North and governors are responsible for insecurity, says Arawa Consultative Forum. And the Nigeria Bar Association says no to the Land Use Act review. Well, this is Plus Politics and I am Mary-Anna Cronin. The Arawa Consultative Forum has blamed North and Governors for the high level of insecurity, particularly in the North and the country at large, describing their abandonment of use in their region over time as a time bomb waiting to explode. It also insisted on dialogue in other regional groups such as the Pan-European, Social-Cultural and Political Organization at Fenifere, its South-East counterpart to Hanez-in-Dibu and the Pan-Niger Delta Forum, to enthrone peace in the North and Nigeria in general. Well, joining us to discuss this is Launrey Suradru. He is a political analyst, Chinidua Honda. He's a retired colonel and Dennis Amakri. He's a former DSS deputy director. Thank you very much for joining us, gentlemen. Before the mic. All right, I'm going to start with you, Mr. Amakri, because of course we're talking about the issue of insecurity. And if a group like this is coming out to point fingers at leaders, especially governors in those regions, then of course it calls to question the people who work with them, security operatives or security experts. And I'm guessing that many governors in the North part of the country obviously have not just relied on our normal security agents, but they must have also experts who are consultants that help them, who might be helping them to deal with the security issue. But when these kinds of statements are bandied, what does that say about security and how the governors are dealing with this in their areas? Well, on the side of the Ariwa consultative people, when they made that statement that the other governors are to be blamed for this. Because, you see, they have not done much for their people. They have basically thought about everything that is happening in the federal government. You know, the president will do it, even when it comes to kidnapping. Kidnapping is something that happens in their locality. Even local government, chairman, they are nonexistent. They are not doing anything. So I believe strongly that yes, the Northern governors have not been able, maybe the exception of one or two or three, otherwise the rest. You can find out that if there is no even a problem in your state, then you are not existing. You don't hear anything about governors who are doing something for their people, schools, and imaginary schools have all been abandoned. The ones that the former president and go put, they have all been abandoned. They've closed down. So you find the people out there, and these are the root causes of poverty. And of course, these root causes are the problems of insecurity. When we say that these governors, I want to believe that you're talking about successive governors, because these governors who are in power today have also inherited some of the problems that they are having in their states. For example, Zamfara, Boronu, these are states that have always been strongholds of Boko Haram, or serious insecurities, for the exception of the states that now have to deal with banditry. But a state like Kaduna state and Plattu state, these are states that have always had issues, either it be riots, it be killings, communal clashes, or religious crisis. They have had these problems, and it's continued to roll over from government to government. So you're telling me that successive governments across the northern parts of the country have just been there, receiving their salaries at the end of the month, collecting monies from RFMAC every other month, but they're not necessarily doing anything. It's the best of the loss of their people. Is this what you're incinerating? That's correct. That's correct because you find out that, look, let me tell you something. I've worked, when I was in service, I've been in some states, and I know that nothing happens in the government until the 25th or so when the finance man goes to Abuja. Everybody knows that the finance man has got Abuja. And then you come back with the monthly salary, and then after they pay the people, and then everybody goes back home. Very few, like I said, you find governors who are doing certain things for their people. So when you also do this, no employment, poverty, all kinds of things, these are the root causes of insecurity. Because why are we having insecurity? People don't have a job, people are just hanging around, and then, of course, politicians will come and incite them. During the election, they will be giving money and they will come there and make noise and disappear. So you find out that the root cause of insecurity, I think, has a lot to do with the performance of governors in the elected states. Interesting. Let me go to Conor Al-Honda, who's joining us live from Port Hackett. Conor Al-Honda, you have been a soldier, a colonel in the army, and you fought for several years, and you not just fought in Nigeria, you have gone for peacekeeping missions outside Nigeria. But what we are facing today in the country in terms of banditry, Boko Haram, and every other agitation from every part of the country. The Northerners, the Arawa Consultative Forum at this point, is pointing fingers to their governors. Now, one of the notable things that we've seen in this era of banditry and kidnapping is that the education is under siege, it's under attack, the schools are the targets of these bandits. And we know that education is the bedrock of every country or every nation, education is attacked, it means that the future of those areas are also, you know, one way or the other under attack. Why do you think that education is targeted as a man who's been in the fields, you know, dealing with issues of peacekeeping or even, you know, war? Well, it is very clear and obvious that the Northern states of Northwest, North Central are the ones mostly involved in this banditry act, abduction of students and some other social