how the war is affecting the Ukrainians here in Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. That's Carl Ackerman for our two o'clock show. And we're gonna talk about his background in Ukraine, his understanding, appreciation, his insights into the people, the place, the culture and their potentialities. Welcome to the show, Carl. Thank you, Jay. Always a pleasure to be with you. And that's no hyperbole. Same here, Carl. So Carl, you have a family connection, a life connection with Ukraine. Can you talk about it, qualify yourself as a witness to what's going on? Well, not only am I trained as a historian of Russia, but when I was 14 years old, my parents who tended to be very crazy, in a good way, decided to take a BW camper trip. This is in 1969 from Leningrad to Sochi. And of course, on the way we stopped, and then what was part of the Soviet Union, the Ukraine, and stopped in what was then called Kiev. You know, Kiev. And it was a sensational city. You know, a three-quarters park at that time, absolutely beautiful. Of course, under Soviet rule. So it was a totalitarian state, but the people were very kind. And in addition to that, my wife and I, when I was a Russian historian and also teaching Russian history and European history at Ilani school many years ago, we were scheduled to go to Kiev as part of a Nicolam Brown, a East Coast prep school.  And unfortunately it was the year of Chernobyl and my wife was pregnant at the time. So we didn't want our children to light up at night. Not to be enlightened, but to light up at night. And it was just a horrible thing. And I was visiting Russia later on as part of my career as a Russian historian. And I was staying in a Soviet hotel. And before me, years before me on this visit, the children of Chernobyl who were very sick from the nuclear accident happened to be staying in the same hotel. And the director and I became very good friends and she told me what had happened with these kids which was many of them died or were severely hurt by of course the nuclear plant in Chernobyl. In ways that no one could even anticipate every disease in the book. Absolutely. And they were very sick kids and she said it broke her heart every day because these kids were staying in her hotel. And I understand why. I think we all need to know more about Russian history. You know, when I was in school, I guess in grade school, a lot of people were fascinated with Russian history. It was on the other side of the Cold War. And you know, those were the people who were gonna throw the bombs. That's why we got duck and cover under our desks in those days. It wasn't the Chinese, it was the Russians. And we were all afraid of them. And you know, so a number of people that I knew specialized in Russian history. And of course, you know, if you're Jewish, Russian history means more to you because there was a fair amount of antisemitism and maybe more than a fair amount. And the program like that, that's a Russian word. And it was invented in Russia. And there were, may I say thousands of programs around the turn of the 19th century, turn of the 20th century, you calculated. And for that matter, that's what, you know, drove my family to come here from Ukraine from a little town near Kiev called Kominets Podolsk. Both sides of my, and in fact, there was an organization in New York called the Podolia Society. Well, a lot of people came from that area in Ukraine. But the Ukrainians were also complicit in those programs and they were complicit in the Holocaust 20, 30 years later. And when I hear the stories about how nice and kind they are, I say, okay, the world has changed a lot and the Ukrainians have changed a lot and they are truly nice and kind. They somehow have braved all the storms. They braved all the Russian maneuvers on them and they've come out okay, I mean, as a culture, as a group. And I want to ask you if that is true. I think that's true. And I want to go back to your original comments, Jay. And then, you know, my family on my mother's side, of course my, with a name like Karol Akamon, I, you know, my father's family were immigrants from in the 19th century, German-Jewish immigrants. But my mother's family came from that great Polish-Russian border. Ukrainian also is connected here. And many Jewish Americans came from this area and migrated to New York City in the early part of the 20th century.  And so there's a natural inclination. And, you know, at that time there, you know, in Ukraine, there was a lot of poverty. And I remember my grandmother saying, eat everything on your plate because think of the poor starving Ukrainians.  And to give you some background on this, and I think, you know, people are not getting sort of the deeper history of Russia here. And, you know, Peter the Great, who lived in basically, you know, was I think born roughly around 1682 and basically died in 1725. If I've got my dates right, you know, who lived in the 17th century, early 18th century, he started to westernize Russia until that time Russia really was a sort of backward, well, I don't know about backward, but it was at least a more directed in Central Asia as opposed to being part of Europe. And Peter the Great very much made Russia part of Europe. Well, what this creates in Russia is a big divide between those Russians who want to be tilting towards the West, and like, you know, Mikhail Gorbachev did recently. And those who are traditional Russian slavophiles, like for example, Fyodor Dostoevsky, the great Russian writer.  