You come from the United States, and Washington through Seoul, that's the name. Which United World War is biggest NGO in the world? Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this very special 20th anniversary meeting of the World Economic Forum on East Asia. We will have an official opening session after lunch, but this is the first plenary session. I welcome our members. I welcome particularly our Indonesian friends. The World Economic Forum has been able to integrate the Indonesian political and business community quite substantially during the last year, so thank you for this confidence you are giving to our organization. And we start with an extremely exciting session. We talk about disruptions, and we have here a panel which also expresses in a very good way what the World Economic Forum stands about because we have in the panel politicians, we have business leaders, we have civil society, and we have academia. So I may just present to you the different members of the panels, and I do it as it is tradition in the forum in alphabetical order, not according to protocol, and first Dominic Barton, Worldwide Managing Director of McKinsey and Company, Brian Gallagher, who is President and CEO of United Way Worldwide, which is the biggest charity organization in the world. I think many companies would envy you, if you measure you in terms of, let's say, I don't, I want to avoid the world revenues. Well, we call it revenue.  Five billion US a year. A five billion organization. Kishoma Mubani, the Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. We know you are from your exciting editorials and many other ways how you express your points of view. Son Nishihara-san, who is the Chairman of the Board of Toshiba Corporation, but yeah, Nishida, Nishida, I'm sorry, but I think you are not only a prominent leader of one of the top companies, but you are also a Vice-Chair of the famous Kedan-Ven organization in Japan. And son, of course, we have Minister Vangestu, Minister of Trade of Indonesia, I would say one of those personalities from Indonesia, who is really worldwide known. And finally, and I should have said, from a protocol point of view, I should have mentioned you first Prime Minister, Prime Minister Tsuka Ta from Mongolia. Very happy to have you here. So we will have a very lively discussion. And we speak about disruptions, managing global disruptions, managing Asian disruptions. Let me ask the first question. What disruption on a global level become later to the regional level? You are most afraid of. I want to have a very short answer, and then we will look how we can respond to this global disruption. Kishor, why don't you start? Okay, what I'll try to do close, is as you know, since many Asians are very polite, and often don't say what's on their minds, I'll try to be a very rude Asian and tell you what I think is in many Asian minds. And I can tell you the number one concern to put it very rudely of Asians today is what I call the incompetence of the West. And this I must tell you is a huge culture shock.  This is how you fix a crisis. And then 10 years later, the same crisis hits American Europe. And guess what? They cannot accept the same bitter medicine that they gave to Asians, and they continue to drift. And I can tell you it's a complete sense of bewilderment in this region on how the United States can be engaged in this amazing political gridlock when they have some fundamental economic challenges that they face. And how Eurozone can't get its act together so much so that we worry week after week what's going to happen to it, what happened to Western competence, and that's my number one worry. What is your biggest slowbrook worry? I think as a trade minister, because this is, if you like my daily bread, pardon the pun, it's food security issue. We went through 2008 high food prices and a lot of disruptions in the world. 100 million people became impoverished in 2008. In 2010, we had another spike in food prices. 44 million more people went into poverty. So for me, despite the stabilization of the food prices, I still think a food security issue in the short term, in the medium term, is going to be number one big challenge. And including in that is also the issue of energy security and water because it is related to the food security issue. And we should not wait until the next spike before we do act because for Indonesia, 10% increase in the price of rice without doing anything in terms of any subsidized program or income increases leads to 1% increase in poverty. So the problem is real, it's an economic problem, it's a social problem, and then it leads into political problems. So for me, that's what keeps me awake at night. Prime Minister. Yes, I agree with some of my colleagues that really the issue of ecological problem is one of the key issue. And this issue is related to small or big countries regardless to the size and development. And in case of Mongolia, I think we have issues of serious deforestation, degradation issue, and water issue. So these are the key issues we need to have a serious look at. And of course the economic issues are important again, especially for the small countries and the economic disparity. And this would be the issues for us, the key issues. Ecological and economic. My Japanese is not existing, you see. May I speak a little bit longer? Yeah. My concern, not only my concern but also Japanese people concern, number one is natural disaster of course. So I would like to talk about regional cooperation in response to the natural disaster that struck Japan on May 11th this year. First of all, however, on behalf of the Japanese business community I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to everyone around the world who supported us very much at that time. We received an enormous amount of assistance, including medical rescue teams, donations, emergency goods, and rescue equipment. Natural disasters are a global risk that can occur anywhere and pose one of the greatest threats to any country's economic base. That may explain why we have seen recent advances in regional cooperation in disaster prevention and also recovery. The greater East Japan earthquake is another opportunity to accelerate such a cooperation from a disaster prevention perspective. The lessons learned from the earthquake and tsunami by sharing the expertise and technologies will be able to cooperate much, much more among regions. Regional cooperation in even post-disaster recovery effort is crucial for us. For example, in the aftermath of the disaster, K-danmen has drawn up scenarios or blueprints that can go beyond rapid recovery in the devastated area to the creation of a new Japan and is striving to make these plans a reality. May I speak a little longer? Probably this is also your concern, Patrick. We are also focusing on the restoration of supply chains encompassing procurement, manufacturing, sales and distribution so that Japan can swiftly restart providing the internationally vital parts and materials it produces and fulfill the trust placed in Japanese brands by overseas customers. As a result of such efforts, 85% of materials manufactured and 71% of processing brands are confident now that they will have sufficient supplies of raw materials, parts and components by October this year. Of course, in case of automobile industry, we may be able to recover slightly faster or earlier than October, but it differs from company to company. In case of semiconductor industry, we have been striving great effort to recover. And during the recovery process, we have accumulated a kind of expertise by swiftly or rapidly restoring supply chains. So most probably I think we will be able to help build stronger supply chains throughout Asia and we will be able to contribute to that by sharing examples of many kinds of practices in order to rapidly revitalize industries affected by the disaster. Strong support, this is very important point, from the global community is essential. One of the most severely affected industries is tourism. From the viewpoint of that tourism, since the day of earthquake and tsunami, the number of tourists visiting Japan has fallen dramatically. In case of April, for example, that number fell by 62.5%. This is partly because of lack of accurate information, but we are trying to provide timely and accurate information from Japan and I would like to request your understanding and also your support in promoting visits to Japan. Japan is safe, so please do not hesitate to visit Japan. All your next visits have to be your next holidays in Japan. Thank you. Dominic. I think it's a very hard question to think about one thing that would worry me because I think there's going to be a lot more volatility over the next 10 years in the world from a number of different factors. But if I had to pick one, it would be unemployment. And I think we've seen the impact of unemployment, particularly youth unemployment in North Africa, even Spain where it's 42%, but it's roughly around 20% globally. And if you look at structural unemployment, which is going up, it's a worry because that's going to lead to protectionism. And I think we're going to see a sense of some countries turning inward to try and create jobs. And one of the downsides of globalization has been people that get disrupted on that side. So I worry about that as a, if you will, a deeper structural level of disruption that could have longer-term implications for growth and how the world moves forward. So we have a whole list. I mean, it's worrisome. We have incompetence of the rest. We have food security. We have the ecological degradation, particularly deforestation, water issues. We have supply chain challenge and natural disaster prevention. We have the unemployment issue. If I would add, let's say, one issue which we highlighted in our global risk reports this year, it is the number one risk was the risk of de-globalizations, a failure of the global system to cope with the complexity of all the issues we have. And we, I mean, we have here only a partial list of all the issues we are confronted with. Now, if we look at the global issues and if you look at all those which have been mentioned, any concrete proposal, what should be done? What should be the response who would like to take up one of those issues? I would pick up on your last point that the thing that concerns me the most is that even though we're in the human development business, education, financial stability, healthy lifestyles, that's driven by economic prosperity. And globalization of the economy is creating more and more opportunity for people. But my concern is that we don't have the mechanisms either in the economy, in public sector policymaking or in civil society, to really understand the cause and effect within what creates growth and what creates inclusive growth. And our decision-making processes are still too national in origin in terms of creating goals, multi-sector goals, across regions, for instance. If you were to look at Asia, we need more and more institutions that would set goals for economic policy, for political policy, and for human development, and then have monitoring. We have great forums like the World Economic Forum, we have economic forum, but we don't have multi-sector forum. And I think there's an opportunity to create that regionally around the world. Prime Minister, Minister, Minister, you want to react, I see. Yes, let me focus on the food security issue, so link what keeps me awake at night with what should be done globally. Obviously, this is the number one item, one of the number one items in the G20 agenda, in the APEC agenda, in the ASEAN and East Asia agenda. So how do we prevent what happened in 2008? Well, it did also happen in 2010, you know, export restrictions and panic buying, which caused not just the price to go up, but to fluctuate widely. And this is one of the concerns that came up in the discussions. But as it turns out, when you talk about food security, it's not just a trade policy issue or even just an agriculture policy issue. You have to address it comprehensively. So there are a couple of elements in the both in the global as well as regional, possible regional responses that needs to happen. One is