yesterday at the BOT level, we actually sat down and talked to ourselves, why can't we be different? Why can't we do something that energizes Nigerians to know they have a critical alternative? And from what we came out at the BOT level yesterday, I think Nigerians should look forward to something exciting from the African Democratic Congress, which is the ADC. Okay, so Ezekiah, I took. Let's move away from that now and look at the nation newspaper where government is to fund petrol subsidy with three trillion dollars in one year. That's what you find. And the fact that the Federal Executive Council, that's the fact, okay, is 2.55 trillion narrow supplementary budgets. President says it will borrow to fund the obligation. What are your thoughts on this one? My thoughts on this one are so complicated that I pray God gives me the capacity to unpack what's on my mind because this issue of subsidy, I want to tell Nigerians that we should just let me come with that word that we don't like to hear of, that we just pray that God takes us through this administration. Number one, number two, that we make up our minds that this APC-PDP never again. Number three, that a credible third force emerges that works on transparency, accountability, and nationalism. The reason is this. When you sit down and interrogate this issue of subsidy, it's one of those, one of those very, very well-ductored, manipulated, and controlled constructs, okay? It's very well-ductored, very well-manipulated, very well-controlled. This confusion is not, is not, is not happening by accident or coincidence. I will tell you something. If you have a thousand blocks and you stack them in modes of 50, you understand me, 50, 50, 50, 50, you understand me? And they are well stacked. Within three minutes, you can count a thousand blocks carefully. But if you have just 100 blocks, and you just scatter them all over the floor, when you say, they say, no, you've counted this one. No, you have not counted this one before. Yes, you've counted 100 blocks. We, one hour, you have not finished counting 100 blocks for everybody to agree that this is 100 blocks. Why is it so difficult for us to know the volume of consumption of PMS or petrol in this country? What is rocket science in it? Why is it so difficult to do that? Number two, what is really the landed costs of petrol? What are the plus plus that takes it to, you know, the cost of petrol doubles when even in the international market, the price has not doubled. So the question is, you can say, oh, the international benchmark, you know, the price of crude has gone up. The percentage difference just has no relevance with the cost of petrol in Nigeria. Why is that so? Number three, what is the rocket science in fixing refineries? I know, and I can tell you without batting an eyelid, that if I want to construct a certain type of building, within an hour, I can tell you the specialists in that area, not just because I'm an architect, and in every area we have professionals, but because the social, the internet makes certain information available to you in your bedroom. So you look at one, two, three best practices. You call them, even if it means paying them, to come and profile what you've got and profile solution. So within one month, within two months, within six months, you can know the real situation and the real solution. So the next question is taking an informed decision. But this government has been on the seat for over six years trying to unravel how to fix the refineries. We've all agreed that refining a product in-house at home is a solution. We've all agreed. Now, if before President Buhari came in, he said that subsidy was fraught to the best of my knowledge. And he comes in, what expected that for such a fraud of such gargantuan financial implication, $3 trillion in one year, $3 trillion in one year, is not something, as a president, is your first priority, number one priority. Because you fix that, it will have implication on security. So you cannot, in six years, know what it would take you to fix the refineries. Doesn't make sense. OK. All right. You see, I'll end on this note, because there's so much on it. We can still go back on it. I'll tell you this. These people need, in my opinion, this money to fund the election. There's nothing as sweet in fraud as big volume of money coming in under shrouded circumstances. OK. Interesting. Interesting. Let's see how that plays out. We will definitely have some more time to talk about this. Let's move steel. Stay with the nation newspaper. Mr. Etukendem, let's look at what's happening. As far as the 2023 presidential race is concerned. And if you look at the top right corner of the front page of the nation newspaper, we have a new name or some new names joining the presidential fray, even though the supporters of Bola Metin were claiming that he opened the floodgates. I see that's an achievement. But 2023, Sarki Okora-Char to seek presidential ticket. We expect what Okora-Char is calling a world press conference to be held in the matter of days. Your thoughts on this? Two things. I want us to, you see, I have, how do I put this? I'm a friend of the mainstream media. But I'm starting to have a very major problem, a very major problem with the mainstream media. That giving us that animation that Nigeria has two choices. Everything you want to do is PDP, APC, PDP, APC, PDP, APC. It's a construct that is not in our best interest as a people. I'll give you a very simple illustration. There is a man called Professor Kings Limogalu. He declared for presidency long time ago. There's another man called Ogon Bola-Admed Tinugu. And he's just declared the media is falling head over heels over him. But I want to ask a question. Just assume that these two people are appearing before a corporate board on choosing a CEO for a corporate institution called Nigeria. Please tell me who amongst the two, the criteria is talking in terms of character, talking in terms of competence, talking in terms of capability, talking in terms of all these things put together. Not to talk in terms of the sentiment factor. I want to put that aside. Are you honestly telling me that Professor Kings Limogalu will look at like a Boy Scout in terms of competence to run a country? You see, there is politics, there is governance. And I expect the mainstream media to run a narrative on politics and governance and let Nigerians start to change the conversation and bring in competence. In defense of the media, I didn't see that coming. But in defense of the media, I mean, we don't take sides. I'm sure you know. We just give people the news. No, no, no, no, no. We could say that we're not trying to ship any narrative as far as any of the candidates is concerned. We're just giving people the news. And who is the newsmaker? No, I'll tell you this. Who is the newsmaker between Mogalu and Tinibu? You tell me, sir. Who will turn the biggest heads? I'll tell you. Your biggest responsibility, which is captured in the Constitution, is to be the fourth estate of the realm. That's your biggest responsibility, which is captured in. You are actually captured in the Constitution. So what do you do? Well, we can't be telling the public who to vote for. No, I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming, brother. This one, Nami and you, brother. You know what you do? What you owe this country in the Constitution is narratives on good governance. So what you do is not who is more popular. It's like the narrative here is on good governance. Nigerians, who will be a better CEO? They're not taking sides. But you are driving a narrative, which is not on who has more capacity. Capacity does not help Nigeria. Competence helps Nigeria. So the media narrative should be, who is more competent? And they sit on that line of competence. And they drive so that the conversation becomes competence, competence, capacity, character, competence, capacity, character. My brother, if the media runs that narrative within a few months, many people who want to contest, we go back with all the money they put together. Today, even if Dango Teh becomes the president of Nigeria, look at Donald Trump.  What is between your ears becomes what is needed for the office. Nigeria does not need capacity. In terms of financial, you know, political sagacity, they need that character, that competence, the CEO. Look at, we need a coach. When you are going to take a coach, you are not looking at how rich he is in terms of financial capacity. You are looking at his technical capacity, technical ability, fit for purpose. Can the media start to drive fit for purpose narrative? That's your job. That's actually your constitutional asylum. We have to move on. We have to move on. But can you blame the media for simply reporting what's happening? I've asked you, sir. Sorry, sir. If I were to ask you, what news has Mogalu made in the past one or two weeks? Can you tell me? Tinibu went up north visiting some political godfathers and all that.  You have him meeting a lot of groups, holding events in Lagos, in Abuja, and other parts of the country. And then the APC is the ruling party right now. And the intrigues in the APC with his political protege, Mio Sibaj also making a run for the presidency, and putting him on sort of a collision course. You don't know what's going on between both men. That's a news item, this is a story. And people are making statements about it. Nobody's talking about Mogalu for now. He hasn't made any news. And I have the responsibility to report. I agree. That is because our perspective is in the wrong narrative. You want a coach for the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and you're telling me about his family, he's going there, he's done this. The narrative is on competence, character, capacity, capability. We will be running narratives on Mogalu's capacity. Whether he speaks or he does not speak, we are looking interrogating him. My brother, let me say this. The day that said Tinubu becomes a president, if he pleases God and his soul. So that day, visiting Karnu, talking about this, become irrelevant. And we have become the poverty capital of the world. The decisions that are being taken are emasculating the people. We are dying. We should be asking us, who is that surgeon? We should even be going around and bringing out the different surgeons. Who is that coach? We should be going around bringing out the best coach. The richest coach is not necessarily the best coach for a country. Now Nigeria has become the poverty capital of the world. We are having problems, mega problems. So our narrative cannot be, oh, the man is making news. That cannot be a narrative, brother. You know that. It cannot be the man is making news. We want to know this man that is coming, even the media, also has the duty of interrogation of, oh boy, this man, when they come, oh, the man get plenty money. Do we need this man? Is he the person for us? Will he make it us better? That should be the media narrative. Why I say this is because I am a product of the media to a great extent. I've enjoyed the goodwill of the media. I am known today, nationally, internationally, because of how favorably disposed the media is to me. So I'm a friend of the media, but the time has come when we've got to call ourselves to order and say we owe this nation to drive a narrative of good governance and not of capacity and comfort. I'm sure you know who I'm coming from. Thank you so much for being part of the conversation. We really do appreciate your time and it's always inspiring, I mean, listening to you. We look forward to more of this time. Thank you, God bless you all. And that's the size of it for the press. We will return with a major conversation, looking at the deductions from the Federation account before the speech to respond. And before that, let's tell you what happened today in history.


