President of France. You have received me this famous old office. Yes. Yes. We saw how well you look when you spend it for the gentleman's son. Yes. You look very fit in full form. I see that they are still under the same iron hand. That's Mary Nasserini ruling every now and then. Yes. That's Mary Nasserini. She's the general of the press. I've been putting money on the cabinet. I don't think so. What's going on? I don't think this is... You have to be very careful. You're going to be sent to the street. You need to be very careful. You need to be very careful. You need to be very careful. You need to be very careful. I think that we might learn something from the French because they've been able to get their hostages back from Iran. Might you be discussing with the President how they succeeded? Well, I don't know whether we'll have time in our meetings all the time to talk about it. Yes, I'd be interested. Mr. President, what kind of message do you hope to convey to the ethnic leaders you're going to meet with at Chicago tomorrow? What message are you going to take there? Well, it's going to be a message about the part they play in America how we're probably the most unique country in the world in that regard, that we are all of us. We came from someplace else. Mr. President, do you have any understanding of what is happening in the Soviet Union with the Politburo meeting and Mr. Shepard Nazi's abrupt departure? I would be hesitant to guess, but it seems to me that there is some controversy there among the government figures about proposals that the general secretary has made. I imagine that's what they're going to talk about. Are you hoping that the general secretary is successful in quieting the country? Yes, because I think most of the things he's suggested are in truth very good and very progressive. Mr. President, do you really have the hope to bring up the issue of chemical weapons? And why did you change your position in France on the destruction of the security staff? I wanted to contribute to a general agreement on the real cessation of chemical work. You know that there are already conventions on this subject, but I think they haven't been respected. So it's necessary to end with this. On the other hand, I think it's good to say that for France to hold on to the position I indicated we are maintaining the position in the future when this future can be determined in the future. And it's already a necessary clarification I think in the future. Cameron, this way please. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes, here are the progress that you have made for the last year. It was made remarkable with the reaction of the United Nations and since the members of the jury of the Nobel Prize have decided to make their choice on the United Nations to make the specification that they would approve of this education that it is an effort to favor the jury and not the members of the jury. So I don't know what the members of the jury are deciding what they are saying. I would like to thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Great coming here. You said that I think it was a fine decision. Stephanie, thank you very much. Ok. Hello, hello, hello. This way please. This way please. Hello. Hello. Thank you. This is the presidential parliament. Althea. Althea's. And Petunia's. You know them better than I do. That's an L. That's an L. That's a L. I didn't see how it was connected to the main body. It was to the central wing. I think we'd better get in the wire. I think we'd better get in the wire. You are right. This is the... The early days used by the... The president was here. He was the president of the private residence. He was the chairman. He was in his cellar. They copied this room. Yes, yes. That's the idea. It's a very famous room. It's very famous room. It can be anything. It can be anything. It's the room of the prime minister. It's the room of the prime minister. It's the room of the prime minister. Mr. President, gentlemen, I could we begin maybe with a discussion of East-West relations and perhaps I could start by providing a brief summary of our meetings last week with the Soviet Foreign Minister. Our discussions with Chevernadze last week were cordial and useful and covered our full agenda. Overall, the talks produced no breakthroughs. We had little new to add on the START Treaty, which you know is the name for the strategic missile treaty, where we're trying to work out a 50 percent reduction in those weapons. Or on the defense or space talks, but on nuclear testing I think we're close to completing the verification protocol for the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty. And we hope to finish this and a similar protocol for the Freshhold Test Ban Treaty this year. He asked that we take seriously Gorbachev's proposal to convert Krasnoyarsk to an international space station. And we don't think this is an acceptable solution to that problem. It is a violation of the ABM Treaty. And it would be too easy, say even if he didn't, but in some successor, use that again in the way that it violates the treaty in spite of their proposing that it be something for tracking space. There was a spirit of exchange on regional issues, but no real surprises. On CSCE, the Soviets are anxious to conclude the Vienna review meeting. And they told us they would drop their demand to exclude fighter aircraft from the mandate for new conventional talks. But we need a balanced outcome in Vienna, which shows progress on human rights, and we're prepared to stay in Vienna until we get one. Last year we told the Soviets what it would take before we could consider their proposal for a human rights conference in Moscow, and they've begun to meet a few but not all of our conditions. We appreciate that Mr. Gorbachev is pushing an ambitious domestic reform program in his country. We don't know whether he'll succeed, nor do we know what this all means for western security. And looking at Soviet internal changes, we mustn't lose sight of what really counts, whether there be any real and elastic change in their defense programs. In New York on Tuesday I met with all the NATO foreign ministers and representatives from Japan and Australia and South Korea. I think we came into an agreement that the western alliance was in good shape, and that we must continue as we have for 40 years to work together. There are some difficult decisions that will have to be made. Conventional weapons, arms control, burden sharing, and weapons modernization. In particular, NATO will have to tackle the short-range nuclear force modernization. The Conference of the Secretaries of the 1925 General Protocol and other interested parties to spread the international norms against the use of chemical weapons. And I understand that all NATO countries have endorsed this idea as well. Mr. President, would France, because it is the depository of the Geneva Protocol, consider the relationship with the cause of our change? Can the build on its growth and prosperity be enjoyed?


That's good y'all, it's your boy Ross. Back again with another video. So I'm gonna check out AEW just potentially ended itself. WWE reactions to AEW CM Punk of backstage footage and the whole targeting of Triple H by Will Osprey on his promo last night on Dynamite and other wrestling related news. This should be very interesting. Obviously, this is a trending topic right now. What AEW Dynamite pulled off last night. A lot of people are saying this is the beginning of the end. Me personally, I don't know if this is the beginning of the end, but it's not looking too good. They're gonna have to do something to kind of change their trajectory right now because the general perception of AEW at this present moment, it's not looking too good. So we're gonna check this out. Appreciate all love, support. Let's get right into this one, man. What is going on guys? It is WrestleMania here. Back with another video. Join us now as we look at the most controversial episode of AEW Dynamite, as well as the wildest news stories and rumors you need to know, including why AEW just ended itself. Why this was not a good idea. Ross Bray takes a shot at Triple H. AEW looks to have regret ever doing this. WWE's reaction backstage. A WWE star still not signed. WWE scaling back sets and much more. Be sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell for daily wrestling videos and follow us on Facebook for exclusive lists. Also check out our new videos on WrestleMania XL. As always, we won't recap the show, but just look at the good, the bad, and oh boy, they're downright ugly. As always, we start off with the good at more words, Swerve Strickland and Joe Heat. AEW is doing many things wrong, but not for its build up for Swerve Strickland versus Samoa Joe. Last night's brawl between Swerve and AEW World Champion turned up the heat in their already sizzling program, adding anticipation for their clash at Dynasty. Number two, Jericho Hooks. I definitely did enjoy that. I watched that. I've been loving what they've been doing with Joe and Samoa Joe and Swerve Strickland. I've been loving what they've been doing with them. I just think they should be, that should be the focus right there. They have something in Samoa Joe and Swerve. Focus more on that instead of everything else. This is a big, big time match and they have something there. I just feel like they're dropping the ball with that. I mean, what they did was cool, but I just think if they would have put that more energy into this feud that they got going on, I think it could be even better. So that's just my personal take on it. But I love what they're doing so far, but they need to focus on that. storyline takes a twist. All Jim Ross wasn't around to say it. It looks like business is about to pick up on the ongoing storyline between Hook and Jericho. Jericho Hook may crash on takeoff if things continue like they did this week when a mistake caused Jericho Hook and Shibata after Shibata missed his opponent and leveled the Ocho. Judging from the match's finish, Hook may opt to team with Shibata instead of Jericho and this could even turn out to be a ploy by one or both wrestlers to embarrass Jericho. Number three, Julia Hart, a beacon of hope. Julia. I'll be honest with y'all, not really, not too invested in what they got going on there. That's just my personal opinion. Maybe some of y'all are, but I just, just haven't really been that invested. Haven't really been that invested in what Jericho's been doing for a while now actually. Hart is a rare beam of light in AEW's otherwise bleak women's division. Hart's promos and ring work are entertaining and she's must see television, a rarity in both women's division and AEW itself. Although Julia Hart is too young to be leading AEW's women's division, she continues to show that it's only a matter of time before she does and an exciting ride. Pentale Zero versus Adam Copeland was an exciting ride that did we say it had AEW fans on the edge of their seats? While Pentale is best known for his tank team work, AEW has established him as a viable singles competitor, so this was a match where Pentale was presented as a threat, even if fans knew AEW was unlikely to take the title off Copeland so soon. That was a good, what about the bad? It's number one, the whisper bit has to go. What did Tremper rather whisper to Chris Stathlander backstage? Well, who cares? Once again, professional wrestling has found a way to take a clever idea, creating suspense by showing a wrestler whispering into another wrestler's ear and running into the ground by using it over and over again. I like how he said, well, who cares? Give a fuck? That's the thing, if you're gonna do something like that, it gotta be a storyline or a feud or a situation that people are already, they've sunk their teeth into it, they're invested. No one's gonna really care that much if you whisper into someone's ear and no one heard it if they're not invested in the characters.  