stocks, to ensure sufficient domestic stocks so that you don't go into panic buying and having some kind of reserve stocks. This is something we're discussing in Asia, rice reserves, for instance, that you can draw on to stabilize prices. Second, well-informed policy, whether it's trade or fiscal, that doesn't lead to panic buying or hoarding, if you like, which tends to sharpen the fluctuation. Something which is already going up tends to get sharpened. So some kind of agreement on what to do with the trade and fiscal policy issues, even subsidizing and suppressing price increases. That's also something which also needs to be discussed. Third, transparency of information on stocks. Stocks in your country, production, consumption, exports and imports. This is one of the G20 initiatives to create better database so that you don't go into panic because speculators in the asymmetry of information, this is what pushes prices up. Fourth, increasing productivity and production, R&D and technology in the face of climate change. I think what we're seeing is the effects of climate change, which has led to sharp fluctuations in food production. This is both a short term as well as a medium term challenge. And I think finally is really in my area, which is what do we do about globally speaking the world trading system and the Doha negotiations. If we could have gotten the agriculture package in that Doha round, that would have done so much to put world prices, remove the distortions in agriculture prices, which has been depressing investment and production in agriculture. But unfortunately, the Doha round as we know is not at the moment looking very optimistic. But at least if we could get some components of that package, which addresses food security issues, that I think would also be a global response, a responsible global response. You left out one controversial policy measure, which is export restrictions. Did you do it purposely? Yeah, export restrictions, we discussed this in many forums. And I think at the end of the day, if countries want to ensure that their population have enough food, is that right or wrong? It becomes a very diplomatic question. So in the end, I think the answer is twofold. One is there must be better sharing of information. And if you're going to do something, you don't sort of announce it without any warning. There has to be some sharing of information and if you like even advanced warning of this. But the only answer to countries not doing export restrictions is actually food reserves. They wouldn't do export restrictions if they knew that there were these reserves out there that they could draw on. Or other countries can also draw on that would reduce at least the spikes in the speculation. It might not remove the price increase, but it would smoothen the fluctuations. Any other concrete proposal related to the concerns expressed? Yeah, I want to build on what Brian said, what Dominic said and what you just said about de-globalization. What we need to do is all our challenges are clearly global, right? Climate change, food security, economic crisis and all our responses are national. And that's a fundamentally illogical thing. And it shows basically that, if I may put it again very bluntly, the minds of the leaders of the world are political antiques today. They see all the problems through purely national perspective and don't realize that we live in a small interconnected world. And that's why, if you were asking for the perfect historical moment for the World Economic Forum to fulfill its role of committing to creating the state of the world, this is the moment to teach the world that we have to come together and work together as one world to accept the logic of one world and then we'll begin to solve these problems. And that's how you're going to get an answer to the Doha round. Because if you keep on focusing on your national interests, you'll never get a solution to the Doha round. But if you realize we are in the same boat and you have to work together, that's how you get the Doha round. So that's what we have to do now. But Kisho, I may challenge a little bit and I come back to your first, the incompetence of the West. You have a situation where you have to balance out. I mean we are now in a situation where we have global problems but national solutions. And politicians are not, let's say, compensated by additional votes looking after global problems. They have to look after national problems. And so the concern of President Obama is probably how to solve the unemployment problem in the US and so on and so on. The Asian countries have, if you take it from a political structural point of view, the possibility of a longer term perspective in general.  So how do we solve this issue of, let's say, national interests, national elections on the one hand and global issues? Prime Minister, do you want to enlighten us? Yeah, I think this is interesting really because for the politicians as you rightly mentioned, there is a national interest and of course the issue of global issues. And these days those issues are really interconnected to many extent. And I think to combat, for instance, on ecological issues, there are many initiatives already and green initiatives and joint global efforts and policy documents are in place. But I think we need to increase the public awareness of the problems first on a national level and on an international level. And with that purpose, for instance, because the ecological issue is a key, a very big issue for Mongolia, at least as almost 70% of our land is under desertification and the water issue is there and deforestation, we decided to increase the public awareness of the local community. And we had our cabinet meeting in a Gobi Desert, not in a capital city, right in the Gobi Desert where is the heaviest part of the desertification. And we told to the people locally first and of course to attract international attention so that this is the issue. So I think mass media, public awareness, these issues to be combined with the joint efforts which we are trying to do globally, I think. Let me come back to the question of unemployment which you mentioned Dominic. And I address myself to the two business leaders here. We speak very much about jobless growth and it seems to be also looking at overcapacities in many areas of industries. We are in a situation where productivity outpaces now see demand for labour. What can we do about it? I mean, what is the possibility? Let me ask you second and let me first you as a business leader who is under pressure to rationalize continuously. How do you still create jobs even if your revenues grow? To improve unemployment, you have no selection except for growing economy itself or from the viewpoints of enterprise to grow our business in global market. However, we are facing many new paradigm issues like environmental issues versus economic growth. In the 20th century, we did not pay any attention to this conflict. But without solving this issue, we cannot survive in the 21st century. So, in order to grow our business, we are willingly forced to create new innovations in the new area. Without creating innovations in different kinds of new areas, we will not be able to grow ourselves and naturally, accordingly, we will not be able to contribute to the increase of employment. This is a crucial issue for us. So it needs completely new business models. We talk about sustainability, green economy, the Prime Minister mentioned it, Dominic. How would you address the issue? Maybe just to build on what was said from Japan, I would say, first of all, we've actually found in looking at about five countries where you've now got business leaders and government leaders working together to try and deal with this issue. Very much in the world economic forum spirit of business and society. There are actually a chunk of jobs that are not filled because the skills aren't there. So one of the really worrying issues is that we have structural unemployment at the same time we have demand for skills that aren't actually there. It's bigger than you think. It can be 20% in some of the places of that amount. That's where I think we can learn from places like Singapore with the polytechnics and the roles. It isn't about building more universities. It's actually more about polytechnics, radiologists and nurses and so forth as opposed to people with general university backgrounds. One important point, though, building on this growth and innovation side is, are there ways to also make it easier to start up businesses? A lot of the jobs are actually in small, medium-sized enterprises and here I would actually look to China. If you go into the Mayor of Beijing's office, you'll see on his wall a chart that says the number of days it takes to start a business from scratch is 36 days in Beijing. It's 35 days in Shanghai and it's 6 days in Singapore. We don't know what the days are in the US or we don't know what the days are in Canada but that's a focus. And so the push is how can we make it easier for people, entrepreneurs to be able to build up and I think there's more that can be done on that side. So I actually believe the innovation can be there but there's things that are getting in the way on regulations and barriers that can help and skills that are not in place. Concrete proposals. Let me amongst the global challenges let me just raise one issue which is the empowerment of young people and to a certain extent also the dissatisfaction, the impatience of young people as we have seen not only in Tunisia and in Egypt but in Spain and I have to say even in a prosperous city, probably one of the most prosperous cities in the world in Geneva where I am coming from, you have now a camp of dissatisfied young people. It has been mentioned also in the Asian context that this could happen. Anybody who would like to comment rapidly on how the empowerment which we have seen with those young people who have new ways to express dissatisfaction will have an impact on the world. One comment which is I think the role of technology and media is playing is actually amplifying that. So if you even think in China about the strikes that were held last year, you had migrant workers that actually were able to afford cell phones for the first time who were able to organize themselves on their two hour bus rides into work and outside of work and that hadn't been done before. And so I think that concerns like that maybe have been around for a while but now the ability to connect up very quickly with quite a large number of people virtually gives more power if you will and so I think that's only going to be on the increase with the way the technology is working today. And I would boil it down to two things, access and opportunity. You know President Obama, the new regime in Egypt, the leadership in Indonesia have the same issues and that's job creation, opportunity creation and policy has to go across country and has to be long term and about how do you give young people access to opportunity? What's your water policy? What's the power policy? What's education policy? And if you look at what happens in the U.S., two million of those jobs go unfilled because there isn't skilled labor for it. Business leaders make one set of decisions in terms of where they're going to take those jobs. National political leadership makes another set of decisions and young people feel abandoned by each. And so long term kind of human development as well as economic development policy making and giving young people access to that opportunity of those decisions. They're going to take it whether we give it to them or not. So you come back to another issue of global governance. You have in some way a phenomenon where the power moves from the center, from the traditional middle class to the young people who are empowered and who want to have change but it moves also in an aging society from the middle to the older people who resist change and how do you handle it? Kishore, any idea? I think the big challenge here is that with the world changing so fast, I think governments are having great difficulty adjusting to the changes. Let me give you surprisingly the example of Singapore which has been by far the most