Hello, this is B. Cam Balskert, Professor of Medicine from Baylor College of Medicine. It is a great pleasure for me to be speaking at the inaugural Cardiovascular Global Forum. And the title of my presentation is Universal Definition and Classification of Heart Failure. These are my disclosures. The Universal Definition of Heart Failure was a consensus statement developed by the Heart Failure Society of America, the Heart Failure Association, and the Japanese Heart Failure Association, endorsed by a variety of international Heart Failure societies, as represented on this slide, published early last year in the Journal of Cardiac Failure and the European Journal of Heart Failure. And if we examine the existing definitions and classifications of heart failure across the spectrum, there are usually three categories. The first one is the definition of the syndrome, which usually relies on symptoms and signs. These are critically important for the clinicians as well as the researchers. The second one has traditionally been the ejection fraction phenotypic classification. These have been important for targeting guideline directed therapies. And the third classification has been stages of heart failure. These have been important for prognostication, appropriate referral of patients, and being able to prognosticate and provide appropriate communication back to the patients as well as the referring clinicians. Starting from the textbook definition. The textbooks traditionally define heart failure as a clinical syndrome caused by inability of the heart to meet the body's metabolic needs. Though this definition, but the physiologically made sense, was not applicable to most heart failure patients. In this study, when lactate levels were measured as a representation of tissue level hyperperfusion in stage D heart failure patients awaiting ventricular assist device insertion, the levels were found to be normal in 75% of the patients with very advanced heart failure with low cardiac index. Representing that the tissue level hyperperfusion in this study measured by lactate levels will be abnormal only in a small percentage of patients. Thus, the textbook definition does not apply to majority of the heart failure patients. Furthermore, former society guideline definitions differed significantly from the textbooks and they also differed amongst themselves. If we examine the former guidelines, some focus on symptoms and signs, some on the hemodynamic characterization of low cardiac index and elevated feeling pressures and some even focused on the maladaptive mechanisms such as neurohormonal and or circulatory abnormalities which are not easily measurable in most patients. Further complicating the issue, the care coverage and performance have relied on appropriate documentation and coding which at present times reflects a chaotic mixed batch of academic, historic and hemodynamic episodes of care concepts and as can be seen, we have ICD codes such as systolic combined with diastolic, congestive, acute on chronic heart failure driving care. We have no specific codes for most etiologies except for comorbidities and we do not have any codes for pre-heart failure like pre-cancer does. These all underline the necessity to enhance appropriate diagnostic strategies with clarity and standardization as one of the first steps to achieve uniformity of care. It's also critical for us to recognize that despite the guidelines and expansion of evidence, registries with real-world patients over the last 20 years show very disappointing results with no improvement in ACE or ARB or in the corticoid receptor antagonists or beta blockade use as can be seen, the MRA use has been only in 35% of the indicated patients. These all suggest lack of standardization of care. And if we examine the strategies that have existed in research in heart failure, we recognize that research studies traditionally relied on criteria either the Framingham criteria which incorporates symptoms or signs or objective criteria such as elevated naturally peptide levels or hospitalization. And if we examine other disease definitions, most have evolved into incorporation of objective criteria as can be seen, EGFR use in chronic kidney disease definition or hemoglobin A1C use in diabetes definition have made these definitions practical and also treatment targets clear with a definable threshold. There have been formulations that propose use of naturally peptide levels as the central diagnostic criteria even in the absence of symptoms, very similar to cardiac troponin in the myocardial infraction definition. But these approaches, soul reliance on naturally peptide levels have been criticized because naturally peptide levels can be elevated in a variety of abnormalities other than heart failure such as chronic kidney disease, atrial fibrillation or with other cardiac conditions and thus lacks the specificity. And also in patients with heart failure with preserved EF lacks sensitivity. Thus, naturally peptide based diagnostic strategies by themselves were not felt to be adequate. So with these in mind, we recognize the necessity to standardize the overarching definition in a simple and practical way but with adequate sensitivity and specificity to close the gaps in care. Therefore, the universal definition of heart failure incorporates not only symptoms or signs but now has objective markers and can be summarized as, heart failure is a clinical syndrome with current or prior symptoms in our science caused by a structural and or functional cardiac abnormality and corroborated by at least one of the following. Elevated natural to peptide levels or objective evidence of cardiogenic pulmonary or systemic congestion by diagnostic modalities such as imaging or hemodynamic measurement at rest or with provocation. So this is the new universal definition of heart failure. Symptoms or signs attributable to structural or functional abnormality of the heart either with elevated natural to peptide levels or with evidence of elevated filling pressures either by imaging or by hemodynamic characterization. In the universal definition, we also address and revise the stages of heart failure. And these stages though were recognized by specialists were not widely adopted by non clinicians or were not understood by patients. The nomenclature gave the impression that they only went from stages A to D and not vice versa. And furthermore, we now have newer diagnostic strategies for definitions of pre heart failure, especially with incorporation of biomarkers and evolving treatment strategies to prevent heart failure in the pre heart failure stages. With the recognition of the necessity to be able to translate the concepts better to non specialists and to patients and also emphasize ability to recognize the pre heart failure stage, including characterization with biomarkers. We revised the universal definition stages, the stages of heart failure as the following. At risk for heart failure for former stage A, which is defined for patients at risk for heart failure, but without current or prior symptoms or signs of heart failure and without structural functional or biomarker abnormality. Pre heart failure for former stage B, which we define as patients without current or prior symptoms or signs of heart failure, but with either structural, functional cardiac abnormality or elevated natural to peptide levels or elevated cardiac troponin, especially in the setting of exposure to cardiotoxins. Heart failure for former stage C, for patients with current or prior symptoms or signs of heart failure attributed to structural or functional cardiac abnormality. And advanced heart failure for former stage D for patients with advanced severe symptoms requiring advanced therapies. And we also emphasize that advanced heart failure can improve to heart failure state with guideline directed therapies. We also emphasize that the biomarker based diagnostic strategy is incorporated as pre heart failure stage for patients without current symptoms or signs. We also focus on terminologies for clinical trajectories and emphasize the use of persistent heart failure rather than stable heart failure for those patients with symptoms, though they may not be showing active worsening. These individuals should not be termed as stable heart failure because that creates inertia and the false presumption of cure or stability by the patients. And persistent heart failure should trigger the clinicians to optimize guideline directed therapies. We also emphasize to use heart failure in remission rather than recovered heart failure for patients who have resolution of their symptoms in our signs and normalization of their LV dysfunction. This is important because in the TRED-HF trial upon withdrawal of therapy, 40% of the patients relapsed despite having improvement in their LV function and total resolution of their symptoms in our signs. Thus improvement in function and resolution of symptoms represents remission rather than permanent recovery in most of our patients. In the universal definition, we also provided classifications of ejection fraction which are defined as heart failure with reduced EF with EF less than or equal to 40%, milder reduced EF with EF between 41 to 49%, preserved EF with ejection fraction that is greater than or equal to 50% and heart failure with improved EF with the baseline ejection fraction less than or equal to 40% with more than 10% increase from baseline and a subsequent measurement exceeding that of 40%. The reason it was so critical for us to standardize the EF categories was the expanding indications for the life-saving therapies which now includes SGLT2 inhibition along with RAS inhibitors, metablockers and minnequoticoid receptor antagonists. Also with the recognition that the evidence now incorporates minnequoticoid receptor antagonists angiotensin receptor blockers or ARNI. By postdoc analysis, the benefits extend all the way to include heart failure with mildly reduced EF as well as heart failure with reduced EF with these agents and with prospective data, with randomized clinical data, specifically emperor preserved trial, we now have evidence that SGLT2 inhibitors are effective and beneficial in patients with milder reduced EF as well as reduced EF. ESC guidelines have incorporated the ACE inhibitor, ARB, metablockade, MRA and ARNI as class 2B recommendations, which actually emphasize use of these agents with a class 2B indication. The ESC guidelines preceded the release of the emperor preserved trials and will have likely included SGLT2 inhibition as another potential therapy for patients with mildly reduced EF if it were to have been published before the release, after the release of the emperor preserved trials. The 2021 ESC guidelines are harmonized with the universal definition and uses heart failure with reduced EF, mildly reduced EF and preserved EF categories. We recognize that ejection fraction may not be a perfect descriptor for the heart failure, if you know, to be classification and there have been discussions whether EF should be changed to normal and not non-normal in the aftermath of the emperor preserved trial, but normal EF definition is not a standardized concept with not a single threshold