W's Brody King conundrum. A Brody King is apparently ready to take Adam Copeland's TNT championship. The problem is that while King has all the goods to be a top star, size, look, and in-ring ability, his continued portrayal as one of AEW's many big men jobbers makes it impossible to take him as a threat to Copeland. Number three, another worthless show. Last night show was an example of how AEW can take advantage of a hook. Here, AEW likely hoped it could attract laps fans and new fans with the promise of the CM Punk footage and get them in to check out the AEW product. Unfortunately, the majority of Last Night Show was as disappointing as a Punk footage turned out to be. Last Night Show was another forgettable edition of Dynamite and even worse, AEW was so desperate to have you wonder if they booked Dustin Rhodes versus Samoa Joe to capitalize on Cody's recent big win at WrestleMania. That's what I kind of felt like, too. When I saw that, I was like, huh, huh. We got Dustin going against Samoa Joe, who's the champion. We just saw Cody damn near go against all the Samoans that are in WWE right now. Hmm. Very interesting, very interesting. Wasn't a bad match, but it was just the timing of it. It felt like, yeah, the timing of that, the Rhodes brothers trying to go for the top championship. Yeah, you could tell, just a bit. That was the good and the bad. What about the downright ugly? Oh, you know it. It backfired badly. AEW did it. The promotion, which has been in a downward spiral for the last 18 months, finally achieved its version of the finger poke of doom by airing the footage of CM Punk's backstage altercation with Jack Perry at last summer's All In Paper View. Airing the footage seemed like a bad idea, but AEW found a way to make it even worse by trying it to turn it into an angle to build up the Bucks versus FTR match at Dynasty. Having the young Bucks insinuate FTR was behind the punk Harry incident as a ploy to gain an edge over them at All In was absolutely asinine. Actually, this move was worse than the finger poke of doom and seems more like a combination of that and the dreadful decisions that led to David Arquette and Vince Russo becoming WCW champion. And this is clear that WWE is in a new era, while AEW is in a WCW era. What do you guys think of AEW Dynamite last night? Let us know in the comments down below. I saw a lot of people comparing them to WCW.  We're not promo segment with the video footage that was released. You can just tell he just looked like just dejected.  He just looked out of it, which I completely understandable because why? This does nothing. You essentially buried technically. You buried technically Jack Perry that's still on your roster.  And then the whole situation of you was fearing for your life, that doesn't even look like that would be something you would fear for. You basically turned nothing into something that ended up being nothing. If that makes any sense. That's all I'm saying. Like this wasn't, this was nothing to be honest with you. And it just, it put a bad light on a situation this happened months ago to try to spin into a storyline. It didn't work. Did not work at all. Now let's move on to the news. Our first story looks at AEW just ended itself. At the top of the day's news is the fallout from Tony Khan's decision to air the backstage footage from the duster between punk and Jack Perry at last summer's all in pay per view. In case you missed it, the footage which has no sound shows punk confronting Jack Perry. Punk shoves Perry twice and then takes him down briefly before punk is separated. No footage was shown to verify or debunk AEW's president Tony Khan's claim that he felt his life was in danger. Dave Meltzer is reporting on some of the fallout from AEW airing the footage saying, I asked around that the basic thing was like, look it's over and done with this bad chapter in the history of AEW and it's over. And no point when he can say whatever he wants. Who cares? There was a couple of people who were going like, Adam Page never got to answer back and won't and will never answer back because he doesn't wanna be whatever. But most people just like, we're over it. It's not part of our lives. It's not part of our company. Forget about it. They discussed what they heard from people in AEW. Now here, as soon as Tony Khan did that, then I started to hear from people and it was like people who were just really frustrated going like, now it's back.  People have been made to look bad now and they can't answer back.  They need to move past this. This doesn't do AEW any good. And I mean, if I'm punk, I'm laughing about it. Honestly, I'm laughing about it. It's likely this will only give more ammunition. Which he was. Which he was. He laughed about it. He posted on the story of George Bush on like some type of battleship. And then on the top of it or something, I don't know if he was a battleship or arena, wherever he was, on the top it said mission accomplished. He didn't care. I think everyone that voiced their opinion back there was like, yeah, let's just kind of move past. Who cares what he says? It doesn't matter. Let's focus on our show. That's what you're supposed to do. But instead Tony said, no, this would be good. Why? To get a temporary rating boost.  For the WWE and punk to level AEW in the media, the WWE blasted AEW in the press during WrestleMania week and maybe thinking how to spin this to its advantage. Punk even took to Instagram to post this right after AEW Dynamite. He definitely is just laughing about this. Next up, Tony Shivani's reaction. How did Tony Shivani feel about AEW airing the punk footage or footage of surface showing Tony sitting at the ounce desk and he doesn't look thrilled when AEW cut to the footage segment? He's definitely having some PTSD from those WCW days. In fact, he did the same reaction at Bash at the beach 2000. So you definitely know what he was thinking about this segment. Next up, WWE's reaction backstage to the CM Punk footage. Now there has been a recent update on what the WWE actually thought about the promo. This is thanks to 5 All Select who reported within WWE there were plenty of people talking about the situation but most we spoke to were exhausted after the insane WrestleMania week. We had no particularly surprised reactions or anything that happened that anyone didn't expect. CM Punk is not getting punished. Scolded or anything of like within the company. There were a few wrestlers who considered the video of a cell phone and others who said that they simply didn't care and watching out of curiosity. They also mentioned that a wrestler who's been both in WWE and AEW said that there was no worse than anything that happened during the Monday Night War era. Next up, no, this was not a good idea. Yeah, right. So fuck, WWE's doing some of their best numbers right now. Popularity wise, show attendant wise, like they're doing some of the best stuff. Storyline wise, they'll give up. They literally just came off of one of, if not, some would say the best WrestleMania of all time. Don't think, they're not worried about that. They're worried about the future. Though fuck, that's just so wrong. If we consider social media as a valid measurement of public opinion, it appears that many fans feel that it was a mistake to run this footage. Even fans claiming to be AEW die hard seemed to be confused as to what the purpose was to air the footage. Many of these comments discuss how the footage did nothing to dispute Punk's account of things, and while it seems to show Punk being the aggressor, Punk never denied this. In fact, even the live reaction from the crowd in AEW had CM Punk chance after it. That's when you know that things couldn't be as bad as they could possibly be. The day Meltzer weighed on this decision to run the video. I don't think it was a good idea. I never did think it was a good idea, but I thought, look, you gotta give them the benefit of the doubt, see what happens. Meltzer pointed out how airing the footage quickly bit AEW in its backside. Here's the thing, later in the show, when fans were chanting CM Punk, it was like, well, this one sure backfired. You don't want people chanting the name of someone from another promotion during your show, and sometimes it's gonna happen, and you just can't avoid it, but this was one you brought on yourselves. Next up, Doug Day's ahead. At 2024, we're supposed to be the year that AEW turned things around, and while AEW dug a huge hole for themselves thanks to its bad booking, the company's recent slew of signings of top-free agents like Willow Spray, Okada, and Mercedes-Benz Monet suggested some hope. However, this footage flop just erased any goodwill AEW had with its fans and its locker room. AEW has dug a hole for itself and may not be able to escape from. Considering just how badly this has already turned out, one has to wonder if anything can be done to save AEW, and at one point, Shahid Khan takes the keys away from Tony Khan. Next up, Willow Spray takes a shot at Triple H. Ironically, AEW's airing of the all-in footage occurred the same night as Willow Spray showed how to roast the competition with a promo. Osprey took time during his interview with Renee Packet to respond to Triple H's recent remarks that WWE doesn't want a high-wrestlers who aren't willing to enjoy the WWE grind. Omsley didn't name names, but fans took his comments as a shot against wrestlers who claimed they had signed with AEW due to the lighter schedule. Osprey told Renee, this is rumour that I'm afraid of the grind, and I'll be honest, I have no idea where this conversation has come from because I'm one of the only guys that are travelling every single week to the UK and America, eight 10-hour flights every single week, and I'm delivering one of the best professional wrestling matches this world has ever seen. Brav. But he wasn't through though, and unloaded with some haymakers. And normally I wouldn't rise to this type of bait, but seeing as the guy that said it is only in the position he's in because he was grinding on the boss' daughter, you're in no position to tell me what the grind is all about, my friend, because you have no idea what I fight for.  While fans differ on whether promotions should take TV or pay-per-view time to criticise the competition, Osprey's interview is an example of how the blast arrival in a way that exposes their weaknesses and plays to your strengths, as something that CM Punk footage didn't either of. Next up, Williams. It was an entertaining segment, like an entertaining, I guess you could say, you know, promo that he was delivering. The only thing is it's just a timing of it. It was just a timing of it because of the whole CM Punk footage, and it just comes off as, oh, this is just a WWE, we're mentioning WWE-related wrestlers today on tonight's show. Instead of talking about ours as much as possible, we're gonna send jabs and mention them. Granted, Triple H did, you know, say what he said, and it was, Triple H said it without saying it, you know what I'm saying, who it was, but it kinda came off as the people that were recently signed with AEW, so people can easily put two and two together. So, I mean, it's fair game.  