politically stable state in Southeast Asia, probably one of the most political states in the world. And they had elections on May 7th and the government was completely surprised. I mean a few ministers lost their seats and it's very clear that even in Singapore in a government that had delivered the economic goods for so long, it had lost touch with what the young people were asking for. So the big lesson we're going to learn from all this is that governments all over the world in both the developed and the developing worlds have to become more responsive, have to become aware of what's being said in the new media because if you ignore what's happening in the new media then you get into trouble. Minister? Yes, to add my thoughts on that, I think it goes beyond just identifying the skills that are needed. I think we also have to focus on self-employment entrepreneurship and the role of technology in that is actually very powerful. The role of like mobile banking or the way we have seen in our own country how the ability to connect on the internet has opened up business opportunities even for very, very micro enterprises and how to combine that with the access to financing and empowering them to become self-employed and entrepreneurs including women. I think we have to make sure that women are included in the picture of job creation, self-employment entrepreneurship, SMEs, micro enterprises. This I think will hopefully be able to absorb the more educated youth that are unemployed now. Let me turn now our attention to more to the regional issues. Of course regional and global issues are interrelated, but when we look at or let me ask the questions of a moving way, what do you consider to be the biggest regional challenge? We speak about East Asia. Who would like to start? Maybe it's time to switch the discussion from Joe economics to Joe politics. Most people are unaware that what we are experiencing in Southeast Asia is something close to a Joe political miracle. It's a very unusual development where the world's greatest emerging power, China so far is emerging peacefully. That's very unusual. History teaches us that when new great powers emerge there will be conflict, turbulence and so on and so forth. I think one lesson East Asia should learn from the events of the last 12 to 18 months is don't take this for granted. You saw an explosion over the fishing boat with Japan. You saw some problems in the North Korean Peninsula. You've seen some problems in the South China Sea. And so the question is how do we keep this Joe political miracle going? And one reason why we've had this Joe political miracle is because the Chinese government has been able to restrain its own population from sort of strong surges of nationalism. And I think this is why the states dealing with China now have to learn to be equally restrained in managing China because if you don't, if you touch the wrong fuse in China and you get an explosive nationalist anger in China, you'll no longer have this Joe political miracle that we deal with. So I think we have to focus very seriously on how we keep this Joe political miracle going in this region. But this Joe political miracle depends also on continuous strong growth of the Chinese economy. Would you agree? Yes, absolutely. And that's why it's interesting. The Chinese have also realized that they cannot rely on economic growth from America and Europe and they're shifting more to domestic consumption. And I hope that they succeed in that because, frankly, the legitimacy of the present government does rest on consistent economic growth. Any please? Since Asian market is of paramount importance to Japan as well, I would like to comment on the issue of global imbalances. In order to achieve sustainable growth, Asia needs to break away from its dependence only exposed to Europe and America and shift to a more balanced economic structure underpinned by internal demand from Asia itself. An effective first step toward expanding intra-regional demand is the promotion of regional economic integration, I think. Prime Minister? Yeah, sorry. But it is very important to this end to set up soft or institutional infrastructure by reducing tariffs and easing or abolishing regulations and to build hard or physical infrastructure in the Asian region. And herewith to facilitate distribution. Of course, it may be also important for each country to improve its people's quality of life by expanding the domestic consumption. For example, enhancing social security systems could provide initiatives for middle income earners to divert income from savings to consumption. And also, another example is to provide more fulfilling national education and vocational training. And I think this will bring more people into the middle income bracket. Prime Minister? Yes, I think the global issues are very much linked with the regional also risks and problems. And here I think economic issues are also key issues here. Risks at the commodity supply, for instance, rare earth between Japan and China. This is an issue. And Mongolia could become an alternative for this certain case and oil issue, oil disruption supply. For instance, in Mongolia's case, we are just fully dependent on one supply. And the countries are also, for instance, the Libyan case and many other cases so that oil issue and coal. Coal is Mongolia's now also could be one of the players for the market. And the flood and the early rain and those issues are becoming also regional issue and the problem for supply of the coal. In other words, the energy risk is an issue for the region. And there is a growing demand for energy from China and other countries in the region and forthcoming shortage of energy. And again, as Minister earlier mentioned, food shortage and food supply issue is again I think the regional issue. With the economic issues I think there is a, I agree with Dr. Mahobani that the political risks and issues are again very much so related with the regional problems. And in the region where Mongolia is located, for instance, Central Asia issue in Afghanistan and the motions in Kyrgyzstan. And of course, the North Korea issue where we would like to also as a part of the region to bring our contribution to these issues. And South China Sea issue so that I think the political issues are again very important factors for the regional risk assessment. Yeah, as you know last year in 2010 when you were reviewing what were the global risks that were keeping everybody awake of your members, number two was managing the rise of China. So I think I would just add to what Kishore was saying earlier. I think the fact how to manage the rise of China is still going to be an important issue within East Asia. And I think East Asia, whatever happens or doesn't happen in East Asia we know now in the global economic recovery process affects globally the economic recovery. 60% of the world population is going to be here so whatever we do or don't do on food security will affect the world similarly with energy and resources use. Not to mention ensuring peace and stability so that the economic integration and economic growth continues. So what we need to do is obviously what we do in the region now we have to recognize that also has an impact globally. It's not just about us and our own region so our responsibility and our role in the global community of nations which is the theme of Indonesia's chairmanship of ASEAN this year. So how do we strengthen ASEAN cooperation in general as well as East Asia cooperation to manage the sparks if there are sparks in the geopolitical sense which I agree totally with Kishore. We should never take it for granted. There are sparks here and there. How do we manage it so we can ensure peace and stability in the region to ensure the economic growth, economic integration takes place. And then on the economic integration that would be my final point. Obviously what we do or don't do in the region in terms of economic integration hopefully it's open economic integration not closed block because there is you know the fear of that tendency is something we have to avoid. We have to show the way in the absence of a stronger multilateral deal then the region also needs to play a role to make sure that what we do in the region is not just for us but it's really to contribute globally. Dominic? Just a couple of things maybe building what people are saying. I think that it's going to be so important this conversion from export driven investment driven growth particularly in China but other countries to a more consumption driven and it's in all of our global interest that that happened quickly and smoothly or we're going to have problems with growth and I would put that in juxtaposition with underlying tensions. I mean I would love to see the numbers on trust. How much do the average middle class Japanese trust the Chinese versus the Indian. I'm just it's not a very popular thing to say but this underlying trust is vital because if you stop getting growth and then it's nice to go outside and have nationalism and so forth. And I think there's underlying tensions that are there and so I would just echo what's being said here to double down on the social social capital. How do we get much deeper understandings of the different societies there because that will be the I think the sort of the spark that can blow things if we don't have a nice shift from investment export driven to consumption driven. And if I could let me let me build on that because I think for the region it's important not to stay dependent militarily or economically to the West on the West. But this idea of social investment across the region that it's interesting to watch how Korea is increasingly investing in social issues in Southeast Asia. And if you look at the response to earthquake and tsunami in Japan the response privately has mostly been regional not from the West. And I think that's going to be critically important going forward that you know the the consumption based regional economy is important. But to Dominic's point so is the exchange of social capital and social support within the region because that that that's the third leg that builds a sustainable regional society. Kishore could we summarize the discussion in the following ways that we say the West you you made your first critical remark has a relatively high political homogeneity but big economic issues. And Asia has big economic potential but see danger of political disruptions and political tensions. Yes I mean you're right but just to balance that I mean you know when when wars do not happen when tensions do not rise you can just say it's accidental. Or you can also say it's a result of some fundamental forces at play. And I can tell you the one of the things I've learned about East Asia and this may be cultural by the way that there is a culture of what I call pragmatism and prudence when it comes to problem solving. So you may have a big fight between China and Japan over the fishing boat incident. And three months later somehow the Prime Minister of Japan meets the Prime Minister of China in some meeting G20 meeting and so on and so forth and tries to calm the waters. Similarly you've had problems on South China Sea things flare up and then they meet and try to come in. So I would say that they if you can keep if you if by the way if if you can keep this culture of pragmatism and prudence going then we will be able to manage the political challenges that you identified so correctly. Let me before we go to a more personal question. Let me just come up with one final question related to global and regional issues. It's a role of the G20. I mean Indonesia is a member of the G20. Japan is a member of the G20. How much does the G20 have the legitimacy and the capability in the present global situation to bring solutions to all the issues which were mentioned here. I see only embarrassed faces here. Let me take a try to answer your very difficult and I guess provocative question. I think it is still the best thing we have out there in terms of if you like the steering committee of the world economy at the moment. And there are things that can be achieved within the G20 framework. Although it's not the only mechanism and what needs to