And to make Vladimir Putin- Which side? He comes out of the Russian, you know, great Russian nationalist tradition. And in the 19th century, they even gave names to it within the Russian literate. They called the Westernizers exactly that, Westernizers. And the deep Russian nationalists were called Slavyanovili or Slavophiles. And Putin is Vladimir Putin, President Vladimir Putin is a Slavophile. Most directly, of course, he's not a 19th century. He's a 21st century. And, you know, like liberals in different periods, it has different meaning. And for his, it's a very dangerous meaning. In addition, you know, he's a ex-KGB agent from East Germany. And he was there when the wall fell and he had to destroy papers. So this is a man who went into the most conservative reactionary part of the former Soviet Union. He saw the empire falls completely embarrassed by this, saw Russia come apart. And his main objection is, his main goal, object is to restore this empire. In addition, you know, one of the problems we face in the United States is that a series of presidents have tried to understand Putin and they think that personal diplomacy can change Putin's attitudes. And they're entirely incorrect about this. I mean, Putin is a great Russian nationalist who wants to expand his country. You know, George Bush Jr., a wonderful man and president. You know, I didn't agree with everything. I don't think anyone does, but I want this to become Democrat versus Republican so that he could see his soul. But I think John McCain was better at saying things.  And John McCain said, I looked into his eyes and saw KGB agent. And I think John McCain had it right.  And some of his moves have really been hard to understand from any rational point of view. Well, the problem with totalitarian leaders and any leader who becomes sort of a, you know, right-wing autocrat is they don't tend to listen to other people and that's the great part of our democracy, whether you're Republican or Democrat or independent, you know, if you have a leader in the United States most of the time and especially under this president right now, he listens to other people and you have to do that in order to get a variety of different ideas. So that's one thing. The second thing is, you know, Vladimir Putin realizes that the great invasions into Russia won with Napoleon in 1812 and then, you know, Operation Barbarossa with the Nazis in 1941 were very painful for Russia and he wants to buffer his borders but he doesn't understand that the world has changed and that no one's going to invade him. And by the way, the Ukrainians gave up their nuclear weapons with the notion through a series of agreements, you know, at Belgrade, et cetera, in Port and Lisbon agreements, a series of agreements that gave up their nuclear weapons to the United States and Russia were supposed to protect their integrity but he thinks that he can do and a lot of pundits, Jay, say, well, this is, we haven't seen anything like this since World War II, wrong. We've seen it in Hungary in 1956 and we've seen it in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and these were quick incursions and this is what I think Putin thought was gonna happen. And now he's in real trouble because, you know, the army has not been successful, the Ukrainians are fighting him to the nail. He didn't expect this. You know, he really, and, you know, from my experiences with the Russian government now that they got in, it's very hard for them to admit, you know, any Russian leader in the recent past with the exception of Mikhail Gorbachev, but they were wrong and they had to pull back. But it's a loss of face. Yeah, it's a loss of face and death for a loss of power. Correct and, you know, Vladimir Putin realizes that this is not successful. This might mean, you know, removal from power on, you know, for him. And once you're removed from power, you know, who's gonna protect this man who has been dastardly to many Russians internally. So he's playing a dangerous game and I don't know, I don't know what a good solution for Vladimir Putin would be, but I don't expect that the negotiations will lead to much unless the Russians are willing to pull back, which I doubt that will happen. Well, they're not gonna do that. Not for the reasons you identified. So, okay, so we have a real problem with him. I mean, one of the things I thought was completely irrational is trying out the notion of nuclear weapons.  And I take that seriously. He instructed his military put nuclear weapons on standby against the country that doesn't have nuclear weapons, that gave nuclear weapons up as a matter of principle. That's extraordinary. What in the world would he do with the nuclear weapons? Just destroy the whole thing into a parking lot? Make it all Chernobyl? What in the world did he do that for? That sounds irrational. That sounds pathological. Well, you know, historically, when people did not know a lot about nuclear weapons, there were American diplomats in the early 1960s who talked about limited nuclear warfare, which limited nuclear warfare. I have to emphasize the word limited. That's insane. And anytime you talk about nuclear war, this is insane. And of course, the most famous case was the Cuban Missile Prices and luckily, calmer heads prevailed. But even in the Politburo, you had people who were discussing things. And my fear about Putin is that he's not really listening to people. Now, people have talked about his craziness and he's, in one sense, he is crazy because of the things that he's doing and his lack of humanity. But on the other way, I think that he's a shrewd Machiavellian player and he's looking for, you know, I think the best way out of this and he's probably under the, I think probably what he's thinking now is that once we get control of Ukraine, then I can, you know, back off and do some things. But, you know, I'm not sure that's gonna happen. For the life of me, Jay, as a history guy, I don't understand why, after the American Revolution where this group of tiny colonialists beat back the greatest power, military power of the day, the British, that people