So, I didn't have a problem with it. I thought it was pretty entertaining. It's just a timing of it was bad. If this was like the only little reference, cool. But even then, you know, it still kinda takes away from what he's trying to do. You know what I'm saying? Like, he could have alluded it, like worded it a little bit more where it fit into his upcoming match with Bryan Danielson. You know, he could have did something like that, where it integrated into, you know, him building up the hype for that match with Bryan Danielson, but it kinda was, I gotta talk about this first, now let me get to Bryan Danielson, and it kinda was disjointed, but overall, I didn't have a problem with it. It was entertaining for me, but it's just a timing of everything. Young Bucks and Will Osprey opposed to the promos though. A new report suggests that the Bucks and Will Osprey didn't come up with the idea for the respective promos against Punk and WWE, or rather Triple H. PWTorch's Wade Keller is reporting, regarding the Bucks, I've been checking with people in AEW and I've been told that this was not something that the Bucks were in favor of doing. It wasn't their idea. It was Tony Khan's idea that he wanted this out there. As for Osprey, Keller commented, I'm also told that this was an idea presented to Osprey. I don't know about Osprey's enthusiasm for it or against it, but it wasn't something he did on his own. He didn't wing it. It was something that hours before the interview took place was proposed to him. That's what I'm hearing from AEW. While Keller's story hasn't been confirmed, it's not a good sign for AEW if it turns out to be true. Next up, AEW.  So it's just like, I don't know, man. I don't know what Tony got going on over there. AEW looks to have regret this decision. Now, it seems that AEW is making copyright infringement claims against anyone who airs the footage, including the MMA hours, Ariel Helwani, who tweeted it, not very nice. Some lawyer out of Jacksonville got my account locked momentarily and DMCA'd the video I posted, which contains CCTV and interview footage from my show. Just felt like the CCTV needed some narration, you know? Anyway, here's Punk's seemingly very accurate P.B.P. Not only that, but they even cut the video out in their own video on YouTube, a video that has more dislikes than likes. Next up, a WWE. And that's one of the reasons why yesterday I did not put the video up here on YouTube because I had a feeling they were gonna be trying to strike people and take down the video of the stuff that they posted themselves. That's the thing, like they posted it themselves and then was taking down the videos everywhere as if they didn't want other people to see it, but you posted it, you hyped it up before the show. Days before the show, like what do you thought was gonna happen? Like, I don't know, it's just, it's crazy. Stars still not signed. As Dream McIntyre signed a new deal with WWE. Well, not according to Fightful Select, which reports there were plans for McIntyre and the company and they plan on retaining him. It's believed that McIntyre is confident he can succeed wherever he works, but even though his contract is ending soon, they don't seem to think that McIntyre will leave. And finally, WWE scaling back sets. Last but not least is the WWE changing up its sets for live events like Raw and SmackDown. That's a report coming from PWInsider.com saying, the SmackDown and Raw set up scene over WrestleMania weekend will be the norm going forward as a way to roll back certain aspects of production in favor of packing more fans into the arenas. Even MSG will feature the smaller production set up for the 28th June SmackDown taping. There may be exceptions to this, but this will be one of the changes as part of the endeavor era. The WWE has been selling out many of its recent Raw and SmackDown shows, so it's no surprise that endeavor will wanna maximize ticket sales, even if it means adjusting the show's sets. But they have it, folks. That's crazy, bro. That's crazy. That's how big WWE is getting now, especially for the live attendance. They're selling out shows. Monday Night Raw had over 20,000 people in there. And I think SmackDown is potentially probably gonna be sold out too this week, which means they're gonna adjust for the set to make it so people can fit more, they can fit more people in there. WWE, bro, they're banking right now, bro. I think it's like, is it like 17 consecutive shows of complete sellouts? Sellouts. 20,000 people on a Monday Night Raw is insanity, by the way. That's just crazy numbers. That's a pay-per-view level number, so. Amen. WWE is cooking right now. But comment down below, let me know how y'all feeling about this whole AEW releasing the footage debacle, because essentially that's what it is on social media. How do y'all feel about it? Are you guys rocking with what Tony Khan did by dropping the footage? Or do you guys feel like it was a grave mistake? Let me know how y'all feeling about this. It's been a few hours since it's dropped, so let me know what's your thought process on this whole situation. And did you guys enjoy AEW Dynamite last night? Also, let me know as well. But I appreciate all the love, support. Road to 150K, and I'm Stingens. Be the YouTube Wrestling Champion of the World. Appreciate y'all kicking in with me. See you in the next one. Peace.


Hello everybody Andrea Trosti here with Dental Tutoring. So the CDHO had mentioned about a week ago that for those of you who do have to write your portfolio and if you are audited, it is those people whose CDHO numbers end in two or six. So if that's you, it's not me, but if that is you then you do have to submit your portfolio by next year. So January 2009. Now if you need help, I can help you. Now I wrote my portfolio pretty much when they first started, well not when they first started doing it, but pretty much the first year I graduated. So as a dental hygienist, oh goodness, I think about six or seven years ago now, I can't remember. I've been in the profession for about 13 years, almost 14 years. So I've been a hygienist for about seven years, I believe, and I became a restorative hygienist about two years ago. So I've been doing a little bit of everything, but I was audited pretty much right away. And it's not hard, but the main thing is you do have to be organized. If you are organized, it makes all the difference. What I did is I had the best intentions of being organized, but I wasn't, and then I had to end up doing my portfolio pretty much every day. I was working on it about two months before Christmas because I wanted it done before Christmas. And you know, life happens. So even if you have the best of intentions to get it done, you might not. But I do find that it does help so much if you do a little bit every single month. So that's why I have the portfolio workshop because I will actually help you guys sort of stay organized and give you ideas of what to work on every single month. Plus I will also show you guys where the online webinars are that you don't have to pay for because they are out there, but you have to know where to look. And you need high quality ones also because if you just simply watch something on YouTube and want that to be part of your continuing education, the CDHL will not accept that. So it does have to be by a proper source. So I can help you with that. So let me just share my screen here and I will show you guys sort of a look inside the portfolio workshop. Okay, so let me just share my screen. Can everybody see my screen? Okay.  So you pretty much have full access to everything. I do upload new webinars about once a month and I will actually also show you guys how to do every single part inside your smile portal because when that first came out a couple years ago, people got quite confused. So it made sense that I would show you guys how to do exactly what you have to do, including your self-assessment. So as you guys can see, there's lots here. But more specifically, if you go up to the link here, the webinars, whereas my webinars here, you will see that there's tons added and I do add new ones every single month. So these are for think your study. If you got together with other dental hygienists, let's say, and you were all talking about something, this is part of your continuing education, but you do have to source it properly. So I can also help you there. But there's tons here. So you will never have to think, okay, I need to know where to look for the webinars. I need to have ideas of my learning activities, my additional activities. How do I put that in my portfolio? Because I do help you with everything. Let's see. So there's tons here, as you guys can see, like tons, tons, tons. And I do add new ones about every single month. So there will be a lot more of course. And there's another link to look at here, where if you're not sure how to do something, I do show you guys exactly how to do it. It's pretty easy. It's just if you don't know how, then you don't know how, right? So that's where I am more than happy to help you guys. And I do have some exercises to help you out also. Because with the CDHO, they look at everything. And I don't think a lot of people realize that. So if you're trying to put something in there that doesn't make sense, they will see that. Or if you try to write a goal that is similar to another one, they will not accept it. So you do have to be careful. So yeah, you guys, so let me just stop sharing my screen for a second here again. So this is where if you want to do your portfolio properly and not have to worry about not knowing what you're supposed to do, I make it pretty easy for you because I am there to help. I am there to help you guys answer any questions. If you're not sure how to do something, if you're like, well, I don't know if this sounds right, I will let you know. And the nice thing is at the end of the year, if you're thinking, you know, can you just have a look at my portfolio to see if I'm on the right track? Yes, I can help you with that. So I can look at the whole thing. And I pretty much find errors in everybody's portfolios that I've looked at to be honest.  So if you let me look at it first, that I can save you guys a lot of trouble and a lot of stress. So I am happy to help. So I think I answered most of the common questions I've been doing the portfolio workshop now for about, I'd say about four years and I have helped a lot. And to say that too, everyone who has been a part of the portfolio workshop, from what I've been told anyway, they have passed their portfolio 100%. So I know what I'm doing and I am so happy to help. So if you guys have any questions, please let me know because it doesn't have to be stressful. It does not have to be, it just helps to be organized. So if you guys need anything, just let me know and I will see you guys very, very soon.