Okay, we're back here live in New York City for Strata Hadoop World 2012. This is theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events. To the events, they extract a signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE.com. Join us, my co-host. I'm Dave Vellante of Wikibon.org, and we're here with Oran Falcovitz, who's the co-founder and CEO of Squirrel, a new company that's really been built around the Accumulo project. We first found out about Squirrel earlier this year. Oran came on theCUBE. We Skyped Oran in. So welcome back to theCUBE, I guess. We're good to be here live. And we were talking at the time about the need for security and big data. You guys came out of the NSA, and there's a lot of government use cases and you're commercializing now and working very closely with the Apache community. So give us an update on where you're at. You just got the funding, you moved to Boston. You moved to Cambridge. Which is great, you know? We'd love to have more folks on the East Coast and big data. So again, welcome and just take us through where you guys are at. Yeah, great. Well, thanks for having me.  It's been really exciting for us. And what's been more exciting is some of the enthusiasm for Accumulo and for some of the key things that we think we're bringing to the Hadoop ecosystem. Primarily security and scalability and more user interactivity with data. So it's been pretty good. I mean, particularly here at Hadoop World, we've noticed real focus on ecosystem building and it's really exciting to work with many folks. And also some great talks about how you go to the next stage from bringing your data into a data warehouse to creating interactive analytics at scale. Yeah, so when we were talking at the Wikibon offices, when you were Skyping in, we were on theCUBE there remotely, we went into some detail around, you know, what you guys are doing around cell level security. We sort of defined what it is. So you guys can check that out, that video out, on siliconangle.tv. Also check out youtube.com slash siliconangle. All our videos are up there. But, and John, I know you had a deep dive with David Floyer out in the West Coast with some of the squirrel guys. So, you know, we've been talking about this or internally and it really came to our attention at Oracle OpenWorld. When Larry Ellison said, we now have the world's first multi-tenant database. And of course, DB2's been multi-tenant for a while, but DB2, I guess, doesn't count. But it seems like with what the Accumulo project has done, you've got a multi-tenant database for the cloud that's open source. That's where it is. That scales, so talk about that a little bit. Yeah, it should be really exciting. You know, the security is sometimes misconstrued to be a locking away and we talk about it in terms of unlocking the power and so there's some really exciting use cases where you can use these visibility fields for licensing and for bringing tens, if not hundreds of thousands of users together in one system to see very disparate data sets that they may not want to bump up against. So, we think that's pretty exciting. We think it's exciting for enterprises to be able to consolidate their data internally to see more and look across that. We also think it's exciting for enterprises to create infomediaries and their verticals and then even beyond that, groups like InfoChimps and others who are creating data applications where they house data and they source data for data science or for other applications that should be really good use. Why don't you actually, before we get into it, why don't you talk a little bit about the Acumulo project for those who aren't familiar with it because many aren't, but set that up as well. Sure, so Acumulo was initially designed by a national security agency starting in 2008 and it was designed to solve a number of problems. The first is to solve a scale problem where traditional data architectures couldn't solve a huge or massive data problems in the multi-petabyte level. It was designed to reduce administrative burdens, both in costs, the cost for administering those and the cost for having to separate your data because of scalability limits and then also in terms of fracturing your data where you don't want every user to see every piece of data. And so it was designed to bring data together, reduce costs, and then to simultaneously allow for tens of thousands of users who are running a Google style like analytics, search, statistics, graph traversal, doing intelligence analysis and simultaneously where you have data scientists, mathematicians running new algorithms, testing new theories, new ideas against that data, creating summaries of it for analysts and for them to meet in the middle and to really reform that traditional architecture. And so at the end of 2011, the government decided to release that to the Apache Open Source Foundation to grow the community, to extend the adoption and to really let the project take on a shape that it wouldn't have just solely being a government project. And our company formed at the beginning of August with many of the core members who developed that and have been working on top of it, developing applications and use cases for it to bring it to healthcare, financial services, energy, education, e-discovery, and so on. Now why could you just bolt on some of these features to a more, I'll call it traditional, no-SQL database if there is such a word? So I think it's two things. One, the security features are embedded into the core architecture, which is unique, right? It speaks to two things. It speaks to one, an appreciation for the seriousness of it. It's not, security in our case isn't something that comes in the next release. It's something that's at the forefront. So it's important from that level. And the second is that it's important to go back to 2008 and look at what some of the other adjacent technologies, what they were, right? Very nascent at that time. And to just bolt on security would break a lot of backwards compatibility and would essentially lose some of the performance designs that have been baked into a cumulo going forward. Yeah, our CTO, David Fleur, said if you tried to do this with a traditional architecture, it would just bring it to its knees, essentially. So your scale is a key component of this, right? I could try to get it worded. Okay, John, go ahead. There you go, no worries. There you go, I see you. Okay, so security and analytics are hot. Obviously, scale, the top three criteria is for the market right now. So that's what Dave and I looked at. The market was saying, people want scale, they want better analytics. That's the top of mind. But security's kind of mandated implied. Sure. You guys built your product squirrel, SQRRL, for the folks out there who want to know the spelling, SQRRL, from NSA. You guys have to build huge number of clusters before Hadoop was around, right? So you kind of had to do this from scratch, right? Is that true? Yeah, I mean, I think one of the key things, the maturity in the product, is that it's solved one of the most extreme problems at scale, in terms of security, and then very diverse, rich analytic ecosystem. And so that gives, for SQRRL, the company, our product Acorn, it gives our customers a lot of comfort and flexibility and applying it to their solutions. So HBase is great for rights, right? So you're doing a lot of rights, HBase is great. What do you guys do? What's your product hanging their hat on in terms? Is it reads? A lot of reads, random reads in rights? Or is it all rights like HBase? Could you explain your approach? Sure, so I mean, Acumulo is designed to be successful at a number of different things. It really supported the first set of analytics. So getting data ingested into the system very quickly, being able to scale that out, being able to isolate those data elements at a very fine level, and then supporting incremental map reduce through the iterator framework, being able to support low latency query, number of indexing and partitioning schemes to take advantage of full analytic features going forward. So you guys are relatively new to the scene, relative as a startup, right? So you just got funding. What's your take of the whole ecosystem? I mean, you're not amateurs, you're not new to the game from an expertise standpoint, but as a company, your young company just formed, funded, going out into the wild.  