don't get it. You invade another country, you know, and the people don't want you there. It's a losing proposition. And I have a story related to Hawaii that I think you will enjoy, is that, you know, when President Medvedev had taken over for four years from Vladimir Putin and he was here in Hawaii for an economic summit, someone asked him at a gathering, I had a close friend who was at the gathering, do you have any advice for us about Afghanistan? And normally the protocol is that he would go, we turn to, he would say something to his interpreter and his interpreter would then tell this American what he was thinking. And he didn't even do that. He just said, get out. And this is what the Russians, if they're smart, they'll negotiate something with the Ukrainians and just get out. Because this is a losing proposition for the Russians no matter what. And let us hope that Vladimir, that there are calmer people that can get to Vladimir Putin and say, listen, nuclear weapons is a no-win game. Well, but this continued attack is a no-win game also. So question, you know, in St. Petersburg, hundreds of thousands of people showed up despite the risk of being arrested and thrown in jail for indefinite periods without civil liberties. They showed up anyway and opposed and protested. And we have photographs of that. That's the most interesting part of this war is that the photographs get out, the movie clips get out, the phone calls get out. And what he did today is very interesting. He knocked off the television towers in Kiev. Now I was waiting for him to do that but it's still going to get out. It's going to get out to Western Europe. It's going to get out to those people who would charge him with atrocities and war crimes who are already readying that attempt. He's going to have a worldwide problem about atrocities. If I'm the country of Russia and I have billions of dollars in foreign banks, which I probably do, to say nothing of the oligarchs, what they have in the banks, people representing lawyers, representing the victims are going to be able to sue them for reparations, compensation and criminal atrocities. And this is sitting pretty. It's another huge miscalculation. He didn't realize that the evidence is all getting out. It's all accumulating against him. They can prove the case right now. Anyway, so my question, first question, breaking it down is the people in Russia, you mentioned the possibility that he would be ousted and he would be thrown out of power and he would be a great risk, personal risk because there are a lot of people in Russia who don't like what he's doing. So query, what is the Russian character that interacts with these issues? Some Russians are with him. There was a story on a national public radio about a woman who was, her mother was a Ukraine. She lived in Ukraine. Her mother's Ukrainian and her father's were Russian and they were both mad at the, they were mad at the Russian. They weren't speaking to the fathering, were they blaming him for the whole thing, whether or not he was at fault. And that kind of divisiveness. So I guess the question is, what is it a Russian character that A makes them accept what Putin does? It sounds like fear to me. And B, what makes them go out on the streets of St. Petersburg and resist and protest? Where is Russia these days? Well, first let me acknowledge what you just said that, Jay, that Russia has been, there have been attacks on the press under Putin. There are, when people disagree with Putin and even go abroad, they're poisoned, as we all know from incidents in England. And Navalny, don't forget Navalny. And Navalny, of course, has been imprisoned. And poisoned. Yes, and poisoned.  And the thing is, if people wonder whether there's a direct connection between Putin and the poisoning, there's no question whatsoever about that. Anybody would know that, make that connect those dots to him.  I mean, that's where he got his training. I mean, you know, I mean, anyway, but this is really good, your points are really good, Jay. And then let me go back to a comment that you made earlier about, you know, getting signals out. And what you did on, you know, on Think Tank, which was just wonderful, is you put that wonderful New York Times article editorial by Thomas Friedman. And his point was that, you know, this is a new world you're invading, but it isn't the partition of Poland, you know, in the 1800s, I mean the 1700s, but it's the partition and the takeover of Ukraine with all the modern technology features that can, you know, cover everyone, you know, and the important role of groups like TikTok and Facebook and things like that. How marvelous, because, you know, this is the way people are really showing what's going on. So that's a critical, critical, critical piece for all of this. To give you an indication of the Russian character, well, you know, one has to realize that for most of Russian history, I mean, going back to the time of the Mongols and Ivan the Terrible and Ivan the Third before him, you know, you've never had, you know, the fundamentals of democracy.  So, you know, a thinking body, as it were, with the Greek statue, right? So, bad analogy, but you know, you get the point. But anyway. Rodin, Rodin. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.  So the next flowering of democracy comes with, you know, the advent in the 80s of Mikhail Gorbachev and that was a fascinating period because I was teaching it in a special school, 238, I was teaching English. And the Russians were throwing out all their old textbooks that had many allusions to Uncle Karl Marx and Uncle Vladimir Lenin and were really exploring things in their traditional thick journals from the 19th century. And experimenting with democracy. And, you know, it's a credit to Mikhail Gorbachev and then Boris Yeltsin where there was a lot of flowering of democracy, but there also was a lot of problems economically. And so what Vladimir Putin did is he came in and he was, he acknowledged the democracy at first but then starting to tighten things up the way he liked things. And then, you know, as people have mentioned, you know, now Russia is really a one product economy.  