and can vary in women versus men in the setting of hypertrophy or changing loading conditions. And non-normal is not a reliable tool for phenotypic classification for higher risk determination or as a tool for guideline directed therapy implementation. Thus the traditional classifications of heart failure with reduced EF, mildly reduced EF, preserved EF and recently added concepts do help with targeting the therapies with different levels of evidence and indications. In the future, EF may evolve into a different conceptualization for LV systolic dysfunction, especially if we can find a modality by which we can capture the presence of LV systolic dysfunction in a reproducible, widely available and practical modality, we could potentially evolve into not only characterization of reduced mildly reduced or improved and preserved EF by echocardiography, but perhaps include LV strain and or volume measurements as further characterization of LV. And but these will require probably further data. And we also need to keep in mind that the target for the therapy matters. EF may not matter if treatment is effective across the whole continuum of phenotypes of EF, especially if it is targeting congestion or other mechanisms by which it is able to demonstrate benefit, such as with SGLT2 inhibition across the whole continuum of phenotypes. But it may matter if a therapy targets the pump, the pump dysfunction as seen on this slide, an agent that targets the contractile performance such as omicamptive, which is a cardiac myosin activator has been shown in the galactic trial to have increased benefit with decreasing ejection fraction. The benefit was highest in the lowest EF quartile. Thus EF will still matter when the treatments target mechanisms implied in more advanced heart failure or when the therapy is targeting the pump dysfunction or the ejection fraction. And EF still matters for device indications. The medical therapies can result in reversal of remodeling. We know this with beta blockade and the newer agents such as SGLT2 inhibition and ARNI also result in improvement in LV function and LV volume suggesting reversal and modeling. Therefore, we will need to be very cognizant of the potential improvement with reversal of remodeling in EF before consideration of the ICD and CRTD therapies. Thus EF by itself is still important for classification and for targeted therapies as well as for device indications. In universal definition, we also emphasize treatment according to specific etiology. As seen on the right panel of this slide, there are a variety of indications that require specific treatment strategies that may be in addition to guideline-directed therapies or beyond guideline-directed therapies such as consideration of the famidis and cardiac amyloidosis or treatment of the underlying tachycardia in the setting of tachycardia and use cardiomyopathy. And these are critical for clinicians to be aware of beyond just phenotypic characterization and treatments targeting phenotypes in heart failure. Our current staging concepts will help us move the needle in terms of earlier treatment strategies from treating very advanced stages to earlier and perhaps even capturing the pre-heart failure state and prevention of heart failure before the symptoms ensue. As to what the clinicians should do, we expect the clinicians to use the universal definition of heart failure to diagnose, confirm and document heart failure, then classify the patient phenotype according to ejection fraction to initiate and optimize guideline-directed therapies and then classify the stages. Again, to initiate the appropriate prevention and treatment strategies and also to be able to communicate the prognosis and appropriately consider referral for advanced heart failure state. In this subsequent encounter, the clinicians should define the trajectory and specify heart failure with terminologies such as persistent heart failure, not stable heart failure to further optimize the therapy and consider heart failure in remission for those who have resolution of their symptoms in our science and not recovered heart failure. EF can be reclassified if symptoms or signs change or there is a new indication for a new echocardiographic or other modality for EF quantification and if there is an improvement, the classification terminology to use will be heart failure with improved EF which requires continuation of guideline-directed therapies. So in summary, the standardization of the heart failure syndrome with the universal definition provides a practical standardized approach with high sensitivity and specificity. The definition which includes symptoms or signs caused by the cardiac abnormality and corroborated by elevated natural peptide levels or elevated filling pressures by imaging and or hemodynamic characterization are the first steps for us to achieve uniformity of care universally. New revised terminologies of classification of heart failure as at-risk, pre-heart failure, heart failure or advanced heart failure will be easier to be understood by our patients and non-specialists and will help us prevent heart failure in the at-risk or pre-heart failure stage as well as during the heart failure and advanced heart failure stages. EF classifications provides clarity for standardization for phenotypic classification and for us to be able to optimize therapies with the appropriate indications across the continuum of EF. Emphasis for trajectories for terminologies for persistent heart failure rather than stable heart failure and heart failure in remission rather than recovered heart failure allow us to continue and optimize guideline directed therapies. Thank you for your attention and the opportunity to present.


Everybody for us here rip in a box of 2022 illusions football hobby for Jamie J Thanks for the order Jamie best of luck The last box of the night mojo here One-of-one funk Raider base nice the 35 James Williams rookie Good start illusionist Tyree kill That's the same way Cousins we've got a Tyler Algear on the rookie signatures 65 of 199 Dac operation detonation Aaron Jones 386 of 499 And a mystique rookie Drake London 188 of 299 perks their Malik Willis foreign moon Dual patch card to 99 Got olave on the shining stars Yellow diamond rookie Kenny pick it to 46 of 299 He's pick it there. We got king of cards Tom Brady Josh Jacobs highlight swatches Jersey card Skymore operation detonation Roger 61 of 175 To 399 rookie mystique Matt Corral No funcadelics yet first impressions Kyle Hamilton on the rookie jersey auto to 299 Desperator to 75 on the amazing rookie insert Chris Godwin 251 of 499 11 of 50 mystique rookie Hassan Haskins Odd sauce gardener rookie endorsements out of the 199 Just got named defensive rookie of the year tonight Nice Salson on the back is a Trayvon Walker amazing insert That'll do it. Jamie. Thank you again for the order. We'll get these out. See you shortly


You know each week in my in my office I see lots of estate planning clients with lots of typical problems But something happened this week that I think is worth knowing about a man came in with his son and He had placed his son's name on His home's deed so in other words dad bought the house years ago for safe I don't remember let's say fifty thousand dollars and put his son's name on the deed in 2017 when the house is worth $900,000 because the dad reasoned to me that when I pass away, I just want automatically to go to my kid Why not give it to him now, or why not put his name on the deed? Big problem, and this is how we work to solve that. We're gonna have to go to court to clean that up We want you to avoid this pitfall What it is is this when you put a child's name on a deed or any loved ones or anyone's name on a deed or Stock or business or whatever you know what you've done is transferred the basis Remember I said it was fifty thousand dollars To that son Therefore when the son goes to sell the house He's gonna pay a capital gains tax between the current market value, which was 900 and something and the fifty thousand dollars That his dad paid for the house so in the words when dad bought the house at fifty thousand dollars By putting his kid's name on the deed It's as if his child bought the house for fifty thousand dollars There's pitfalls here, and they can be avoided with proper legal advice Don't let this happen to you


From the VMware campus in Palo Alto, California, it's theCUBE, covering women transforming technology. Hi, I'm Lisa Martin with theCUBE. We are on the ground at VMware in Palo Alto with the third annual women transforming technology event. And I'm very excited to be joined by the CEO of Women Who Code, Elena Percival. Elena, nice to have you here. Hi, thank you very much for having me. So tell me about Women Who Code. You started co-founded it a while ago. Give us a little bit of a background about what your organization is. Yeah, Women Who Code is the largest and most active community of technical women in the world. Our mission is to see women excel in technology careers. And that's because we have a vision of women becoming executives, technical executives, founders, board members, and of course, through pathway of being software engineers. So Women Who Code started originally back in 2011 as a community. Tell me a little bit about the genesis of that and what you've transformed it into today. Yeah, it started off as a local community and it was just a space to get together with other technologists. And what we really started to see is, it was this thing that was just fun and kind of our little secret for that first year. And we realized at one point, I said, hey, other women around the world deserve to have this as well. And that's really where the focus to grow globally came about and focus on women building up their skills and building up their leadership skills. And if you invite software engineers to a leadership and networking event, they won't come. But we hold an average of five free technical events every single day throughout the world. And at those events, they're primarily technology events where we weave in a little bit of leadership and networking, but it feels authentic. And it's an event that software engineers are excited to be. Five events per day, that's incredible. So VMware became a partner back in 2015 when you had around nine or 10,000 members. Now today it's over 137,000 global members. Talk to us about the strategic partnership with VMware and what that's enabled women who code to achieve. Yeah, we can't accomplish what we accomplish without the partners that support us. We try not to charge our members for anything. So those 1900 events we put on last year were free. We've given away $2.8 million in our weekly newsletter of scholarships and conference tickets, encouraging our community to go out there and engage in the broader tech community. And we can do those things. We can launch in the cities that we can launch in. We can elevate women as leaders around the world, but we can only do that through partners. And VMware is one of our founding partners. And what that took is someone in executive leadership to see who we could be. Because we were very small and we were very local when we came to VMware and talked to them about what our vision was and what we were going to accomplish. And I say now what I said back then is we've only scratched the surface of what we're going to achieve. There's some commonalities, some parallels that women who code has with VMware. This is the third annual women transforming technology event and at VMware here and it's sold out within hours. Walking into that room, it's very empowering. It's very, the excitement and the passion are there. And you just start to feel a sense of community. Tell me about the parallels that you see with VMware and some of the visions that they share about not just raising awareness for the diversity gaps and challenges but also taking a stand to be accountable in that space and what they announced this morning was Stanford with this massive $15 million investment in this innovation lab of actually wanting to dig deep into these barriers to help identify them to eradicate them. What are some of the visionary similarities with women who code in VMware?  