happen is obviously to ensure that there is representation enough representation in the room. Say for instance Indonesia in there. We are not just representing Indonesia. We're also representing ASEAN and so on. And ASEAN is also sitting there on its own right. And second how do you take what what leaders agree in G20 and make sure that there is the reality check with the business sector as well as other stakeholders. I think World Economic Forum has participated in what they call the B20. I think that's still that's an important input and of course implementation. A lot of the implementation has to happen in the IMF in the World Bank in the WTO as well as regional and national commitments. And it seems to me one of the big issues that will be discussed in November amongst others apart from the macro issue. One of the important macro issues in there which relates to what we were talking about earlier about energy security is the removal of fuel subsidies. That's been on the G20 agenda. This needs to be addressed. Second of course on financial sector architecture and correcting imbalances. That still is a key issue given the drift in the west as Kishore put it. I think we're not over the Eurozone crisis. We are not over the issue in the U.S. with their debt cap and whether they're going to get it or not. So the uncertainty in the world economic recovery is still going to be a big issue. The third issue is food security which has interestingly enough it started out as let's get at the commodity speculators. Now it's become a much wider agenda as it should be. And if we can get I think output out of that which is implement then taken to both global action regional action and national action. I think this this hopefully will provide the usefulness of G20. And I think the question out there for the finance and macro follow up you have IMF and you have the G20 finance ministers as a process. You don't have a similar follow up process for the other issues. So how do you get at that? Just maybe one final one. For God I'm a trade minister after all those thinking what you were saying earlier facing the rise of protectionism in the lack of progress of Doha. This is again going to be so important and how are we going to take that issue forward and what G20 leaders are going to say about that. We spoke about political issues and global issues, regional issues. But let me ask you now a very personal question. Should you wake up in the night? I mean and really we worried about societal developments. I mean is the global society going into the right direction? There are fundamental changes that are happening now. What is worrying you? We touched upon one which is the empowerment of use but other such disruptions which are worrisome or which may be great opportunities. Brian, do you want to start? Or Prime Minister? Yeah I think those again those issues are very much related and personally I think one of the key issue is the growing social disparity. Mongolia is one of the country which is really blessed with abundant mineral resources. And we think that we are talking about the Dutch disease and resource curse and many other challenges we have. And we would like to make it to solve to the benefit of the citizens and people of Mongolia to provide equal opportunity. And we have introduced, we have learned from others good experiences. We said that we don't need to reinvent the wheel in many cases and we learned from Norwegian good experience and Chilean experience and Alaskan fund issue. So we have introduced the stability fund we got in place. We got the human development fund. The government Mongolia has introduced. We got the investment development bank concept so that we channel all this wealth to the benefit of the people, to the benefit of solving the issues of disparities also by providing equal opportunities. So I think that's the growing social disparity is one of the key issue that countries need to look at on a national level and learn from others and work together internationally. You could turn it around and say disparity but what we need if you want to survive as a society is much more social inclusion. You are particularly in this area. What will issue? Well let me very quickly first say that both at the highest level and then maybe the most local level what worries me. The relevance of the G20 to me close to your earlier question is almost completely driven by the willingness of the original G7 to understand their changing role in the world. And it seems to me like there are multiple agendas within the G20 and I find it difficult therefore to have a G20 agenda. Side meetings, G7 meetings, the G8 meetings and then the G20 meetings. So that being said my experience is we've talked a lot about global issues and national issues. Inclusion starts at a very local level. Are we sustainable at a village level, at a prefecture level, at a state level? And what are we doing to build the infrastructure within local communities? Because what's interesting to me, we go back to the social media, young people aren't just connecting with themselves within country. They're connecting with each other across borders. And so social and economic conclusion is we are going to have to address at a very local level where people are living and the impact not just within country but across country. And I do think that, I made the point earlier that the policy of the U.S. Congress or the U.S. President can only go so far. He and they have to think outside of country if they're going to be successful within their own country. And I think it therefore takes legislative and business incentive around access to education, to power, to water. The forum on East Asian Vietnam, I was on a panel at the time with the head of the Philippines Water Authority. And he told the story of how he was running water pipe through very poor neighborhoods in Manila to get to industrial parks, commercial development. And he was dealing with his problem of everyone was stealing his water as it went through those neighborhoods. And he finally went into those neighborhoods and asked why people were stealing his water. And they just wanted access. They just wanted access to water and opportunity. And as soon as they changed their policy to start creating access into those poor neighborhoods, his efficiency went up dramatically. His profitability went up and he still got water to the industrial park. It's that level of micro-inclusion that then builds up to national policy and good global decision-making that I think sometimes we lose sight of. And people don't want that much. They just want that kind of access. That's a good response to the issue raised. But I want to know your personal worry in addition. My personal worry is that people in the world are, in terms of their thinking, their desire, their interaction, have gone way beyond our institutions. That our institutions are lagging where people are. And I mean that in terms of government business and NGOs. That technology has been part of it. But I think our institutions have to, even including mine, have to start operating much differently, much more flexibly, much more inclusively because I think the people have gotten beyond us. And it worries me. It worries me from an economic perspective and it worries me socially. So the incapability of our systems to cope with the complexity and with the new demands. I think our systems always lag kind of social need and social demand and economic demand. But I think the cycles in the world, economic, social, political cycles are so much faster today that we're lagging so much that we run the risk of big economic disruption, big social disruption. Keesha? No, actually I share Brian's worry significantly. In fact, what makes me up at night is the fear of not finishing my next book. Which, by the way, is on a subject that only you mentioned, by the way. You only use the two words, global governance. And it's a very, very boring term. Nobody wants to address it. But we live in a world where the demand for global governance, as demonstrated by what Brian just said, is growing exponentially. But the supply is diminishing because, as you mentioned, leaders are preoccupied with national challenges and not paying attention to global. So this disparity between supply of global governance and demand is, I think, a major global challenge that we face today. But the good news, by the way, is that there is a silver bullet. You can actually find a way of creating a relatively stable world order that carries on the kind of what I say relatively miraculous growth we've had the last few decades. And that silver bullet, if I put it in four words, is called the rule of law. And if you can create a single rule of law that applies equally to the most powerful countries in the world, as well as the smallest countries in the world equally, then you solve an incredible number of problems overnight, whether it's Israel, Palestine, none of us have touched upon it. Here, whether it's the South China Sea, whether it's the dispute with Japan over the fishing boat, whether it's the North Korean issue. The rule of law, if we begin to accept a single rule of law for the one time has come, basically, because you created a single human community across the globe. You now need to create a single rule of law. I think it can be done and that's what I hope we will try to achieve in the next 10 years. What I feel very important in this aspect is also to create global benchmarks. And I just want to draw your attention to the competitiveness report which we have published on Indonesia as a benchmark exercise. I recall about 10 years ago, Singapore scored number one in our global competitiveness report and I happened to visit Singapore at that time and I saw Prime Minister Go Chok Tong and I told him congratulations, Prime Minister, you are number one. And his reaction was yes, but in education we are only 16 at that time or whatever it was. And I have created the interministerial committee to see how we can improve. And I think he said what we should do, we should always take the best examples and to follow those. But Minister? Yeah, you asked the question about what is your personal response to what I suppose it's a personal gripe and a personal regret that this is opportunity lost. If we did this, we could really increase growth, reduce poverty, create jobs and reduce inequity, which is to unleash the potential of the largest emerging economy in the world of the size of $10 trillion. Do you know what is that size of, what is that emerging economy? It's women. It's $10 trillion is the amount women spend. And 90, if you take $1 income spent by women, 90% goes to the household. If you take men spending, only 50% goes to the household. And we have all kinds of numbers which show that if it's women who are managing the money, it goes to education, it goes to health, it reduces poverty, it increases human skills. And in the very powerful three years ago session on girl effect, if you provide equal opportunity for education for girls, they go into more gainful employment, they reduce unemployment and poverty. And another number, if you gender, mainstream gender into policy such as like community empowerment programs, you have to involve the women in the decision making. Otherwise, I had some experience before I became minister working in Africa on the UN millennium development goals. And if you gave the decision to men for instance in a village, if you had $100,000, what would you use it for? The men would say, okay, let's have a satellite dish so we can watch football. You give it to the women and say, okay, let's build pipes from the river to the village so we don't have to go every day 10 times to get water. So it's this reality. So I would say let's make sure government policy, business models provide equal opportunity for women and equal access. Because you are going to unleash unbelievable economic growth and at the same time create employment, reduce poverty and reduce inequities. What is your biggest worry at night? Is it your next quarterly statement? What is your biggest worry at night? Is it your next quarterly statement? I have to repeat what I said once again. In order for human beings to understand each other, because human being consists of rational power and irrational sentiment.  