No. Do we see, you know, a special type of a shirt to wear that you might get from Italy? No. So what's Russian's main product? It may, it's gas. And besides that, there's vodka.  But of course, these are sometimes retailed by other people and that's a very simplistic answer. And when I was in Russia, you know, many years ago and with my parents and then again, as a Russian historian many times, there was also at that time under the Soviet Union very inexpensive caviar. So you have caviar, vodka and oil and natural gas, what I didn't realize. You can't get alarmed on those things, I'm sorry.  But what I was really interested in is that according to, you know, an article in our local newspaper, Jay, the Star Advertisers, like 20% of our petrol comes from Russia. And I was unaware of this completely. I thought it came from Australia. I thought it came from Indonesia. But hey, it changes is the point. You know, from decade to decade, you have a whole kaleidoscopic change in where the oil comes from.  So, you know, and of course in our papers, I said there's not going to be a problem. So we shall see, but, you know.   But, you know, since then and since certainly, you know, the overthrow, there hasn't been any internal violence here to speak of. And we haven't, nobody's attacked us, you know. And that's so for the whole United States. We haven't had people crossing our borders, aside from, you know, the war of 1812 and 9-11. And I suppose you could say the insurrection, we really haven't had domestic organized violence. But if you go to Europe and if you go to the borders of Ukraine and all of Eastern Europe, you find people crossing the borders, taking what they want, raping, pillaging, stealing, destroying, you know, for generation after generation, you know, all of the history of Europe, and I'm not a historian of Europe, all of the history of Europe is loaded with that sort of thing. It sets up a different way of looking at the world. It sets up a different cultural mindset. And we here in Hawaii, we have trouble appreciating how it is to have generation after generation subject to violence and pogroms and border violations and invasions and death and killing and really bad stuff. And that's what Europe is made of. And that's certainly what Eastern Europe is made of. So, and Russia has been involved in that. And Russia has been the subject of oppression and violence and not, you know, undemocratic and uncaring government for a very long, very long time. Despite last night. And I, you know, I want to take a moment because you mentioned the United States and Hawaii also, sometimes, you know, before the overthrow of Lillipalani, Hawaii being a separate nation. And then, of course, there was the attack by the Japanese during World War II, but what you're talking about is actual invasion and occupation. And I think you're very right about this, Jay. I think that we haven't had that experience, but I'm thinking also that two things. And in this discussion today, I wanted to say, you know, I think there were things that led up to this invasion and the calculation by Vladimir Putin. And there have been pundits who point to as getting out of Afghanistan and Joe Biden, our president showing weakness. And I would argue just the counter. I would argue that this has been a long time coming because American presidents have been very naive about, in particular, George Bush Jr. And of course, Donald Trump been very naive about the United States relationship to Vladimir Putin. And of course, you know, President Trump even cited with Vladimir Putin against his own internal agencies, which I think was a critical mistake because that opened the doors, I think. So if you look at all of this in a larger context, President Biden, by getting out of Afghanistan, imagine if we were still in Afghanistan and fighting, you know, there also. And we're not fighting there, but supplying us. And actually we might be fighting. So, you know, what he has done in retrospect is very nuanced.  Henry Kissinger, I think, you know, regardless of whether you agree with him on different levels, I in some areas I don't, it was the greatest statesman of the later part of the 20th century. And we should listen to him. And what he did behind the scenes is he created this whole NATO, that is President Biden, not Henry Kissinger, his whole NATO alliance.  And I heard Tucker Carlson praise him the other day on Fox, because I'm someone who believes that you should listen to all news media, but think tank Hawaii is the very best. But let me offer you a thought, Carl. This is really interesting. Trump did what he could for reasons that are, in my view, very clandestine and nefarious, sinister reasons, you know, to push NATO around, to diminish its authority, its cohesiveness. The same with the EU. He did all of that. Now Biden comes in, we have Ukraine, which is a monumental historical event in this century for sure. And he brings the coalition together. Query, though, it was, here's a proposition for you. It was time, it was ripe. Trump had raised the issue and did destructive things to NATO and the EU. And now if some American leader could come back and resurrect that, it was the perfect time for him to do it. It was waiting for him to do it. He might not have had the same advantage if Trump hadn't done his destruction a few years ago. I think that a lot of the blame for Vladimir Putin arrogance right now and has to do with the United States being divided from what he could tell. And I think that President Trump, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, I'm not trying to get into politics here, but I think that he divided the nation and he also gave carte blanche to Vladimir Putin. And I think that when you give carte blanche to a pretty ruthless, well, to a ruthless dictator, this is what happens. And I think, Joe Biden is a traditional political expert and he's gonna rely on people who he knows. He's gonna think about things, but he's got many years of experience. And I think he handled Afghanistan well, despite us having problems getting out.  