What's it like and what's your plan? Yeah, so I think one of the great things is that specialization is really key in this environment, that no one group can do it all themselves, and so we're fortunate to have a number of key partners in the Dubico system, Hortonworks and MapR, and working with a number of other folks as we go to market, as we launch our enterprise product. So we think that what we bring, the maturity, the uniqueness to the security and the scalability through the database layer, adds a lot of value, and we're eager to partner with many others who add additional value on the business intelligence front, folks like Tableau, Pentaho, the Burst folks met up with today, had some really interesting things, as well as a number of other vendors from ETL, forward, so. So talk about the different search options. I was just talking to Claudia or Jeff Hammerbocker, we were talking about what they're gonna do with Cloud Solar, and they got the new Impala platform that they're promoting, obviously real time, it's a pretty big deal for them. You guys have played with Solar and Lucene, what's your take on the different search options? I think customers are looking for a variety of different types of search capabilities, both traditional, faceted search, more advanced search capabilities, and we'll have a lot more to announce at the beginning of the year when we put our product out there. Just trying to get you, trying to get better. You want to show a little leg on the cube? I'm wearing jeans, so yeah, impossible. So we've talked earlier about some of the use cases, I mean, obviously government, financial services, their healthcare, there are others. Is the strategy of the company to get a foothold in those industries where people have the greatest appetite for security and then expand out, is it to stay narrow within those niches? Well I think just take a step back, we see through our engagements, people across a number of verticals, that there is a large appetite for security either as a compliance mechanism or as a licensing mechanism, one way to bring business units together. So for us, what we're looking for and where we're seeing the greatest amount of enthusiasm are folks who want more from big data, more than just ETL and people who understand that this is an alchemy, it's not magic, there's a lot of hard work and there's a lot of core mature technologies that are needed to do that. So folks who have big data problems, who are suffering from keeping their data separate today, folks who have emerging big data problems but have immediate security concerns and then vice versa, folks who just have performance problems but would benefit from having an additional security story on top of that. We're working with all of them and getting a lot of good traction. How would people solve this problem in means other than a cumulo? Are they not solving it or are they just having to work incredibly hard to figure this out? Yeah, so I think what we're seeing is people are going to a lot of exotic lengths to sort of work around the edges, make a lot of hodgepodge. A lot of gymnastics going on. Yeah, a lot of gymnastics and they're just losing a lot of the efficiencies that they want, the simplicity that we provide and then ultimately this has negative effects on the analytic outcomes and the data-driven solutions that they're pushing. Yeah, so we've been poking around a little bit about the need for security and obviously it's there. We were at IOD this week and of course it's IBM conference. IBM's very focused on security. Sure. Has a strong security background and I think there's definitely affirmation for what you're doing. I would also expect to see a lot of competition in this space. Have you seen it yet? Do you expect to see it? Talk about that a little bit. Well, we hope that many people adopt this type of security. We think it's critical and we think that it's not a one-trick pony, squirrel, security, plus the scalability and the advanced real-time analytics will give us a competitive advantage going forward. So we're eager to have many folks bring security in and take a serious look at it. We think that it takes a lot of dedication. It takes a certain amount of seriousness and secondly we think that it's not trivial to do it and talk is cheap in this area and we think that we have a good head start on that front. So you have a young CEO, very committed, passionate for what you're doing, knowledgeable. Talk about the next 100 days.  What's the main 100, 200, whatever? Period you want to choose. What's the priorities? What's on Oren Falcovitz's to-do list in the near term? Sure, so first thing is that we're recruiting more top engineers and we're growing out the rest of our team, both at a senior leadership level as well as marketing and sales folks so we can get out there and meet with customers and solve their problems. And I think the second part of that is we're going to be delivering an early version of our product in January and then making that generally available in the early part of Q2 for 2013 already. So it should be pretty exciting. You're going to have a busy holiday season. Yeah, so we're busily working on that but bringing on more top people, grow the team and then start solving people's problems. Cambridge, Massachusetts, right? That's your office? That's right, yeah. All right, Cambridge, Massachusetts, not Boston, not, Dave, Cambridge is a little bit different so, Dave, what's it like in Cambridge? Well, is it, you know, there's a... Is there a vibe in Cambridge that's pulling on startups? I will tell you this, that the Boston area sort of went on the biotech track and it was attracting a lot of VC funding and I have to say, compared to Silicon Valley, it's been pretty quiet in Boston. No, just in general, right? And now I'm not saying that there's any kind of competition, why try to compete with Silicon Valley? It's a vortex. But I will tell you this, there's a lot of great action happening in big data in Boston. You know, you need a purpose as a region. Boston definitely can't compare to Silicon Valley. Yeah, it should try. In the big picture, but in big data, we said on theCUBE, big Boston's a lot of legacy systems guys going back to the 80s, you know, like Cal Berkley here in Silicon Valley, all the big data startups, you look at them. Systems backgrounds, networking guys, not the flashy, 2.0 company. Yeah, I mean, I'm a Boston transplant, right? I haven't been there for very long, but I'd say that I think that it's gonna compete well for two key reasons. One, academic institutions are the best in the world. You know, Harvard, MIT, and I think second is that when you can bring the types of technology and computer science that we're bringing together with the life sciences industry that's already strong, like you mentioned, Dave, you're gonna see some really interesting outcomes. And that's very unique and that's not existing, I think, on the West Coast. Yeah, and we're gonna be covering this. So in early November, it gives me a launch at the HackReduce event. We're gonna be there, we're gonna have the cameras and figure that out. So we're gonna cover these innovations. We gotta cover the East Coast, we gotta cover the West Coast with Silicon Angle. So go to Wikibon.org, check out the research. We've got a couple of pieces, actually, on Silicon Angle as well around this topic. The Acumulo Project Squirrel, very interesting trend. One that's gonna just become of increasing importance, especially as Hadoop gets more and more into the enterprise and starts going commercial grade. So, Oren, thanks very much for coming on the group. It's always great seeing you. I appreciate it, yeah. Can we be right back with our next guest after this short break? Here on SiliconAngle.com's theCUBE.


So now that I was a middle, a middle school high school, I may have had two children. I tried to start my own school. But I was away at the school. I had to have an education, an educational scheme. But that was the case. It was a case that I had. I had to stay at the school. I went there. I was absolutely impressed with the program and everything that we had going on. All the equipment, the individuals that I was taught by now that were all just like me. The same interests, same interests. So what I'm going to tell you is the stories about how we ended up here. It was a very, very nice community field where I kind of really quickly learned about another month. And I absolutely love that. But what do you remember? At least I think when you think about it, you will get out of life what you've put into it.