Our average age of our community is 30. We have a lot of trouble claiming that you achieve what you achieve in your career because of us. We know we play a part in it but we know that potential, that raw power exists within you and when someone sees and knows that that's there and gives you what you need to be able to harness that potential, you are able to achieve great things, global things. You're able to change the world and that's what we do for our members and their careers and that's what our partners like VMware do for us. I saw on your website, 80% of members experience a positive career impact after joining women who code 80% and Alina, that's huge. Yeah, and a lot of that comes from the people that you connect with, the sense of belonging. We had a woman at the end of our hackathon in Manila come up to our leaders there and she started crying. She said, I was about to leave the industry and I realize I have a place and that sense of belonging that you get from coming to a woman who code event that's very welcoming, it can really hope to override all of those unconscious biases that you encounter every day throughout the course of your career and it helps you to realize, oh, I'm not alone. There's a lot of really smart, talented women in the tech industry. There's people out there who want me to be in my job and being in my job isn't just for me. I'm lifting up the people around me as well. So one of the things that we hear a lot about is a lot of focus on STEM programs and getting young girls interested in STEM fields to study in college. But another thing that's huge is the attrition rates. Women are leaving technology at alarming rates and a lot of people think it's to go off and have children and it's actually not the case. What are some of the things that have surprised you about women kind of in that maybe mid-stage of their career that are leaving and how can women who code help to impact that positively? Yeah, so what you're speaking to is definitely the data showing that women are leaving their technical careers at a rate of 50% at the mid-career level and they're leaving their overall careers if you aggregate women in careers at a rate of 20% over a 30-year period. So that gap is huge and the industry is a great industry for women. You've got a lot of job security, a lot of job opportunity, a lot of flexibility. All of these things are great for women in their careers. But what you're encountering is often being the only or one of the only. You really don't overcome that until you're getting above 20, 25, 30% of that feeling of being the only on a team. And what I think is the biggest issue with women coming into their careers and what kind of wears you down is the unconscious bias. It's something that you encounter on a daily or multiple times a day basis. That thing that if you complained about a single one of them, you'd be the weird person who complains at your company. And so what women who code really does is, one, helps to create a sense of belonging. It helps to build domain-specific and non-domain-specific skills. It helps you to envision your career not just the next step in your career, but the step after that and the step after that. So it's really working to combat those things that you're coming to on a daily basis to provide that sense of community, to remind you, you do belong and to really help you envision and achieve your career goals long-term. So you have about 137,000 members globally. And when we had Lily Chang on earlier, she was talking about the Shanghai and Beijing and kind of what that sort of meant to her going back there now as part of on the board. Tell us, maybe give an example of a real shining star who had joined Women Who Code and was able to get that support and that guidance and that camaraderie to continue to be successful and actually be promoted and succeed. Yeah, so one example that I love is a woman came up to me at an event last year and she said, Haley and I was going to the Women Who Code Python events and I now today, because of what I learned, ended up choosing a path into data science. I'm a senior data scientist and this year I'm being flown across country to speak as an expert in data science. I would not be in this career path without Women Who Code. Another story that I love is a woman who came up to me at a hackathon and she told me her story that she had joined Women Who Code in February and she was going to our events and kind of figured out what she wanted to do and by the summer she had transitioned into a new job, gotten a job with the Weather Channel as a software engineer and she was making more than double any salary that she'd had prior to that. Wow. And so it's career direction, competing salary or competing job offers which really increases your likelihood of having a higher salary. Those are kind of two examples that I love. The one thing that we haven't talked about is our leadership program. We have a global leadership program which really actions you to build skill-based volunteering and become a local tech leader. It opens up lines of communication between you and executives at your company. You often get called in as a thought leader at companies. You typically will receive a promotion or a pay increase at a higher rate than you would otherwise. Some of our leaders get press mentions, get invited to be speakers at conferences or even advisors on advisory boards. And so when I look at the stories that are coming from our leaders, one of my favorite stories is a woman in Atlanta who she had a master's in CS. She was inside of the box, the person that every company wants to hire.  And okay, you've got this. At her first event, she stood up and she was like, my name's Erica, feel free to ask me questions and kind of sat down as quickly as possible. But she stood in the front of that room. She began to be perceived by the community and by herself as a leader. And in under one year, she was invited, she didn't even apply to speak at three different tech conferences. And she went from barely being able to say her name in front of a nice community to giving a talk to a standing room only crowd. Wow, and very impactful. And is that for other opportunities that you guys deliver in terms of public speaking or is that because she was able to, through women who code, just start to get more confidence in her own capabilities and in her own skin? Experience, confidence, self-perception, community perception. I had one lead at our community tell me that she became a leader at Women Who Code by regularly attending events. One day, the leader was running late.  I've been coming enough. So she went and stood at the front of the room, welcomed everyone, got everything going, set our pitch. And she said by the end of that three hour event, people thought she was a leader. And she began to think, oh, yeah, I'm a leader. And she says, hey, I know that I can get an interview anywhere I want. I know that this opens doors for me. I had one leader tell me that she interviewed with SpaceX. And they specifically told her in the interview that they were impressed with her Women Who Code leadership. And that was one of the reasons they were interviewing her. Wow, what have been some of the things that have really blown you away in the few years that this organization has been around? It's just the individual stories. It's every step of the way, the impact that it has in the lives of our leaders and our community. And I honestly feel every day that I get to do this for a job. With what VMware announced this morning with Stanford and this huge investment that they're making into Women's Leadership and Innovation Lab, to look at some significant barriers that women in technology are facing and to identify those barriers that we can then eradicate, what are some of the things that you're looking forward to from that research and how you think that can actually benefit Women Who Code? Yeah, I'm very excited to see what comes out from there. I think we need a lot more research to help us to understand at what point things are happening and at what things you can be doing that really help to overcome. I think that combining research with the real world in-person action that Women Who Code does and the work that we do with our community would have an even bigger impact. I also think what it speaks to is accountability. You know, a very large, very successful 20 year old organization standing up saying we actually want to study this and I think that there's a message there of accountability which is I think a very important one that other organizations can definitely learn from. Yeah, I think that also they're going to an organization outside of them and funding that and so the research that comes out of there might come back and say, you're doing this wrong. This is how you can be doing it better and so the fact that they're willing to make an investment and say, hey, we want to see this better, not only for us. It's not just going to be internal. The state is going out to the world. That's an investment in global change. That's not just holding that in at a personal or organizational level. Right, so in addition to that news that came out today, what are some of the things that you're going to walk away from this third annual Women Transforming Technology event going, ah, that was awesome. Now this gives me even more ideas for Women Who Code. Yeah, I think this is a great opportunity to connect with especially women who are in leadership positions and figure out how we can better service women at the higher tiers of their career because you don't stop needing support and you don't stop growing your career once you become a director or a vice president. You continue to invest in your career and you continue to need support and so I'm really looking for ways that we can better serve those women. And hopefully we start to see that attrition number of 50% start to come down. Definitely. Alaina, thanks so much for your time. It was a pleasure to chat with you and we wish you continued success with Women Who Code. Thank you. Thank you for watching. I'm Lisa Martin with theCUBE on the ground at VMware for the third annual Women Transforming Technology event. Thanks for watching.