But without face-to-face communication each other, it's really difficult to understand deeply. Then the travel and tourism will be playing the most important role. I don't say so because I'm chairman of Japan Travel and Tourism Association as well. But even in my case, if I did not visit many countries I could not understand your history, your culture, your customs, which are very important for us to understand each other. So please visit Japan once again and please try to support Japan's recovery from the disaster. We welcome you with a spirit of traditional Japanese-style hospitality. This is my message. I can tell you, you know I visited your country five weeks ago to show my solidarity. And you never have been received better in Japan as you are now. Dominic? The thing I worry the most about is actually short-termism versus long-termism. You're actually your point about quarterly earnings. To me it's another example of how governance does not match fit. We've talked about national governance for global issues. I think that with technology and the media cycles there's a sense to be very, very short-term. The media cycle now is three times a day. It used to be ten years ago, three times a year. And for governments it's very difficult for elected governments to be able to think about dealing with long-term issues like education or even women empowerment, which I completely agree with. These are not things that you can do in your election cycle. If you're a business and you're trying to build new businesses, it typically takes seven to eight years to do it. It's difficult to do that if you're being measured in a short-term manner. That's something that worries me because some of these big issues and risks we have are long-term, but we have short-term biases in terms of how we deal with them, which will cause us challenge. Let me not be presumptuous and try to summarize, but maybe at the end I bring in a personal note. I have to say what worries me is how sustains on business leaders and political leaders to cope with the situation, the complexity of the situation. And I think when what wakes you up at night, I would say, nearly from my own experience, it's the hostess which says, so we are landing in 15 minutes because the world has become so complex. But if I would add a very personal note, one matter I'm very preoccupied with, I think we are going through a second revolution which cannot be compared with the industrial revolution. When we talk about the internet, we usually talk about the second or third industrial revolution. I think it's a revolution which is very similar to when the world or humanity became domesticated, which means we suddenly becoming trellors instead of hunters. And until now technological progress was mainly to create tools to do better, to increase what we are doing, to increase productivity. But if we look at the internet, the internet is more, it's a tool, but it's more than a tool. It has become parts of our own DNA as a government, as a business, as an individual, which means in some way we are outsourcing parts of ourselves. This raises a whole series of issues, a question of how much do we own ourselves. I mean how much is Google owning us now, or Facebook, or if you look at governments, WikiLeaks, and so on and so on. So we are not anymore in control of everything. So it's a part of our DNA which is now public. And this offers a great opportunity for mankind because we could say one part of our DNA, we could really share globally, and we could have the beginning of a new global civilization based on this major revolution which is happening. But of course it creates also a number of issues which we have to resolve, and for which key shore we have to take, we have to create a necessary legal framework how to handle those issues. I would like to thank the panelists on behalf of the audience. I think it was a very lively discussion. We touched most of the important issues. Some of those we will follow up in the discussions over the next 36 hours. So thank you very much for having been such active, lively contributors.


This study examines the use of massive open online courses, MOOCs, as a tool for training future teachers in media education. It analyzes existing online courses for the purpose of implementing media education activities into their practical work. Additionally, it assesses the potential of MOOCs in the formation of media and information competency among teachers. Finally, experimental verification will be conducted to measure the effectiveness of these courses in training media educators. This article was authored by L. P. Ostapenko and O. K. Soloviova.


So, I came across this story today on my subreddit. The title of this particular post on my subreddit over at r slash distro tube. The title reads, getting reeled for using a video to install Arch. So, I'm not going to read the whole post here, but he writes that he downloaded the March ISO of Arch Linux and he installed it in a virtual machine and he installed it using DT's older install videos, which were about two years ago. The last time I did a Arch Linux installation on camera, as far as the full installation, reading the wiki, was about two years ago, but that video is still relevant today. It still includes all the steps to install Arch Linux. So, he's followed my video and he's installed Arch at least once, maybe multiple times, I don't know, in virtual machines, maybe even on physical equipment and he was over on the Arch Linux subreddit over at r slash Arch Linux and someone, I guess, was asking about how to install Arch Linux as far as, you know, he didn't want to just use the wiki and the guy suggested, hey, go watch DT's videos, the DT Arch Linux installation video. Just follow that, you'll be fine. And he got a lot of backlash from that, from him suggesting to go watch a video of a Arch Linux installation rather than telling someone to go read the effing manual, right? Go read the wiki. If you're not installing Arch Linux the Archway by reading the wiki, you're doing it wrong. And the author of this post, he goes on to write, yeah, it's a great document, the Arch wiki, but I also think it's missing some steps. Some of the things DT did in his video are not on today's wiki, but I think DT was reading from the wiki while doing that installation. So in the last couple of years, they have changed the wiki, I think, and removed those steps. So the wiki is a living document, it's constantly being changed. People are adding stuff, deleting stuff.  Yeah, because the Arch Linux installation, the guide on the wiki is just that. It's a guide, but it's kind of a basic format, a basic template, a basic guideline to follow because Arch Linux is designed for you to install Arch Linux in whatever manner you so choose as far as you format the disk using whatever tool you want to format the disk with. They suggest F disk. But in my videos, some of my videos, I use CF disk, you could use CG disk or F disk or parted or whatever it is you want to use. Again, the wiki reads one thing, but that doesn't mean there's not 10 other ways you could also accomplish the same thing. So that's why in some of my videos, I do different things than what's in the wiki because they're using tools I'm not familiar with or they're suggesting tools to use that I'm not familiar with. So I use the tools that I'm familiar with. And sometimes I add extra steps that I think are important like I know, like the networking issue. So many people have problems, especially with Wi-Fi if you're installing on laptops. And a lot of times I cover things, extra steps that are not really mentioned in the Arch installation wiki, such as going ahead and installing network manager, because that really does kind of solve all of your networking problems, just installing that package. The author of this post he goes on to write, seriously, I'm getting a little perturbed with the fellows over at R slash Arch Linux for dumping on content creators like DT and others who provide a valuable service to the Arch Linux community. Well, I would agree in that regard. I do think that in many ways we do provide a valuable resource of more valuable assets to Arch Linux, the Arch Linux community. And really just Linux in general is because we're actually helping people get through these installations. Right. How many people do you think have probably installed Arch Linux by following along some of my videos? Hundreds, thousands, maybe tens of thousands. I don't know. A lot of people have installed Arch Linux following along with my video. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? Honestly, it's not necessarily a black and white kind of issue. I can understand why the Arch Linux guys have problems with people following guides that are not official guides as far as it's not from their website. It's not instructions that they control, right? The wickey is theirs. But, you know, if you're following along a video from DT, you're following an Arch Linux installation from a blog post, you know, that person could be giving you some very bad information that could be outdated information. Now, is it wrong to install Arch by using a video or a blog as your guide? Well, for me, I would say no, it's not wrong. As long as you understand the commands, the one thing I will stress, if you do not understand the commands that are being posted in that blog that you're reading, or if you don't understand the commands that DT is entering on his video, on his Arch installation video, that's a problem. If you don't understand every single command, you should go read the wiki, right? My video is to help speed up the process a little bit so you don't have to read as much. But I'm hoping you at least know what these commands do, right? So when I do the FDIS commands to partition the drive, you should know what those commands actually do. When I do the make file system command to make my file system, you should know what it does. Or when I install grub and then make the grub config, it's really important that you understand what that does. And the reason is sometimes you have to come back and do these steps again. Sometimes Linux installations, especially rolling release distributions like Arch Linux, sometimes they break. For example, grub is a package that sometimes will break and you will have to go back and reinstall grub and remake the grub config just exactly the way you did in the original Arch Linux installation, assuming you did it the Arch way. If you've never run through a Arch Linux installation, you never entered those commands yourself and actually knew what those commands meant. Then if you ever have to enter them down the road to fix a broken grub, for example, you're not gonna know what to do. So I'm all four people following my videos to install Arch Linux or following articles and blogs to install Arch Linux. As long as you know the commands, ultimately though, it's a good idea to always follow along with the ArchWiki and to constantly go and search for things in the ArchWiki. Anytime I have a problem I need to solve, there's some topic about Linux that I don't know much information about, I go search the ArchWiki. It's the best Wiki for Linux-y information, right? And Arch Linux, the whole distribution Arch Linux is really designed to teach you. Arch Linux is not designed just to be another Linux distribution everybody installs and it's just a great distribution. It is a great Linux distribution. But really Arch Linux, I believe a primary purpose of Arch Linux, especially the way the installation is laid out being a command line installation is designed for education, right? It's designed to actually teach you everything about Linux. And you miss out on a big part of the whole reason to use Arch Linux if you just skip over that educational process. Now of course, many Linux users don't actually wanna learn about Linux. They just wanna install an operating system and use it and that's fine. If you wanna install Arch Linux and you really don't wanna learn anything about it, that's fine but ask yourself this, since Arch Linux is really meant to teach you about Linux but you don't wanna learn about Linux, why are you trying to use Arch Linux? Like you're kind of using the wrong tool for what you wanna do. Why not install something like Manjaro or Arco or Garuda or Endeavor? All of these great Arch Linux based distributions that make Arch more user friendly, right? It's much more a new user friendly Arch Linux based distributions rather than trying to use something that's much more deep, much more involved and really is designed to make you have to learn and if you're not interested in it, again, you're probably installing Arch Linux for completely the wrong reasons and it kind of sets you up for a lot of heartache, a lot of pain because I see this all the time on distributions like Arch Linux, like Gen2. These are distributions that are for much more advanced users. You know, they're a little deep, right? They're a little involved. You really gotta get your hands dirty and get under the hood and do a lot of things at the command line with things like Arch and Gen2 and there are way too many people that are using those distributions because I see them post on help forms, things like that. There are way too many people using things like Arch and Gen2 that really have no idea about Linux in general, right? Because some of these people just followed a guy. They followed a video, a DT installing Arch or DT installing Gen2, they just entered the same commands and at the end of the day, yeah, they're running Arch, they're running Gen2 but they really don't know how to maintain it. They really don't know how to use it after the installation because the installation really is not the hard part about distributions like Arch or Gen2. It's actually using it from that point forward. It's maintaining it, right?  