vices. First of all, you check the government of Nigeria, the government of Kathina states in the North Central, then the government of Zanfarah, of North and government of Kathina and Sokoto. Those are the areas we have abducted students, they have kidnapped a whole lot of peoples and Islamist students and boarding houses and university students. Now, when you check all those things, you find out that the government is more or less encouraging them. And they have bourgeoisie compared to those that are working with them, working in tandem with them for them to pay high cost of money. I'm sorry, I don't understand. How do you mean the government is encouraging them? How do you mean the government is encouraging them? I don't understand. You said? You said the government seems to be encouraging them. How so? Yes, because of payment of ransom to the banditry. Because what the Kathina state government has done is to make sure that they don't pay ransom even the Greenfield students released was paid for and later they were caught. But those of the government of Niger, Kathina and Zanfarah have been paying ransom to them and these people come back and they arrest or abduct students. So what should the parents be doing? I wonder, put yourself in the shoes of the parents and I'm not in any way saying that it's okay to continue to fund. I'm not saying that it's okay to continue to fund terrorism because paying ransom one way or the other means that we're funding terrorism. But if you put yourself in the shoes of the parents of these students who've been abducted and the fact that maybe security agencies have not been up to power when it comes to dealing with this issue because all we keep hearing is that the army doesn't know where the bandits are but then we see a Sheikh Gumi always going to see these bandits accompanied by security apparatus. So if you were in the shoes of the parents of these people, would you sit down and fold your arms hoping that government will not negotiate and your children will be free? You can't tell me that the army or the security agencies don't know where they are. These people are seen, most of the governors like Matawaleh, the governor of Zanfara, the governor of Katsina they confess that most of these bandits come to the markets openly, hanging rifles on their shoulders and buying goods and cutting it back to the people. So and from the recent talks by Sheikh Abu Bakr Gumi, he said that he goes to their locations to the forest with armed policemen and armed security or military operatives. So these people know their whereabouts, their location and everything. So you can't tell me that. So the question is why is it collaborative? Okay, Sheikh Gumi has also come out to say that there is a collaborative effort between the army and these bandits of course the army has come to say that that's wrong and of course it's fake news but the question on everybody's lips and I'm guessing that's what everybody's thinking right now why is it so difficult to fish out these bandits and then they keep coming day after day, it's become a free-for-all they keep coming back to these schools to keep abducting knowing that ransoms will be paid so if the army says they don't know where these people are or they know where the people are why are they continuously operating and taking more and more people and they don't take just two people, they take 300 sometimes, 100 plus so really are we the ones that are being fooled here or is there something else at play that we really don't understand? Well you may ask me that question also because we may not know how collaborative they are with the higher instinct and I know that, look, these people are working in tandem with the government, agencies to compare who you are with and other agencies that are deciding them to work out because they know their location, they can attack, they have cut apart the place so what are we talking about? and whether we like it or not, the federal government of Nigeria, eyes are on death they are watching the whole world, the whole world is watching them to see what they will do they don't want to end this issue because they are busy cutting away money in millions of dollars that's a very hefty allegation but I'm going to go to Lareh, Lareh these young people are saying that they have been abandoned, they have been forgotten all the promises the government have made to them, none of them have been kept so unemployment is at its highest, the cost of living is rising high these young people of course are idle and it's necessary that they might just become the devil's workshop as a Nigerian, as a citizen and as someone who's analysing this space of the politics that we are discussing this evening and from what you've heard from the two gentlemen, where do we really go from here because we seem to be going around in circles and not really making a headway yeah, thank you actually Mary Ann, and I think it is very important that we understand where we're coming from before we start talking about where we're going this is a situation where you can barely point out any serious state in the north and that is not just in the north, it is also the same thing in south-east it's the same thing in the south-south, it is also the same thing in the south-west that governments are not actually providing a living environment for businesses to try or even for you to start new businesses, except for individual efforts so employment generation is reduced to political patronage so where they pick on some of these young people, give them some token like you have with the social intervention program that is just a kind of palliative but it's not really sustainable, it is not something that you want to affect any major shifts that would come in terms of assuaging the rate and the level of poverty that you have around the country it is not just like you said, it is not something that is starting now it is something that has been there unfortunately even since the advent of