the impact of the CAA, the NRC, other recent internal decisions on our external situation, our image broad, and on our foreign policy. Because what has happened as a result of, well, the last year or so especially, is that we are increasingly isolated. There has been no meaningful international support for this series of actions that we've been discussing today. Apart from a few committed members of the diaspora and a ragtag bunch of Euro MPs from the extreme right. And this isolation is really increasing. If you look at what's happening abroad, the list of critical voices abroad is quite long. From President Macron to Chancellor Merkel to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to visitors like the King of Norway and so on, who would normally be polite, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees for our human rights, for instance, has condemned the CAA, calling it fundamentally discriminatory in nature. But it's actually a cumulative effect of a series of actions. The same UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had also expressed extreme concern about the situation in Kashmir and urged that India rapidly restore the rights that are currently being denied. And we seem to know that we are isolated. I am ducked a meeting with the heads of the two foreign affairs committees in the US Congress because an Indian origin representative, the only Indian origin woman actually in the House, was going to be present who has tabled a resolution which is critical of the CAA and of several recent actions by the government. Rather than attending the meeting and rebutting these charges, we chose to duck this. And one result of our recent actions, including saying Abhikhar Trump, Sarkar Rath, Haudy Maudy, is that we have actually broken the bipartisan consensus that used to exist in the US, at least existed for the last 25 years. NDA-UPA doesn't matter. On improving India-US relations, all the significant democratic presidential candidates have spoken out on these issues. There have been hearings held in the US Congress. Language on Kashmir has been inserted into the Annual Foreign Appropriations Act for 2020. And the resolution, which Pramila Jaypal has introduced, now has 29 co-sponsors, including Republicans and the only Indian origin lawmaker who attended the Haudy Maudy conference. So the question arises, why is this? Are we in violation of our international commitments? After all, India is a signatory, not only to the University Declaration of Human Rights, but since 10th April, 1979, to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, 1967. You be the judge. Article 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights says, each state party to the present covenant undertakes to respect and to ensure to all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction, the rights recognized in the present covenant without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, or other status. Notice it's for all persons under your jurisdiction. It's not for citizens, this prevention of discrimination. There's a very similar article in the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. So secondly, not only is it not confined to citizens and applies to all persons present on the territory, it also prohibits discrimination on grounds of national origin, which, as you've just heard, is exactly what the CIA does. All the knowledgeable people that I have spoken to agree that we seem to be in violation of our international commitments. And for those who think that the law isn't as that in any case international law cannot be enforced, you must consider the political and other consequences of being perceived as violators of international law and of not keeping our word. Global public opinion on India has shifted in the last few months. Look at the media abroad. I mean, the criticism in the West comes from the extreme right, the Wall Street Journal, all the way to the Guardian, and other leftist sort of papers includes almost everybody in between, New York Times, Washington Post, and so on. Some in India, supporters of the bill and the act, have drawn comfort from official media in authoritarian states. To them, one can only say, be careful what you wish and whom you hug. Even our friends have been taken aback. The Bangladesh Home Minister is quoted in a Bangladeshi paper as saying when asked what he was going to do about the NRC, CAA, and threats of deportation to Bangladesh, let them fight among themselves. Is this what you want? If this is how our friends feel, think of how happy we make our adversaries. What we have achieved in the recent past is to hyphenate our image with Pakistan's in a fundamental way, as religiously driven and intolerant states. Kashmir has been discussed in the UN Security Council again after 40 years. And we've lost, in a sense, India's ability to be an example and a model for other countries in the subcontinent, as we were during the freedom movement and in the early years of the republic, and immediately after radical reform started working in India in the 90s and the first decade of this century. We have gifted our adversaries platforms from which to attack us. At the very least, this inhibits investment because investment is an act of trust and of faith in the future. Our ratings have declined. Seven countries have issued travel warnings. None of this helps us. It's one thing to go alone, to go it alone in pursuit of national goals, as we did in 1971 when assisting the birth of Bangladesh. But then we had global opinion on our side. It's quite another to do so in the pursuit of sectarian, divisive, and party political goals, as we seem to be doing now. What the world thinks matters more to India now than ever before. More than half our GDP is the external sector. We depend on the world for energy, capital, technology, markets, essential raw materials, fertilizers, 80% of our imports are maintenance imports. So disengagement or going it alone is not an option. But we seem determined with actions like this to cut ourselves off and isolate ourselves. This can lead to no good end. Thank you.


I'm like a Turk in Turkey. Well, first of all, thanks for having me here again. And it's a pleasure to be here with you, to reconnect with the liberal libertarian ideas every year, like in this wonderful place. I'm going to speak about how the Ottoman Empire and its transformation into modern nation states influenced the Middle East and why it might not be a great thing, at least it's debatable. But before that, I would like to touch upon Dr. Stone's, Professor Stone's speech. I'm a fan of Dr. Stone and his work. I very much agree with what he said about Turkish society and culture and history. And one thing I would like to emphasize probably on that, or at an angle, is that I think Turks have been struggling to understand whether westernization and modernization are the same things. I think the Kamalist revolution basically was the idea that you need to modernize. And modernization means you have to westernize. So you have to get rid of your traditional culture. That was one model. And the people who objected at that model in Turkey, which partly includes me, are not necessarily anti-modern. Few people would be anti-modern until the traditionalists in Turkey. But they said, well, we will modernize, but modernization doesn't equal westernization. So it means you don't have to listen to Mozart, but you should get more technology and make more music, your music better, or you can have your Bollywood as the Indians do, but you don't have to be the exact replica of Hollywood. You can modernize within your culture, retaining your values. Of course, you'll change some things in your culture. But the idea in Turkey, especially the Kamalist idea, that you have to be like the West exactly. And that's why we had excesses of that revolution, like the famous Hetz revolution in 1925. Boller Hetz was made compulsory. And the Fez was banned. So the idea was by varying both the brimmed hats. We would be modern. But I think, on the other hand, the other camp, the political camp in Turkey, which ultimately the AKP is tied to, says, no, we will not change our hats or we will not change our Fez, but we want railroads and telegraph and now internet and construction and we'll build our country. We need education and so on, but there's a distinction between that and I think in the Turkish political sphere. And Turkey has been this, is a, I think a case study of experiments in which these two forms of modernization, these two visions of modernization have struggled throughout the 20th century. And I'd say now I think the conservative side has been more dominant lately in Turkey. The side which views modernization something that you can do within your own culture. Well, anyway, that's another philosophical or like a political discussion. Today my talk, which actually haunts you know, brought to discussion a few months ago brilliantly, is the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the modern Middle East. And I would like to begin with a map we have I think that technology right now. So this, well what you see here is, well the Ottoman Empire was a big place and this is what was the Ottoman Empire in its largest form, like a broad map. What we call today North Africa, the Arabic Middle East and the Balkans was the Ottoman Empire until, well, this is the Empire's largest form in the 17th century and the Empire lost its Balkan states gradually from the 18th century onwards. But the Arab provinces remained as a part of the Empire well into early 20th century. And when the Empire fell in World War I and during the process which led to that destruction, some 26 nation-states emerged from the Ottoman Empire. All the countries we're speaking about in the Middle East right now, like Egypt, Tunis, Algeria, Libya, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, these were all were the Ottoman Empire. It was based in Istanbul of course and like it was one of the, like it lasts for six centuries, one of the big political phenomena in world history. And of course we, as the products or as the children of the modern age, we always assume or not we but we are taught to assume that the age of Empire was like a black, dark age and with the rise of modern nation-states everything got better. It's not a, I mean it's a debatable position. It's a debatable idea. So I'll try to bring that a little bit to discussion today. What happened is that when the Empire fell, all these nation-states emerged and they were modern and they defined themselves in a national way. But there was a problem with identity with all those states because in the Ottoman Empire the political structure was by definition multi-ethnic and multi-religious. In other words, there was not a