Our next portion is what we love to do the most, which is having a conversation, and this is about RethinkingAmericas.com hegemony. The moderator for this is our very own Sasha Meinrath, vice president of the New America Foundation and director of the Open Technology Institute. He's an expert on community wireless networks, municipal broadband and telecom policy. He founded, most excitingly, the commotion wireless project, aka the Internet in a Suitcase and along with Vince Surf is the co-founder of the Measurement Lab, the MLab, a distributed server platform for researchers around the world to deploy internet measurement tools, advanced network research and empower the public with useful information about their broadband connections. Sasha. Thank you, and if the rest of the panelists could come up, that'd be great. Yeah, so MLab now we've got about 600 terabytes of data available for anyone that wants to use it for free, and that's growing by about 500 gigs a day, and Milton actually has done some research using some of that data. It is quite an exciting project. I'll give a little bit of background on each of the panelists, their reputations, proceed them. Depending on how you count it, I believe, Andrew was, I can, employee number one. First paycheck, but there were three of us. My belief is that mine was the lowest numbered. Gotcha. Check one. That's the Internet Corporation for signed names and numbers. They help. No, I didn't seem important at the time. I was just desperate to have some money in my bank account. That's right. And before becoming world famous at the White House, you had worked for a large search engine firm. I think we first met when you were bringing broadband ideas to African regulators. Is there another search firm out there? I mean, I should Google that at some point. And as of 1129 has now coined the NECAP, the ITU campaign with the whole, I hope somebody got a picture of that because that was pretty exciting.  Constrain Yeah, I think right. Excellent. Next, Andrew, we have Ellery Biddle, who is a policy analyst for the Center for Democracy and Technology West and has flown in just for this. She's been working primarily on international projects with CDT and helping coordinate their West Coast activities with our Ganshu and headquarters out that way. And in particularly a focus on Latin America and a deep knowledge of what's happening in Cuba. She works with Global Voices Online along with actually Rebecca, who's in the audience and will be speaking later and covers a lot of the Cuban blogosphere internet policy affecting Latin America as well. And on her left, right next to me, is of course Milton Mueller, who has written a couple of books on Internet Governments, Networks and States, the Global Politics of Internet Governance, Ruling the Root, Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace, which for me was a seminal book to read back 10 years ago, I guess now, and really sort of documented for a lot of folks for the first time what was actually happening in a lot of these strange and at that time completely unknown spaces that were beginning to affect the very trajectory of communications in civil society. And Milton usually gives like the big thumbs up to the research analysis we do, but also occasionally throws the sabbat sort of the, well, that's just total crap, Sasha. And so I'm hoping that he will help keep us honest. This panel has a deep historical appreciation and knowledge for what's transpired in these spaces and a remarkable geopolitical acumen around these issues. But also a pinch, as we saw with Andrew, a pinch of feist to keep things interesting this morning. So why don't we get this started? We'll start with brief comments from each of them and we'll just go down the line. We'll have a bit of discussion in Q&A up here, and then we'll open it up for the remainder of our time for audience Q&A. So start thinking about what you would like to ask them or how you'd like to tell Andrew things about what he just proposed earlier. Milton, if we want to start with you then. Okay, how's the sound? Can you all hear me? It sounds like it's okay. Good. So I want to begin with a historical perspective. We have actually a long-standing problem going back decades in which globalized institutions that promote the free flow of information are seen as a cover for U.S. hegemony. You can go back to the 70s and the so-called New World Information Communication Order. You can go back to the World Summit on the Information Society, and now we have the Tempest in a teapot known as the International Telecom Regulations, which the same issue is being debated. So we are against ITU and UN governance, or so we say, because we think there's something inherently wrong with it, and Andrew articulated a lot of those reasons. But many people in the rest of the world suspect that we are actually against it simply because it means that we, and by we here I mean the U.S. government and some of its larger economic interests and corporations, are simply not as powerful in that context as we are in the so-called multi-stakeholder regime that's been built up around the Internet. And so they simply may not buy a lot of our arguments, and the ITU feeds on this by presenting itself as the alternative institutional framework for nation-states and developing countries who are resisting U.S. hegemony. Again, this is not new. And I think this is an argument we need to take seriously, and I think we have to deal with it primarily by being consistent about actually creating and building new, open, democratic, and multi-stakeholder institutions to govern the Internet. And that we, you know, our response to that concern is seriously undermined by the inconsistencies in the U.S. position. So let me just put it on the table here. I am against the hegemony of the U.S. government. I am for a hegemony of liberal values. And many people in this country confuse those two. They consistently, persistently make one stand in for the other. They view the U.S. as a steward of liberal values, and it's easy to do this because of course in the relative scheme of things we do have a fairly liberal constitution. But from a consistent and principled perspective, the U.S. is just another government. Okay? Indeed, as the world's most powerful government, it deserves special scrutiny and special concern with respect to its ability to intervene and exert power over communications. Now, Andrew attacked the ITU for fostering and facilitating communication surveillance. Well, that's a strange charge to come from the land of warrantless wiretaps. Who do you really fear in terms of surveillance and communications more? The ITU, which is fundamentally not that confident when it comes to dealing with encryption and things like that, or the NSA and the FBI. I just wonder, you know, if you had to worry about those two things, which ones you would worry about more? We complain that the ITU is centralized and hierarchical. But nothing could be more centralized and hierarchical than ICANN's authority over the domain name system. Indeed, because of sovereignty and the ability of governments to opt out of the treaty and to have it ratified by a nationally democratically elected system, in many respects, ICANN is more centralized. And once it makes a decision and implements it in the domain name system, it's done. You either have to create an entirely new domain name system or go with it. And as Andrew rightly noted, our own military industrial cybersecurity complex is pushing for certain forms of centralization. It was our people who declared that cyberspace was a national asset. Think about that. What does that mean? A national asset cyberspace? And we're pushing for new technical standards based on public key infrastructure, which also have the tendency to make things more centralized and potentially even more brittle. So here's my bottom line. This is a great opportunity, or at least it was a few years ago. We need to build new global governance institutions for the internet. And they need to be non-nation state based. And we need to leave behind nation states and intergovernmentalism as much as we can. So I fundamentally agree with the idea that not that we need to kneecap the ITU, but that we need to move beyond it. We need to be constructive in the sense of creating just and effective government institutions, governance institutions that are not nation state based. And unfortunately, we're failing in this task because no one seems to understand the need for these new institutions to truly be institutions. That is to have stable and predictable rules that people follow to have real processes that people followed. If I had time, I could give you two examples that occurred just yesterday of ICANN just arbitrarily making decisions that completely ignore their own processes. So let's get our own game in order and let's build these new multi-stakeholder institutions in a way that really simply leaves the old institutions in the dust. And we'll get a little bit of geek cherry springer up here. I can't employ a number one versus Milton Mueller fight. And the limbering up for the chair-throwing phase. That's right. Very good. And you, of course, will just be collateral damage given your position. But would you like to weigh in on some of these issues and what you've been working on with CDT? Yeah. So I think, Andrew, I guess I'd like to pick up or pick up really on points that you both kind of left off with, which is the, you know, if not the ITU, then what or then whom? I think many of us here agree that the ITU is not the right place to take these kinds of governance and internet policy questions. And I think that a lot of people in a lot of the world feel pretty much the same way, that they're frustrated by the lack of institutions or groups or bodies where they can take the issues that they're concerned about. I think in a lot of the discussions in the U.S. primarily about this issue, there has been this kind of talk about, oh, well, we have these great multi-stakeholder groups that you rattled off a bunch of them. They're just lots and lots of acronyms. I'll have to repeat them, but these groups are, you know, they work pretty well. We've gotten to a stage where there are little groups that focus on specific problems. They're generally expert driven. They're generally driven by a commitment to preserving and improving the technical efficiency of the internet. So that's really important. The thing about those groups, even though they are open, transparent, anybody can participate for the most part, is that they're not, I would not say that they are truly globally inclusive by any stretch of the imagination. Most are based in the industrialized West. The agendas there are generally driven by people from those places, and particularly from the U.S. There are language, huge language and cost barriers for people from a lot of the world to really be able to have true, legitimate, meaningful participation in those institutions where they're not just giving their two cents, but where they can actually sort of drive an agenda. So I think that that is sort of a big piece of the puzzle that we have to think about in a really serious way, not just say, you know, keep hearing over and over, well, we also need to worry about the concerns of the global south. We'll have to take that into account. I think it's a lot bigger than that. You know, the, if the internet is really a global medium, and we, and I think we all really do sincerely want it to be as free and open as possible in, as, you know, in, throughout the world. And we, you know, we already know it's extremely uneven. You know, the internet in one country is not the same as the internet in another. If those are really our goals, then there really has to be a much bigger, bolder commitment to an inclusive process and politics around the institutions that do exist. And then, like Milton said, I mean, I think that the idea of establishing new institutions isn't bad. I think that we have