the democratic dispensation and it would be very unfortunate if people would only limit this to the current government that is when it becomes political and that is when we are actually looking at the solution to the problem it is something that is really been endemic and that is why very far please go, you can see that many of the northern governors are usually charged to court by either ESCC or ICPs after the leave of it so it means many of the governors in those days have only just been in government many times to steal or divert or manage the resources that are located to many of the states so what that our consultative forum is saying is just actually naming and rather shaming for now some of those that were mentioned have been an endemic issue, a challenge that has been there over time that people have not been paying attention and it was inevitable for us to have the state and the state of insecurity across the country because security is not just about providing gadgets and those guarding intelligence, if you have a system that is heavily invested with the foundation for insecurity, there's no amount of equipment that you're going to purchase intelligence that you want to gather, you will still be dealing with criminals even in terms of those that you will supply information to even in the security process so it is not a problem that is just, and it is not impossible I don't totally agree that the government is also part of the bandits but I would agree totally that it is not a problem that is about a federal government and that is where we've been getting it wrong and where the statement of Arewa Consultative Forum is based but here we are, we're talking about states now, we're not talking about the federal government yes the federal government has its job but we're talking about states now and you said something, I'm sorry just hold on you said something about the fact that yes this has been a problem it has been a problem, but I'm guessing I can almost bet my bottom dollar that every single time a governor campaigned to get into office he used the previous government's lapses as an excuse to get into office so why shouldn't we leave this at their doorsteps knowing that they promised to give the people a better life but here we are dealing with security, unemployment and of course the fact that people cannot even afford anything right now because the cost of living is high our farmers are unable to go to their farms because it's unsafe so really a potpourri of issues but then the problem still has to lie at the feet of our governor so can we really put it past them if they are occupying office and they made promises before they occupied that office why can't we continue to point fingers at them and not look back because they're the ones who are right in front of us, why? don't you totally correct and that's the point that I was driving towards you assisted me in just making the conclusions we need to start asking them questions we need to start collecting our most goals to the states and then we start asking questions what happened to the local government funds what happened to the state, a federal addition to the states what happened to the security goals that they collect how many investments are attracted to the states how many business are also facilitated by the government at the level of the states then we can be looking at, so we've looked at the federal government we're still looking at the federal government until we go to the local government and the state unfortunately all the states have collapsed you know, governance at the local government level so you can't even find any state and I say that without any clear contradiction any state currently in this country where you can point at a semblance of democracy or good governance at the local government level because the governors would appoint the local government chairman and that is why you can see them sacking them as mums and capises even when the supreme court said they can't do it but they would do it because they need the funds of the local government not for the government purposes but for the purposes of the administration you can see how they all kicked against it when NFIU said stop withdrawing local government funds in cash but they couldn't afford to do that because that is where they need that fund for the purpose and local government is closest to the grass but it's not been allowed to function by the state government and that is where we need to start taking people to tax we have not just governors, we have also assembly members you even have those parliamentarians and the national assembly from all these days who would campaign like you said on the ground of poverty lack of education and the rest of that they only use it as a mantra to attract and attention support and criticize the outgoing government but not for the purpose of governance and support and we need to start taking them to tax on their commitments during campaigns A quick question before I go back to our security man we need to take them to task yes, how do we bring them to accountability when there seems to be a loosely I mean for want of a better word and I'm using the word gag loosely here there seems to be a gag on the average person who seems to be screaming out loud on the average person who's calling for heads to roll in a sense because they feel like they have been let down I mean we're seeing all kinds of bills and acts that are being pushed that are not necessary to deal with the issues that we have at hand right now so again, how do you get these people's attention if every attempt seems to be literally shut down yeah, I think I will start from you and myself with our constituency where we belong so the media is actually playing a very sad, ignoble role when it comes to the issue of the governor and that is why you would see them always jumping around for merit awards always on annual the best governor without any form of defense or any form of justification for those