Ottoman-ness that conflicted with your Turkish-ness or your Kurdish-ness or your Jewish-ness or your Armenian-ness. You could be an Ottoman-Armenian. You could be an Ottoman Turk. You could be an Ottoman Arab. You could be an Ottoman Albanian. In the pre-modern era, before the 19th century, this was secured by the Islamic system of Zimmi's, which protected people. The Muslim-Muslims were superior. Jews and Christians were given protected status, not equal but second class protected status. But in the 19th century, even that was reformed and the Ottoman Empire accepted the idea of equal citizenship for Christians and Jews in the middle of the 19th century with the Islahat reform of 1856. It began with the Tanzima reforms of 1839 but 1856. The Sultan declared, all citizens are equal and they are all Ottoman, they are all Ottoman. That's why the Ottoman Empire employed large numbers of Armenians or Jews or Greeks in Ottoman bureaucracy in the 19th century and late 19th century. And when the Ottoman Parliament was opened in 1876, there were a large number of Jewish-Armenian or Greek or some other non-Muslim representative of those non-Muslim communities. And in the Ottoman constitution of 1876, Ka'ununi Asasi, the fundamental law, because I mean the Ottoman was a monarchy but it became a constitution monarchy with that law. One of the clauses states all citizens are called Osmanlı, Ottoman, regardless of race and creed. Again, you could be a Jewish-Armenian, you could be a Turk, you could be an Armenian. But in the new states, this thing, this pluralism got challenged. And let's see the next map, please. Sorry, it's a complicated. I'm not really good with the technology, so I'm not modern enough yet, so Turkey is maybe doing a good thing. Okay, this is the modern Middle East in which we have all these nation-states. And Turkey is only one of them and there are some 20 more of these nation-states. But the borders of these states were not drawn according to some natural border. I mean the border between Syria and Iraq, as you can see drawn by straight lines, they were drawn not based on the realities on the ground, they were not drawn according to Ottoman provinces because the Ottoman Empire had a system of provinces. So for example, the country that we called Iraq was actually three provinces, Basra, Musul and Baghdad. And but the Musul province was going a little further north. And for example, in Syria, it was like Damascus was a province. And these were, there were no borders between these countries. So for like a villager in 1920 who was living in what became the Turkish Iraqi border, there was no concept for a border before. So these borders were drawn by mostly, well by treaties, by the French and the British who decided to colonize the Middle East. And it was actually decided in a famous agreement by the British and the French called the Cycus-Picot agreement of 1916. Can we check the next slide please? Yeah, this shows the French and the British zone of influence. The blue part is the French influence which ultimately became Syria and Lebanon and the pink and the red one ultimately became Iraq and trans-Jordan which became Jordan and also of course Israel there as well, Israel-Palestine. So these countries just sat down basically on a map discussed, this should be the country, that should be the country. So it created these countries called Iraq or Syria. There was historical regions there but they were not separate countries. So then in just a few decades, what you had was that before you would have a country called the Ottoman Empire from one end to the other end you could just go without any border. Then you had these very well-defined borders. And actually there's a funny movie about this by a Turkish director Sinan Cetin called Propaganda and it was actually shown here a few years ago. It's a story of a village in southeastern Turkey, probably a Kurdish village. And like one day in the early 1920s, a delegation from Ankara, the new Turkish capital, comes with their marches and so on and they say, we brought you a border. And they say, the villagers say, what is a border? Like it's just this barbed wire which will protect you from your enemies. And they say, we have no enemies. Like the next villages that I'm talking about, like it's their relatives. So the whole, so and the borders actually were created and even not just barbed wire but land mines were made or planted. Today, still between Turkey and Syria, there's a border with land mines and barbed wire on both sides. And the people on both sides of the border are basically the same ethnic and religious groups. They're relatives. They wanna see each other, actually. Turkey recently began an open border policy, allowed visa-free travel and that's a good thing. And I'll come back to that. But until today, these societies which actually were the same society were actually divided artificially between these nation states. Now, but having a border is not just enough.  You can well define it, you know, where it ends and begins. But you also want to have a well-defined society. You want to have a nation. Again, that is the new idea which began with the French Revolution and which actually created, killed the Ottoman Empire, was, I mean, the Ottoman Empire lagged behind the West in terms of technology and military skills and so on, definitely. But what really killed the empire was nationalism. Because after the French Revolution, this idea that an ethnic group should become a nation and should have its own state became a fashionable idea. And it began in the Balkans with revolts against the empire, the Greeks, the Serbs, and the Bulgarians. And these moments of national liberation are often, you know, traced as moments of freedom for those countries. In one sense it was because, I mean, some consider the Ottoman rule as an Ottoman yoke. And that's, I think, it's volatilistic when you look at it from a historical perspective. But creating a nation state also created the zeal to make that nation homogeneous. There was a famous slogan in the Balkans, Serbia is for the Serbs, Greece is for the Greeks, and Bulgaria is for the Bulgarians, which meant the non-Serbian, the non-Bulgarian, or the non-Greek people would become a problem and they would be forced to migrate. Or they could remain and become, you know, like a community discriminated against, or they could, in many cases, they were forced to migrate. They were ethnic cleansing. That's why in the Ottoman psyche, the idea of a national liberation within the empire is connected with the killing and the slaughter and the expulsion of the Turks. Because throughout the 19th century, when there was a national liberation movement in Serbia, Serb, Turks, or Muslims who were also considered as Turks, even they're non-Turkish, were seen by the Serbs as the enemy. So they came back, they fled to Istanbul, and Turks saw these refugees coming from there. And that fear of an enemy within which will create its own territory and then will exterminate your people is the background of the decision to expel the Armenians. That disastrous decision in 1915 to expel the Armenians from Anatolia because when the Ottomans were in war in 1915 and Russians supported the Armenian insurgency and some Armenians revolted against the Algorand Empire, the Ottomans then thought, the Ottoman government of the time, the young Turk government, they had internalized the nationalism of the era. And they said, now we will do it first. And unfortunately it was a horrific disaster. I'm not like supportive of that decision. And hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished. But the blame was I think the whole era and the whole spirit of creating these nation states, homogeneous nation states. And I think none of the countries or none of the societies at that era is totally immune from that I think problem. And some of the countries were homogenized by ethnic lyncings, expulsions. There were more civilized means that we call population exchange. And Turkey did that with Greece right after establishing a republic in 1923. Actually even before the public in 1922, there were many Greek citizens, there were many Greeks in Turkey who spoke Greek, there were Ottoman citizens before. Now they would have the Turkish citizens. And there were many Turks living in Greece. And the two countries decided to have a population exchange in which Turks, just Turkey told its Greek citizens to leave the country overnight. And they were put on ships and sent to Greece. And the Turks living in Greece were similarly sent to Turkey. Some people were left and especially Greeks in Istanbul were exempted from that. And the Turks in Western Thrace, some particular part of Greece were exempted. Still we have those as minorities, both countries. But one of the tragedies is that those people were seen as aliens before they immigrated. They were seen as aliens in where they went as well. So for the Greeks, the newcomers were the Turkish Greeks which they didn't fully like and didn't see as fully Greek. And the same thing happened in Turkey where the newcomers were seen as the Turks of Greece which were not again the same people. So this effort to create these homogenous societies created a lot of trauma in the lives of these peoples. And all across the region. A particularly tell-tale example is the situation of the Kurds. I mean, that stone referred to the Kurds in a brilliant way. I mean, how the Spanish have a problem with the Basque or the Basque problem with the Spanish. Maybe one difference is that the Kurds are also on the privileged part of Turkish society where the Basque region is not like a poor part of Spain. But the Kurdish story is very interesting because it tells us, it shows us an important case study of this transformation between the empire and to the nation state and how it created a important trouble. Next slide, please. Okay, here's a map showing Kurds as a people. This dark color. The Arbaker is one of the important Kurdish dominated cities in Turkey, like Oreal and the Kurdish cities. As you can see, the Kurds as a people are scattered in a large geography which is covered by Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.  