Welcome all back to the treehouse ladies and gentlemen where it is always a good place to start the morning Now I got something special for you here today We're gonna be doing a a croppy recipe. I've done three or four times been been perfecting it with OSG It's really OSG She's gonna be showing you guys this recipe today, but I am gonna be providing the fish Actually excited about today's video number one these fish cakes gonna be delicious I've been waiting a couple weeks to do this recipe again But also, you know a lot of times I travel around to these different lakes and I'll do overnights and Sometimes it's so far away. I'll drive home and you know kids are already in bed and stay in local here today I like going out to my local lake coming home. I've got fish kids are playing in the yard Clean the fish up, you know kids get to see the whole process. We eat the fish It's the circle of life man. I really do love that so you guys will You're coming along today to hang hanging out the local lake and come back to the treehouse for little fish dinner So I got a chicken check for you guys right now rooster drama pernil sanders over here in the background has overtaken Mr. Penny for the lead rooster slot. I don't even know where where mr. Penny is right now They have been straight brawling. He's over here.   He will straight give him a butt whooping just kind of wondering and let me know in the comments Do I need to take take one of these roosters out because if this cycle continues I mean one of them is going to whoop the other one so bad He's just gonna expire and you know, we'll have to throw him in some soup or something chicken tortilla soup I don't know We'll come up with something something fun Let's unwrap this one and head to the water Floating with 64 I have my crappie shorts on today The crappy the crappy attire is out And we got the meat necklace So soon as I catch these things Be ambitious, but as soon as I catch I'm gonna throw them in the cooler get them ice down So they'll be nice and chilled when I slap the sides off of I had them chases bait around it's a tube. It's the tasty tube They are not they're not eating it. Just had a real nice real big one come out and look at it I don't know if they're just in a weird mood today. It could be the mood Croppy when they get the finicky it's tough Except bumping bugs got a little more action to it. So windy. This is very difficult Well, that one wants it come on eat it. Oh my gosh, they're just falling it out the coming right up to it I think they're just in a mood today you guys to just cooperate so we can Put you into a fish cake under my trailer motor and try I know that's not gonna measure They do not want to buy it.  So I am rolling with the punches as they say Let's make a few casts. Well almost went swimming right there. I'm so glad I turned around and saw that that will do Give me five of these we're in Fitness little buddies will be perfect questionable one there and a skater Scout saving the day fast right now are coming out of the spawn and they're starting to move out on the main leg point it is It's gonna get really wild here in another few weeks, but right now. They're just in Small schools and they're high up in the water column So fishing a jerk bait or like a square bill On these points or anywhere you see the gulls And the shad is a good move Point them out buddies Point them out. Are they right there of the provisions for the family cool organics? Yes, sir. No skunky for me today Chocolate covered pretzels. No, I have some fish. Okay, but not crappie. They are not crappie Little white bass Okay, white bass cakes. Yeah, this should be interesting still and it was a weird weather day today, too It was very windy. It's cold. It's very windy and cold the crappie. He said no, thank you. We're gonna clean the fish We're going to Go to the OSG. Oh in the kitchen OSG It's been a while and You feel prepared to get all the necessary ingredients good to go I feel like you got it dialed. We're gonna nail this thing or what? I think we're gonna nail it. I'm actually gonna take some fresh Green onions from my garden. Let's show them the garden. Show them. We're going full granola Oh, yeah, I'm going full granola here. Full granola at the treehouse here So these are onions and these have exploded. So I actually need to cut some of these back and we've we've also set up a Rainwater Watering system here. So it goes from one of our rain barrels up there catching the natural waters and infusing it Into the garden, uh, and we've also Infused it with our own compost the help of the chickens I mean absolute full granola And we got some tomatoes. I I've requested tomatoes Uh, so we're gonna see how that goes here and the tomato blades are actually taking off pretty good, too They've already grown quite a bit. By the way, if you guys have green thumb tips Tips for tomatoes, I want to hear them in the comments. I want big juicy bat tomatoes. Whatever we gotta do Here they go folks live action Colonel Sanders is just whooping up. Whoo, buddy. Whoo Wah, bam. I mean, they don't even like know we're here while they're fighting better. Watch out. I'm gonna watch some toes Ben Ben you better get out of the way son while they're duking Yeah, I don't I I know I don't I don't really know what to do here Well, I think mr. Penny is giving up like obviously he doesn't feel his frisky anymore. He's like, okay, dude What do we do? Do we put one down? What's the deal? I mean, they're just popping each other Well instead of fish cakes we might be having chicken tonight That's dinner guys. Good to your food before you eat it. Just got a mystery package delivered. I don't know What'd you order? I didn't order. I didn't order anything. Are you sure? If it's what I think it is This was like must have been air like air delivered or something Oh So much unplanned action in this video you got Cockfights surprise unboxings Hey, it's uh my second hat my colors Oh, it looks like it's good Don't say that. No. All right. So This is the new Doppler three million Adopt for three million So I purposely did not put a live Turret or a turret on my life scope this spring season because I wanted to bass fish up in the stumps and not break my unit. Um These guys didn't want to send me a unit last year and like everybody else. They had some Uh issues just get the parts and stuff Finally, um, they're available now. So this is this is the foresight It looks uh, it's pretty solid. Anyway, I'm gonna be uh installing this supposedly it's easy to take all it off You do want to do, you know the offshore spot lock with the turret dangle And then if you want to go up shallow do uh some stuff faster than whatever you take it off It's pretty easy. So foresight forward facing sonar mount Now a little pro tip. I put a little bit of food grade food grade uh knife oil On my blades before I get going it prevents some of the gunk From from getting in there And it also uh prevents the wear the finish if you got a finish on your On your blade like this one kind of has a non-stick It'll it'll make it nice and nice and greasy for you. All right. I got a bowl of cold water And then the fisherman's sitting on ice for a few hours I do like to let him sit overnight if possible. Just lets the meat firm up a little bit These are perfect size for what we're going to be doing here today Wanted those little crappie, but they were not cooperating. So I'm actually interested to see What these are like so making a little Cut right behind the gill plate And just slide nice down through that rib cage That'll be careful with the young ones Don't want to slide through the Back bone It's a female. It's a female we could uh, we could throw that row in there Easy peasy That would take me a little standard unit knife and I'm delicate around the rib cage cut Get the most out of the meat These are good candidate for this recipe. It's like they're too small and really Uh, you could fry them, but they're too small to do anything else with You coming to check out this action, Amy? Yeah You always like the filet part, don't you? You want to go fishing? Dude, you want to cut some of these?  Your shoes and put them in this because you always forget Because I always see Your shoes going into wrong wrong place. It's back here. It's a skunk. It's a skunk. It's a skunk. It's a midday skunk Hot action. Oh, you got me another one out. Yep, thank you sweetheart No, no, no, no Ben Fish egg fish eggs are called row Oh row Row Row Yep Like row row row your boat. They don't just have one or two babies. They have thousands of eggs That they lay at one time And not many survive Not many survive. Nope That's why they have so many You're gonna give me the next fish. See this is like family assembly line Oh, you're you're holding it good. Yep. I'll take it. Thank you Never ending action here at the treehouse with two kids We have our filets So that's 10 total filets in our bowl here We'll take these inside give them a little cleanup Rinse all this stuff off and then I'm gonna let osg take it from here in the kitchen osg Welcome there she is. Uh, oh Stay away from that blender, buddy And what you got going on so far.  