I mean, look what happened in Vietnam. And then with this, so far, this has been wonderful. And I applaud the president for not getting involved in no fly zone because he don't want Russians and Americans fighting each other directly because that's gonna lead to some very serious consequences and could very easily lead to a nuclear war. So he has been very, very astute and what he's produced is his coalition. And I remember the slogan from the 1960s that the more radical students will always say, they say, the whole world is watching. Well, the whole world is watching. And it's because of the Thomas Friedman, what Thomas Friedman said that, you have a lot of people who are watching this in real time. And one of the things I wanted to share with you, Jay, is President Zelensky said that Vladimir Putin is a war criminal. And here's what I would suggest for the United States now is I think we should start setting things up now in the Hague, make it very public and say to those Russian generals, if you follow him, you are a war criminal too.  And we should have another Nuremberg and we should prosecute these guys and put them in jail for the rest of their lives. Yes, is this what you were telling me you were going to raise and you thought I'd be surprised and shocked? I'm not surprised and shocked. I think that's a wonderful idea and it's a doable idea too. Well, I just think it's, I mean, I tend to be a centrist and reserved in saying things like this, but I think it's time to do this. And I think that, I hope that President Biden today and his State of the Union will say something akin to this, but it's time.  They're invading a country that has done nothing to them. That's what my wife says, maybe they know each other.  Well, you're in a story and I have one last question for you because we got to break not only because we're out of time but because the State of the Union is only a few minutes away. Okay. We must watch that. But looking at all of what we've talked about and looking at something we haven't talked about enough really, that is the culture and character today of the Ukrainian people, such as it is. Are they going to be able to hold out? Are they going to be able to conduct either a full-on, full-tilt battle with the Russians so as to break the Russians in a morale or are they going to, and or an underground battle such as we saw in France in the 40s? Are they going to have the stick to it of this to carry on this fight? A lot of them are leaving. 520,000 have left as of today. It's a lot of people, although they have 42 million. In that sense, it's not that many. But my question to you is knowing about the Ukrainian character and culture, are they going to be able to stand fast and resist the invasion? You know, I would, Jay, use the Afghanistan analogy because Russia also invaded Afghanistan Of course, the Ukrainians for the Russians represent something very different. I mean, to a certain extent, Afghanistan was to most Russians, you know, a foreign people, a people that they couldn't really imagine. But the Ukrainians and Russians, you know, if you think about the intermarriages and all sorts of things, you know, you really are dealing with, I mean, the Russians may temporarily, and this is a big if still today, may take over all the cities, but then they're in for a fight. And the Ukrainians have proved their nationalism. And I think what the Ukrainians have done is they've inspired a new look at what democracy means. What democracy means to individuals. And I have a slightly different take on events that have been happening in the United States, including January 6th. I think that many Americans are still, you know, the great overwhelming, I would say go as far as 80 to 85% of the population is rooted in democracy. Some have been misled about the last elections, but you'll notice that what they hold dear is the electoral process and the constitution. They just think it was violated, which is, you know, untrue, but there are people on the news and people who make, you know, erroneous assertions. I don't say fake news because I think that, you know, that's just overused and just horrible. Most news people, like for example, Chris Wallace, who was on Fox for many years, are decent reporters. He moved over to CNN already, you know? He did, he did. And, you know, I noticed that, but, you know, for a while he was at Fox and I would listen to him on Sunday mornings and he's a good reporter. And so I don't think we just- We gotta close, Carl. I'll tell you my takeaway from all of this, you know, just as the United States, you point out is diverse. Sometimes kicking and screaming, it's diverse and maybe racist, but diverse. So is Russia, so is Ukraine. And Ukraine is a combination of cultures. It's diverse and it's related to Russia. So when you send Russian troops into a place that has a lot of Russian people, you're really setting up a kind of civil war. You're setting brother against brother. Nobody likes that. And the end is never good. The end is never permanent either, as we know here in this country. Anyway, thank you, Carl. A great discussion. I look forward to more with you. And of course we're gonna cover this in, we're gonna cover this in some detail in the global burning issues on April 1st and we'll be sending out all kinds of publicity and registration forms on that. Thank you so much, Carl Ackerman, history professor, history social studies professor Punahou, who can tell us a lot about what's going on. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jay. It's always a pleasure to be with you. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.