So, Kurds were just one of the peoples of the empire which were not, you know, inspired by the ideas of modern nation states. So, you don't have nationalist Kurdish rebellions against the Ottoman Empire. There were some reactions to centralization in the 19th century. So, there were some extra taxes and some Kurdish local chief days who didn't want to pay taxes. There were some problems with that, but there was no Kurdish nationalist uprising. But, in the 20th century, when the Middle East was divided between Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, and when these countries wanted to define their notion of citizenship, the problem began, especially in Turkey because Turkey is the country in the Middle East which is most modernized, but also it is also the country which went to the most extremes in terms of homogenizing its population, or at least trying to homogenize its population. And you can see this transition in the Turkish definition of citizenship clearly. In the Ottoman Constitution, as I said, it said all Ottoman citizens are called Ottomans regardless of, you know, race and creed. In the Constitution of 1921, when the Turkish parliament, the war parliament, did, you know, hastily in the time of war, but there were also Kurdish deputies, it said, it didn't define any citizenship, and it said the state of Turkey. State of Turkey, not the Turkish state, but the state of Turkey. In 1924, though, once the war was won, because the war was a war of the Turks and the Kurds together against the occupying powers, the definition of citizenship changed, and it said every citizen of Turkey is called a Turk. And in the Constitution of 1961, which the generals drafted, and in the Constitution of 1982, which the generals drafted again after their military coups, because in Turkey the military does a coup once in a while, you know, when they put the board in their barracks. They're not doing it anymore, but you know, that was the case until recently. And they drafted these coups first. It says every citizen of Turkey is a Turk. That's a constitutional clause of Turkey. But Kurds don't think that they are Turks. And once you define Turkey as a Turkish state, then the minorities, like the Kurds, have a problem. And that's why the Turkish Republic had its major, you know, uprising in 1925, right after the Constitution of 1924, in which a Kurdish group led by an Islamic, like a Sheikh, revolted against the Republic. And you know, there was a big clash between the military and that group.  And then from that point on, from 1925 to today, there has been more than two dozen Kurdish rebellions in Turkey. And the Kurds rebelled because they did not, they wanted to be defined as Kurds and they did not accept being Turkified. And in the face of that, the state intensified its effort to make them more Turkish. So there's a famous motto of Ataturk that every Turkish knows and it's written in every wall. And it says, ne mutlu Türküm DNA, which means how happy is the one who says, I am a Turk. So it's a different concept than the, for example, U.S., the founding of U.S. in the United States, you know, there's the idea of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So there's the idea that you will pursue to your own happiness. Here in Turkey, the state tells you how you will be happy. You will be happy by being a Turk. And the funny thing is, I mean, it's about happiness, but the first time I went to the Arbaqur, the biggest Kurdish city in Turkey. Well, now the biggest Kurdish city is in Istanbul, that's a different story, but the traditional biggest Kurdish city. In the Arbaqur, there's this military garrison in the middle of the city, which is protected by like watchtowers and machine guns and so on. And in one of the walls of the garrison, it says ne mutlu Türküm DNA, how happy is the one who says, I'm a Turk. Then there is a very high barbed wire wall to protect that writing from the citizens of the city, who are not Turkish and who are not really not happy by defencing. So this making people Turkish has been the amazing policy of the Turkish public court decades. And it is like engraved in every official text. For example, every Turkish student when they go to school from the beginning, from age 17 to the high school, you have to take an oath every morning. And the oath starts by saying, I'm Turkish, I'm righteous, I'm hardworking.  And at the end of the oath, you say, let my existence be a gift to Turkish existence. So there are two problems there, I think, from my point of view. First of all, the individual is sacrificed for the collective, that's one problem. I mean, I'm a Turk, but I don't want to sacrifice my existence to Turkish existence. I mean, I respect Turkish existence, but I can sacrifice or not sacrifice it, it's my choice. That's one problem. The other problem is, some people are not even Turkish in this country, why would they sacrifice their existence to, I mean, I would not sacrifice my existence to, with all the respect of Scottish existence, for example, and I'm a Scottish, I respect them very much. Why would people do that? So Turkey has struggled intensely with this problem, and for decades and decades, the state did not accept that there are Kurds. It was actually illegal to say that there are Kurds in Turkey. In 1982, I mean, this was the paradigm created under Kamalist period from 1925 to 1950, where Turkey was a single party regime. The only party was the Kamalist party and it was running the whole system. They installed this cult of Turkishness and that everybody, the idea that everybody is Turkish. And then after that period, there were times of little softening because elected governments came to power. They decreased some of the hawkishness of the regime, but then the military would come and restore the regime and also be focusing on the Kurdish question. So, for example, the military government of 1982 imprisoned Seraphettin Elci, a politician in Turkey, for saying, I am a Kurd and there are Kurds in Turkey. That was separatist propaganda, so he was imprisoned for that. So until 1990s, it was illegal to say that there are Kurds in Turkey, legal to speak Kurdish because there was a law saying that any language other than Turkish cannot be spoken. Well, English is fine, that modernizes us. French is fine, but local languages other than Turkish could not be spoken. Now, none of this, of course, I should say, justifies the brutality of the Kurdish insurgencies. I mean, including the PKK. So, I mean, they reacted to this oppression, but they created their own very oppressive movements in which attacks civilians and it may kill many people in Turkey. But the insurgency between the state and the PKK created like a huge death fall. The number of casualties as a result of the war between the PKK and the secretive forces is 40,000 people in 20 years. This is like 10 times more than the death toll of the conflict between the IRA and the British government. It's a huge death toll. And where Turkey will head from that, still unknown, there was a bomb in Istanbul two days ago.  I mean, if you wanna go, but occasionally, with an Istanbul, they can make an attack. And of course, the conflict is mostly going on in the Southeast. And right now to, and this is just one of the conflicts which arose from the legacy of the idea of these nations stays in the Middle East. If you go to Syria, well, you will see there's a different structure there. In Syria, in Turkey, there's this majoritarian majority, rule on the Kurds and Kurds as a minority feel oppressed. If you go to Syria, there's a minority rule. The minority, a Levite minority, which rules the country because the French left them behind, has like a domination over the Sunni majority. And the Sunni majority is revolting these days and the people of Assad are shooting them for protesting against the regime. If you go to Iraq, you will see different status. Like in Iraq, the Sunnis used to be the dominant class, whereas the Shiite majority, which makes almost 60% of the population was marginalized. Now they have a comeback and after the fall of Saddam, now Iraq is trying to create like a system in which this metered Shiite known as Sunnis will be marginalized. And of course there's a Kurdish element in Iraq as well. If you go to Lebanon, you will see a very different system, you have even more groups that are trying to maintain a political system after a bloody civil war. If you go to like Gulf states, you will see Sunni majorities oppressing some Shiite groups. And Shiite is always seen as a problem. So the states which are basically legacies of the colonial rule and the political structures which are legacies of the colonial rule. Because in most countries, as I said, when the British or the French were leaving, they left behind something. It was sometimes good. I mean they left that good education system on nice railways. I mean colonialism has exactly the contributions to be honest, to this part of the world. But it also, it was a doom to legacy in the sense that it left a particular group that the French or the British decided to work with as the dominant group. Or in some cases you had like independence movements which fought against the British or the French or the Italians in North Africa. And then those groups becoming, I'll tell you the website. So what to do in a region like this? Like will this region be like this always? And will there be ever peace of mind? Well there are theories about how a better Middle East came. And here is a theory, a particular theory which I don't like, but it's an alternative. Can we please check the next slide? This is a suggestion by a U.S. Colonel published in a U.S. Military Magazine and he says this can be a better Middle East if we can create a group for every ethnic group, a state for every ethnic group, it will be better he says. For example, then Turkey would be divided, there would be a free Kurdistan. Syria stays there, Iraq is divided between the Sunni Iraq and Arab Shia state. There's a greater Jordan, I mean Israel's back in pre-67, that's a good idea, but you know sort of thing. There's Medina and Saudi Arabia is divided, everything is divided. So the idea is that there are ethnic groups which don't have their estates, so let's give them more states. So let's create a, let's just continue the tide. I mean it began with the fall of the empire and like Balkans and with the Serbian revolt. Let's go on more, so let's give the Kurds another state. But when you do this, you will have other problems. For example, among the people whom we call the Kurds, there's another group called Zaza. And Zaza says, no, we are not Kurdish, the Kurds want to assimilate us. So we'll create a Zazaistan among Kurdistan. And in every region that you define by a majority, there's always a minority. Among the Kurdish parts of Turkey, within the Kurdish part, there are some Turkish ethnic groups. And Kurds live not just in historical Kurdish areas, as I said, they live in Istanbul as well. So there is actually no way that you can really give every ethnic group a state and think that this will be a wonderful place. And now the alternative idea, which first of all, there's no good idea around, but the probably better alternative is not to just create more and more states, which will probably fight with each other and turn into sparas in themselves, like war machines and which will