I put goat cheese in there. I feel like they make them extra creamy extra without that egg So I don't have egg but I have goat cheese. All right. That's that's a good tip. Okay. Good part tip So this is going to be mixed in with the fish. Yes. So our fish is right here Ready to go. Okay fish filets in the blender adding the crumbs Well, bam Okay, I'm probably not going to use all this just because it wasn't that much fish red Un going in about half of that Little goes a long way with the onions. This is a garden plot This smells fresh green onion. Oh, yeah Salt pepper Well, bam a little bit of paprika You could do old bay too We have old bay, but I like Straight regular pepper. Yeah old bay's good move and I'm gonna throw in some of this garlic and herb Okay, I'm sure what our son is doing in the background, but no idea. Now we're gonna add some of this goat cheese crumbly goat cheese Going in Fourth of a cup I have guess All right a tiny bit of mayonnaise a little bit goes a long way with it. A little mayonnaise makes it nice I guess you could use egg if you really Good wanted to So the mayonnaise if you want All right, okay now here's keys the key right here because last time I think you made them too much I agree I feel like because I didn't pre-make the breadcrumbs I was trying to like pulse the breadcrumbs with or pulse the bread with the fish And we ended up with like a slime mush. Yeah, it was gross. So the first time I did it was great Stand back Okay, this is a game changer.  You don't want it too thick because then it doesn't cook very well There you go And then it's pretty good That's why you need to catch more Wow It's looking great my dear. Thank you. All right. So we'll finish these patties and then move on to cookie Yeah, typically what I like to do if I have time is to chill them in the fridge for like an hour or two We might have to skip that step I might throw them in the freezer for a minute while I get the oil heating. Okay Um, instead of using like a vegetable oil or canola oil. We use a high heat tolerant olive oil That's the sound that's the sound you want About five minutes on each side Let a breast Those look pretty darn good I'm feeling like this is gonna be a good batch, huh? Running along and catch up for the kids So This is gonna be a big test right here, you know when the kids are eating fish You know, it's pretty good. Um, I will say the first time we had it kind of reminded me of Like a fish stick that you would get when you were younger it had kind of that feel to it Yeah, I agree and it was easy to eat. It wasn't like flaking all over. It wasn't messy So it's kind of like a nugget where they could just Dip it and rip it Dip it and rip it and it's always good to see the kids eat Especially fish, especially something that you've caught, right? Oh, I know Yeah, well it also makes you feel good because I caught the fish But also like they're watching me clean it and everything and emmy's emmy's into it You know She told me on our we were going to dump the fish that she was like dad I just I just love that we both love the lake And I really I really love the fish and I just I want to do things with you because I mean it was the sweetest thing she helps me in the garden. I mean, yeah Don't feel pressured by the camera to flip it too early. You do it when you're ready Yeah problem. Oh, I like the brown though That that one came out clean nice Sticking a little bit a little bit and too hot It tangles you I'm wondering if it's because it didn't chill all the way because they were still They weren't fully chilled could be could be now if these white bass cakes or the jam I mean, we're talking all summer long, baby All summer long white bass cakes I'm here for it. We eat a lot of crappier. In fact, we uh, we got crappie eyes I think we're gonna have it tomorrow night Because we didn't know if we were gonna Yep, almost didn't happen today I saw like a hundred seagulls just fly up.  Yeah My dear bring in the fish cakes Come stand with me. All right golden brown I think you cooked them well. They seem a little more Chunkier they do the fish is definitely different and I think not chilling them is different so We'll see they smells good. They don't smell burns. They're just Let's split a cake you and I What you don't want like last time we had it was real spongy. It was it was like sponge cake super spongy the texture was Not good. What do you think? Still a little spongy? No It falls apart very easily just taking it all in flavor fantastic A lot of different flavors in there. I still like croffy better Texture wise. Yeah It could just be chilling them That could be the element goat cheese the green onion the red onion flavor is fantastic Texture is good as well Can I film I need you to help me with something Yeah, all right. It's good. What do you taste? All of it. What do you like about it? Everything everything. Well, you know that was in the cooler just an hour ago Not anymore Yeah, ah Okay, mom's got more for you in play. That's an unbiased test right there. I can assure you She's a picky eater You had guacamole today. Yeah That's funny because you never really want to eat avocados here at home Speaking of that a little avocado and tomato on the side with this Fantastic, what am I trying to think of not a salsa, but a pico Something like that put on top of that. I'm about to hit it with this aoli sauce Although is the jam that bite. I just had right there. That was good as Any crab cake I've ever had in a restaurant. Thank you Every three star restaurant we've ever been to can you have the sauce? I don't know. Wow. That's amazing. Is this the bacon? That's awesome. No. First ingredient, so if you don't know Oh World mr. Penny You know used to be top dog at the roost and Well, now he's just locked out of the house Guys the fish cakes they were amazing.  You know try this recipe. You'll be shocked how good it is And I'm interested to try it on some other species as well But so far the crappie and the white bass are fantastic with it I don't know what was going on with the crappie today. They were locked in their little caves I couldn't get the trolls to come out of the caves today, but very soon they're going to be moving offshore We're going to get the Doppler on the boat and we were going to be Plucking them. So I'm excited for that and also these these white bass are starting to come up Getting in the schooling session school is about to be in session and I can't wait to get Amy out there and Get her with her little pole and and she's going to have a good time. She's getting into it. So it's fun, but Mr. Penny, I think it's time to sign it off Bishop Briggs, you know what to do. I will see you on the next great adventure in the outdoors


Next up we have James Driessen addressing us on foundations of skeptical operation systems using non-classical suspension of a logic gate. James actually goes by Jamie. He has years of experience working in fast-paced, regulatory and technology-driven environments. He's an attorney, MBA and engineer, practiced in both sides of the business arena, defending corporations or advocating consumers' rights. And he has in-depth software and hardware knowledge in Linux, Solaris, Windows, and Netware LAN environments. In January of this year, James' method of building a skeptical logic algorithm received a U.S. patent number 8099375. Welcome, Jamie. Now I have to get into a Mac world here and figure out where I am. No, I need to pull up my folder, which is in the presentations. There you go. Okay, so I'm going to present a little bit differently here because I am approaching a very optimistic or subject of programming sentience. And so while at the podium, I simply represent the programmer and you get to watch the movie. This presentation introduces you to several new concepts about programming sentience. It particularly focuses on machine skepticism and how skepticism relates to self-awareness. Skepticism no longer has to be some ethereal or unexplainable concept. Once skepticism is actually understood, it can be programmed. The programmer defines sentience herein as the ability for self-awareness. This programmer also advocates human ownership for machine life. Much in the way we own our own children until they are 18, patent-term periods for 20 years