So, good afternoon all of you, I was, I joined during your introduction, when your introduction was going on. So, I know a bit of your background. I think most of the people are from second year who have completed their second year and are going to enroll in their third year and I will introduce myself. My name is Yogan Sharma, I am designated as software engineer, I am part of the project coordination team here under Professor Fartak and Professor Kannan Madgalyan. We work on several different projects. Some of you, you had just known about like the ESOS projects, like the OER project. We are also working on an interesting project, which is named National Virtual Library of India. So, I have a good news, I have two good news, would you like to hear? So, the news is that I have this only slide in my presentation. So, mostly I will speak and I will try to interact with you all. Secondly, it is only, I think, lesser than 15 minutes for the lunch break. So, you all must be excited about it. How many of you had a good breakfast today? Raise your hands. Okay, so, I can see the hunger in the atmosphere. Good. So, you have come from like all over India, different states, different colleges. How many of your colleges have a library? Raise your hands please. I think most of the institutes have a library. Now my question is that how many of you ever visited to your libraries? Okay, a fair bit. Good. Okay. So, the ones who visited, what was the process of like finding the books in the library? Or you knew that this was the book. I want this and you directly went into the catalog section or the book section and you got it. Was it the case or you just walked in and with the thought of exploring new books and went through the catalogs and saw the library? So, I know the answer. There would have been both the cases, right? How many of your libraries are automated and you get to access a kiosk or a computer desk wherein you can search the catalog of your entire library? Do you have? Very good. I would recommend you must visit the library over here in the IIT. It's a pretty huge library and it's a very good library. You will get to access a lot of good books here as well. So I can see that the library automation has happened in a majority of the libraries. Now imagine if you want to, if you want to access the catalog of any other library beyond your own institution, has anyone done that through any of the systems, websites, modules you have? Anyone? No, right? But supposing, just think of this idea that if I want to access the library of, say, NIT Rorkela, NIT Trichy, triple IT Jabalpur, how it is possible? So, we are trying to make it possible through a platform named National Virtual Library of India. And right now, we talked about only the academic libraries. How many of you ever visited to a public library? Which hosts thousands of books, lakhs of books beyond academics, okay? So I'll brief you about this project. This project is entrusted upon IIT Bombay by the Ministry of Culture. And to start with, we are bringing the data of all the libraries, public libraries under Ministry of Culture on one single platform. This will not only help the general audience, the general masses, readers, but it will also help the research scholars across streams. Not only the technical streams, but the non-technical streams as well. Now in order to execute this project, we have another partnering institute named IGNU. If you have heard, IGNU is an open university based in Delhi. We had a former partner, CEDAC. This portal, there has been different versions of this portal. Right now, the portal is undergoing some beta testing and the portal will be ready for public in the coming months. It will be released for the general public. Now, in order to bring the catalogs or the data of so many libraries, can you just estimate the number of libraries in India, academic and public in total? How many it would be? Just a guess, a random guess. Anyone? So the good thing is, even I don't know it. It's in thousands of course, but I don't have an authentic source of information somewhere I read that it is close to 50,000 plus. Now imagine the volume of data we will have to deal with for developing such a system. It's huge, it's in petabytes. So when we are developing such a system, we also have to plan how we will be hosting it. So as part of this project, what we did, we here in IIT set up the first ever cloud with 4 to 5 petabytes of storage. So we were involved in the process right from defining its requirement to the tendering process to the procurement, to the setup, testing, commissioning and I was just going through your activities or the projects that you will be working on and some of the projects, in some of the projects you will have to deal with the cloud infrastructure as well. So it will be good for you to know a bit about the cloud technologies and probably you will be also visiting the cloud itself where it is, the infrastructure where it is hosted. So this was another part of the project and it's a pretty interesting one, you know, managing huge volumes of data, making it searchable, making it easily searchable for the user. Another thing, another activity was that when I asked you that how many of your libraries have library automation, some computer-based software-based indexes, software-based catalogs, not all of you raised the hands. So there