Hi everyone, my name is Steph. This is Little Bookish Teacher and welcome to my plans for this month. So August is MS Readathon Month here in Australia and I have decided to participate. I'm very excited. I have my hoodie, which is great because I like to wear hoodies in the evening when I'm reading. I thought I would share with you some of the books that I'm planning on reading during the month because you will see them in upcoming videos. So for those of you who don't know, the MS Readathon is a readathon that has been hosted here for a very, very long time. And I remember doing it as a kid. We would nominate ourselves and how many books we were planning on reading and you could raise money for the MS Society. And all of the money raised goes to support children and families living with MS. It goes into support and care, goes into special events for them. It goes into speech therapy and physio and also things like the MS family camps and fun days which gives those families the opportunity to do those really fun activities with care and support from the community. So I am really excited to be participating. It is still mostly a kid's thing, but you know what? They said that adults could sign up this year and I didn't realize that. So that's what I'm planning on doing and I'm really excited about it. I do have a fundraising page. I will leave it linked down below. If you would like to donate, please don't feel any pressure too. I am very, very happy at the end of this readathon to donate the rest of the money to this really great cause and also to celebrate a love of reading because that is the other big push for this readathon is to encourage kids to read and to read more. So I have a lovely stack of kids picture books, middle grade, junior fiction, young adult books that I'm planning on reading this month. Most of these are review copies. So they do have due dates by the time I have to read them, but I thought I would share them with you so you know what's coming up. The first one is Baby Day by Jane Godwin, Devina Bell and Freya Blackwood which are a dynamite combo. This is a really, really gorgeous little board book for very small children about first birthdays. There is also Two Sparrow Heads in a Lonely Sky by Rebecca Lim. Rebecca Lim is an incredible Australian author. I've read her books in the past and really enjoyed them and I'm so excited to see she's got a new book out. One I haven't heard of is Lily Half Moon, The Magic Gems by Xavier Bonet. This is a graphic novel. So I'm super excited to dive into this cause you guys know I love my kids graphic novels. There is Never a Hero by Vanessa Lin which is the second book in the Only a Monster series and I haven't read book one yet but I am planning on reading both of them this month and there will be a vlog of me reading them. So you'll get to hear about both of them and I'm so excited. There is also A Friend for Ruby by Sophie Laguna and Mark McBride who do these really awesome, very, very quirky picture books together. I love these illustrations cause they're just so different to anything out there at the moment. And the last of the review copies is Last Place Lin by YChim and Frida Chu and this is all about persistence even if you're doing something or trying something that's new to you. So those are my review copies from Alan and Evelyn. So thank you very much to them. I cannot wait to dive into them. And then a couple of other books that I am planning on reading this month. This book, Fingershare Deadly, A Celebration of Black Excellence by Cory Tut with illustrations by Molly Hunt. I'm so excited to dive into this. I've had a flip through already. It is broken up by different fields. So sports and the arts and music and whatnot. And then it celebrates the amazing Aboriginal and First Nations people who represent in that field. I can't wait. I also have The Heartbeat of the Land by Kathy Freeman with Coral Bass and Tanya Harris because I cannot believe I have not read this book yet. This is coming. I'm so excited. Continuing my First Nations theme, My Culture and Me by Greg Dries. Again, I've read Greg Dries' books in the past, but not this one specifically. I can't wait to dive into it. And I am hoping, Fingers Crossed, hoping that I can get to Evie and Rhino by Nero De McMullen and August and Jones by Pip Harry. These are the last two books I have to read from the short list for 2023. I'm hoping I can get to this before the awards are announced. That is my plan, keep your fingers crossed. So they are going on my list as well. I will leave links to all of those books down below. So if you would like to check out more information, you can. As I said, I will leave a link to my fundraising page for the MS Readathon as well, as well as links to the MS Readathon page so you can find out more information about the Readathon if you're interested. I hope that wherever you're on the world, you're staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.


Hi everyone, Joe for jayspeakcasewrakes.com doing a quick number block randomizer right here Thank you. That's how it works. Everyone knows the people here knows how that knows how it works or the numbers right there Let's roll it. Let's randomize it eleven times. Come on random.org You don't got time for eleven on the dice roll believable five six seven eight Nine at this time nights got to be snake eyes every time nine ten and eleven Every second count Matthew head just down to my Cody if all the dice rolls were eleven. That's like a it's like a minute longer. That's Only how many dice rolls we do on a daily basis then The end of the day might be an hour nine Ten and eleven the final time. I guess wasn't that bad zero down to four member zero gets any and all redemptions Including one of one redemptions for just those four teams highlighted in that tab on the bottom of your screen Matthew with zero, but he also has one so your bases are covered Matthew Peter with five David with nine Jack with two Kurt with eight James with three Jack with seven Sean with six Mike with four and The video itself the break itself will be in a separate video. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We'll see you for that


winner tonight organized by the KCL Center for Ground Strategy. My name is Travegas Barri, I am lecturer in the Department of World Studies at King's College and tonight I have the great pleasure to chair the presentation of Dr. David Martin John's new book entitled Histories Fools, the pursuit of idealism and the revenge of politics. In our panel tonight we have of course the author of the book, Dr. John's. Let me just briefly introduce him. Dr. John's is a honorary reader in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland and visiting professor and teaching fellow in World Studies Department at King's College in London. He has extensively researched and published on the international relations and political development in East and Southeast Asia on terrorism and political violence, applied history and political tools. And tonight he's of course presenting his new effort, the book, Histories Fools. I'm also very glad to have here in the panel and to introduce you Professor Michael Reisburu. Professor Reisburu is professor of Strategic Theory and is the former head of the Department of World Studies, is an expert of strategic theory, the nature of war and the hidden aspects of warfare and on the history of strategic tools. And Professor Reisburu will be the discussant in tonight's conversation. So I am very much looking forward to start this event. But before we can start let me just remind the public that the video of this event, this webinar is streaming live on YouTube and it is also recorded so it will be available on YouTube afterwards. We will now listen to Dr. John's presentations and then Professor Reisburu comments and then we will open the floors to questions and comments from the public. If you want to ask questions you can use the Q&A function. There is a little section at the bottom of the screen. So please post your comments and questions there and I will read them loud to the speakers. Okay, thank you very much. I leave the floors to Dr. John's. Thank you very much. Thank you for that introduction. I'll talk for about I don't know 15 minutes I think on what the book tries to do. So the book attempted to synthesize what has happened since the end of the Cold War and exercise in how worldviews form, sustain themselves and disintegrate, leaving those who embraced them sifting around the wreckage for something to clean to. Coming to the end of my peripatetic career which began as the Cold War ended, Kings offered the opportunity to reflect on what had happened to the cosmopolitan agenda of global order founded on democratic norms and its legacy for Western thought and practice. In this enterprise I was able to draw upon a number of my own writings over a 30-year period, some in collaboration with others like the good Professor Rainsborough and John Buu who also I collaborated with when I was at Kings. To elaborate, the process was to elaborate how what Michael Oakshot under whose aegis I began my first graduate career in the late 70s termed a rationalist style of politics and how that informed an understanding of what the collapse of the Soviet Union meant for global order and the progressive end to world history. This teleology was, I argue, a form of magical thinking. It saw order both national and transnational as the product of a determinate independent ethical instrument, taking a long view of the future and a short view of the past. The evolving progressive mentality had the ultimately debilitating effect of misrepresenting the West's actual predicament in a reality that actually disclosed a variety of possible paths following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Somewhat problematically it had identified only a single homogeneous line of development which is, as I quote from Oakshot, to be found in history only if history has made a dummy upon which to practice the skill of a ventriloquist. The ventriloquism however was persuasive. It appealed across the political spectrum as well as to the media and big financial and business conglomerates. It was a McKinsey executive after all who gave us the borderless world and even after 9-11 and despite the long wars of choice that the US and its coalition partners embarked upon, in part to bring about democratic regime change, it sustained its appeal to a cosmopolitan transnational elite. The book traces how the prevailing idealist norms of a progressive democratic order achieved economic and political salience. Its structural postulates emerged from the collapse of the Soviet system, the apparent end of ideology and the triumph of