to learn a lot from what can go wrong with too rigid of a structure and learn a lot from ICANN and from, you know, other groups that have developed over time and, you know, and I think that the probably most successful examples are groups that have been flexible enough to kind of develop with the internet to be able to respond to issues as they arise and to actually change their process and structure in order to accommodate changes in technology. I guess the other sort of point that I think is important here just in the context of the upcoming ITU conference that I'd like to emphasize is that this is, and you brought this up, Andrew, the, the, what is happening at the ITU is that there are a number of sort of known kind of bad actor countries, countries that really are, they are interested in making policies that can control expression, that limit people's privacy, and that is all in the interest of political control. They're coming to the ITU not because they want permission to carry out policies that way but because they want them legitimized. They're going, these kinds of practices are going to continue no matter what. But if there is a UN institution that actually puts this into their treaty and says, sure, that is, you know, that's a win for those countries and, but it's sort of at a global scale. We end up with a norm that moves further in the direction of, you know, where all of our interests lie. So that's, that's a very troubling thing. Then there are also countries coming to the ITU that want policy changes and they're not coming there with, just with political control in mind. They're going to the ITU because they're not enfranchised in institutions that can help them or the institutions that could help them with their unique policy problems don't really exist yet. So that, that group I think is so important in all of this because they're the ones, you know, that people keep saying this is the fence sitter group. You know, these are the countries that we really, countries in Africa, Latin America that we really need to focus on, you know, winning their votes. But it's not, it can't, that has to just be the thing that wakes us all up to the fact that this, it has to be a much more inclusive global conversation. That's my two cents. Thank you, Alex. Andrew. So, so, so if I'm right that in much of the world, the normative interests, the normative liberal interests that I think Milton and I, LRE2 are committed to, which is to say freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, security and privacy, these kinds of values. And if I'm right that the internet is imperfect but uniquely powerful, at least in its potential to give real meaning to those values. And, and if, if, if, so from that starting point that these, these sort of normative objectives is what we're pursuing. And because so many governments are institutionally inimical to those values, so many governments are, for their own reasons, seeking to engage in censorship, control, surveillance and so forth. Then we don't love intergovernmental bodies making decisions. And frankly, as Americans, and I would argue with Milton, I mean, only in one respect, which is that whatever screwy our system is, it is one of the more rule-bound systems in the world. In other words, the rule of law, imperfect though it is here, is stronger here than it is in most places. And so not only should we as Americans have skeptical trust in our government to adhere largely to the rule of law. I think that is something that, as Americans were entitled to do, skeptically. But it's a good thing for the world that the internet came out of the United States, because much of the world is correct in placing faith in the United States to largely be a, an actor consonant with these normative values. So anyway, if intergovernmental, one country, one vote kinds of institutions are not the place to do internet governance. And if the existing multi-stakeholder institutions, like ICANN, let's say, are two U.S. oriented to live up to the billing as a global vehicle for consensus-based decision making, then, you know, what are we to say to the Brazilian, South African, Kenyan, Indian, Indonesian who wants to see these values vindicated and also wants to feel like their voice is equal to that of any, any American. And I think what Milton said is true. I guess, you know, we need more and better institutions to do the stuff that I'm talking about, which is to say this engage in these conversations. But I will say that I do believe that a little bit of sometimes you need some destruction, you need to burn the forest in order to grow the new, you know, the new pine, pine trees. And in the case of the ITU, I think it's very much the case that its day is gone. U.S. should formally commit itself to hastening that day. I'm not this angry a person, actually. Dismantle. Dismantle. That was the word that I stuck in my notes. I was like, don't say kill. Dismantle. Dismantle. It's much gentler. We just want to dismember you.  Anyway, but I'll leave it at that, which is to say that the sort of the paradigm shift in one's thinking that you have to, that you have to embrace, if you were to go from being, let's say, a telecom engineer to being an internet engineer, is you have to learn how to embrace what it means to have completely open relationships with the other actors in the internet. Right? So I've had friends tell me, you know, that went from like Bell Labs, you know, working on SS7 switches to, you know, learning how to configure a router for the internet. And I've said, like, you just have to completely change your mind to say, like, well, maybe today we're going to be paying you for transit, and tomorrow we'll be peering, and maybe we'll, you know, it's just a much different way of thinking about things from an engineering perspective. And kind of in terms of politics and governance, that same switch has to happen, which is that for an internet way of doing policy coordination, you have to accept that there will be lots of conversations happening in lots of different places, and no one body is the place where this is all going to happen efficiently and in a consolidated centralized way. And that's a hard thing to try to convey to my, you know, Indonesian friend to say, like, well, we're going to take away this thing where you know you get a guaranteed 10 minutes at the mic and a vote to move to a world where you're, you know, assured of nothing, you're, you know, you're one of everybody connected to the internet. So folks should now be moving their questions from the simmer on the back burner to the front burner. I'm going to ask a couple and then we're going to move it over to you. Adam, how much time do we have? We're good. We have a good time. Excellent. So one of the interesting things that I didn't hear is a whole lot of worry about an actual UN ITU takeover. Given that that seems to be the messaging that we keep getting, I'm curious, like, is this all a little hyperbolic, this notion of the UN ITU takeover? Like, what's really going on here?  Right, there's the ITU is desperately battling for relevance. Okay, this is their death rattle. This is their grasping, you know, their hands are coming up above the water and saying, what can we grab onto here? Oh, my God, we've got the ITRs coming up. Maybe if we can stick something about the internet into those, you know, that's what's going on from the ITU's perspective. And the idea that they could take over the internet is of course, something that I've been arguing against for the last six months. Not that I don't think it was correct for Google and other corporate interests to mobilize civil society against the ITU the way they have. Because it's a very interesting phenomenon to have all of these people suddenly interested in global governance. I mean, he may be not in like the super geek discussion. Right, he was he was I can't employ number one, I feel like I was like civil society, internet governance advocate number one. And it's like, I didn't I wasn't joined by anybody until about four months ago. So suddenly, everybody's interested in global governance of the internet, they're beginning to understand the role of institutions, they're beginning to understand the distinction between intergovernmental institutions and non governmental institutions and the need to build multi stakeholder institutions. This is all great. But and if it was necessary to lie to people and tell them the ITU was going to take over the internet in order to make that happen. I don't know, maybe it's a good thing. I don't think it's such a good thing. I think I we've struggled in our sort of internal conversations about how to advocate on this issue. It is a lot easier to say, the UN is going to take over the internet than it is to say, well, there's a sub agency the UN and they have this treaty and they might be able to add some things in that might make a difference in the way some countries behave, you know, that's a harder sell as a message. But I don't, you know, like I was saying before, it's not and as as the ITU secretary is always emphasizing, it's all about the member states.  So we're we here in the US. Yeah, we're sure not going to see, you know, any any changes in the way that our government makes decisions about the internet based on this treaty. But in other places, you might. I don't I am also sort of skeptical about how much is really going to get in there. It's hard to tell right now. I think there was a lot of hype around the ethno proposal that Andrew mentioned that would present a serious threat to net neutrality would create new charges for traffic moving through the internet and essentially could just be a huge blow to innovators and folks who are sort of trying new things with particularly with small amounts of revenue online. That appears like it's going nowhere. Some of the cybersecurity proposals are a little bit more concerning because they they have fair amount of traction in a lot of places and some of those are really about, you know, political power and others are really about sort of serious fraud problems that countries can't figure out what to do. And so they're bringing it here because they don't know what else to do. So I think, you know, as far as far as the end game, the UN isn't taking over the internet, but some changes could happen. And like I said before, I think it's, you know, it's a norm setting question. If there is this institution, however much, yeah, I mean, if they they really are sort of struggling for relevance, if some countries can take away from that a new norm that is less in the direction of openness and and freedom, then I think that that's something we should all be concerned about. So, so the the rhetoric that the UN is going to take over the the internet is is preposterously hyper inflated. I mean, it has no relationship to reality, right? There is no mechanism within the the ITU system for operational control, mandatory policy making, anything like that. That's not the issue. The reason to care about what's happening at the ITU, frankly, is is not so much as as Americans because we're big enough and powerful enough, we'll do whatever we want. And most big countries, it's the same thing is true. The reason to care about what comes out of the ITR process is that what it has the potential to do is accelerate through legitimization of bad practices, things that will be really bad for people in countries like Mozambique, Senegal, Malaysia and so forth. Because one of the things the ITU does is propagate practices. And that's one of the things I hate about it the most is that it has propagated a set of war and best practices for how incumbents can harden themselves into positions of persistent power and how governments can do, can use that kind of concentrated anti competitive, anti internet sort of infrastructure to engage in censorship and surveillance and so forth. There's these bad actor countries, right? Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, increasingly depressingly Russia. And then there's the US and Sweden and, you know, the Netherlands and a handful of countries on the other side that take a pretty hard line, you know, free speech and at least rule of law when it comes to surveillance point of view. And then you've got all these countries in the middle and where the ITU does its damage is in those countries in the middle when it spreads ideas for how to do this kind of thing. And through its legitimation alters the internal debates within those countries about the allocation of power and responsibility and the zone of what is acceptable for a government to do with regard to the internet. And that's the reason we should care about it. That's the reason it should be defanged and dismantled in my view. So I'm going to ask the audience a question out and also the panelists. Who's been to an internet governance forum? That's a good number of people. Is that the kind of, I mean, like, so I was at the last one in Nairobi and didn't really feel like I was really doing a lot of internet governance at the Internet Governance Forum. Are these the kinds of multi-stakeholder structures that you would think like could be empowered to take on that kind of role? Or do we need something completely different? What does the solution look like? Well, the IGF is dissatisfying because it's a hodgepodge of conflicting agendas trying to play out in one thing. It's a place that the U.S. government is kind of viewed as a safety valve. So give everybody one place where they can go once a year and talk about whatever they want that relates to Internet Governance, but it has no potential, like zero potential for actually radiating into intergovernmental kinds of activities like the ITU does. So if not the ITU then the IGF. But the problem is there are some people who want to actually talk about and do things that we would properly call governance. There are other people who want to stop those activities. There are some people who just want to get together and talk about how to build out and develop the Internet. So it makes it feel when you're there like there's no there there. I actually would like to see more smaller kind of like special-purpose conversations about particular problems. If you look at the development of technical standards anyway, you have these peculiar organizations like 3GPP or the UMTS forum or you know any of these very specialized bodies that say like okay what we need now is to add data over the wireless airwaves. And like how we do that, I don't know, but let's get together and they work towards sort of a defined goal. So it strikes me that this kind of grand IGF sort of once a year thing while definitely useful in the sense that it has built networks and allowed people to get to know each other and led to flows of information that I think generally are quite constructive because they're coming from Internet people rather than from regulate, you know, primarily around Internet people rather than regulators and their ilk. Lawmakers and their ilk. It still is probably not the most, it's not the end game for multi-stakeholder dialogue around the Internet. The thing I think we need to emphasize is the alternative forms of governance, one of which I like to call networked governance in which you have, it's a form of organization that's been explored in sociological theory and you have basically looser relationships among actors and I think the paradigm of network governance is sort of the relationships among Internet service providers in terms of how they interconnect and route traffic. There's no overarching hierarchical authority that says here's the rates you must charge, here's the standards and practices you must adhere to. There are standards, there are uniform standards, but they're voluntary. They're held in place by their working, you know, the fact that they work and they make people compatible. And we need a better appreciation of the concept of network governance and stop thinking that, you know, we're going to have a centralized governance institution and there's going to be multi-stakeholder or intergovernmental. We need these looser forms of governance and we need to understand and legitimize them. With respect to the IGF, you have to put it in the context of the World Summit. That's what it emerged out of. It was a compromise in which the whole world wanted to talk about the US control over ICANN. The US said we're not going to change that, but as a compromise we'll create this little space where you can talk about this problem and we'll have various code words for it. We'll talk about things like enhanced cooperation or, you know, critical internet resources. And so then for the next five years the people who didn't want to change anything in the status quo tried to stop us from talking about those issues in the forum and the people who wanted to talk about them pushed very hard to talk about them. Some of the governments started to say we're very frustrated with this. We're going to split off and form our own more state-centered internet governance forum.  But then you start being confronted with alternatives like either we dismantle it and eviscerate it and ecap it and get rid of it or we get slashing and burning. Slashing and burn it. Or we create a government-centric one like the Indians, Brazilians and South Africans proposed. And then you look at those alternatives and you think, nah, it's better. Let's keep what we've got and keep going to that and keep having these dialogues. And some of the dialogues are really starting to gel in the sense that we're starting to not be so afraid about talking about enhanced cooperation and naming it what it really is, which is, to what extent does the US government continue to have a privileged position? To what extent do other states have a role to play or not? We're really starting to have that dialogue there. So I think it's something that should be retained. But is there something that could grow out of that that would be, that would move in the direction of actually making an actual policymaking? One of the ideas we had, for example, was when you have any affirmation of commitments, these reviews of ICANN, rather than having ICANN's own processes review itself, which is kind of weird, why not have that function performed by the Internet Governance Forum, for example? That would be somewhat interesting, something of a step forward. So I'm going to ask one more question and we're going to open it up. So get ready. I want to end with a bet. Like let's say we're all like figuring out like what the over-under is, the spread on the World Conference on International Telecommunications WICIT, which is happening next week in Dubai. It's perhaps one of the reasons why we're all up here today, at least as a catalyst for a lot of these discussions. What would you guys bet comes out of WICIT? Bet comes out of WICIT. What's your prognosis? More WICIT. I don't expect a lot to change in the ITRs, but a little bit might shift. I think what will happen actually is oh, we're continuing this conversation on to the World Technology Policy Forum, on to the next sort of series of meetings and opportunities for this kind of group to come together and continue these discussions. So I think it's no rest for the WICIT. Yeah, I think it is no rest for the WICIT. That shouldn't be funny, but that is. Sorry, that's so geeky. Yeah, no, I mean, I think we all, I think this is the consensus, right? Expectation is that when issues get too thorny and difficult, they get deferred. And so, you know, and I think what I think is interesting is whether Milton's earlier sort of point might be right, which is, you know, is if the ITU is, you know, a deploticus, like how can it grow fur, you know, like how can it mammalize itself, you know, confronting the to make this a painful metaphor, the meteor of the internet hitting the planet and turning, but anyway, but like it's it can it can't, you know, is there any chance that the dinosaur can turn into a mammal and survive in this new era? And if not, is the is the ever kind of present phenomenon of deferring the hard issues into the future and future conferences, is that just enough to basically achieve my objective? A kneecap into a slashing and a burning to now just annihilation of the whole planet. Evolution and evolution. It's not like I'm not having a bad morning, by the way. This is like, I don't know why I keep resorting to these terrible dire metaphors. But but what I actually so here's what I what I would view as a bad outcome and one that I hope we won't see is if the US negotiators come back and the US executive branch presents to the Senate a set of idea proposed ITRs for ratification that are an ITR stands for what it it's an international telecommunications regulation. But they're essentially they can be they don't have to be but they can be treaty level. They can be essentially amendments to the treaty. And so anyway, what I what would be a bad outcome would be a kind of like to me is like, well, could have been worse. You know, there's going to be there's some stuff in here that's sort of about the internet, but not directly.  We don't want to completely burn the US government's ability to have influence at the ITU T and in the world, the work, the world administrative radio we want to preserve our heft in those for us.  That's the usual thing that happens is we sort of end up with a kind of mushy compromise that in my view is a bad outcome because it preserves the life cycle of the dinosaur rather than, you know, moving us into into mammal world where, you know, where we're all going to be a lot more comfortable. Just to quickly add to that, I've argued that we should have as a US position taken the view that we don't need the ITRs anymore that they're basically obsolete. And actually I have heard although I don't have confirmation that certain people in Europe agreed with that position two or three or four years ago. And that somehow we came to the view that the ITRs were important and necessary and they needed to be retained and therefore we're now stuck with, you know, given that's the US position and that we've missed our opportunity not to slash and to burn but to simply say, sorry, that time is up on this treaty, we probably will get the outcome that he describes, which is this sort of minor modifications that aren't really bad but aren't really good and really open the door to just continuation of this long slow decline and open the door to certain kinds of trouble. All right, let's open it up for audience questions. Where is the microphone? If we can get right here in the middle. Mark McCarthy with Georgetown University and with SIA. A good discussion from all of you. I like the prediction of an outcome from Wicked is not too bad, not too good. But I'm wondering about the more basic question that is really at stake here, which is, do we really need international policy making institutions at all in this area of the internet? If you do nothing at all, nation states are making policy. This is the Tim Wu thesis from years ago on who controls the internet. If you want to go beyond that to a sort of single global policy in the area of cyber security or surveillance or free speech or censorship, do you need to go to an institution, a policy making institution at all? I know you rejected an intergovernmental kind of policy making institution, but do you need a multi stakeholder institution to sort of set international policy here or do you just leave it up to the nation states and they'll do their own thing? Is diversity a good thing here? At least at a micro level, right, there are like, there are going to be lines on the DNS root zone file table, right? Like there's going to be an IP address that defines a name server that correlates to .ru, right? And so, yeah, you know, there are some things for which a policy making mechanism is necessary. Similarly, like, you know, to have a unique number space for the PSTN, somebody's got to tell you what number you dial first to call Taiwan. So there are some things that need to be done. We've also found that this is not internet specific. This is more at the telecommunications layer, but but we have found it important to have some harmonization of uses of spectrum. That's good because if you're an equipment manufacturer, you want to tune your radio to a particular frequency and manufacture and be able to sell it in lots of countries. That's a good thing. You can carry your phone across borders. That's a good thing, too. So there are activities and the way that they are performed, you can call policy. But so anyway, to that extent only, they need policies for how they're going to make those kinds of decisions. And this is part of the sort of core argument against the structure of the ITU as it's been involved as it's as it's been in place for the last couple of decades because what the internet has opened up is a whole different way of doing communications that doesn't require state owned monopolies to connect their wires to get at the border using a particular size and kind of switch. Now you can simply rely on the abstract standards layer of, you know, I'm sorry, the TCP IP, you know, to tell you the minimum thing that you need to do to switch traffic back and forth. So in this new world, also in spectrum, by the way, we need to come up with something which is not as locked down, hierarchical and inimicable to new models of spectrum use that we have right now. So we do need some forms of centralization and policymaking just a lot less and a lot different than what we've seen before. Well, so I guess I would say, I mean, this raises a really important question about what is happening with the ITRs, with the ITU's treaty, which is that a whole lot of different kinds of policy are being taken there.  