should serve for protecting machine life literally as children until maturation may lead to citizenship if the machine can qualify. Just as different vertebrate animals seem to exhibit different levels of intelligence, different machines might also have different levels of intelligence. This idea of measuring a computer's intelligence introduces us to a form of the compatibilist argument for free will on the standpoint that intelligence and sentience are actually not the same thing at all. For example, no oblivious routing protocols facilitate transmission irrespective of existing states of the network and allow for emergent behavioral routing between destination pairs. Emergent routing protocols suggest that we might manage data transmission independent of data connection or even data correction. This might also introduce us to this rough idea of quantum computing. Quantum computing is primarily approached on the chip level, what we call semiconductors, but it can also be a logic paradigm that challenges our established notions of what is computable and what is not computable. Quantum mechanics does not mean the world is suddenly gone magic or mystical. Yet, quantum computing should help inspire further advances in sentient computing beyond our standard true or false variables. This three-dimensional block sphere diagram should not suggest to you tertiary or quaternary constructs. Rather, it should suggest a quantum level binary, or true-false, which builds upon our current understanding of true or false. This depiction of a two-dimensional Hilbert space overlaid upon a projective representation with right-hand rule consistency gives us a new way to look at true or false variables. Because a free decision is a causally complex event, consisting of the agents causing itself to have a certain intention, such a causally complex event is called volition, which any programmer of sentience should place at the pinnacle of any free overt action, such as one's freely raising one's arm. The blue screen of death or stop message occurs when operating systems confront a programming error or glitch, also called kernel panic, fatal error, postmortem dump, segmentation fault, reboot requirement, core dump or bus error. There is nothing mysterious or indeterminate about the blue screen, but under quantum computing the blue screen may provide a separate state space representation for a simulation within the simulation. Along these same lines, skepticism must not generate any independent factor data. It should only organize or check data to form belief or doubt and to serve as an operating system in the game of self-awareness. The skepticism alternative to a decision tree should perform only parsing and pausing of data input. Parse and immediate pause should occur whenever data or input is accepted and thus elevate any two-dimensional Hilbert space data representation or data correction to a higher level skeptical construct. If objective self-awareness can be defined simply as the cognitive ability to separate ourselves from our environment, programmers of sentient should aspire to acquire a much greater understanding of both physical reality and metaphysical reality from a quantum level. Even if existential truth is real, belief and doubt are actually the same thing, just different levels on the same scale where irrefutable facts and knowledge are the fallacy. Understanding how the sentient mind is devoid of facts without belief helps us overcome Hilbert space through false limitations and leads us ultimately into the realm of antipodal belief doubt within the skeptic operating system. Philosophically, a machine's skeptic construct might be best imitated by nihilism, which refers to a reductionist principle proposed by 19th century authors such as Friedrich Nietzsche, who once said, as long as you still experience the stars as something above you, you still lack a viewpoint of knowledge. The solipsistic belief-pass filtering can take us to an I think therefore I am picture of self and the nihilistic pass filter can lead us even beyond to the I think but I am not yet self-realization. Probabilistic or Bayesian neural nets as useful as they may be may not satisfy right hand rule consistency for machine skepticism because probabilities ultimately tend to drive all data toward factual resolution or air correction. A quantum level belief pass filter allows the computer to make the leap all by itself or in other words to embrace that granular or quantum packetized nature of the cosmos. Our minds do not accept data without skepticism and our proposed sentient machine should not be fed air corrected data from a programmer. On many philosophical levels, all data input is in air. The skeptical operating system should remain at all times devoid of meaning within the computational framework as long as the operational structure remains at all times within the proposed skeptical framework shown here. This proposed recurrent cyclical redundancy is where the programmer proposes that data may become self-aware rather than air corrected. No facts or knowledge are ever registered in the human brain without a similar belief pass filter. Likewise in the skeptical operating system there is no fact which is completely 100% irrefutable. There is no falsity which has 0% chance of being true. When you look at the nature of reality with an open mind yet armed with the tools of math and hard science such as quantum mechanics and cosmology, it is hard not to arrive at the conclusion that a programic mechanism is behind the workings of the universe. The evidence includes the discrete nature of reality, the inevitable direction of virtual reality, the finely tuned universe and the fact that all known scientific and metaphysical anomalies are only explained by such a model. Are we living in Nick Bostrom's computer simulation?  There is the famous dream argument of Descartes supposing reality to be indistinguishable from a dream. There is the 5 minute hypothesis or unfollows or last Thursdayism which suggests that the world was created recently together with records and traces indicating a greater age. And of course the pop culture matrix hypothesis or simulated reality hypothesis suggesting that we might be inside a computer simulation or virtual reality. Whatever non-locality framework we want to assign, this virtual reality cause of causation view of our environment can show that skepticism is the most simple and correct approach to programming sentience. George Boole once told us that traditional deductive reasoning differs from inductive reasoning where facts are determined by repeated observations. In machines we have always thought that syllogism was presumed superseded by first-order predicate logic. But perhaps intelligence is different than sentience and intelligence can never be more than data input. Author Daniel Dennett in his lecture on free will in the Enlightenment lecture series of Edinburgh University in June of 2007 stated, yes we have a soul, but it's made of lots of tiny robots. In conclusion, given this new construct of machine-based soul, I want you to accept a definition for skepticism. As a paused state, when a system stops parsing data, a sort of crash should occur and a belief hedge state may be accomplished. Accept this definition, a paused state, because it will allow a binary belief or doubt. 1 equals believe and 0 equals doubt and the gradient becomes a cyclic redundancy that pauses or terminates based on data classification, not on fact resolution or on data storage. I hope you have enjoyed this presentation. If you have any questions, please see me during the breaks or after the conference at the dinner tonight. Thank you very much. Will your algorithm run on a quantum computer? Or can it run on a classical computer? My algorithm is designed to run on a classic computer. And the reason being that quantum computing really, when you look at the block sphere in Hilbert's space, overlaid on a three-dimensional representation, it's not telling you to look at tertiary or quaternary or three-dimensional. It's telling you that true-false is not what we think it is. True-false has many areas in between. And so what we do with the algorithm is simply not allow data to be anything other than data. We in our programming accept this idea that we can feed facts into computers. Facts do not exist in the mind. Even if existential truth and false may exist, there is no way for the mind to tell. And so why should we let our computers act any differently than our minds and actually register a true or false? And so we just use a belief pass filter in the front that does not allow data to be anything other than data. It cannot ever be registered as a true or false or a fact.