market capitalism. As Thomas Friedman, more than Francis Fukuyama showed, the golden straight that ensured growth and development required globalization, the electronic herd, open markets and open democratic societies. Yet even at peak optimism for the end of history, a number of skeptics pointed out that rapidly rising Asia might be different. This not with standing, the postulates of globalization and their correlation with enhanced economic growth, via an interconnected world, best achieved through states that liberalize, integrate and pool their sovereignty through regional and international arrangements, facilitated a new progressive ideology for a post-historical order. Interestingly, this evolved from previously recondite theories that deconstructed Western thought and practice in the 1980s. The return of grand theory, as Quentin Skinner identified in the 80s, set the theoretical agenda for constructing a new world order, framed along progressive and idealist lines, emanating from a radical reevaluation of Kant and the Enlightenment project. It also reflected a reawakened academic concern with public ethics and theories of social justice and group rights associated with John Rawls, Charles Taylor and Ronald Dworkin, amongst others. This North American liberalism coincided with the growing European interest in a Frankfurt school understanding of universal emancipation and cosmopolitan transnationalism. The emerging discipline of international relations theory combined with a third way in governance to embed this utopian project as an enduring influence over public and international policy, seduced by the empty kisses of abstraction and assuming all problems available to a communicative reason. The progressive mind subsequently dismissed objections to the promotion of its modernization agenda, framed around multiculturalism, group rights, devolved sovereignty, and an international community based on shared norms, as at best irrational, at worst, racist. Given its universalist pretensions concerning the shape of the emerging world order, the emergence of Islamism post-911 in its encounter with the borderless secular West crystallized the illusions that beset the progressive mind in its endeavor to establish an inclusive order freely obeyed. The persistence of a political religion that should have adapted to the prevailing inclusive but secular worldview occasioned a series of intellectual and policy contortions. Several chapters consequently evaluate the political and ideological equivocations that ethicist universalism engaged in to accommodate the fact that secular modernity had become amenable to a political religion, to use Eric Berglin's term, that adapted to its tolerance in order to advance an alternative non-negotiable eschatology. Somewhat problematically, the third way of counter-insurgency prosecuted this violent ideology abroad but treated some of its transnational leaders at home in the West as either misguided or mentally deranged. Progressive and inclusive politics at home whilst persecuting a war on abstract terror abroad seemed increasingly incoherent rather than enlightened and tolerant. The practice of the mainstream media, academia and governments, whether of a conservative or social democratic hue, to sanction any criticism of this policy of tolerating the intolerant only added to the incoherence of the cosmopolitan vision. The Orwellian application of terms like Islamophobia and radicalization further suppressed open debate. The misuse of words as Camus added in a different context added to the sorrows of the world. The long wars of choice damaged the progressive project but by no means proved fatal. The postulate of this idealist project assumed after all that progressive globalization had answered the problem of both equitable economic growth, global order and major interstate conflict. Open borders, independent central banks and light-touch regulation would end the economic cycle of boom and bust. The financial crisis of 2008 rather than the war on terror undermined the structural foundations of the third wave. The consequence of the global shock to financial markets saw the emergence of a new precarious class in the West and a burgeoning divide between a cosmopolitan elite committed to some version of pooled sovereignty and international institution building and an alienated mass who experienced the crash leaving them anxious and abandoned on an alien shore where ignorant armies crashed by night. Financial collapse restarted history. It had a series of consequences unforeseen by an Olympian teleology. In the West pressure for the return of the nation state rather than their reduction to member state status fueled outbreaks of nationalism everywhere. Brexit, Trump and the rise of populism across the West were the output and visible signs of an interior struggle for the West's soul. Despite the cracks appearing in the transnational progressive edifice Tony Blair could claim in his art autobiography in 2010 that it still set the agenda. A decade later this was not the case. The last chapters of the book then explain how this change from global optimism to Spenglerian decline evolved. Internally the democracy promotion agenda always less than convincing to Asian technocrats faltered destabilized by the internal polarization of democratic party politics. Externally the return of geopolitics and the rise of the revisionist powers especially a China that refused to be a responsible stakeholder in a US-led international institutional order further exposed the gulf between the idealist rhetoric and the quotidian practice of international politics. The book suggests that to address this weakness the West might return to a more prudent politics that constitutionalists from Machiavelli to the authors of the Federalist papers first promulgated rather than the pursuit of abstract norms in global justice these might better suit our interesting times. Machiavelli and Hegel might be more appropriate guides to statecraft than Kant and Habermas. The crisis of Western democracy rather than demotic hysteria requires a reason politics of balance a middle not a third way. To mediate the modern pursuit of universalist schemes of progressive perfection prudent skepticism should recall government to its perennial office of preserving order relevant to the current conditions of society restoring in the process both a balance of attention and a balance of power. Of course this time it might be different and Western democracy is the most successful form of rule in the 20th century might not recover the conclusion observes that enduring political metaphors like the body politic serve to warn of the diseases that cause constitutional decay body politics sorry body politics like their human equivalents suffer and die even seemingly healthy bodies as Ibn Khaldun and Thomas Hobbes diagnosed can fall prey to internal disease external shock and of course more recently microorganisms empires regional orders and kingdoms vanish and far more frequently than is generally recognized at the same time the rise of government by algorithm is in the process of transforming both the economy building a new form of capitalism without capital and rebuilding ourselves from autonomous individuals from the autonomous individuals to our factors in a algorithmic equation and the autonomous individual of course was so important to the classical liberal project of democratic accountability ruled by AI programmers offers the ultimate triumph of the style that we first identified as rationalism that engages in schemes whose ends have always been determined by their end oak shot warned that shag ran ultimately awaits all those who embark on such enterprises I'll stop there Flavia all right thank you very much for this fascinating presentation and for all the kind of controversial points that you raised professor race board please I would yeah thank you thank you David thank you Flavia thank you David I want to keep my remarks pretty brief because David is the main event and he's obviously given you a very good summary of of his new book so I'm just going to confine my right my comments to so one or two general thoughts the first of which is to and I have I have read David's David's book from cover to cover and have you know and I went through it and I began underlining all the things which I thought all the very good points which he made and I realized that I should really sort of use my market to underline all the all the parts which were not relevant speaker or were not didn't have something to say because they're very very few of them so my my book is actually literally sort of etched with you know almost every page is etched with with a marker pen so he makes I think the strength of David's book is that he brings together an incredibly impressive array or he mentions a synthesized incredibly impressive array of very very sort of complex international and political and philosophical ideas and manages to sort of unify them in his book in a in a very very so but you know profoundly so insightful manner which actually tells us really about how we that is we if you want to call a generic west have kind of ended up in our rather deracinated condition so I would just like to sort of reiterate how much value I think resides in David's book and I think it it also it is also very important because it is in quotes controversial you know controversial not because I think David says anything which does not make in many ways entirely logical and and profound sense but because he cuts against the grain of I think what some of us understand is a sort of deep consensus within particularly the discipline that we might call international relations and it's a wider so it's wider studies in whatever you want to call it international political economy and broader political science ideas and so forth which given the the anti-realist orientations of a lot of a lot of thinking in these kinds of disciplines today means that David's book is essentially a kind of an outlier in a lot of the works which which are currently produced under the aegis of of international relations but which actually deserve I think as a result to be even more closely read because it does question and critique a lot of the pretensions which have arisen inside that discipline and indeed which have as David argues have actually influenced policy policy decisions and I'd just like to conclude my remarks by emphasizing what I think of the deleterious impact on on policy which the rise of a political and intellectual edifice which is imbued with utopian ideas and often convinced of its own moral rectitude has actually brought in the policy sphere and hopefully it won't be too difficult for many people to think