Now that being said, I have noticed that Arch Linux, their community, they've kind of softened their stance a little bit on the whole idea of Arch should only be installed using the command line installation process, rating the Arch wiki because now Arch Linux even has a easy installer. They have a guided installer called Arch install, all one word and it's pretty much like a standard Linux installation like an in-curses installer or whatever where you just go through a menu system or whatever, you choose some things and boom, you're done. Even Arch now offers a way for people to quickly install Arch without having to go through the Arch wiki and learning how to partition the drives and all of that. Ultimately, I wouldn't let people on the internet whether it be people in the Arch Linux subreddit or on Discord or IRC or wherever, people on the internet are just gonna act nasty sometimes and why do some of these people in like the Archforms, Arch subreddit, why do they clown on people for installing Arch the wrong way? Well, a lot of these people are just internet trolls. You find internet trolls everywhere on the internet. Arch Linux is no different, right? There's gonna be some people that just hang out on these forums and these subreddits that just wanted to degrade other people and you installing Arch, I guess, the wrong way gives them an excuse to be mean and nasty to you, right? And they do that because for whatever reason their lives are kind of messed up in some way. They really kind of hate their own lives and they wanna make other people feel miserable to maybe help prop themselves up in some way. There's a lot of damaged people out there in the world. This is not an Arch Linux problem, right? That's just the nature of society in general and of course, that's the nature of the internet. So don't let those kinds of people color Arch Linux the community the wrong way, right? They're giving Arch Linux a really bad rep that I don't think it deserves. And of course, in every community, you've got your gatekeepers. Some of these people, some of these people that give you the RTFM and you didn't install Arch the right way, they're just gatekeepers because they installed Arch the Arch way back in the day and they wanna maintain their little special club and if other people can install Arch in some other ways, maybe some easier ways, then it doesn't seem like they're as special. You know, they're not as elite, right? And that is a problem for some people, but again, you have gatekeepers in every community. All in all though, I don't think this is an issue. However you wanna install Arch Linux, whether it be following the Wiki, following one of my videos, following somebody's blog post, you make your own choices in that. The only thing I would say is if you're doing Arch the command line way, absolutely make sure you understand every command you entered during the installation. You should never enter a command at the command line if you don't know what that command does because potentially somebody could be posting something on the internet as a Arch Linux installation guide, but it's really damaging your machine or it's installing some kind of malware. You never know, right? You never know. So make sure you understand each and every command. Other than that, I don't care how you get Arch Linux installed. As long as you get it installed and you're happy, go with it. Now before I go, I wanna thank a few special people. I wanna thank the producers of this episode. Gabe James Maxim, Mahomi's Too Bald, Matt Mimic, Mitchell, Paul, Role West, Armored Dragon, Bash Potato, Chuck Commander, Ingrid George, Lee Methos, Nate, Erion, Paul, Bees Orch, Mdore, Polytech, Reality's for Less Red Prophet, Roland, Tools, Devler, William, Zenibet. These guys, they're my highest tiered patrons. Over on Patreon, without these guys, this little rant about installing Arch Linux, the Arch way, it wouldn't have been possible. The show's also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen, all these names you're seeing on the screen right now. These are all my supporters over on Patreon. I don't have any corporate sponsors. I'm sponsored by you guys, the community. If you like my work and wanna see more videos about Linux and free and open source software, subscribe to DistroTube over on Patreon. All right guys, peace.


Chinese mercenaries are fighting for Russia in Ukraine. Chinese mercenaries are fighting for Russia in Ukraine according to a video shared by a Russian military blogger on social media. The footage shared by Russian military correspondent Pavel Kukushin on his telegram channel shows two men sitting opposite each other at a table communicating in Russian and Chinese via a voice electronic translator. Newsweek reported about this. There is no language barrier. A volunteer for the People's Republic of China communicates with the commander of the Piat-Nachka International Brigade using an online translator wrote Kukushin. Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly been under increasing pressure to take a more aggressive approach to his war against Ukraine and introduce a full-scale mobilization in the country to bolster its manpower and has for months been targeting citizens of Cuba, Armenia and Kazakhstan of former Soviet Republic bordering Russia through various means. The Chinese unit in the Piat-Nachka Brigade is growing. More and more Chinese are constantly arriving. Our Chinese brothers have also come to us, a Russian serviceman said in the video published by Kukushin. Ukraine's military intelligence directorate has claimed that Russia has recruited mercenaries from Syria to fight in Ukraine while the Ukraine National Resistance Centre, which is run by the Ukraine government's special operations forces, said Malaysians have also been spotted fighting for Russia in the occupied Donetsk region. Some Indian citizens recruited by Russia told AFP that they were promised roles that wouldn't involve fighting on the front lines. But when they arrived in Russia, they were trained to use weapons including Kalashnikov assault rifles and deployed to Ukraine. We have got some of them out and are working on getting the rest out now. India's Ministry of External Affairs told the Financial Times. Konstantin Sonin, a Russian-born political economist from the University of Chicago, previously told Newsweek that Putin is likely deterred from announcing an open mass mobilization because the propaganda narrative that he and his entourage are pushing is that Russia is not waging a war but is conducting a limited-scale military operation. Russia keeps new T-14 tank, Su-57 out of Ukraine, over reputational damage fears. Russia has touted the new T-14 Armata as a highly advanced and formidable tank for dominating the modern battlefield. Yet there has been no evidence it has seen action in Ukraine or that it has even been deployed there for that matter, according to Business Insider. The publication says that Moscow has also sidelined another much celebrated asset, the supposedly fifth-generation Su-57 fighter jet raising the question of why the Russian military would leave top weapons behind. The answer, per a new Western intelligence assessment, is that the Kremlin likely fears the reputational damage of losing one of its T-14s in combat. The Russians have described the next-generation T-14 main battle tank, which was introduced in 2015 as cutting-edge weaponry, featuring new technology and automated functions like a remotely operated cannon, sophisticated sensors, onboard drones and defence against anti-tank weapons. The emergence of the Armata initially sparked concerns among some Western analysts who worried that it might rival NATO tanks like the M1 Abrams, Leopard 2 or Challenger 2. But years into its development, the T-14 program remains plagued by problems such as manufacturing issues, delays and a reduction in fleet size, all while the tank's reliability has also been called into question. Russia's first Guards Tank Army was supposed to receive the T-14 in 2021 and Moscow was even considering deploying the tanks to Ukraine at one point in early 2023. Kiev has denied Moscow's claims about the tank's involvement and said it hasn't seen any Armata's in battle consistent with the UK's assessment. According to Business Insider, the relationship between the T-14 and the Ukraine war bears similar hallmarks to what British intelligence and aviation experts have previously said about the Su-57, which is Russia's highly touted first attempt at a fifth-generation fighter jet, the kind of aircraft that should be able to make a difference in a war like Ukraine. Russia is highly likely prioritising avoiding the reputational damage, reduced export prospects and the compromise of sensitive technology which would come from any loss of the Su-57 over Ukraine, Britain's Defence Ministry said earlier. I am sure that thanks to people like you, as I said, sooner or later, at least on the spiritual level, unification will happen. This is inevitable, Putin said at the meeting with the participants of the festival. Putin stressed that it is necessary to eradicate everything that prevents this. This is prevented by the most disgusting manifestations of nationalism. This is a disaster that poisons the lives of many peoples including Ukraine today. He refers to the large number of flashpoints in the world said that any war and any hostilities are a tragedy. Yes, indeed, the situation is difficult. There are many problems and many flashpoints, he told. Here, we have a conflict with our neighbours nearby. Hostilities are underway. Could it be more problematic? Putin continued. This is always a tragedy when people fight each other. People die. After all, they get injured and so on, he added. Putin has lambasted the West's double standards in regards to conflicts around the world. Putin recalled at a meeting with participants of the World Youth Festival that the United States took action in Iraq, Syria and former Yugoslavia without the UN Security Council's approval. Well, if they have permission, why are not other countries allowed to protect their vital interests in the same manner? He asked rhetorically. The Russian President told the meeting how the West justified its bombardment of Yugoslavia. My counterparts used to tell me repeatedly, well, yes, we did it without the UN Security Council's resolution. But the war had been raging there for so many years. Eight years of bloodshed in Donbas. Something had to be done. Putin recounted the words of his counterparts.