Well, thank you very much for inviting me. It's my first time at one of your conferences and just in case you haven't come across, I hope your libraries are stocked full of our publications, but they may not be because we do produce everything in hard copy as well as electronically. And this is who we are, what we do with UK's only specialist think tank for higher education. We have relationships with 115 universities now up and down the land, all four parts of the UK, all parts of the higher education sector as well. We do work and we're totally transparent, much more transparent than most think tanks about all our funding. We do also work with a small number of large companies with an interest in higher education. I've got to say do include some publishers Elsevier, Wiley, Pearson, for example, though as I say we work with far more universities than we do companies. And we're really known, we do the things that I guess all think tanks do really. First of all, we sit between government and universities institutions and try to get the two sides to understand one another and we do that partly by trying to shape the policy debate. And we really do that in two main ways. One is we have lots and lots of events. We've recently tripled the size of our events programme. We did more than a dozen events last year. As I say, we sit in the interface between higher education and politics. So we had, for example, at our annual conference last year, we had Joe Johnson, the university's minister, come and speak at a policy briefing day we did for all the organisations, the supporters. We had Gordon Marsden, who's the Labour higher education spokesman, our annual lecture in December last year. We had Martha Cantor, who was Obama's tertiary education minister, so in charge of all further and higher education funding in Washington for the first four years of Obama's presidency. And then perhaps what we're most well known for is our research output. We did 15 policy papers last year and I'll talk a little bit more about those in a moment. I should say that my own background, we're a very small organisation and my own background is working in Whitehall and Westminster as you heard. And most of my career has been in education of some form or other because I was also a secondary school teacher for five years after leaving university. But most of my recent background is working in Westminster and Whitehall as you heard, David Wood, it's a special adviser, so some of the open access issues came across my desk. But I've got to say I'm not a great expert on library issues and access issues and I think if I'd been asked half the questions you had just asked Nick, I think I would have answered them with questions as well. And so I've just wanted to warn you that because when I was asked to speak here I did say I would want to address higher education issues a bit more generally, most of which of course directly impinge upon what you do. And I'll say a little bit more about that in a moment. But I am a user of your libraries. These are just a small proportion of some of the library. I wondered if I should test you on if you could recognise the buildings, but the first one is of course Birmingham University's old library just being replaced where I did some of my own academic research on the extreme right in Britain because they've got Oswald Moses papers. That's part of Sheffield University Library where they also have a British fascism collection. That is Churchill College Cambridge where I did some work around migration, policy migration. They've got Margaret Thatcher and Enoch Pal's papers and I spent a lot of time in the National Archives so I think they're a partner rather than a member of our UK because they're not a library of course. And those are some of the academic papers that I have myself written. So I think of myself as an amateur historian. I'm not an academic in any way but I do spend some of my own free time perusing in places like the British Library and the National Archives and as I say some of the research libraries that are older. Those are the most famous, most traditional universities. So those are some of the articles that I've written. But what do we do at Happy? We've done five papers so far in 2017. The first one we did this year was an alternative provider. So these new higher education providers which don't get direct public funding. And I think actually there is an issue there for you of course because traditionally these organisations are not being set up with good well resourced libraries very often which is one of the reasons they can keep their fees down. Secondly we found the killer fact in that report was we found even after the higher education bill goes through Parliament which is meant to introduce a level playing field for higher education providers of all types. We found there would be 500 completely unregulated higher education providers in the UK. And that by the way is not our figure. It's from the impact assessment of the government's own impact assessment on their legislation. I think they were shocked when we published that figure but we had to point them towards their own publication. Certainly the Beers Press Office was shocked by it. So there are some tangential links between that and I direct links I think between that and what you do. We did the first and only actually really detailed econometric analysis of what Brexit means for student numbers. I want to return to that in a moment. We published up the lecture by Martha Cantor who I said was the Prime Minister. She now runs in the US the campaign to have two years of free community college education study in higher education which Bernie Saunders and then Hillary Clinton were both associated with. It's a cross party group actually so there are some Republicans on it as well but we've done two other papers this year. One again which I'll return to at the very end of my remarks briefly on technology in higher education and then also one on BTECs because students arriving at university with BTECs they explain nearly an entire widening participation progress in the last decade or so. So if universities have not been accepting people with either straight BTECs or a mix of BTECs and A-levels then that widening participation progress would not have been made. But once these BTEC students get in they very often fall behind. They start actually slightly more confident than A-level students but they're much more likely to drop out and they're much more likely to drop out at research intensive universities than they are elsewhere. So about 40% of BTEC students entering research intensive universities do not complete that course. So and one of the reasons is they seem to be less well versed in some of them, the sort of independent directed learning and some of the essay writing skills and those other things that are more commonly needed at university. So again it's not totally unassociated with all the things that you do in your libraries. So I think this is an annual meeting. It's worth I think remembering all the change that has been in higher education since you last met. We've had a white paper on higher education. We've got the bill that's currently in front of the House of Lords. We've had the referendum. We've had a new prime minister. We've had the teaching functions of universities removed from the old biz department and put in the BFE. We've had the research functions stay in biz but biz has been renamed. Both those two departments have new secretaries of state. We've got of course a new US president as well and I'm not sure there'll be much time to talk about him but it's worth remembering. This cartoon amused me in the telegraph last year when all these changes were going on which I think summed up suddenly 24 hour news came into its own didn't it? But I thought what I'd do in the rest of my remarks if it's okay with you is talk a bit about the bill because the bill is really significant and if currently in the House of Lords they were debating it yesterday talk a bit more about Brexit and our research on that and I just wanted to touch on three sort of longer term issues that I think are of direct relevance to what we do. My view is because the bill on higher education that's currently before Parliament is very, very controversial. But my opinion is we do need a new legal framework for higher education in the UK. The very first report I wrote when I got too happy was that one there, unfinished business, the case for new higher education legislation and the reason I say that is as you know better than me probably the funding of universities has been transformed. The funding council doesn't do all that much funding anymore on the teaching side at least of universities. Most of that money now comes directly to universities through the fees which have to carry the burden of all sorts of things they didn't have to carry in the past like capital projects. And there's also, as I've already referred to once, been a large growth in the number of students at providers who did not come under Hefke's Aegis. And many of those are taking out quite substantial tuition fee loans and maintenance loans so there is a relevance to the public expenditure and the public realm there. This is the parliamentary processes of a bill, of a piece of legislation, first reading, second reading, committee