back and to understand what some of those policy failures have been arising out of a conviction that that that moral goodness actually resides in a in a self proclaimed policy elite which has given us particularly in foreign policy terms we can also see it in domestic economic terms as well as David also mentions but in foreign policy terms it's it's very stark you know with the with the number of completely misguided and deeply costly some would say illegal a lot of people would also say deeply inhumane ultimately interventions which have taken place in in areas where the intervening powers of the west have did not have any understanding or didn't have much understanding or an appreciation of of any kind of long-term follow-through of what the what the implications would would end up wreaking which as we know has been the disintegration of a number of societies particularly in the Middle East has resulted in the destabilization of of countries as diverse as Libya Iraq etc Afghanistan sometimes having knock-on effects in producing large migration flows which have also freed further destabilized parts of southern eastern Europe but also extending into further parts of western Europe which then surprise produces the blowback that that these policy elites have from complete disdainful so you know like brexit like like the rise of Donald Trump in the United States like like the rise of so-called populism in eastern Europe well you know if you want to know the causes of these of these events well maybe the these people who these global idealists should actually look in the mirror because they themselves are responsible I would suggest to a greater degree so what the rise of this of utopianism in the west which David's book has amplified I think speaks to a way in which you might say that the a prudential approach in foreign policy terms in the west has been lost and which has allowed you know this generic idea of the west to actually be outplayed and outthought in terms of approaches to extent foreign policy concerns be it in the Middle East be it in South Asia and elsewhere so you know lo and behold you get the west seems to be consistently outdone by Russia by the likes of China which seem to assert their interests often in a very brutal fashion let's be let's be open about that you know I don't think anyone necessarily wants to see the western powers you know become like those powers but nevertheless the the detachment from from that sort of prudential approach in western foreign policy I think has exacerbated numerous numerous problems and diminished western influence but above all I think the emergence of a very utopian or the pursuit of idealism in in western foreign policy and the rise of this ethically informed progressive global cosmopolitan approach has resulted in the detachment of this policy elite from an understanding of their own societies you know so they have a a disdain for a disregard for the populations within their own within their own politics yeah which means that in the end they if you don't understand your own society then probably you're not in the best position to actually give good policy and strategic advice because as as klaus witz said and I'm a student of of Carl von klaus witz one of his phrases was that in order to make a good strategy you had to understand the temperament and uses that word the temperament of your own people to understand the passions and feelings at play and if you basically corral policy making within the self-invoked morally sort of this self-arrogated moral idea of how you conduct yourself conduct foreign policy then of course you're going to detach yourself from any understanding of the temperament of the people of your own society and once you've done that I think you lose all claim to or certainly you lose a substantial right to claim that that you're acting in the best interest of your own society and so let me let me leave it there I hope that's given you a few sort of sidelines on what I think are some of the sort of broader policy implications inherent in David's book all right thank you very much for adding further food for thoughts to this discussion David I don't know if you want to add anything before opening the floor to the questions that are already arriving hello David do you want to comment oh no no sorry I thought you were asking Andrew no no I was asking if you have any anything else to add or to respond no no we'll just go to Q&A I think okay perfect thank you very much both of you we are we are already receiving questions the first one is from Martin who asks how much of the western post Cold War strategy is deliberate and consistent with genuine consideration versus the accidental policy decisions of direct democracy like Brexit or populism Trumpism right okay well yeah I can see the point I would have thought you know if we're tracing over the long journey of 1990 to 2020 I mean policy since 2016 has been rather more capricious one could argue but prior to that you know the the third way in governance both you know locally and globally seem to have a fairly consistent attitude internationally or transnationally to what it was sort of seeking to achieve which was by various means a democracy promoting agenda attacked the idea of economic growth and internationally institutionally built order that would promote not only an ethical foreign policy but an ethical order which emphasised regions and international arrangements rather than states as the key actors in world politics so I think there was you know up until Blair at least a fairly coherent view of what international policy especially for the US and the UK should entail since then no it's probably been more inconsistent and more uncertain and our current predicament is is where we are at at the moment all right thank you very much and Mike no I don't want to take up any more time from the for the question so I broadly broadly agree very much with what David says I think I think that's exactly right that you know and again just emphasises what hopefully what I was trying to say in my own comments which is that there was a I think a discernible way Michael broadly Western tradition of prudence in foreign policy which certainly post 1997 has largely been lost and has has produced you know a lot of the damaging policy outcomes that we are currently contending with thank you very much another question from Mark the vision of the ideological transnational policymakers has been undone by the excess by the excess of pragmatic neoliberal economic policies to what extent were these two worlds linked now like I can't see that question at the moment which is quite a complicated one okay with the moment I oh hang on it might be here it's okay no I've got can you find that question from Mark no for some reason I've found it yeah I'm well so the question then if I would rephrase it is that the open market policies of the post Cold War economic policies which were to use that awful phrase neoliberal well did they undermine the the transnational policy vision well I'm not sure there seem to be a curious alliance between the idea of a or my my argument would be in response to Mark's point I would view it the other way around really the the the success of market states in the 1980s in being or seeming to be the only way of developing modernity along economically more equitable lines they might you know states that wanted to develop after from the not what from the Cold War onwards might start off as authoritarian but in the process of development they would have to produce or they would inevitably give rise to middle classes who are increasingly educated and who would want the goods of a more liberal not necessarily democratic society but implicitly the emergence or the attraction of market economies or market states globally facilitated the transformation of Asia particularly those Asian countries who were open to the West during the Cold War South Korea Japan the Asian Tigers the Asian dragons all were receptive to this so-called neoliberalism which was the basis of their development it was also it would seem the reason why the Soviet Union collapsed so the consequences that liberal economic policies were the foundation for what then comes as an idealism out of it which you know with Habermas or Giddens wants to make capitalism more attractive more friendly hence the idealism builds out of the economy not the other way around so if you like there's a bit of structural Marxism here to facilitate the discourse that would be my point in response thank you very much next question from Duham what has been the number one pushback in terms of academic growth to the ideas posed in your book the sorry I'm just sorry I'm going to see that question again okay I think that the major pushback is that the problem with academia as it's developed as a managerialist and grant getting approach to knowledge and with it the perhaps decline in some standards that apply to entry has meant that increasingly academia has become orthodox in its presentation of knowledge and its maintenance of research hence the lack of space for alternative views particularly I would say conservative views has been quite notable since universities became businesses again from the 90s onwards I would suggest okay thank you very much Mike do you have anything if you want to jump in no I'm just I just completely agree with David on that I think he's not very long okay thank you we have the next comment from Terry but the Asian Tigers and I see were not followers of neoliberalism the economic growth was driven by state-led and non-democratic regimes supported supported especially by the United States no no I know that's fair enough Terry but the point would be that their state-managed growth actually was accountable to market forces in other words you know you could say they you know the Asian model which you know I kind of discussed quite extensively in the first chapter of my book was interestingly an ability to take aspects of liberal economics and filter them through an Asian values model that meant that a kind of state capitalism or what comes to be known as an authoritarian capitalism was made feasible then it was made feasible of course by the open conditions of the western markets that enabled Japan, South Korea and other countries to rise as I have not seen put it like a flock of flying geese thank you very much Christopher are we not confusing or at least mixing up and and ways ends might be idealistic but the ways must always be realistic the means must be what we can afford in both Russian capital and political capital well don't think so Christopher I mean I see what you're getting at but I would have thought the ideals are always within the means that are