awards and that must stop we must stop even celebrating governor that even coming to office one year after that is number one number two it isn't sufficient to showcase even governors are as ridiculous as celebrating the commissioning of bulls ordinary bulls the same thing with four or five class rooms for schools we must stop this kind of shenanigans and also hold them and that is how we bring them to account just like you said the other thing that is also very critical is that the civil society must start benchmarking the performances of the governor so when a governor gets into office you know what was the state of the schools of water supplies of the health facilities on the roads and then assess them as they progress so that we can see if they are gravitating towards some of their commitments and our expectations and not until after four years when they would have stolen the money and about to escape let me go back to our security men let me start with Mr. Makri from all of the analysis that we've done tonight it makes it seem like your job might be a lot more difficult than we think it is I mean it's easy for us to have a conversation with security persons and say why is this and that not done but if the fundamentals are not addressed then it makes your job a bit more difficult now there are questions we're not even trying to put it past security operators that there are no questions to be asked there are questions of welfare questions of equipping men and the soldiers that are fighting this war this irregular warfare but then going forward if you were to advise governors because when we talk about governors the first thing that comes to mind is security votes but it goes beyond that doesn't it? Of course it goes beyond the security votes it goes to governance itself because you remember there are many many governors that will say oh we want state police because I'm the CSO of my state but I don't have the power you know and when I see that I laugh because I find it to be very very insincere it's very very sincere for the governors to say that because I worked in the state as a director in the state every Monday morning we have a security council meeting and in that security council meeting you have the police you have the DSS you have the army you know you have the navy like in some literal states where they have the navy people or air force all the divisional commanders are there and I see this and then they sit down and plan the security strategy for the states and everybody goes out to do what they have to do so for the governor to come out and say what does he want he want the force that he can use to pursue his political opponents that is wrong because these people are there for him to use and it will be so insincere of him to say that you know he cannot use them so for all other political problems that need security intervention they are at his disposal to use and they will go ahead if they disagree they remember that he must have brought politics into it he must have brought politics into it but if it is of security nature or criminal nature the security agencies are at his disposal to use and not to talk of the billions of lira that he claims as what do you call it security vote and I think it's high time they start auditing those money because I think it's just going into a bottomless pit I mean that's a whole kettle of fish on its own it's a conversation that we can have for an hour or another day but let me finally go to Conor Honda Conor Honda you've heard everything that we've talked about going forward and it also puts the army in a precarious situation where one minute we're seeing them accompanying Sheikh Gumi to the destination and then the next minute the army is saying they do not know where the bandits are the job of the army is caught up for them we know that but how can we win this war against banditry and insecurity in the north with the help of the army and collaborations with governments taking out politics from it there's no hiding the fact from what Gumi said that Gumi was once a former soldier a captain in the army medical and he can be telling lies that the army accompanied him and the policemen to the location of these bandits he can be telling lies he won't say they are unknown soldiers or unknown policemen or known whichever operatives he has said it and he said it but all I think the government can do is to investigate fully to investigate fully and make sure that they authenticate those that went and those because it is someone to a role of jokes that the army knows their locations and nothing yet has been done it's just not that our military our military can accompany a high class government agent or non-government agent to go and find out what is happening in the dissonance today they are they either they don't know their locations and nothing has been done and no arrests has been made which means the government is playing to the gallery they are not those that are really involved in this thing ok well Larry Shradu is a political analyst Dennis Amakri former DSS deputy director and Connell O'Honda thank you very much gentlemen for being part of this conversation alright thank you alright well we'll take a short break and when we return we will announce plans to review the land use act and some actually disagree we'll get to know when we come back