are still libraries, specifically public libraries, which have not gone through this migration. They still maintain the hard copy index registers, catalogs. So library training for those librarians to migrate and automate their libraries is another activity of this project. So I'm sure many of your colleges are remote centers and some way associated with IIT Bombay for different capacity building programs. Through these remote centers, we conduct a capacity building program called train 10,000 librarians at a time. So we remotely conduct sessions for the library staff as well as the technical staff in libraries and help them automate and migrate to softwares such as Koa and dSpace. These softwares, Koa and dSpace, I'm not going to take a class of these softwares, I'm just in very short explaining what do they do. A library has, you know, two types of data, one is the cataloging data wherein using which referring to which you can search what all is there in the library. So that data is mostly handled by the Koa software. There are of course many softwares in the world, but Koa is an open source software and it is most widely used and accepted. So Koa is used mostly for the bibliographic data and in a library whose content are also available in a digitized format, a digitized format, I mean, in the form of say images, PDFs, eBooks, ePub books. So that data is hosted on a software named dSpace and if you search on Google Open DOAR, you will find a directory of libraries across the world whose data is being hosted on different dSpace instances and it is open to access for public. Ignu, who is one of the partners in this project, they are helping us in this migrating effort and in setting up these Koa and dSpace instances. Another challenge I will talk about, one was that the huge volumes of data that we are talking in petabytes. Another one is making that data ready for the use in this portal. A lot of data, even in our personal systems when we, you know, organize our files and things, they are not very nicely organized. We rename the files like anything. So similar cases happens in the libraries as well. When we visited some of the libraries and we got the data and we realized that majority of the data was lacking some information. So a record in a library consists of two types of information. One is the metadata. Metadata talks about who the author is, what the book is, when it was published, etc., etc., where it is located and the other is the data itself, the file itself. So this metadata part, a lot of information was missing. So IGNU is helping us in curating that data. So the flow goes like this, that we go and visit a library, we collect the data, we help them migrate, we help them automate, then we curate it, then we harvest it. For that we have written a harvester program and so as part of this portal. And then finally it renders on to the portal in an easy to use manner. So this is in a nutshell about this project, it's a pretty interesting project. Beyond libraries, we have some other, we are bringing the data of some other cultural organizations as well and we plan to bring the data of other organizations like museums and a few other organizations. But it's still in progress and it will take a lot of time. So I hope you find, found it informative and pretty soon when it will be launched for public, I hope you'll use it. So this is one of the project that we are using and I'm open to questions if you have any. It can be related to the lunch or break also. So no questions. Anyways, I'll be meeting you again in one of my presentations tomorrow and wish you good luck. Thank you.


Hello and welcome to the International Daily Roundup with people's dispatch where we bring you some of the top stories from across the globe. Let's take a look at today's headlines. Mass strike held in Myanmar as military janta wants against loss of life. Anti-imperialist resistance intensifies in Haiti as protests continue against moisture regime. Workers announced general strike amid worse than economic crisis in South Africa. Vaccination campaigns and the inequities in the global COVID-19 response. Following weeks of street protests, a mass strike was held across Myanmar on February 22nd. Hundreds of thousands of people stepped out into the streets to participate in the 2-5 strike, making it among the largest demonstrations held since the military coup on February 1st. The call to strike was issued by the Burmese civil disobedience movement. Businesses were shut down as workers, civil servants and government employees joined the protests demanding the release of civilian leaders. The strike took place despite warnings issued by the military janta on the state-run MRTV broadcast. The military warned against court, riot and anarchy and that the protesters were inciting people to a path where they will suffer a loss of life. Myanmar has witnessed a steady escalation of state violence against the protests. The use of tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets and reports of live ammunition have increased. At least two protesters were killed and another 20 injured after security forces used live ammunition during a protest in Mandalay on February 20th. As reported by Myanmar now, hundreds have gathered to support striking workers from the inland water transportation department. Over a dozen protesters were detained by security forces in the capital city of Nayapidaw on Monday. As per estimates by the Assistant Association of Political Prisoners, 640 people have been arrested so far and 594 still remain in custody. Auschwitz State Councilor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Wynn-Mind have also been demanded in police custody as they await the next round of hearings scheduled for March 4th. Mass protests against the regime of disputed President