stage, report stage, third reading. We are currently in the second R that they are in the red bit if you like. So we're nearly there with the bill actually. We're in the report stage in the House of Lords which you'll see the dates are there. Last night was the second of four days on the report stage in the House of Lords. So in terms of its sheer parliamentary progress, the bill is nearly there. But in the House of Lords, the committee stage in the House of Lords, there was 650 amendments, 120 of those were from the government and they sort of went through on the nod. The opposition only moved, only got one through which was adding a new clause to the very top of the bill to define what a university is. But the really exciting stuff is going on now, a report stage. And the government came forward last week with a whole load of amendments. They said it was going to buy off all the opposition in the House of Lords. I'll come back to that one. And it got endorsements from University Alliance, Universities UK, the Labour HE spokesman in the Lords. All these Lords' amendments that government came forward with was meant to buy off all the opposition in the Lords and that was meant to be the end of it. But in the last week, there have been four defeats of the government in the House of Lords on HE. There's been other defeats on the Brexit bill, of course. And what the Lords have said is they said there should be no link between your performance in the Teth, you know, Gold, Silver, Bronze and the fee increases. So that has gone through. They've said universities must help their students get registered to vote, which I personally agree with. They've massively watered down the government's recommendations on degree-awarding powers. They wanted new institutions to be allowed to have degree-awarding powers from day one of their education delivery. They did that only last night. And another thing they did last night was actually saying the government can't use the results of the Teth to rank providers Gold, Silver, Bronze. Now, many of those things will be overturned in the House of Commons. So just because the Lords have opposed to them, but it may be the government needs to come forward with some further amendments because otherwise we'll be in ping pong as is called between the Commons and the Lords. And the reason, by the way, the bill is having such a difficult time in the Lords and the reason the Brexit bill is having such a difficult time in the Lords as well is that is the maker of the House of Lords. The Conservatives for the first time in living memory, first time in centuries, do not have a majority in the House of Lords since they kicked out of hereditary peers, most of them. They don't have a majority. You've got to remember all those grey people at the end as well. They're the cross-benchers. If you include them, they'd have nothing like a majority in the House of Lords and actually lose votes on average more than once a week in the House of Lords. So the bill is at quite an exciting moment. And we're not out of the woods yet because there are some other really exciting amendments down, some of which I support, including this one. This is probably the one that is left that will be most lively. And this is a cross-party amendment. Lord Patton, you'll see, is up there, the former Conservative Cabinet Minister, Chancellor of Oxford, on international students. And it says, I don't know if you can read that from where you're sitting, but the Secretary of State has a duty to encourage international students. The Secretary of State must ensure that every student that has an offer to study must not be treated as a long-term migrant. They can't be in the statistics. They can't be in the government target for reducing that migration. And finally, you can't tighten the rules any more than they were when the bill gets royal ascent and becomes an act. So there will be a majority, I suspect, for this in the House of Lords. The interesting question is whether there be a majority for it in the Commons. There probably is a majority for it in the Commons, but they'll be whipped quite hard, particularly those Conservative MPs, to vote this down. I suspect, but this is probably where it will get most lively. We ourselves as an organisation have said there should be other things of the bill that aren't there, which got us a mention in the sunset column last week, because we recommended that there should be much tougher rules than there are for getting student loans back from people who leave the country. It's always written up in the tabloid press as a dig at EU students who come here, take our loans and return home. Actually, there's more money from British students who've studied here and then worked abroad. And they've tackled this problem in New Zealand in a very successful way. I don't know, I'll just leave the thought with you. It might be a better way than chasing down self-employed, higher national insurance contributions from self-employed people, I don't know. You'll need to have read today's papers together. So I'll work on Brexit. So what we did was, as you know, the university sector, and we did some of the polling, we did the first polling among students on Brexit, university sector was pretty much our one on Brexit. Students didn't want to leave, academics didn't want to leave, vice chance was certainly didn't want to leave. And there's no point in replaying those debates, but I think the one downside of the unanimity of opinion was maybe there wasn't quite as much thinking in the sector about the consequences of Brexit. If and when it should happen. And so soon after the referendum last year, we commissioned this piece of work from London Economics saying, can you just have a look at what you think Brexit means for demand at British universities? And it's a very interesting piece of work because they did two things that no one else has done. The first thing they didn't treat all British universities the same. They took a categorisation of universities developed at the University of Durham by someone called Vicky Bolliver and said, we think that different sorts of universities will be treated, will be affected by Brexit in different ways. The second thing they did was they didn't just look at the direct effect of Brexit. So the direct effect of Brexit is probably EU students don't have tuition tree loans anymore, have to pay the full international fees, but they looked at other effects. For example, there's been a depreciation of the value of the pound since June the 24th last year of about 10%, which makes UKHing cheaper relative to our main competitors for international students. And I just wanted to give you a sense of some of the results of this. Also, my green things have slightly blocked the number. Sorry, the dimensions must be slightly different to my computer at home. But the key thing here is if you raise tuition fees for EU students to the full international level, obviously the cost goes up and you would say at the same time you can't have a tuition fee loan to cover the cost. We think that will lead to a 57% decline in the number of EU students coming to the UK. The bill you can't read says 31,000. So 57% decline is 31,000. This is entrance. This is first year entrance. So we think there will be a 57% decline in the number of new EU students coming to the UK. The loss of cash income to universities as a result of that is probably less than you might expect. It's about £40 million, the other bit in green at the bottom. And that's because the ones who still come are paying the higher fees. So that was our first go at this. We then looked at that depreciation of the pound, that 10% depreciation of the pound that makes us relatively cheaper. And we said, well, actually, that might actually encourage some people even from the EU to come to the UK who might not otherwise have come here. So, for example, it will make those postgraduate courses which aren't affected by fee limits in the past and for which in the past there haven't been loans available anyway. So it might lead to a slight increase as well in the number of new students coming here. And it could also lead to a relatively significant increase in the number of non-EU students coming to the UK, which adds up to about 20,000. So you're still losing the 31,000 from the previous slide, but then you're getting about 20,000 different people very often from different countries. So the net in the gross are different. And we think the benefit of, cash benefit of these 20,000 people would be about £225 million in their fees. And if you put all that together, it's a reduction from the EU of about 26,000, an increase of about 15,000 from the rest of the world. So a net loss of about 11,000 students and the ones who are coming are likely to be the richer ones, of course, and from different range of countries on balance and that the net cash effect is actually a benefit to universities of £185 million. But as I say, all the benefit comes from the depreciation of the pound and all the loss comes from the direct result of Brexit. So there are slightly different effects. But it explains why we as an organisation have not been quite as negative as some. And when we published this data, I was quoted in the press saying Brexit is not a disaster for universities. Alistair Ffit, the vice chancellor