I am Richard Henry Lee, and I and my family were intimately involved in the events, trials, and ideologies that led up to that momentous year of 1776. The Lee family was one of the first families of Virginia, and Virginia was the most powerful English colony in the New World. It is no wonder that the Lees left a lasting mark on what became the United States of America. I and my brothers are the fourth generation of American Lees. Our great-grandfather emigrated from England. Now, there's a family legend that was perpetuated into my father's day that we are actually descended from a Norman knight that came over with William the Conqueror and participated in the conquest of England. Some versions of the legend even say we're descended from William himself. Well, I'm not sure there's actually any truth to that myth. It is true, however, that the name Lee comes from the old French De Lager, meaning of the law. So that would seem to suggest Norman influence, though more likely the name of a judge than a knight. The Lees have always been businessmen and entrepreneurs. One such ancestor was a wine merchant who sold wine to the crown. Royals are, of course, notorious for not discharging their debts. Instead of paying him in silver, the King gave him worthless land in the New World. My great-grandfather came to Virginia in 1640 to claim those thousand acres. There was enough property to place him on the Virginia Council of State, the governing body of the new colony. Since that time, the Lees have been a part of the ruling aristocracy. Even though the family had been transplanted to the colonies, we still maintained close ties with England. And why shouldn't we? After all, we were an English colony and England had a voracious appetite for tobacco. Over the following generations, a whole fleet of ships took lead tobacco to every corner of the empire. A part of thinking of ourselves as displaced Englishmen meant that the sons of prominent families in Virginia were educated in England. For our family, Eaton was the school. Well, at least that's where the oldest son went. My brother Philip Ludwell went to Eaton while my brother and I attended Wakefield. By the time my education was complete, my parents had died and my eldest brother Philip, or Colonel Phil, as we called him, was the head of the household. Since I had no interest in farming or commerce, we agreed that I should go into public service. My brother secured me a position as Justice of the Peace for Westmoreland County. However, Augustine Washington, George Washington's older brother, had planned to retire from the House of Burgesses and his seat would be open and he suggested that I run for it. I did and I won. My brother Francis Lightfoot Lee won the seat for Ludon County. Colonel Phil was already a member. When I walked into my first session of the House of Burgesses flanked by my two brothers, I joined eight other cousins and in-laws. We formed the largest voting block in the Assembly, often controlling more than 10% of the vote. At the time of my entry into the House of Burgesses in 1758, we here in the colonies were still at war with French. However, the capture of Fort Duquesne in September that year ended the immediate threat to Virginia and the British victory at the Battle of Quebec the following year all but ended the conflict in North America. The problem, of course, is that it had been a very expensive war and Parliament was looking for a way to pay for it. Since much of the conflict had taken place in the New World, they turned their eye to the American colonies. Even though they couldn't hope to conquer or rather cover the national debt of the Empire with taxes on the colonies, they could hope to cover some of the expenses of keeping a standing army here in the colonies. What was the Parliament's solution? The Sugar Act. The Sugar Act was a bill set to replace the Molasses Act of 1733. You don't need to know all that. What you need to know is the way that Americans had gotten around the old Molasses Act was simply to smuggle molasses and sugar, which they largely turned into rum. You see, Parliament had a policy of what Edmund Burke called salutary neglect. Enforcing the law took four times as much money as the tax brought in, so they didn't bother. The problem with the New Sugar Act is while it lowered the tax in an effort to make the colonists more willing to pay it, it provided more funds for enforcement of the act, therefore making it difficult to smuggle. And this at a time when the colonies were entering into a post-war economic depression and everyone was desperately in need of a dram of rum. Americans protested this act by simply refusing to buy British luxury goods. This in turn made British merchants lose money, and so they petitioned Parliament for the repeal of the Sugar Act. Next, Parliament tried a different tactic when they passed the Stamp Act. The Stamp Act was an act requiring that a government tax stamp be affixed to various different paper products. So a newspaper, a deck of playing cards, marriage license, legal document, these all would require that a tax be paid so that a stamp might be affixed to the product before it was sold. On the surface there may seem to be very little difference between these two acts, but in fact, they were radically different. The Sugar Act was a tariff. It was an act designed to regulate commerce and trade, perfectly legal for Parliament to pass. The Stamp Act, on the other hand, was a direct tax on domestically produced and consumed items. It's understandable that Parliament might say you need to pay a duty on that imported barrel of molasses, but it is another thing entirely for them to say you have to pay a tax in order to sell a newspaper that you printed on your own press with your own paper in your home colony. It is the birthright privilege of every British subject that he cannot be taxed but by the consent of a Parliament in which he is represented by persons chosen by the people and who themselves pay a part of the tax they impose upon others. I wrote a set of resolutions related to the Stamp Act and presented them to the gentlemen of Westmoreland County. Three of my brothers and four Washington sign on February 27, 1766, a decade before the Declaration of Independence, Westmoreland County declared that Parliament had no right to extend such a jurisdiction over it. Because of the public protests and pressure from British merchants, the stay-at-back was repealed almost as quickly as it went into effect. In the years that followed, however, Parliament continued to try to apply direct revenue duties to the colonies. In May of 1769, George Mason proposed a resolution in the House of Burgesses that only the governor and the authorized legislature would authorize to tax the colonists of Virginia. The royal governor responded by dissolving the House of Burgesses. Protests continued, and the following year on March 5, they erupted into violence as British soldiers opened fire on a crowd of protesting citizens, killing five and what would become known forever as the Boston Massacre. Even then, Parliament would not fully relent. They removed all the duties but won the tea tax. This led to protests all along the North Atlantic seaboard, but the most famous one happened on December 16, 1773, in Boston, the Boston Tea Party. 342 chests of tea were thrown into Boston Harbor. That's enough tea to make 18 and a half million cups. The British responded by closing the port of Boston and passing what became known to the colonies as the Intolerable Acts. These acts allowed for British officials and American offenders, both, to be tried in England for crimes committed here. They also updated the Quartering Act, allowing red-coat soldiers to occupy unused buildings. Other colonies started sending food and supplies by wagon to the people of Boston and continued to boycott British goods. One of the problems we faced was the fact that groups in each colony were acting independently from one another, although many like-minded individuals from all across the colonies had been writing letters for a decade through committees of correspondence. It was sometimes faster to communicate between Williamsburg and London than between Williamsburg and Boston. So in a letter to Samuel Adams in June of 74, I proposed a Continental Congress. That September, 55 delegates from 12 colonies met in Philadelphia for seven weeks. We agreed to a ban on British goods and resolved to draft a petition to the King asking for the repeal of the Intolerable Acts and the removal of troops from Boston City. Indeed, we declared all acts passed by Parliament since 1763 to be in violation of the rights of British citizens of America. I suggested that the American colonies armed themselves to prepare for possible military conflict. This the moderates would not compel to agree with. The drafting of the petition to His Majesty fell to John Adams and myself. I have heard that when the King saw it, he sneered, complimented its eloquence and then laid it aside. A fortnight later, he rejected it and ordered Parliament to halt trade, arrest protesters and protect loyalists. Parliament, knowing that some reconciliation might still be possible, instead issued a pardon for repentant rebels. But not for myself. Patrick Henry, George Washington, John Hancock, all the Adamses. Indeed, we would be captured if possible, hanged and then drawn and courted. The most important thing that was decided by the first Continental Congress, however, is that there would be a second Continental Congress the following May. Just before we drew together to meet, war broke out. On April, 1917, 75, the shot heard round the world rang out Lexington Green in Massachusetts. Suddenly my suggestion of a few months earlier that the colonies armed themselves as prepared for war seemed like a sensible precaution. In the following months, the representatives from the 13 colonies began to think and act more like a nation. Though New England militias were adopted into a new Continental Army, the colonies began to send troops to the side and George Washington was named Commander-in-Chief. In the meantime, each of the colonies had to decide how to react to the growing conflict. Many colonies held conventions to draft new frames of government and to propose resolutions to safeguard the life, liberty, and property of their citizens. The Revolutionary Virginia Convention was held in May of 1776 and they passed a