General Moisi continued in Haiti over the weekend. Tens of thousands of people gathered in the capital of Port-au-Prince on February 21st to protest against imperialism and the US-backed Moisi dictatorship. Protesters are demanding that Moisi step down after illegally extending his term in office. Moisi has alleged that his term in office will end on February 7th, 2022, citing discrepancies over the official start of his term. He has been ruling by decree since 2020 and has set up a committee to draft a new constitution. The Haitian opposition has agreed to set up a transitional government for two years and to hold press elections. They have also appointed Supreme Court Judge Joseph Massin Jean-Louis to serve as interim president. The protests in Haiti have also focused on and denounced the external imperialist forces lending support to the Moisi regime. These include the court core group composed of Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, the US, the Organization of American States, and representatives from the UN, among others. The support is also evident in the form of U.S. trained police officers that have deployed increasingly violent tactics against the protesters. Tear gas rubber bullets as well as imported uses of live ammunition have caused serious injuries to protesters and journalists. At least two protesters have also reportedly been killed so far. Romario Santhralis died on February 9th after being brutally and fatally beaten by police officers. On February 6th, another person was reported to have died during the mass protests held on February 14th. Hundreds of thousands of workers across South Africa are set to down their tools as part of a mass strike on February 24th. The call to strike has been issued by the South African Federation of Trade Unions or SAFTA demonstrations have been scheduled across major cities starting 9 am local time. Workers will also march to the parliament in the capital of Cape Town where the finance minister will deliver his budget speech. The general strike has been announced at a time when the working class is struggling under an economic crisis worsened by government policies. Around 2.2 million jobs have been lost in the country during the pandemic. The conditions of employment have also become increasingly insecure due to outsourcing and zero-hour contract policies. The Federation of Unions is demanding the nationalization of all strategic, monopoly industries, banks and mining houses. They are demanding that these be placed under the democratic control of workers and communities. Other key demands include a moratorium on job losses, a basic income grant, a 1500 grand and a minimum wage of 12,500 grand. SAFTA has also called for the reposition of a 50% wealth tax as well as broader policies including community health care and public housing vulnerable groups. SAFTA has also demanded a just transition from a high-carbon to a renewable energy-based economy. This includes job creation and protections for those currently dependent on the high-carbon economy and worker and community-based control. For a final story today, we take a look at the recent developments around core vaccination campaigns across the world. Amit reports of the emergence of new variants responses to the pandemic and vaccine distribution have revealed major global inequities. Here is Dr. Sathya Dhrath from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research to talk about the politics of the global COVID response. Only part of the answer to this question of yours is in the science and the technology.  Remember that all of these vaccines that are currently out there are private sector, profit-making sector. But it's in addition to that it's also over the past year become an apparent reality that conservative xenophobic political ideologies in governments across the world have taken advantage of fear-generated community xenophobia across the world and therefore vaccine nationalism and in fact COVID nationalism has become yet another obstruction, I would argue, to a global community collective response to the pandemic. And in the absence of a coordinated global collective community response to the pandemic, we are going to have fragmentary responses popping up. We are going to have countries pulling at cross purposes with each other. We are going to have these situations of vaccines being returned or vaccines being demanded. We have the situation that the WHO sponsored COVAX program to supply vaccines for underprivileged communities across the world not having enough vaccines as yet being supplied to that those programs. In addition to that, we have these variants that are inevitably going to pop up. We have extremely variable variant tracking methodologies in place across the world and we have stigmatization as a consequence of variants that is going to be prevent travel from the UK, from Brazil, from South Africa, identify those people, lock them up and so on and so forth. In this extraordinary coordination of capitalism and xenophobia, it's a little hard to make optimistic predictions about how well life for the ordinary people of the world is going to return to normal. Let us stay with the community norm of physical distancing and masking. Let us acknowledge that the vaccines are safe because the evidence is that the vaccines are safe and therefore let us not give into vaccine anxieties and take vaccine shots as and when they become available and let us keep pressing our governments for better public health system investment, resources, vaccine rollout and variant tracking. More than that. And this is all the time we have in this episode of National Daily. Round up for more such stories and videos. Visit our website, peoplesupply.org, subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thank you for watching.