So that there is definitely a need for that. And it is very useful to have global voluntary standards for that kind of thing. But then when you think about a completely different area like surveillance, what, you know, what are the standards that govern how a government decides to access your communications to look at what, you know, that the idea of even setting a global recommendation for that kind of thing. I don't know how I don't think that's we don't think that's a good idea. We have, you know, states are going to do what they choose. We have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the ICCPR and those documents we actually feel at CDT and a lot of our civil society partners feel the same way that you can really use those if you want to make strong policies that are protective of free expression and privacy, access to information. Those documents actually are sort of set an excellent baseline that can be kind of a great guidepost in making strong policies that way. I think it's, you know, it's really great that we have those documents. But as far as a global standard, I would not want to go further. Excellent. All right. Next question. I think this gentleman up here had his hand up right out of the starting gate. Thank you. Philip Corwin here on behalf of the Internet Commerce Association. But these remarks are solely my own. I think rather than asking who should govern the Internet, I think the right question is how much governance than the Internet really need. And it seems to me, and of course, my phone is ringing right at this moment. It doesn't need. It just has to work as long as it works, as long as there's consistent technical standards and it's available 24 seven. And when you send an email, it gets to the intended recipient. When you type in a web page or hit a search link, you get to the right web page. That's all it really needs, which, and I think once this meeting in Dubai comes and goes, and I agree, it's probably not going to it's going to be, you know, the elephant, you know, giving birth to a mouse. It's not going to be much of anything. I think it'll be good because it'll refocus everyone on reality. I think there's two realities that we do, which is one at ICANN. I don't agree quite with Milton on US hegemony, because I think in the last few years, the government advisory committee has taken a much more active role in the context of these new TLDs. And it'll provide a form, a context where people focus on the real issues in ICANN, which is, what is the role of governments within ICANN, which is very squishy and unpredictable right now, and what are ICANN's processes? I mean, they seem to be right now changing their definitions of what's policy and what's implementation and what's existing rights and new rights by the week. No one really knows what the rules are. So we can focus on that and then it will refocus everyone on the fact that the real legal, as opposed to government action, is in national legislatures on what's email privacy, what's the right of people using the panel to address. Well, are we focusing on the right question and what will we be looking at after Dubai comes and goes and not much happens as a result? Yeah, I think one potentially unfortunate aspect of the controversy over the ITU is that it diverts attention from the real problems, the real action and internet governance, which is happening both at the national level and in ICANN and the regional internet address registries and some of these other issues. It's the theme that I've been trying to make is that if we can't get those right and agreed, ICANN is not all of internet governance. It's not that important. It has a pretty simple function when you get down to it. If we can't get that right, how can we hold up new institutions as a model to beat down these efforts of the developing countries to assert the ITU as this potential locus of global governance? So we've got to get it right. So I totally agree with that. I mean, all I would say is to add to that is so you started off saying like how much governance do we need? And I mean one nice principle is that you should govern as little as possible. So you should do the least amount tackle the smallest possible problems internationally because it's so hard to get right. But like to be clear, when for example ICANN opens the door to the creation of a new top level domain that say could be .cashmere, like it or not, it's suddenly in the thick of the kind of geopolitical problem that wars get fought over, right? Or who runs the registry called .islam? I mean like that is to put it mildly explosive.  There are things over which people will go to war. And suddenly ICANN is in the middle of that. Now I think Milton and I probably may have like very different views but for similar sorts of reasons, you know like we're not actually all out of part in one sense although we end up in very different places, whether an organization like ICANN should ever put itself in a position to have to be making a judgment call with the participation of governments, not with the participation of governments through some mechanical where a .Jesus could be registered by somebody. And like it or not, that requires some degree of governance and all of the things that go along with that, openness, transparency, participation, representation and so forth flow from the need to make some decision about whether that character string ends up in the DNS root zone file. Well I would just urge anybody who has their internet open and on to go to Jesus.com. The last time I looked at that which admittedly was many years ago, it was some very handsome guy who addressed as Jesus and the whole website was basically a come on to women who might want to be saved by him personally. But Milton, but that is an argument to why people should relax. It doesn't mean that they will relax. I know, I know but the point is the reason that happened is because .com ran a registry where you just first come, first serve and they didn't care and they didn't try to apply policies as to who got what name. You're right and we agree about the problem. I think we disagree with how to handle it. You either have to be completely non-discriminatory and neutral at the core or you have to be incredibly, basically you have to shut down the system and say there aren't going to be any new top level domains which didn't seem to me like a viable option. It's not an easy choice I admit. We're going to almost throw down over GTD. We have time for only one more question. So let's go over on this side back here. Dealers' choice. There we go. I'm David Sullivan with the Global Network Initiative. My question for the panel, you know, it's this kind of remarkable moment where this group of activist groups, governments, companies have fixated the world's attention on this very kind of obscure problem in the grand scheme of things. And I just wanted to note, as we've been here this morning, word spread that the Syrian government has shut down the internet entirely. And I'm wondering whether we've got our eye on the ball and whether the sort of global community of people advocating for a free and open internet are focused on the right thing right now. And I'm just throwing that out as a provocation. Sobering question. Well, I mean, this is one of those questions though that's always like, isn't the thing that you're talking about dwarfed by other bigger, more important things? Like, sure, right? I mean, like actual censorship, actual surveillance that betrays dissidents, that is vastly more important than the content of the ITRs.  Exactly right. But fundamentally, I agree. I've been saying this for some time, is that the real action in terms of censorship and the worst forms of control is at the nation-state level. And that, you know, focusing so much on the ITRs was, again, it had some good effects, getting people focused on global governance. And now you have a better sense what could we actually do about Syria shutting down the internet? Answer, not much. But in a system of sovereignty, answer is not much. Maybe we should change a system of sovereignty. That's a pretty big task, but I'm up for it if you are. So, I will say that I think this is a chance for me to re-pimp my earlier argument, which is, you know, the containment, the ITU's constitution gives Syria that right, right? If they believe that their national security, decency, or sovereignty or territorial integrity are threatened, the constitution gives them the right to shut down the network. And so, this is why I think a containment strategy with the ITU is not enough. We have to engage in a Reagan-style rollback of the ITU's current remit. We should be pushing to change the constitution so that you can't shut down the internet under any but the most extreme and narrowly defined circumstances. Ellory, last word to you. Well, this is a question, but I'll just say it anyway. But how is that going to read internationally? I just, I don't understand. I mean, if the US were to come out and say, this is what we want to do, we have to make it so that the ITU can't get even close to this and we're going to dismantle it, shoot it, burn it down, whatever. Internet users, many of them worldwide would celebrate. They would view that as a positive move because their enemy is not the United States primarily, it is the government trying to repress them. And the ITU is a tool of that government. Right. But I do, I guess I'm not sold. I think as we've all agreed here, like governments are going to continue to do what they want to do and they, I worry that they will be even more angry at the US than they already are if something like that happens. And that ultimately leads to worse results for the people in those countries. I'm just saying we should ally ourselves with the users rather than the government's trying to repress them and that rolling back the ITU is part of that battle. And that would be smart, long-term national strategy for the US, smart long-term economic strategy for the world and a good way for us to try to live to the fullest the values that we espouse, however imperfectly as a country. That's my argument. And on that note, let's thank the panel for a frolicking good talk. Thank you so much.