being promoted so of course the problem well the way I would present it is that as states develop as they become more wealthy as a result of globalization they of course want more than just material well-being they want other things the idealist agenda has to have wealth to make it run I would say okay thank you very much another question from Mark how far was Blair merely resuming the long tradition of western interference for example Iran in 53 or Sweden in 56 Vietnam Korea etc um yeah well he not only resumed it he put it on steroids I'd say I would I would just add on to that yes please yeah that I mean in one sense yes you can say that Blair Blair's wars and so cool they do exist on some sort of continuum if you want to if you want to see the perspective as one of western intervention on the other hand as David implied what what you could say about those those particular those particular you know wars pre um pre you know pre uh pre the end of the cold war is that they were informed either by a desire to protect Britain's imperial interests um and or they were done um with some idea of protecting broader western western ideas of anti anti-communist interests you know so there was a sort of a clear sort of ideological um uh sort of you know goal um point to a lot of these inter interventions and also um you know if you're thinking about um I mean obviously Britain didn't intervene in Vietnam but you know you could say that Britain's so-called wars of colonial disengagement they were they were pretty sort of realist orientated encounters which were intended really to leave behind pro-British regimes you know and also where the British um felt that the situation was too complex say um in Palestine or um a good one would be the Yemen and the late 1960s or mid 1960s the the British kind of got out you know or didn't even didn't even decide that the fight was worth it so there were very much of realistic premises based on sort of calculations of what could realistically be achieved um what uh what Blair's um sort of wars you know of course it wasn't just him of course it was it was a broader sort of western coalition was based on sort of explicitly sort of ethical ideas you know um making the world a better place or if you want to be critical bombing to make the world a better place you know and I think that is that is the difference and that is the controversy inherent in them is that you know the basis for intervening you know there may be you know the the aims might be all well and good they might be based on you know wanting to do good but in the end what has been the results has the has the end for those sorts of societies actually turned out very well well you know I think the the broad conclusion is that um uh you know we're looking at um you know I don't want to take a pic Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, um Libya, um someone and so forth um well uh I don't think the um the the scale of advantages and disadvantages weigh very heavily um on the advantage I think those encounters are grossed on policy elite policy advice yeah and um so I think we can make our judgments accordingly yeah to um Mike's point is absolutely spot on really about the Cold War uh relative realism compared with the post-Cold War democracy promotion you know agenda of wars of choice rather than wars of necessity and it's quite you know like the point about Vietnam I think is is is an interesting one you had a pragmatically but Prime Minister like um uh Harold Wilson and a very prudent foreign minister when he wasn't in his cups in George Brown um contrast very dramatically with Blair's um internationalism really and his um complete kind of uh addiction to um an interventionary agenda which didn't really suit British interests in the long term thank you very much another question from Will who asks about the Biden administration who's uh uh coming um and asks how um can the United States correct the zero sum excesses of the Trump years especially vis-a-vis uh an increasingly assertive and capable autocratic China yeah well I mean the the the way in which the um uh the Trump regime collapsed is huge the problematic for Trump's legacy on the other hand um some of the foreign policy decisions that Trump took in other words you know America was not engaged during the Trump regime in any um uh interventionary exercises overseas um and with regard to China I don't think uh it's as you know Trump's policy is a zero sum excessive as Will maybe you know thinks um certainly you know there was a case um that Trump rather capriciously abandoned the um the what was the trans-specific trade um proposal that the Obama late Obama regime was was was promulgating um but in other areas the fact that um China had been really since Kissinger treated as a power that could be shaped um and could be a responsible stakeholder in the international community that gave China considerable advantages not under Trump but as a result of um Bush and Obama the second Bush and Obama China's entry to the WTO sorry the World Trade Organization in 2002 uh supercharged its growth and it was not accountable to the kind of liberal constraints that the WTO should have imposed upon it and so Trump's attempt to um question China's trade policy I think was entirely reasonable and actually you know if Biden and Kurt Campbell have any sense they would build upon it rather than necessarily trash it thank you very much another question second question from Mark uh free markets are undermined by monopolistic structures and where people and organizations operate beyond tax systems as a new global establishment being created as a result and if so what does this mean for democracy well I think good question mark um I think the um you know monopolistic structures are indeed problems uh for not only people and organizations but for democratic growth transparency and accountability and um um I don't know whether a new global establishment has been created but certainly um post-covid and post-financial crisis we've created a hell of a you know financial debt arrangement that it seems unlikely we're going to get out of in in the immediate future without some very hard decisions being made um I don't know that there's not a I don't don't see a new policy establishment actually I see a lack of an establishment really and the g7 and the g20 offering very little right thank you very much another second question from marty um it seems to me that since the cold war the there has been a significant deletion of foreign policies from defense policies in the west uh which may be a strategy on its own how much as separating the influence of military strategies um affected our current western vulnerability to more militarized approaches to strategy maybe might can answer that actually um well um yeah no thanks it's an interesting question if I if I understand the um uh the terms of the question right marty that um it certainly is the case that I'm gonna speak for sort of um or sort of my um thinking is based on um you know sensibly british understandings but I think they apply more broadly um across western europe and even the united states as well which is that um as the breadth of the interventionist tendency arose um defense spendings were actually reduced as a percapser of gdp so I think that does um as your maybe I think your question implies that that produces well a fairly sort of obvious and logical tension between your uh your means and your your capabilities which I think is a very um potent source of the current incoherence in um broadly speaking western western foreign policies if your aspirations are to um are to be interventionist then of course you must be willing to um service that uh that that capability both in terms of means and most importantly of political will and so um and I think we can see again so far as the sort of uh an understanding of british foreign policy is concerned how um incoherent this this this made british foreign and defense policy in the aftermath of the um toppling of saddam hussein in iraq whereby um you would have thought or you would have hoped and then david and I uh remember this period very well in in 2003 um and um speaking for myself I think for david as well you know we were thinking well maybe you know maybe if there is something in this um in the in the whole idea that saddam hussein has uh um has a nuclear weapons capability or an evolving capability and maybe um maybe it was correct to go in and intervene and topple saddam hussein but regardless of whether it was or wasn't you would expect that the intervening powers which britain was was perhaps the second key um partner they would actually have a plan to occupy the place you know rather than just regime um you know topple over the regime and hope the hope the society will somehow remake itself in some sort of democratic image um and the fact that both capabilities and will you know result you know the all the lack of them um resulted in the complete failure of um western certainly british policy in in iraq and through a completely incoherent um occupation policy I think underlines the verity of what you're saying and if we extend it into um say you know the intervention in libya again knock over a regime um you have no interest in in in the means or the will in following it through and and um seeing through a a a uh government um you know which which could um be which could survive in place of gadafi um now arguably you know one shouldn't have actually intervened in the first place but nevertheless if you've chosen to do that then of course you must have the the means and the capability and I think that um you know the chickens definitely came came home to roost as a result of the of that de-latching um that you refer to marty so yeah I think it's a fair fair point thank you mike um another question from aron uh how much are we in the world uh living with the hungover of the end of the bipolar cold war in the west yeah I I think what erin's asking is that um the cold war in the wet inducted because the the rest of the question is versus nixon decoupling of the bipolar east by china in the india pacific shift that's a balanced power um well if I kind of um understand the question aright is it that the west um uh is itself um well the west always saw the cold war in terms of um the soviet union and china is a bit of an add-on um and actually the the the the end of that um and the shift um in the cold war mentality or you know that europe could expand eastward um ignored the fact that um china uh which was treated in you know as a result of kissinger and nixon's opening in an entirely different way and enabled china to emerge as a far more um effective threat particularly economically to the west uh than