I had to start with you because first of all you have to speak to the family. I need your strength, your support so that I can continue what we began. We did it together and we have to continue together. This, this atmosphere. Okay, please be seated. The first conference in a living room, in a private home, I met a kid called Yonah Basbouzo. We arranged the seats by ourselves and we said we came to change and they said how? And we said next month we have a big conference, please come. I said to them we're opening our first headquarter. We need to convince the mayor of Dimona to join us. I have to talk, that's the way we did it. Ten years from bottom up, from grass root, we built together the most amazing movement in Israel. And this is the way we got to the bureau of the prime minister. What we're doing today is right and we're going to deal with it. He's talking about the interns working for 36 hours in a hospital, in a shift. What we do today, what we're doing today is critical than ever. Just a second, just a second, please be seated. Don't silence them. These are interns, they're also part of the family. The state has to deal with them. We're going to deal with it, even if it takes time you're completely right and we're going to deal with your problem of long shifts. They're one of us. Politics is a very hot subject, we know. What we're doing today is critical than ever, because it's not just politics, but the question, who are we? And the answer of the other side is that we are enemies, but our answer is that we are family. Family is where you guard one another. Even if you don't agree with someone, you're still connected to him. We won over the incitement, and we're going to do it not just four times, but for the fifth time as well. We're not going to allow them to devastate our home. And this time again you'll say that it's impossible, but we will prove that if we decide to do something, you cannot stop us. Our values, not things that we think about. The reign of law, the Israeli democracy, freedom of religion. The wish to have peace with Palestinians and the region's countries. Something that will create opportunity for every child and takes care of the weak. When you know what you believe in, nothing can stop you. We promised and we kept our promise. We promised we're going to change the regime. We did. Establish a government. We did. And they went all over us. The commentators sat in the studio and explained that we have no chance it's not going to happen. You believed it, and due to you it happened. We promised that we're going to reduce the unemployment, strengthen the courts and the status of Israel in the world, to help our soldiers, the elderly, people with disabilities. We kept our promise. We didn't succeed in everything. We had some failures along the way. The law of the administration of the government failed at the third hearing because of one vote. If there's no a deed, there's no government. I'm just saying the interns are now leaving. We give them our blessings. It's their democratic right to express their protest. This is the limitation of term of office. The first and second hearing it went through, but the third one we failed because of one vote.  Listment went through the first hearing. Tens of thousands of soldiers would go to work, but it was stuck in the committee. All right, we've been listening there to Yair Lapid, of course, leader of the Asia Tea Party and Prime Minister and come in Prime Minister or Interim Prime Minister as he kicks off the party's official campaign 90 days before the election on November 1st. Well, joining us in studio is Ruthie Bloom, columnist for the Jewish News Syndicate. And Ruthie, look, if we look at the political map realistically, it's hard to see how...


My name is Mya Santamaria, I work in the Department of Finance, full disclosure, I'm a Chartered Accountant, I'm not a PhD economist or anything like that, so I apologise for that. But I do have over 22 years actually of experience in finance, in banking and insurance, so I've learned things on this dark side. And I joined the Department of Finance about two years ago, and in the Department of Finance I lead the working group on cryptocurrencies and blockchain. So I'm going to introduce the panelists now, if that's okay, please. Alexis, come on board. And how's your work? Would you like to come join us? Max and Giacomo, I think you may have seen his presentation this morning. Okay, so Giacomo actually was presenting this morning, so I think you hopefully will have seen his presentation, I won't say anything else. Max is CEO of HODL, HODL, do I pronounce it right? Okay, that's great. How's your work? Is the Chief Head of Investment, Capital, Capital, so long. It's a bit long, sorry for that. But it's the inside piece, I actually really like very much. And Alexis, you are Chairman and CEO of Financial.com. It's a Munich based financial information company, and basically I'm representing the old, I've been tech since 1999, but I'm representing the old economy, so I got my tie on it. Very good. Okay, yeah, actually, I mean, between all of us have a lot of many years in financial services. You both Hans Jörg and Alexis, you've been in financial services for over 20 years. Mark, I think you were in private banking and wealth for over 10 years as well. Yes, I was a private banker and asset management went management for 10 years prior joining to crypto. So I know both worlds pretty well. Well, I had a bank account once. Very good. As you can see. So we do strive for a variety of experience to make the panel discussion interesting. So there you go. Let's pick action on that topic because on my experience from financial services, when we talk about cryptocurrency, and I tried to speak about it or at least presented to policy makers and regulators, I find a little bit like more fears in the metrics. When you feel like you're actually giving people either a red pill or a blue pill, which one is it going to be? Mostly it's because it feels like people either love cryptocurrency and Bitcoin or they seem to fear it and hate it. And I think maybe the realities might be somewhere in between. And certainly that's something I like to explore more in the panel discussion today. Who would like to go first? I'd love to because I feel I'm the advocate of the ability of today. And I simply want to change your perspective on Bitcoin a bit. So if I may, I'd like to draw your attention on your attention on this slide. And this slide is so to say is a history of panics, maniacs and crashes at financial markets throughout the history of financial markets as such. And when