As we keep celebrating decades of uninterrupted democracy in Nigeria, what really is the role of political parties in governance? The political climate in River State seems unending. What is the way forward to this volatility? And of course, we'll also be taking the headlines from off the press. My name is Nyam Gul Aghgaji, very good morning to you and welcome to the breakfast on PLOS TV Africa this 22nd day of November. Well we'll go straight to the top trending issues, issues that really caught our interest in the course of the last 24 hours. We'll make it mandatory for INEC to upload results, that is according to the Senate. The Senate Committee on Electoral Matters has outlined some of its plans to tackle challenges facing the conduct of elections in Nigeria. Sharing on television on Tuesday, November 21, the Committee Chairman Senator Sharif Adin Ali said that we'll be making it mandatory for the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC to upload election results online. Ali also said the Committee proposed resolving all pre-election matters before the election and upgrading election technology. Kudos to them. Federal Government IPPIS is defrauding our members, that's according to CoS, that is the President of Colleges of Education, Academic Staff Union, SMART or Lubeko, has raised an alarm about members of the group allegedly being shot changed by the integrated personnel and payroll information system, IPPIS. Hailing President Tinnabu for cancelling the policy directing tertiary institutions to remit 40% of their internally generated revenue to the national treasury, Lubeko also called for a review of the centralization of payroll administration. He alleged that IPPIS has become a means of defrauding CoS members as there were thousands of cases of short payment, outright non-payment on lawful delay and or withholding of third party deductions. Remember that ASU had complained about this and so many other people complained that their people were not being captured and so many other complaints. Another headline that we heard is Nigeria is witnessing huge investments under Tinnabu according to foreign affairs minister Yusuf Tuga. He said that the country is witnessing a very huge investment under President Bola Ahmed Tinnabu. He was commenting on the G20 compact with Africa CWA conference, Tinnabu is attending in Germany during an interview on television. Tuga reeled out some achievements they have recorded so far. Well, it's left for Nigerians to debate whether that is true, that the huge investments are coming into the country and we do hope that if these investments are coming into the country that it will translate into something great for the citizenry and not just to fuel our coffers. We also have the Minister of Foreign Affairs Ambassador Tama Tuga saying that with Simmons gas deal between Nigeria and Germany Nigerians will experience improved electricity supply by the first half of 2024. In his words, in the coming year by the first half of next year 2024 there will be remarkable improvements in the electricity supply in Nigeria. He added that the setbacks experienced in the past would be managed by the President Bola Tinnabu administration. Tuga said the gas deal between Nigeria and Germany is a win-win and Nigerians are hoping also that it won't be like we were told that from June we are going to have locally refined oil and then it was moved to a few months later and now we're told that by December we'll be producing this fuel and we're still to see any sign that this is going to come to pass. Okay, we also have a report from the Chief of Defense staff telling the House of Reps that Salmon Akbar is frustrating their efforts in the Southeast. Now the Chief of Defense staff that is Christopher Musa, General Christopher Musa has accused self-proclaimed Biafra agitator, Salmon Akbar, of undermining the efforts of security forces in the Southeast. General Musa said these while heading a delegation of other service chiefs and the Inspector General of Police during their appearance before the House of Representatives on Tuesday November 21. In the aftermath of Namdi Khanu's arrest, Akbar had asserted his leadership in the agitation for the restoration of Biafra. I wouldn't want to call it the restoration of Biafra but that's the word that's being used in the media for Biafra, agitation for Biafra, not restoration but because it will seem as if it had been a country before. It is widely believed that Akbar is allegedly providing financial support to armed groups operating in the Southeast who often enforce the sit-at-home order declared by Akbar. Using Finland of safeguarding Akbar, Musa urged the federal government to initiate diplomatic dialogue with the Finnish government and invite the Finnish Ambassador to Nigeria to address the concerns surrounding the activities of the agitator. Musa acknowledged the efforts of the military and other security agencies in maintaining peace in the Southeast but he expressed concern that Akbar's comments and actions were undermining these efforts. When I was reading the story, I was just remembering the Umarudiku incident. This is Nigeria where we attempted to smuggle someone in a bag or a box back to Nigeria in those days. You don't mess with Nigeria but how can someone stay in a foreign country and be doing instigating the people back home to be killing themselves because as far as I'm concerned, the Southeasterners are killing themselves because the victims are Southeasterners as well. So how can someone be instigating people to fight a country and then to kill himself and another country is shielding this person or is it that Nigeria is not doing enough to make sure that this person is brought to book or something? What other way do they define terrorism and terrorism financing and terrorism enabling? Is he not an enabler of terrorism in the Southeast of Nigeria? So why is the Finnish government keeping him? There are a lot of questions that maybe we need to ask the diplomats to give us answers to so that we get to know why it is so difficult to get this man out of the way. Is he arrested, put him in jail or prosecute him or one thing or the other that can be done to the man? So maybe we'll be asking, like I said, a diplomat or people who are in the know to tell us why it's so difficult because, okay, for instance, Nigerians have just been told why the Super Eagles coach cannot be fired. So we've seen reasons with them. So let's also know why a park cannot be arrested or cannot be taken to court or something. Let's get to know so that we put our minds at rest. He's in a faraway land but financing possibly the terrorism that is going on in the Southeast. Those are people who are some of the most industrious people in Nigeria, if not the most industrious people in Nigeria. And Monday market used to be like the in thing when you're talking business. People were coming from every part of the country to the Southeast to do shopping on a Monday. And now Monday is no longer Monday because there's a seat at home which every single governor has tried to abolish but people are still afraid and you wouldn't blame them for that. Okay, this story, I don't know, people will have it with mixed reaction. There's a headline saying, I will find a way to insert myself in Guinness Book of Records as the president who started instituting reforms from day one in office that is according to President Bola Tinuble. He said this while addressing Nigerians in Germany on November 21 that yesterday he said he will find a way to insert himself in the Guinness Book of Records as the president who started instituting reforms from day one in office. Tinuble noted that he has a private sector background and Nigerians voted for him for reforms and his stock record are former governor of Lagos State as former governor. He stated that Lagos has been able to become the fifth largest economy in Africa after he became governor of the state. Tinuble also said that he has already initiated reforms and will continue working to ensure that the lives of Nigerians are better. Well, reforms, Mr. President, congratulations. You really started reforms on day one. The question is what kind of reforms? That's what Nigerians will be asking. Are the reforms good or are they bad? If you say you hit the ground running, where you're running to is a question because you might not be running to the right direction. I'm just saying. But if you're running to the right direction, Nigerians will be the better for it and we're going to see. One of the policies that we know that you started implementing from day one was subsidy gone. And we have seen how that has led us. Some other countries have also done similar things like Kenya, I think. And then after a while, they saw that it was more harmful than it was helpful for the economy and the people. And they revoked it and this went back to the old ways, but with some kind of reforms. So as we applaud you for bringing reforms to us, let there be the reforms that will reform our life for the better because it's not everybody who is running is running to the target. There's a saying that sometimes there might be a lot of activity without productivity. So let the activity be productive as well. So the federal government revokes 1,633 mining licenses. They did this through the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development and they revoked 1,633 mineral titles previously given to non-compliant mining companies. The Ministry of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, announced this on Tuesday, November 21 in Abuja. They said the licenses of these mineral title holders were revoked due to failure to pay mandatory annual service fees of 1,500 Naira per cadastral unit. In line with the powers conferred on him by the NMA, 2007 Section 5A, that's how he revoked the licenses of 1,633 titles. And I'm just wondering, so these things had, these people had licenses and mining has been going on. How much money from this mining has been coming to the federal coffers, just like the mining app? Because I usually like to call even the extraction of oil from the soil mining as well. So how much of this money is coming into the coffers of the federal government, just like the oil money is coming into the coffers of the federal government? So if that sector will be sanitized and everything will be transparent, which a lot of Nigerians doubt, if everything will be transparent, then the diversification we're talking about in Nigeria possibly will be achieved in no time. Because if we don't do that and we rely on oil, the world is moving away from oil. We don't know what will happen even in the next year. Maybe everything oil will fade out. We have solar generators now. We have solar-driven cars. We have solar electricity. We have so many other things that we're using the sun, God-given sun, to get energy from. So we do hope that a lot will be done and transparently too. The 440 million Naira bulletproof SUV we bought is not for the chief of staff, but for his office, Lagos Budget and Planning Commissioner, Okwe George, says. The Lagos State Commissioner for Budget and Planning, Okwe George, has provided insights into the recently released two NT23 Lagos procurement budget. On Monday, November 20, Governor of Lagos State, the budget is on all who received criticisms. After details of the recently published 20-23 Lagos procurement budget made the rounds on social media, the document showed that 7.5 million was disbursed for the replacement of liquid fragrance in the governor's office while 440 million was allocated for the purchase of a bulletproof vehicle for the office of the chief of staff of the governor. In an interview on Tuesday morning, November 21, Okwe George stated that the aim of publishing the budget was to strive for accountability and transparency. He went on to state that the Lagos LX bulletproof vehicle was assigned for the transportation of dignitaries not for the chief of staff. There are certain specifications that need to be followed when purchasing these vehicles according to him, but they have also purchased certain vehicles from Volkswagen in Nigeria. So they do not support local vehicles and manufacturers. And we just, I don't know, the office of the head of service will have bulletproof cars. And then they said the dignitaries will be transported in that. So when they are going on an official assignment to enter a bulletproof car, when they finish the official assignment, they enter any other car that is not bulletproof so that we know that it is only during official assignments that they can come to him. Well, we still will not understand, may not be able to understand how government thinks, how people in government think, and why they do what they do. Because if it is in black and white, we would say that's wasteful expenditure. How do you buy perfume for 7.5 million or billion? How do you buy a bulletproof vehicle to put in the pool of other cars? And then when you are on official assignment, you use that, and then when you come home, you use something else. I don't know how that works. How will the head of service come to him, who is after his life? We don't know about that. So if the head of service will have a bulletproof car costing as much as that, how many will the governor have that we've not known over the years? But I thank the state government in the first place for publishing the budget. Now people are talking. Now they know what things that the people will be against. When they publish again next year, as I hope they will, then some things also will be pointed out. And gradually there will be change in our policy as we've always wanted it to be. Well, those were all the headlines that captured our interest before the headlines of today on the newspapers. So we're going to take a break now and return with the headlines on the newspapers, on what we call off the press. Stay with us.