try to create their own homogenous societies. Instead of doing that, let's just accept the status quo, let's just try to diminish the role of these states, decentralize them, and let's get rid of the borders between them as much as we can. Let's just, instead of maximizing the state system, let's minimize it. Let's just make the state system less dominant on our social reality. And actually that's an idea that is being promoted right now by the Turkish government, Turkish foreign minister Ahmed Davutoglu. Now Turkey is defined by Erdogan in the past, because if you type Erdogan, everybody knows him. He's a strong prime minister, sometimes a little angry, so there's two angry prime minister. But Turkish foreign minister Davutoglu is also an important man in terms of shaping Turkish vision. He is the brain behind Turkish foreign policy. And from the first day on, he was criticizing this divisions in the Middle East, artificial divisions, and he says, we have to get rid of them. How do we get rid of them? Well, you cannot abolish states in one day, at least. But his vision was, he said, let's get rid of these borders in the sense of let's promote free trade. Let's open all the borders and people should be able to travel. Let's promote free travel. That's why Turkey now abolished its visa system with Syria or Jordan or like Beirut. So you can, without a visa, people can travel around between those countries. Turkey began to promote something like a primitive EU in the region in the sense that countries can have more ties. And in one of his speeches, Davutoglu said, the, your security, the security of our country is not based on the number of tanks in your border, but on the number of trade agreements you make with your neighbor. The more you trade with them, the more you understand that you're interdependent and the more you will want them to flourish and yourself it will flourish. So I think that that's a better vision for this part of the world and maybe the whole world, but especially in the Middle East, the societies in this region already have these historical contacts and they already have a historical culture connection. And opening up, opening them up will allow them, I think, to create a more liberal state within themselves. And how many Ministers are there in this, five Ministers? Another thing I think we should add upon this is the promises of the Arab Spring, that is lately we're watching that. I mean, it began in Tunis and moved on to Egypt and Libya and Syria became much more dramatic and Libya turned into civil war. But basically there was a prejudice in the West. Many people were looking in the Middle East and they were saying, oh, this country, this region is full of dictatorships. So probably the Arabs love dictatorships. Why would otherwise all those countries are in liberal, strong states, which oppressor people? Well, people actually don't play dictatorships. I mean, the reason why there are authoritarian strong states in the region was not because, you know, majority of the societies favored them, but because it was a legacy of a doomed, like doomed political structure. It began with the fall of the empire and it has historical roots. I mean, it goes back to like a feudalism in this part of the world, you know, that there are historical reasons for it. But also, that was also the fact that some of the Western countries, especially the United States, for a long time preferred dictators to more liberal regimes. Because dictators were the one who were helping the US in terms of foreign policy with oil contracts or making peace with Israel. So for a long time, the West said, we don't care. We just want a strong man in that country who will be good for our interests. And it was none other than Condoleezza Rice, who accepted that in 2005.  And so I think the region, all like the uprisings, the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia has shown that people of this region, like people everywhere in the world, want to be free. They want to be free from a government which imposes ideologies. They want to be free from a government which tortures people and which is not, you know, questioning people's addresses, like aspirations. And in the long run, what will be is that, what will be good for the region is, first of all, forcing those countries to liberalize their laws and systems. And secondly, allowing those countries to have better links between them. Because the more closed a society is, the more borders you have, and the more barbed wires you have around society, the more the authoritarian state in the society has a grip on its people. And that's why invading Iraq really did not help the Middle East, but giving them Twitter and Facebook helped a lot. So allowing people to go beyond their, you know, bar guard borders, understanding the world, being exposed to new ideas has been helpful, as in this case. And actually the history shows that, you know, the history between the West and the East shows that people in this part of the world have always benefited from peaceful interactions with the West. I mean, think things and foundations and schools in this part of the world have always been helpful. That helps, you know, force liberal ideas, democratic ideas in this part of the world. But on the other hand, invasions and bombings and they do not help. They do not help. They create more reaction and actually they create a feeling of being on the threat. And also to add up on that, the peace between Israel and Palestine, that's another important thing. And if they cannot be sold, people in this part of the world will continue to think that, you know, the West is against them or not, you know, caring for their rights or not looking at them in a justice, from a justice perspective. So ultimately, I think this history shows that there is nothing that honorable or that, you know, there's nothing about the nation state that we should really take as a great idea. I mean, for a long time people thought the empires were the dark age and the nation states emerged and nation states are the best era. That's the zenith of human history and human evolution. I don't think that is the case. That is a phase in our history. Maybe a few centuries from now, people will live in a different structure. Maybe there will be no states. Maybe there will be more loose states. Then maybe there will be a more federation structure in the world we can know. That depends on technology and so on. But the nation state, like all other systems before, had its, you know, some strengths, but also had its own important troubles and problems, especially in this part of the world which is very diverse, ethnic and religiously. The nation state has created maybe sometimes more problems than the blessings it brought. And how to tame the nation state I think will be a key question in the years to come. And the indigenous cultures of this region, including Islam, I think will be an important tool to work on that question. Because in traditional Islamic thought, the state is not seen something that you should venerate. The state is not seen something as, you know, as an object of worship which the nation state has become. It is rather seen as a tool to ensure that people obey law and order. But, you know, as a tool which should be tamed and kept under control. And I have been working on that by the way that's a final point. And can there be an Islamic argument for liberalism? And my answer is yes, but I don't have time for that right now in this talk. This book, which I have in two months, coming in July, I address the Muslim case for the liberalism there. Well, thank you so much.


In this demonstration we're going to see how to find the center of mass of an irregularly shaped object. For the object we're going to use the state of North Carolina. In order to help with this, I'll be using this piece of equipment. There's a nut tied to a string with a pin tied on the end. What I'll be doing is using this string with this pin and a weight attached to it, together with the map so that I can suspend the map from the pin and see where the string falls. So I'll begin by putting the pin here. This can be anywhere, but I'm just picking somewhere around Elizabeth City. I hold the end of the pin so that the map is suspended from my hand. So this means that the center of mass of the map will be somewhere along this vertical line. With a marker, I'll draw the line on there. It's kind of a rough line, but you get the idea. So we know the center of mass falls somewhere on that line, but we don't know where. In order to find out, we need to draw a second line to intersect with the first. So to do that, I'll put the pin in somewhere else, somewhere up here around Boone. Suspend it once more, draw another line. And that's enough to find the center of mass, which should be the intersection of those two. But just for good measure, we'll do it one more time to see if the third line also passes through that point. So I'll put this somewhere down around Wilmington. I don't have to draw the line for you to see that the string is passing very near that intersection point. So no matter where I put that pin, it should pass through that particular point. And let's see where that is. It turns out that it's very close to the city of Sanford. So if that really is the center of mass of North Carolina, then I should be able to balance the entire state on that particular point. Now, when I said that Sanford was the center of mass of the state of North Carolina, I was talking about this cutout of the state. Actually, the center of mass is influenced by the distribution of mass in the object. And for North Carolina, we know we have mountains to the west, and so that's going to increase the mass on the western end. And we have bodies of water distributed throughout the state in various places. So all of these will affect the actual center of mass of the state of North Carolina.


Who would you rather face in a charity boxer match? A, Santa, B, the Easter Bunny. C, the Truth Fairy. D, Pudgy Bear. I'm going to say the Easter Bunny, I think. OK. I just find the Easter Bunny just a little bit pointless. You know, I don't really understand the point of it. So I'm going to say the Easter Bunny and my walk-on music would obviously be the same as I walked down the aisle to my wedding first time round, which was Z-Cast. Z-Cast. Fair play. Fair play. I'm going to go for Pudgy, because he's only got one eye. That is a shout.  Work on the other eye, just jabbing. And once that's closed over, you'll need a bleeding bandana on both of them, won't you? I mean, you've gone there.  And also, you're only seeing once a year.  You want to fight him outside March, where he's got his feet. I'll be honest, you're only seeing all of them once a year out in your daily.