you take the different lines plotted here, what you might say is a so-called day zero. That was for any asset class being on that chart here. Day zero was the highest price of said asset class. And then it was plotted back five years into its own history. And the line then corresponds to years after since nowadays or the next five years after the highest price. And guess which line reflects Bitcoin? It's a blue one. And knowing that the left-hand side is in logarithmic terms, you would say that in comparison with all the other bubbles we had throughout the history of financial markets, the Bitcoin, let me call it like this bubble we saw in December 2017 was by far the largest bubble, at least when it comes to the price increases we saw years before. Well, a picture from time to time might tell you less than a thousand words because it's just a picture talking about or reflecting bubble history such as the tulip mania and others. And the fact point is, is it really a bubble we are talking about or isn't it? When you take the Kindleberger criteria, I come to the conclusion clearly we are in the middle of a bubble when it comes to Bitcoin. All the criterias as being named or hammered home by Kindleberger, he was an historian in economics, my view fulfilled. There is a fantasy of a new technology. There is much circulation. There is much liquidity flowing around searching for yield. There is a fantasy of a new technology, as I just said, new financial vehicles, be it the CBOE futures, be it mutual fund investment vehicles of nowadays and so on and so forth. So to make a long story short, I would say clearly Bitcoin primarily is a phenomenon of a bubble. And we are in it. It might just be a second part of what we are just seeing. And I even doubt that it's an asset class. This morning we talked about Bitcoin being an asset class. Me as an investor, I would say an investment professional. I would say, no, it's clearly not an asset class. Why should it be? A market cap is too low for being a nameable asset class. One hundred fifty. What was it? Billions of US dollars. That's nothing in comparison with equity markets or any other kind of financial market. It has not any intrinsic value. You might say, well, just like gold. Yes, Bitcoin is just like gold in that sense. But gold for me is not an asset class. It's a religion. Sorry, sorry. Sorry, can I stop you there? Because I do appreciate your comments. I think they're valid. And I'm sure the G20 ministers meeting in Fukuoka next week would love to have you there. But we do have three other panelists. And to that point, actually, I mean, you're obviously quite feeling quite strong about it not being an asset of sorts. But maybe it's because you're looking at something new from an old traditional lens. So what do you think, Alexis? Well, it's really hard for me to add something more. I pretty much agree with the previous presenter. But yeah, actually, Bitcoin is kind of a narrative. And if it would deliver what it's talking about, if it would come money, then it would be a deflationary asset. As deflationary. Disinflationary. Okay, sorry. But as mentioned earlier today, this would cause huge problems because we have experienced a great depression. We have seen World War II, so deflation is not an option. So I think what people always see as the most positive aspect being kept by 21 million, I personally see it as the biggest problem of the Bitcoin. Okay. I'll go directly to your mark. Would you like to, Max? Okay, that'd be great. Because at the end of the day, what we're saying is we know that Bitcoin was actually created to not follow traditional legacy systems. Does it matter? Yeah, actually, I just wanted to comment on that because during my banking time, I was handling a lot of papers to my client with different performance assets, and each of this paper contained the words, small words on the below, that past performance doesn't guarantee the future performance of the asset. So I think that we're living in a new age, digital age. That's what I heard in the year 2000 as well. What? That's what I heard in the year 2000 as well. And you don't have internet anymore? A couple of years ago as well. No, but there was Apple on the horizons already, and there always have been valuation metrics. Mine is still working. But now it's still valuation metrics. So start trying to value Bitcoin. Can I finish my... Thanks, Max. Thank you very much. So I wouldn't value or I wouldn't compare Bitcoin to previous asset classes because, again, it's decentralized by nature. And to understand the decentralization thing in the simple words, you have thousands of people in the world now at this moment working on the Bitcoin. Nobody out of them are coordinated by any central bank or anything else. I think that Bitcoin is an asset class. Maybe you can't compare it to the traditional asset classes due to the nature of that and due to the idea behind that. But it's also a social economical phenomenon for me personally because a part of the having promises, tech and all that stuff, we also have a very strong community of smart people who are working on that. And as I say previously, they're doing it in a decentralized way. Away from financial services. So one would potentially say that it's a financial services institution would not be happy obviously by Bitcoin because effectively they'll be coming into their own lunch as potential competitors. So it's natural to honestly understand your point of view, Alex and Hans Jörg. Can I just add something? I mean, there's a nice book written by two researchers in the US, Carmen Reinhardt and Kenneth Rogoff. It covers 800 years of financial crisis and the title of the book says, this time is different. And they're making a joke of it because they say, well, the times are different, technology is different. I don't know what else is different, but people are always the same. So the human mindset is always the same. And people always tell a new story why this time is