resolution instructing Virginia's delegates, such as myself, in the Continental Congress to propose to that respectable body to declare the United Colonies free and independent. I then returned to Congress and on June 7th I proposed the following resolution. Resolved that these United Colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved, that it is expedient, fourth-width, to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign alliances, that a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective colonies for their consideration and approbation. As I finished uttering those words, the most important words I had ever uttered in front of the most important men in America was their cheering, with their rounds of hazzah. No, my resolution was met with deafening silence. Everyone was afraid to speak. The thing that we had discussed and whispered about for so long was suddenly out in the light of day, but who would claim it? Even the Massachusetts delegation refused to commit. Oh, John and Samuel Adams were strongly behind me, but other members of their delegation came from small towns and didn't think the time was ripe for declaring separation. Five colonies stood in favor of independence of five colonies against, with the other three undecided. I decided it would be best to postpone the vote and debate until July 2nd. And in the meantime, I went to work trying to convince those worthy gentlemen to follow the path that they knew was the right one. One unexpected ally I had in this was my sister, Alice. She had married a prominent Philadelphia physician, Dr. William Shippen, and her lavishly stock table and wine cellar went a long way to convincing many delegates. The question was not whether, by declaration of independence, we should make ourselves what we were not, but whether we should declare a fact that already existed. When Congress finally voted, 12 states voted for American independence with only New York abstaining. Immediately after the vote, I returned to Virginia, let people like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and John Adams finish the work. The Lees of Virginia had made their mark. I was asked today to speak a little bit about my personal background as well as tell the story of the events leading up to the June 7th resolution. However, I have a few minutes before my next engagement and I know some citizens have posted queries to me in correspondence, so why don't I answer some of those? First question from a follow new winning of Quincy, Massachusetts. And he writes, Mr. Lee, you have said that the Stamp Act was a turning point in your relationship between the mother country and the colonies, yet I understand you actually applied for the position of stamp collector for the colony of Virginia. Would you care to comment on that? Oh my, thank you for bringing that up. It was just as embarrassing the first time it was brought up. The Stamp Act was first proposed in 1764 or more precisely when the Sugar Act was passed, Parliament suggested that they would consider a stamp tax in the colonies. There was at that time opposition to the Sugar, to the Stamp Act as there was to the Sugar Act, but no one could anticipate the intensity that that opposition would take. Even Benjamin Franklin, who is in London, acting as an agent for the colonies, saw no harm in recommending a close friend of his to be the stamp agent in Pennsylvania. Now please keep in mind that this is more than 10 years before the first shots of fire at Lexington and Concord. In our minds, we were still English. This was not the first position I had applied for under the auspices of the Crown. I applied for the position of stamp collector for three reasons. First, it would be best to have a man of honesty and integrity in such a position so as to fairly levy the tax. Second, such an important position may offer opportunity for other advancements. And thirdly, it promised to be a lucrative posting. What I did not initially realize was the deeper implications of such a tax upon the American body. Upon further reflection, I came to realize that this represented a gross overreach on the part of Parliament, exercising an unwarranted and unconstitutional right upon the colonies. However, by the time I realized that my letters of application had already set sail, I had no way to withdraw my name from consideration. As fortune would have it, the post was not to be mine. Instead, the position went to an ally of Speaker Robinson, one George Mercer. Captain Mercer then proceeded to publish not one, but two letters in the Virginia Gazette exposing me as a failed applicant and calling me out as a hypocrite for now speaking out against the Stamp Act. I did whatever any decent, or I think gentlemen or man would do, I apologize. I wrote a letter to the Virginia Gazette in which I said something to the effect of, it was but a few days after my letters applying for the collector's job was sent away that reflecting on the nature of the application I had made, the impropriety of an American being concerned in such an affair struck me in the strongest manner and produced a fixed determination to prevent the success of a measure I now discovered to be in the highest degree pernicious to my country. I consider that to err is certainly the portion of humanity but that it was the business of an honest man to recede from error as soon as he had discovered it. That should have been the end of the matter. However, it was not. My younger brother Arthur had just returned from England and the continent where he had received not one, but two medical degrees. Though we had not laid eyes on each other in years, we had maintained a very close relationship through correspondence. I had kept him abreast of all the things that had been going on here in his home colony. So incensed was he by Captain Mercer's harsh criticism that he challenged him to a duel. Captain Mercer was a war veteran who'd fought alongside George Washington in the French and Indian War. He was also known to be a deadly marksman. My brother Arthur on the other hand had not to my knowledge ever fired a pistol let alone hit anything with one. Yet there he stood on a bluff overlooking the Rappahannock as the sun was coming up at five o'clock in the morning quite ready to die to defend his brother's honor. Captain Mercer never came. The captain later said that he had been delayed and by the time he got there, Arthur was no longer present. I found out long after the fact that the truth of the matter was our mutual friend George Washington had intervened and asked Captain Mercer to spare my brother's life. I went forward with my publishing at the Westmoreland Results and George Mercer was forced to resign his post amid violent protests. Shall I another one? Here we go. This is Constance Winther from Charlestown, South Carolina. She writes, Mr. Lee, being a Virginia, yes I am, and being so intimately involved with the cause of independence, you must have worked closely with Patrick Henry. Can you describe your relationship with him? Well, let me tell you about the first time I ever met Patrick Henry. I hadn't been in the assembly for a few years and had established myself as a prominent voice in my family's faction. The speaker of the house was John Robinson. He was an extremely popular politician who had been in that position for a number of years. He was also the treasurer of the colony. As you can well imagine, vesting a single individual with both of those important roles left much of the power of the government of Virginia in the hands of just one man. Speaker Robinson was also a partner in the Loyal Land Company, which controlled the South Bank of the Ohio River and conflicted with the Ohio Land Company on the North Side, a company that my brothers and I were founding members of. Since we were enemies in business, we were necessarily also enemies in politics. For Speaker Robinson would not hesitate to give preferential treatment to his friends and allies over us. So I rose in the House of Burgesses and proposed that the offices of Speaker and Treasurer be separated. It was at this point that a disheveled looking man of about my own age stood up from where he was on one of the back benches and seconded my motion. At this time, the only real political division between the Burgesses was the split between the Tidewater aristocrats in the eastern part of Virginia and the upland farmers and back woodsmen from the Piedmont Hills to the west. 35 of Virginia's 56 counties were in the Tidewater region and 21 were upland. Obviously these two different geographic reasons would have different needs. They were also made up of different minded individuals. Most of us from the Tidewater region had inherited our property. We were there ruling Virginia by right of birth. Those from the upcountry had carved an existence out of wilderness. They were there by tenacity of spirit. We were also separated by a mode of dress. For the Tidewater aristocrat we wore morning clothes, black, somber clothing and the very finest quality but very plain with our hair or wigs powdered, much like those paintings that you sometimes see on the walls of important people's homes. If you were from the frontier, you probably were wearing your Sunday best which really frankly wasn't very good. The disheveled looking young man who stood up to second my motion that the offices of Speaker and Treasurer Beesundered was even less well put together than his brethren. As a matter of fact, he looked so ragged that when he came to the first session the centuries actually stopped him at the gate. It was not until he had presented his official papers and certificate of election that they grudgingly let him enter the building for the proceedings. And of course that man's name was Patrick Henry. He seconded my motion and the motion passed dealing a substantial blow if not a mortal one to the power of Speaker Robinson and the old guard. It turns out that Mr. Henry and I saw eye to eye on a number of things. Despite our very different backgrounds that began a lifelong friendship based on respect and mutual admiration. Even though the events of the summer of 1776 were momentous, that wasn't the beginning of the story nor was it the end. The fight for freedom is an ongoing struggle. One that must be faced by each successive generation. Though my generation may have declared independence, fought tyranny and formed the union, it's up to you to carry on that fight.