We're all aware of the issue of the importance of Brexit. It's going to be central to the work of the Institute in the coming months and years maybe. We're very conscious that a Brexit has particular consequences for Northern Ireland. And we need some very creative thinking about how this is to be dealt with. It's fair to say that in terms of creative thinking about the economic and constitutional arrangements between these two islands, the SDRP, over since its foundation, has probably been the most creative force, particularly as I exemplified through its leader, John Hume. And so we're now at a moment where the same level of creativity is likely to be needed. And today, we have Colm addressing the issue. We plan to have all, at least we hope to have, all the major political leaders in Ireland, north and south, coming to this Institute to talk about the consequences of Brexit for this island and for these islands. Colm Eastwood is the leader of the SDRP, a position he's held since November 2015. In 2010, he was appointed Derry's youngest ever mayor at the age of 27. He was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2011 and was the party's representative on the committee of the Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister. He's also sat on the Northern Ireland Assembly Environment Committee and was appointed to the post of Assembly Private Secretary to the Minister of Environment, Alex Atwood, in 2010. Various other things about him on the personal level, being a music lover and as a keen supporter of Derry City football. But what is not written here, but which I am told is true, is that you also have a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu. So I kept that quiet for a long time. Anyone who wishes to dispute his anything, he wishes to talk about later on perhaps just might bear that in mind as the disputation begins. Colm, it's a great pleasure to welcome you. Thank you so much. Party disciplines become less of an issue since that fact was released to the public by somebody. Thank you very much for the invitation and for the welcome. It's a real pleasure to be here. Looking down the list of past speakers, I'm told that there was a similar crowd here for the head of UN Peacekeeping a number of days ago. Hopefully will not need the services over the afternoon. But it's clear that the Institute has never been short of impact and influence. It's very welcome though and probably somewhat inevitable that the period ahead will bring this Institute into even greater prominence. Given the science of the times, I imagine you have a very busy period ahead of you. Let me begin with where I think we currently stand. The European Union is facing a prolonged and potentially defining crisis. Its foundation and founders are a distant memory to most. The connection has been lost. There is no exaggerating how stark the situation is. The EU's ethos and perhaps its very survival are now at stake. Stating this reality may well seem obvious, but I think it's a obvious reality we all now face. This crisis didn't begin with Brexit and there is no certainty that it will end with Brexit. In truth, the Brexit vote was probably a symptom of a wider problem rather than its original source. It is instead the layered challenges of globalization, which I believe formed the biggest question afflicting the Western body politic. Since the financial crisis and crash of 2007, Western electorates remain in the depths of uncertainty and vulnerability. Deindustrialization, unstable and insecure labor, the transactional and managerial nature of our public culture and services, the impersonal uniformity of modernity and the ever-increasing distance of political power from the lives of ordinary citizens have all fed into this electoral landscape. The verdict of that electorate has increasingly diagnosed that a more porous world of ever-increasing pace does not necessarily equate to a world of ever-increasing progress. Through their eyes, it has certainly not meant a world of ever-increasing purpose. These sentiments had boiled underneath the radar of popular opinion for some time until now and they can no longer be ignored. As we have seen on both sides of the Atlantic, visceral politicians spouting ever more visceral language have written that wave of emotion. I believe the heart of the Brexit vote was in large part a reaction to these swirling cultural themes and sentiments. As a result of one of the biggest errors in modern political calculation by the former British Tory Prime Minister, David Cameron, the European Union got caught up in that complex crosswind and it bore the brunt of all that anxiety and anger. For many, the referendum offered the perfect chance to retreat to the imagined comfort of an imagined past. In particular, that is because a reawakened English nation is finding it difficult to define itself in the modern world. The crisis of the English nation has probably been a long time coming and will probably take a long time to resolve. Since the dawn broke on the 24th of June, the British establishment has struggled to react and recover. As has been witnessed to all of us, they are still a long way from finding their feet. So to use that awful modern phrase, we are where we are. Here in this island, north and south, we have watched all of this unfold before us. However, as we all know, we are far from being an audience to the event. We are all active players. We have plenty of skin in the game to use another awful phrase. Brexit will affect every institution on these islands, political and civic, for many years to come. We are now desperately in need of an Irish solution to a European problem. We should not and must not be bound to the timeline of a largely English crisis. 56% of people in Northern Ireland voted to remain in Europe. That's a statistic I believe is worthy of repetition. 56% of people in Northern Ireland voted to remain in Europe. It was a decisive democratic decision on the part of people in the north. Just as in Scotland, ours is not the choice of England or Wales. We have not chosen huge constitutional change and a life outside of Europe. We have chosen to diverge from that future. We have chosen to remain loyal to the European Union's ideas and ideals. There's been ample talk about the potential for seismic, economic and social fallout from Brexit itself. No doubt that will continue and grow if the British government triggers Article 50 in the new year. We know the pitfalls that await in terms of trade and free movement. At the last count, the British government will be required to enter into six separate sets of negotiations. This will bring a new meaning to the phrase long and protracted negotiations. In recent weeks, I've been outlining the political dangers and difficulties ahead of us if the British government continues down the road of removing Northern Ireland out of the European Union against our will. It is this political fallout which needs to be aired much more audibly in the current period. In 1998, we voted on this island to determine from that moment on, the North would have control over its own destiny and future. It was deliberately designed to ensure that constitutional change could only be enacted if and when given the consent by people in Northern Ireland. An intrinsic part of that agreement was the European Union. For Northern nationalists in particular, common EU membership with the south of this island, with the anticipation of deeper integration, was a key part of our buy-in to the political institutions. The totality of relationships presented to us by Albert Reynolds and John Major on the steps of Downing Street at the start of our political process now faces being ripped apart. The seriousness of that reality should not be understated or undervalued. As I've said over recent weeks, a post-Brexit word could also mean a post-Good Friday agreement word. The British government has shown no understanding or even interest in the significance of this reality. Maybe that should be no surprise. The British Conservative Party have a long tradition of displaying a tin ear to Irish concerns. It is for this reason that it is now so important for the Irish government to represent the whole Irish voice in the time ahead. The Irish government is a cool guarantor to our Good Friday agreement. At times of change and crisis, they have a responsibility to act as our ultimate insurance policy. It must not be a neutral observer in the coming weeks and months. I'm now calling on the T-shirt to uphold that responsibility. We are calling in the North's insurance policy. We need the T-shirt and his ministerial colleagues to speak for all Irish citizens, unionists and nationalists alike, in the forthcoming negotiation. In that vein, I warmly welcome the announcement of an all-Ireland Brexit forum, which will be established in November. As we know, the First Minister, Arlene Foster, attempted to politicize this issue earlier in the year. I am pleased that her attempt at veto has failed. In truth, although it is important that politicians from both sides of the border are involved, it is primarily an opportunity to hear and garner the views of civic society. There is huge anxiety in our business community, in our agri-food sector, in our community and voluntary sectors about the impact of Brexit. This is not solely about a loss of EU funding, but also about access to markets and influence across the other member states. If used properly, the forum will be an important vehicle to formulate a coherent and comprehensive response to the challenges we all now face. I especially welcome this week the progress on our cross-party legal challenge to Brexit, which will now proceed to hearing in Belfast High Court next week. After the referendum, we pledge to use every parliamentary, legal and political mechanism at our disposal to defend the will of the 56% in Northern Ireland who voted to remain in the European Union. The Court has now recognised that particular issues for Northern Ireland risk being lost as part of a broader case in London, and that our own circumstances should be judged on their own merits. That principle is at the heart of our challenge. Let me be clear, all of these steps represent a phase process in our opposition to being dragged out of the European Union against our will. They are all measured and designed to protect the Irish national interest. While it's taking immediate steps to tactically fight the trajectory currently being pursued by the British government, Irish nationalism also has a responsibility to plan ahead for the medium and long term. Any political adviser or observer can see that this is a time of shifting sands. In the last number of years, if the last number of years has taught us anything, it is that political life can no longer afford to presume the permanence of anything. At the beginning of this speech, I talked about the many challenges of globalisation, and especially people's increasing sense of loss and alienation from political power. Those issues are not unique to the English nation, and it would be a mistake to imagine them as such. Ireland must find its own answers to all of these questions. That will require a replanting of the centre ground and securing people's rootedness in it. It will also be no surprise to anyone in this room that I firmly believe that those questions are best achieved through a reunited Ireland. That is the debate which now has a renewed momentum. It is vital, though, that that new momentum is directed in a modern context. We have to be honest with ourselves. Irish nationalism has thus far failed to provide a credible and detailed plan for what a new Ireland would look like. As SDLP leader, I pledged that my party will now begin that work. That will require putting in the hard yards of policy development, and will also require extensive public engagement and persuasion. And doing that work, we must abide by an important principle. A reunified Ireland must also be a reimagined Ireland. And embarking on this journey, Irish nationalism must avoid the trap of pitching our tent on old ground. The new blueprint for a new Ireland must be built on a green field site. It must not be a process imprisoned by the past. Let me also say this. I equally believe that Northern Unionism must also enter into their own process to determine the constitutional change which awaits. The United Kingdom, as Unionists know it, is no more. They cannot credibly continue to defend the disintegrating status quo. As Irish nationalism begins to develop its own vision and plan for the future of this island, I would equally welcome the development of Unionism's views as to how they see the future evolving. How do they imagine the future of a union, particularly when Scotland edges closer and closer to independence? This cannot be a one-way conversation between Irish nationalists. Unionism must involve itself as well. Although we may not always have the courage to admit it, Northern nationalists and Unionists have a lot more in common than we like to often say. Over the years, one has looked to London and the other to Dublin, with neither always feeling a warm glow of welcome, apart from the people in this room, obviously. We have always been two people's battling for belonging. The future we now build must map out a pathway whereby we are all welcomed and comfortable in that new Ireland before us. Friends, the referendum vote in June was a moment of true change because it was a moment of lasting change. A post-Brexit Ireland is an Ireland we must all now work to shape. It will require us to take control of our own future. When buying something, my grandmother used to say that she was too poor to buy cheap. Hers was a simple but effective formula. When entering into a deal, she would always maintain that you should make sure to buy something of quality, which would give you the best possible deal for the long term. She had it well drilled into. There's a huge amount at stake for this island in the time ahead. There is likely to be plenty of bargaining. All of us will be required to find the best deal possible for our citizens. That will require us to be resolute and if necessary, to be stubborn. It will require us to defend the single market, defend free movement on this island and defend the constitutional agreements we all signed up to in 1998. We can't afford anything less. Northern Ireland is too poor to buy cheap. Thank you.