of Oxford Brooks University was quoted the same day as saying Brexit is a disaster for universities. And actually, those two things are not mutually exclusive and I'll explain why. Our figures are just on student numbers and fee income. If you think about all those other things, so there's a question on Horizon 2020 a moment ago, then you might still end up saying it is a disaster. As I say, our report is just on student numbers and student income. But what we said is if those 20,000 are allowed to come, the net, so long as those extra 20,000 are allowed to come, they are worth about £2 billion to the British economy. Because the tuition fee income in the first year they bring is about a quarter of a billion pounds. If you look at them over their entire duration of study, it's nearly half a billion pounds. If you look at all their non-fee spending, accommodation, living costs, all of that, it's about a billion pounds. And if you look on the knock-on benefits, supply chain benefits, all of those sorts of things, you get about £2 billion. The reason our figure matters is Amber Rudd has threatened a new crackdown on international students. So the headline of our report was actually if you don't let those 20,000 extra come in while we're also losing 31,000, there could be a net cost to the British economy of £2 billion, which of course it would be dramatic. So we've made a bunch of recommendations, they're not that dissimilar to things other people have said, but remove students from international migration targets, share policy responsibility for migration with other government departments. We do something most other countries do not do, we say the Home Office has sole responsibility for student migration. Other countries share that responsibility with the Education Department, the equivalent of the Foreign Office, equivalent of the Cabinet Office, equivalent of number 10. And we've said roll out a red carpet for international students. We spend some time looking at other countries, we look at other countries in a selfish way to look at what the lessons for the UK are. And every other country we've looked at, and most recently they're Germany, Australia and New Zealand, do all these things. So this is not rockercites, this is not politically impossible stuff, this is just what they do in other countries, including our main competitors. So I've talked a bit about the Bill, I've talked a bit about Brexit. I just want to end by raising three other issues that I think are of interest. So as I said, I'm no great expert on some of the access to data, access to research questions you were discussing before. But we did produce a report on this question a couple of years ago called Open Access is a national license the answer. And the argument was written for us by a couple of people at UCL. And the argument was that you have a national level agreement between the main publishers and the British government. And then anybody with a UK IP address can have access to any research that would otherwise have been paid behind paywalls for free. Now, there are various challenges to this, is it technically possible was one challenge. I'm told it is because if you're in another country, you can't log into the BBC website and watch all their programmes because they know you don't have a UK IP address. This is the single most controversial paper I've published at Happy in my three years here. There's a distinction between our blue papers and our yellow papers. Our blue papers are analytical and less polemical. Our yellow papers are polemical. So this was meant to be nothing other than a contribution to the debate. Some people said it's a nationalist licence, not a national licence, because it only solves a UK problem, not a national problem. This was someone from Bristol said we should, this is about the most misguided proposal imaginable. I would like to see it to authors both of them senior UCL withdrawal with all possible haste with an appropriate apology. I pointed out, partly on Twitter, which you'll see up there, there was a slight irony of being an open access advocate calling for a paper to be withdrawn just because I didn't like it. And he then, you can see that he withdrew his retraction, but he then, the final one on further reflection, I withdraw my withdrawal of the call to withdraw the UK licence proposal. So this was a very, this led to three weeks of letters in the times higher elsewhere. So, and as I say, our job, we're a think tank and we're a charity. Our job is to make sure there's a healthy higher education debate. It may be that this isn't the answer. This was our attempt to tread into this terrain. And if you have better answers, please do think of us as a publishing outlet as well for better ways. I was very struck by the questions from the lady from Cambridge about whether all the incentives are wrong. The incentives are driving people in a particular direction, which means the publishers will always, always gain. You know, if, as I said, we don't just publish what I agree with, we publish anything that is an interesting, useful contribution for the debate and which gets through my advisory board because I'm accountable to various people. But that was our attempt anyway. So I draw your attention to the publication and have a look at it and see if you disagree with it as strongly as Mike Taylor did. Second issue I just wanted to talk about was the technology one. So we recently did this report on technology and of course I realised libraries are full of technology and not just books anymore. And this was written for us by colleagues at JISC who I know have a relationship with RLEK as well. And the argument is very interesting paper with a packed full of case studies and the argument in the paper is that Australia and the United States, two of our key competitors are ahead of us on technology enabled learning. But we're not so far behind that we could lose this race. We could still be up there with them or do things even better than them. And I think the thing that's really earned a lot of interest in institutions are some of the specific case studies. So, for example, a meta-analysis in the US which shows that if you redesign your courses, curriculum redesign with tech at the heart of them, then you can both reduce your costs and improve student outcomes. And of course if you start with the goal of reducing costs, then often these projects fail. If you start with the goal of improving student outcomes, you often find that you do save costs at the same time. We've got new HESA statistics out while we've all been sitting in this room. HESA has published new non-retention statistics so I haven't seen them yet. But they discovered one project in Australia that uses smart use of new technology, learning analytics to reduce non-retention rates significantly. Australia is a very good comparator because they removed student number controls five years before we did. And one of the impacts that they found of removing student number controls was their non-retention rates climbed quite significantly. And the Nottingham trend, which everybody tells me, I visit Nottingham a few times, but everyone tells me is the best learning analytics systems in the UK, show that the more you share that data with the students, the more it changes student behaviour. And we know from some data we've got from polling students that students put as their top reason for not working as hard as they should, that they're not putting in enough effort themselves. And Nottingham trend seems to have, to a certain degree, cracked that challenge of how you get students to work as hard as they know they should be, but are not always doing. We do the biggest single poll, I think, apart from the National Student Survey of students each year called the Student Academic Experience Survey, which is a survey of how hard students are working and various policy questions. And I just want to leave you, this is my final slide, with a question from that, which I think you will find salutary and useful, and maybe a killer fact from your partner sector, which is where we said to students, we used to say to students, if your university had loads more money to spend, where should they spend it? And when they realised that's not quite the environment we're in.  And the thing that they want less spent on is buildings. And the thing that they're least willing to see cut, look down the bottom there, is reducing spending on learning facilities, e.g. IT, library or laboratory facilities. Now, I know what you're going to say, I know what you're going to say is there's a contradiction there, because what is a building other than a learning facility? And I take that point, but I suspect the answer, I suspect we get the answers we do, is that students don't want to live on building sites. They do want to be in nice, shiny new buildings, but they want to be the ones benefiting from them. They don't want to be the ones living on a building site, like when you go on holiday in Torremilino or something. But nonetheless, I think that 5% fact, the bottom of the list, is quite useful for all the things that you do. As I say, that is the area that students least want to see money cut from. And for me, that's a killer fact, which shows the importance of what you do is understood by students as well as by staff. Many thanks.