different and then they learn that everything is just the same. So this is just the history of 800 years. It was 63 or 60 something financial crisis. So it's always been the same. So it's, if someone mentions this time is different, be cautious. That applies to government currency. That applies to government currency. We're talking about asset prices. We're talking about asset prices. We're talking about sovereign defaults. But they're focusing on democracies. And a democracy needs inflation. Why? Because politicians pay more than they can afford. So they issue debt. And they say the future taxpayer will repay, but there's no future taxpayer. You need it. You need it. Otherwise a democracy wouldn't work. I think we need a beer soon. So this is what we've learned from 800 years is that a democracy needs inflation. It will always end up in inflation. It has to. By the way, this is a good business model. Religion is the best business model. You promise a better life after death. You can get money upfront. No one reclaims if this doesn't happen. There's no regulation. That's how money was invented. So religion is the best business model for as much. Bitcoin is kind of a religion. We can say that's how money works. There are also people that actually read that book. Yeah? Oh, come on. We're not going to get personal, please. And we want to end the day in a good note. Jack, what would you think about all this? So I agree with most have been said. I mean, Bitcoin is a bubble in a way. Well, rhetorically we could say that Bitcoin is not the bubble. It's the pin. That's the typical rhetorical answer. Which means that it's a bubble that basically is going to grow and never really burst if the alternative bubble of the government central planning of money is going to burst. It's an anti-correlated bubble. If the bet on central planning of money is going to succeed, Bitcoin is not going to succeed. But since I agree with the second sentence that every time somebody says that this time is different, that there is a red flag, central planning always failed in the past and this time is probably not different. So Bitcoin is a pin that will burst the bubble. But it's also true what Dan said also this morning and yesterday. Bitcoin actually is moving like a bubble. Bitcoin is not really facing the phenomenon of monetization in a smooth way. It's not that everybody is going to agree to smoothly pour resources into Bitcoin. There will be phases. There will be wave. There will be FOMO. There will be food. There will be basically adjustment of expectation and very strong correction. We are seeing that all the time. Bitcoin actually is not a bubble. It's a collection of bubbles. The only point is that this bubble always burst at the higher point than the previous. So it's okay. We are continuous to creating bubbles. We are bursting bubbles and we are going up like this. Eventually, while the market debt grows, the volatility level is going down. We are seeing that already. But it's a collection of bubble. Also, the interesting thing is that the traditional bubble, so the stock market bubble created by manipulation of interest rates, is somehow influencing Bitcoin. I think that it's a safe bet that the manipulation of interest rates creates incentives to overinvest and misinvest, and maybe part of that crazy liquidity is also going into Bitcoin or worse into technically speaking, sheet coins. So, yeah, Bitcoin is an anti-bubble. Bitcoin is a collection of several bubbles. And Bitcoin is probably also helped by all the government-driven bubbles. Okay. That's it pretty much. Can I just differentiate? I really like blockchain technology and I think there are many currencies out there that are better than Bitcoin. So, don't get me wrong on this. Okay. It's good that we agree. Maybe I wasn't super clear about that, but... Well, I always reach about the asset class thing. I agree that, I mean, as we said this morning and it was repeated, Bitcoin is still an experiment. For example, the market cap of Bitcoin is still very low. We cannot call it an asset class in a typical financial sense. That said, the reason I usually talk, I mean, from my experience of having had a bank account, I talk with finance people and when I talk with them, I call Bitcoin an asset class for this simple reason. It is an asset, for sure, with a very strong price dynamics but is not clearly part of any other known asset class. And if you try to frame it as another existing asset class, it will show some kind of dynamic that are completely different. For example, decentralization of decisions or price dynamics or historical dynamics. It's also, I mean, it's a religion. That's true. It is a religion. It is also a digital gold. It is also a brand. It is also a growing technology. So the reason it's an asset class is not size. Eventually, if we succeed, we will get there to a relevant size. Right now, the size is very small but the nature, it cannot be... If we want to be honest, scientifically speaking, we cannot really fit this into any other specific asset class. But given that, as a characterization, it's simply not sufficient to make it investable, I would say. And for me, everything and anything that's not investable is not an asset class, full stop. Okay.  