the soviet union um that seems to have been um what could be increasingly seen as uh something of a mistake so kissinger the great cold war realist and pragmatist is always a bit um uh elusive in his view of china or as something that is uh obviously a major civilization but something that can be brought within a western orbit that was always the dream after 1972 uh nixon himself was a bit more skeptical uh before he died in an interview with william frieken he actually noted that he might have created a frankenstein's monster um this is the um you know one of the potential legacies of that kind of um um shifting politics towards china i think and the endo pacific now becomes a region not only of opportunity but also potential global conflict going forward as the chinese and the soviet well the russians particularly now realize great terrific thank you very much um i think we are uh almost the time is almost over uh before concluding if i can just ask briefly a question to david as well because you mentioned 9 11 and then the economic crisis in 2008 which under certain respect as you said had even more influence and impact and now we are living into uh in the middle of a health crisis and i expect in 10 years probably the next one will be an informatic crisis and then probably the planet will explode and the world will end but my question is um if the current crisis will have any impact on basically pushing things in the direction you you described in your in the book well yeah i mean i think um you know the the we're talking about the the covid effects yeah yeah and what that implies going forward um i suppose you know obviously i wrote the book before covid that's what i'm asking came out in april and devastated my attempts to promote it so i'm fairly against microorganisms at the moment but um i think you know the not only the um disease itself a microorganism you know that has devastated our economies in the west um uh and so it's not just the micro it's not just the the coronavirus um we've dealt with coronaviruses in the past without this um medical health kind of um approach to disease the public health state that we now live in um where we're ruled by our our kind of um iatrogenic concern with with health at the expense of our economies um this seems to me to be uh potentially tragic actually i mean when i wrote the book i thought there was scope for um democratic recovery you know i mean we've become a bit over the top about the potential for a universal end of history but you know our aspirations for a liberal order were you know noble um you know we might have gone around about that it slightly wrongly or wrongly uh in the long term or relatively short term but the the idea of international order pre-peace and harmony are you know good um uh ambitions um and democracies might have got overstretched and over promoted certain things but there was the potential to um you know prudently recover and and reboot the democratic project uh the economic devastation that we've leaped upon ourselves which china has has not suffered from even though it would seem to have created the virus um is you know uh one of the great ironies of the current condition i think i mean china's recovering very nicely as we're all in across europe into a third lockdown um no i'm i'm quite pessimistic not not because of the coronavirus itself but our response to it which is being so illiberal all right well thank you very much uh thank you for answering my question um time is over unfortunately so i have to wrap up i want to thank our speakers dr johnson professor raceboro for this fascinating talk i would like everybody to join in a virtual round of applause for our panelists uh thank everybody for your attention uh and your participation of all your questions uh this um event will be available on youtube on the war studies channel um i think tomorrow i mean as soon as the recording is ready so you can re-watch it and i thank everybody uh and see you next time bye bye all right thank you thank you bye bye it's a lot fun you can stay on


What's good y'all this is Roy Ross back again with another video and Y'all These past few hours have been insane Last night they featured us on Monday Night Raw as they showed you know the different reactors, you know Reacting to see a punk returning back to WWE that in itself was amazing The love and support you guys shown on social media for us was just truly amazing and we appreciate y'all that Was fantastic. We get the call from Mark Henry The Mark Henry the legend himself While we're streaming for us to be on his podcast With a bully Ray on Sirius XM radio busted open podcast He actually invited us to be a part of that I'm like, all right, cool After we get off the live stream He gives me his number Mark Henry actually gives me his personal number to hit him up Me and Doug got on the phone with him. We talked about it setting everything up and Everything was a go Right, so that in itself on top of WWE reposting, you know our reaction. That's crazy I have Mark Henry's phone number in my actual phone the guy I used to watch all the time and WWE the world's strongest man like that just Mind-blowing right you can't you can't even fathom that so looking forward to doing that last night Went to bed pretty pretty happy, you know, I'm like, all right, we're gonna do the The busted open podcast a what not cool wake up this morning. I'm getting messages in the discord I'm getting messages on Instagram. I'm like getting messages on Twitter. I'm like, yo, what's going on? I Check and People are saying see them punk reposted our clip of our reaction to his Instagram I'm like, wait, no way I go check see him punk's Instagram and there it is He reposted our reaction to him returning to WWE That in itself is Mind-blowing wake up this morning Before we have to do the bust it open podcast that happened. He reposted it so To me if y'all know me and and my story and wrestling how I got back into wrestling Y'all know the fact that see him punk's pipe bomb is the only reason I actually started watching Wrestling again because if it wasn't for that pipe, I don't know if I would have gotten back into wrestling as soon as I did You know, so his infamous pipe mom bop brought me back to wrestling so to see him repost Our reaction to him coming back to WWE. That's once again Mind-blowing. I can't I'm it's like it's hard for me to fathom what's happening right now So we get into the zoom call Put a busted open podcast again shout out to Billy Ray shout out to Mark Henry shout out to everyone that was a part of the show getting on there With two of the legends people that I grew up watching I grew up watching Billy Ray But putting women and and children in whoever through tables I grew up watching that going crazy him and D1 having some epic TLC matches I grew up watching him The same thing with Mark Henry seeing them interact with us Was Fantastic But that that was such a cool interview I can't wait for you guys to actually see it if you guys missed out shout out to everyone I was able to listen to it or whatnot. We appreciate y'all We they should be sending us the visuals so you guys can see it We're probably posting on the main page, but that was so cool and they were so dope and It was it's just one of those things where it's like I can't believe this is really a theme And I even told Mark Henry about you know one of my favorite moments from him is that infamous John Cena promo he had what the problem he had with John Cena talking about retiring But it was all the rules. He wasn't retiring head on that nice salmon suit Mark Henry brought out the salmon suit jacket and bully Ray was like he got it like y'all because he never brings out That jacket he still has the infamous jacket He cut one of his best promos saying he was retiring only to attack John Cena, bro as a fan. This is just wild and After we did our segment they They let us know One of the guys that's over the show that's uh, you know that runs the show He he pretty much said hey He enjoyed our segment. He thought it was very dope and you know They're looking forward to working with us again in the future and I would love for us to be able to be back on their Podcasts, so I'm gonna link down their podcast their socials down below So that way you guys can go check them out. Um, this was truly amazing and after the show Before we signed out a bully Ray was like, yo man, make sure you put us over or I'm gonna have to come Find y'all put y'all through a tape. I was like, you know, you gotta do that, man We gonna put y'all over we're gonna make sure y'all good So once again, I don't want to spoil too much of what was said in the In the interview, but y'all definitely once they send out the video footage Y'all definitely couldn't go check it out at the links Then I'm gonna put down below for you to go check it out and once they send a video footage We'll definitely post it on the inter clutch page But it was cool, man They they asked some pretty cool questions and it was just so surreal and even before we got off the show Bronson Reed had popped in so they were gonna have a second segment with Bronson Reed I'm just like, yo, what is happening? So overall these past few hours, that even been 24 hours have been truly insane I I can't stress how much we are truly thankful for y'all me and up because we know We don't get to this position if it if it isn't for y'all support numbers don't lie and These corporations and entities and individuals they see the numbers they see our interaction with you guys They see how we you know, you know how genuine we are and they want to reach out and work with us That's truly a blessing I'm literally Meeting people I used to watch growing up as a kid I'm truly blessed and thankful for you guys and yeah these past few hours have been insane Hasn't even 24 hours yet, and I am Thoroughly just shocked So hey, man. I once again, I appreciate y'all so much. I'm gonna link down below The broken the busted open podcast so you guys can go check it out Listen to it and when they drop the visual, you know, you can check it out there once again They'll send us over the clip and we'll probably post it on YouTube so That way you guys can check it out or I will link it to their their youtuber What not and go show the support for Billy Ray and Mark Henry and think them I want to thank them as well for inviting us on the show shout out to see a pump for reposting our reaction This has been crazy shout out to W. The E to reposting our clip on on their show last night Just insanity man, but I appreciate all the love of sport you guys shown on channel road to 150 gay And I'm still gonna speak to you to the rest of the world appreciate talking to me. See y'all next one. Peace