In the mid-60s, a major change took place in the character of the fighting in Vietnam. Large numbers of American combat troops began to arrive. Until then, the fighting had been handled by Vietnamese forces with American troops serving primarily as advisors. The enemy, unable to defeat this combination with primarily guerrilla-type forces and operations, had begun bringing in regular North Vietnamese army units in large numbers. It was in response to this massive influx of North Vietnamese troops that United States combat units were sent to Vietnam. Troops did what they came to do. They carried the fight to the enemy where he lived. The aims of the aggressor were checked again. And at the same time, the armed forces of South Vietnam were growing both in size and capability. This took a big jump forward when the national mobilization laws were enacted. Throughout Vietnam, it was recognized that providing real security for all the people was essential. And that if the job were to stick, it would have to be done by the government of South Vietnam itself. With the end of the 1960s, the time had come for another major change in the character of the war in Vietnam. That is, free world forces would begin to phase out of the war, as the people and the armed forces of South Vietnam became capable of filling the gap. The term that has been used to describe this change is Vietnamization of the war. Vietnamization means Vietnamese armed forces taking over, but it also means, it has to mean, a great deal more. How much more, every Vietnamese soldier has helped to understand, since so much of the effectiveness of this effort will depend upon him. He learns that Vietnamization also means pacification, and that both terms take in a wide range of action. Military, political, psychological, civic, social, economic. All of these, as they go forward, mean progress to peace. And this progress to peace, all the factors. Military, educational, economic, political, psychological, and social, all interlock. None alone is an answer. But since there must be real security for the people in their daily lives, before the other factors can be put to work, the first steps are primarily military, security for the people. A chance to live their lives without being in constant fear of harassment and terrorism by the communists. The Vietnamese army, as it grows in size, experience, and capability, is making strides toward detaining this initial goal, taking over a step by carefully coordinated step, the areas of responsibility that have been held by American combat units. In planned stages, it has been extended to other areas. The Vietnamese Navy continues to function off the shores of Vietnam, keeping watch over the sea approaches. It also patrols the shoreline areas to intercept enemy shipments of arms and supplies. The Vietnamese Navy has also taken over from the United States armed forces in the highly effective riverine operations in the Mekong Delta country. Units of the Vietnamese Marine Corps enjoy a fully earned reputation as fighting men, and they continue to maintain that reputation as their forces are being expanded under the Vietnamization program. The Vietnamese Air Force has not yet reached a level of size that will enable it to meet fully the needs of combat over the whole nation, but its pilots are capable and their numbers are growing under an intensive training program. The same kind of training effort is being applied to the pilots of helicopters as the Vietnamese armed forces push toward the day and they can meet all their combat and combat support needs using their own people. The program extends into the technical and support operations of all the Vietnamese armed forces. Hundreds of technical personnel have been trained in various levels of maintenance in such essential areas as transport, communications and ordinance. Many of these have been trained in American technical schools outside Vietnam and they return home not only to perform their new skills, but to teach them to others. Once a given area has been cleared of enemy main force units, the prime responsibility for ensuring local security rests with forces designed specifically for this job. One such is the regional force which operates on the province level and ranges throughout its assigned territory as needed. These are company-sized units, specifically stationed in their given province and serving it. They continually seek out the Viet Cong, engage them in battle and if necessary, call on arvin or allied forces to reinforce them or take over. At the district level, the platoon-sized units of the popular forces function. These are not as mobile as the regional forces they rarely go far from their own hamlet, but they form an important part of the structure designed by the Vietnamese government to attain and then maintain security for the people. The popular forces typically protect points of control and communications in and around the towns and hamlets, checkpoints, government installations, warehouses, bridges, as well as the perimeters of the communities themselves. Both the regional and popular forces can call on the mobile advisory teams of the United States Army for advice and training help. Such teams assigned to province areas work with and through the province and district chiefs. At their request, the teams go wherever they're needed to help regional and popular forces improve their operations and do an even better job of providing for security on a local basis. On a still more local level, in the villages and in the hamlets, boys and older men participate in the people's self-defense forces. Some women serve too in support capacities. The boys and men, either too young or too old for regular military service, do an important job providing village self-defense, mounting regular and successful ambush patrols against the VC. Perhaps even more important is the mental atmosphere reflected by the very existence of these volunteer self-defense forces. On the one hand, the willingness of the people to be identified with the government to accept it as their government and to stand against the Viet Cong. On the other hand, the willingness of the government to put its trust in the people, to provide them with arms and ammunition and training. And the people's self-defense forces know small development. More than three and a half million villagers have volunteered to take part. In addition to the forces which meet the threat of communist aggression from without, a major emphasis must be placed on rooting out the hidden communist structure within. In the cities of Vietnam and in the towns and hamlets, the national police provides a prime answer to this need by augmenting the armed forces of South Vietnam. They are, along with the regional and popular forces, increasing the ones who maintain security in areas which have been made secure. More like the town police that we know are the policemen who work at the district and lower levels, assigned to hamlets and villages. They handle the usual things that township police handle, crime, disturbances among citizens, as well as some matters concerning the VC. Though in most action of this latter sort, he would call on the National Police Field Force or regional or popular force units for help. All of these forces direct their efforts toward achieving that first essential goal, security for the people so that they can raise and sell their own products, live their lives without the burden of constant fear. This security is growing. A prime indication of this is the massive increase in the number of local communities which have elected local governments throughout Vietnam. This happens only when the people of a village or hamlet are really convinced that the government's protection against Viet Cong terror is here to stay because officials of local governments have been a prime target for VC assassination since the fighting began. Today, more than 90% of all hamlets and villages have elected local governments. This is a big step and an important one, a development that has really mushroomed since early 1969. The communist failure to win over the people became even more apparent under the Army of Vietnam and regional forces protection. The South Vietnamese intensified their program of building. New roads, bridges, schools and other public facilities began to dot the landscape. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese enjoying government protection. They are beginning at last to live without fear and to build with confidence for the future. But security, as we said, while it must be the first step, is only the first step. The Vietnamese government's follow-through takes many forms. One of these is seen in the members of the Rural Development Cadres, the RDCs. They work in specially trained 30-man teams, lightly armed and well able to lead and teach villagers the techniques of local self-defense. But this is by no means their whole job. They are also teachers for the children. Each RDC team includes a wide range of know-how. They are trained administrators, people who know how to set up a dispensary and get it running, people who can help with planning and village sanitation or agriculture or marketing. In their own words, they encourage by good example. They live with the people, work with them. They demonstrate by what they do that the government is interested in the people and in helping them help themselves. Working with the newly elected village council, the RDCs help in the planning of community improvements and show the council how to apply to the national government for funds under the Village Self-Help Development Program. In short, they help local self-government and self-development get rolling. And this is filling a long-standing vacuum in terms of local government in Vietnam. Until 1954, in many areas, the entire administrative system, often down to the village level, was run by the French. When they left, the resulting vacuum was made worse, as the Viet Cong systematically murdered village leaders and teachers. Now, with more than 9 out of 10 hamlets in villages working under elected local governments, the situation is changing for the better. Many of the new capabilities that are helping the entire nation are cultivated here at the training facility called the National Cadre Training Center at Vong Tau. Newly elected hamlet officials receive training here to help them get started in the business of local government. The 30-man teams of the rural development cadres receive their training here, and popular forces instructor cadres are also trained for their work at the Vong Tau Center. Village technical people such as village sanitation chiefs, dispensary personnel, and administrative specialists are schooled here, too. All of these people go back to their villages and hamlets with at least basic know-how to guide them as they begin working out the social and civic and economic progress of their individual community. Once local elections have been held and a new local council gets organized, it comes up with a decision as to some prime need of the village. For example, a school. They're eligible for government funds to help in providing their own answer to that need. They decide what the need is. They will contribute their muscle and sweat. The government will contribute funds from the village development program. If the project is fairly large-scale, perhaps some materials will be provided by AID, the American Agency for International Development, and technical help by the Vietnamese government. Another vital effort being made by the government with U.S. help is the continuing program of improving and extending the road and waterway networks of Vietnam. Thousands of square miles of area, which before were largely isolated, are now becoming readily accessible. The roads and waterways provide a tremendous boost to economic activity. They create ready avenues for the movement of goods of all kinds. They are also vital to the development of local governments. If the VC can keep a village isolated, they can keep it dominated. Every road means just that much less isolation. It also provides a route for quick action by Vietnamese Army or regional force units if a village or hamlet needs help. The economic impact of this program can be startling. One large town which formerly existed in virtual isolation now has a good primary road. With transport of goods so much easier, the cost of living in the town has dropped by 40%. Another sweeping element of change in the pacification effort is the land reform program. The government is in the process of transferring ownership to the farmers who work the land and compensating the former owners. Former colonial lands have been given over to local ownership. And the program calls for more action in the same direction as more and more areas are made secure. People living and working on land that now belongs to them, not someone else. This too is a factor in people identifying with the government. Government funds may further underscore the point made by its land reform programs. For example, rural credit loans make it possible for a group of farmers to get together and buy farm machinery which they can share till their land with an efficiency unknown in the past. The same kind of loan may enable a fisherman's cooperative to replace heavy, easily torn, fiber nets with light, long-lasting ones of nylon. These are only two from dozens of possible examples. But whatever the specific need they provide, such loans are further evidence that the government is in fact concerned with the progress of the people and is working to further that progress. The stable crop of Asia, of course, is rice. And a major step forward in the economy of South Vietnam has been the introduction of the so-called miracle rice, designated IR8. This high yield rice produces two to three times greater volume at harvest time. Once the farmers realize this, the planting goals were quickly exceeded. In fact, self-sufficiency in rice is now in sight for the Republic of Vietnam, even in excess for export. It's a giant step toward one of the cornerstones of peace, a stronger, more self-sufficient economy. Another aspect of pacification is the resettlement of the masses of people who were evacuated from battle-torn areas to become refugees. With wider security being established throughout the country, there has been great progress in resettlement. Most refugees return to their former homes, often with government assistance in the form of a resettlement allowance. Something to help them settle back in. The price of a new cow or tin roofing to rebuild their house, depending on what they've lost and what they need to get started again. Those who don't return to their home areas often go to new locations, perhaps to lands provided under the land reform program. Or they may simply decide that the refugee hamlet in which they've been living can be a self-supporting community. They've put down new routes, established a new way of life. They elect officials for their new community and go to work to make it thrive. No account of the progress of Vietnamization and pacification would be complete without at least a brief examination of the returnee program known as Chu Hoi. This is a government program which offers full amnesty to Viet Cong and even North Vietnamese Army troops who decide to leave the communist ranks and join with the South. The VC or NVA man who makes this decision is sent to a center where he receives food, clothing and medical care. He is sent through a course of re-induct donation. Between 1965 and the end of 1970, more than 150,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army soldiers have come over to the South.  He then goes to a Chu Hoi village or back to his home. He too has become one committed to the Republic of Vietnam because he knows that he is now a Viet Cong target. But he also knows that his amnesty goes all the way. He is a fully accepted citizen. He can qualify to vote or serve in regional or popular forces back in his home region. The Chu Hoi returnee may work with an armed propaganda team going out to tell the story of his own experience to the VC and the countryside in an effort to persuade others that the Chu Hoi program does in fact mean what it says. Genuine amnesty. All of these activities, programs, policies, have as their objective the attainment of a situation in which the people of Vietnam can determine the way they want to live their lives and then live them free from constant fear. As large numbers of American forces have returned home, Vietnamization proceeds. Vietnamization, pacification. These are words, but they stand for and attempt to define a condition of life for millions of people. The establishment of area security by military means and with the follow up of national police protection, then the building up of stronger local and national government, greater productivity in the economy of the nation and Hamlet. All of these are part of that definition. And all interlock and depend on one another. Just as do the lives of the people. This program, as it succeeds, is deadly to the aims of the Communist enemy. He knows this. He's not likely to just let it happen. So, it will take a continuing and massive effort on the part of all concerned. The enemy will do anything he can to disrupt it, but so far the progress has been such as to warrant a cautious air of optimism. The objective is clear. Some of the means to achieve it are beginning to work. The outlook for the future carries something more of hope. Self-government, self-development, self-defense at the national level and at the village level. And all the beginning steps are being taken toward progress to peace.