Well, yes, fair point. But it even would go further ahead saying an investment class for me is something I can generate some kind of return. I'm talking about intrinsic value of that asset class. So if you have any... And not return in a sense of prices rising and therefore generating return as such. So if you have one single asset that for a correlation level can lower the general risk of your portfolio, unless it's big enough to be its own asset class, you will not use it to mitigate the risk or to better... What is just that was quite good. Past performance is no indication for future results. So why should I take past performance or past volatility to make it... to take it as a diversifiable asset class? I simply don't see it as such. You might say, well, there are equities, there are bonds, there are other type of currencies. That's okay. They have their own track record, but Bitcoin is just out there. It's some kind of a token. And you might say it's investable. Yes, you may go into it and out of it, but given that kind of volatility we have seen throughout the last couple of years, knowing that the price increases outnumber all other kinds of bubbles we've had. For me, it's just something for those who love it, who believe in it. And I come back to what you just mentioned. This time it's different. Yes, it's a fantastic book and everyone should read it. And this time it's really different and these are the most expensive words of the history of financial history. This time it's different. So whenever you hear it, better stay away from that kind of asset, not asset class, but vehicle. Any comments? Okay, please, Dr. I think there's something extremely misleading about the chart that you said, which is that it goes back only five years from the top of the bubble. And if you put up the five years before that, all of the bubbles that you put would not show up in the graph. They would all be stuck next to the X-atches, even on a logarithmic graph. Bitcoin rises so much that all the other bubbles are insignificant. And I think this is where you need to start revisiting your project and revisiting your assumption because the amount of appreciation that Bitcoin has achieved in 10 years is about 18 million percent. So even if it loses 99 percent of its value, it still outperforms everything else in human history over the last 10 years. So there's something there that's different. Even if it loses all of that value, there's still value that has been created for 50 billion in 10 years. That's a great story. No, that's not a great story. You need to ask yourself why and find another explanation other than just dismissing it. Oh, yeah. Okay, next time I take 10 years, it makes it even worse. Or 20 years, whenever it started, I don't worry about this. But the thing is, what I plotted here is a comparison where it's not only the Taliban year and other kind of narrative. That's a good word for Taliban year probably. But all the other kind of equity classes, of asset classes you've had and you're still having such as U.S. stocks, German stocks and any others and Japanese ones. And having that this, they reflect economic power, nothing else. And Bitcoin reflects a religion. There is a difference here and therefore I'm making this point. No, religion is the notion that we have papers from the government with God on them. Come on, come on. We need to discuss fired money to make that point clear. What I like most about Bitcoin is the fact that I'm in Hayekian like probably many of you see in the audience. So I'm as an economist, I'm at Heron or a disciple you might even say of Friedrich von Hayek. And you made a very valid point but he did not talk about Bitcoin. He talked about the denationalization of money and I even doubt that Bitcoin is a currency and therefore it's not money. So what would it take for you to revise that idea? So 10 years from now Bitcoin is 10 times where it is today, so $80,000 per coin. So we've had 20 years of growth in Bitcoin and 200 million percent. Would you still think that it is a collapse? Because the key thing that you need to confront is that every one of these is a bubble, as Jakob was saying, and yet after each bubble we end up above the previous high. So next time what I bring with me is a better chart even I don't have it with me but it's even more in lighting probably. You take that chart with a Bitcoin price and what you then take next is a yield, not the yield curve but the 10 years yield of sovereign bonds be it US or Europe or even more so with the landing rate of central banks. And the landing rate of central banks do reflect a very simple story. We have been in a negative yield environment for more than 10 years in major parts of the world. And interesting to see that just before the US central bank changed gear in the year 2017 the bubble collapsed and now given the fact that the ECB and the Federal Reserve once again changed gear backwards. So in checking even more liquidity it just restarted again. Let's try to answer the question. At which point do we basically revise our position? So I would say for example that if in a time horizon of 30 years that's maybe too much but let's be bold. I say that if it's in five years for example a good percentage of asset allocation in political sensitive areas or international black and grey markets do not use Bitcoin I will start to seriously reconsider the effectiveness of the project of the experiment because it is an experiment. At which point do you see Bitcoin growing without collapsing except with some volatility and you accept that this time is really different? Is there a threshold where you revise your position? Need to think about it very carefully but given the fact that just a few of millions people are using it obviously and given the fact that if I'm not wrong one third or even more of Bitcoins are being mined in China knowing that it takes just a majority of 50 plus percent to change the rules. It doesn't. Oh okay. That's a misconception. Okay. You need actually everything. Because that needs to be from the table obviously. It needs to be not being manipulative or manipulated. That was the case Bitcoin will be very reasonable. It needs to be more widely spread and that's simply not the case and you shouldn't forget that we have more than 1,000 other cryptocurrencies. How about these currencies? Do we know whether they will... That's what you are saying. Others are telling me they are in use. So even thinking about building mutual funds on cryptocurrencies to have a diversification effect. Yeah but this conference is called value on Bitcoin not the value on other shitcoins. You're sorry. The non-value of Bitcoin. I would change my mind if it becomes legal tender obviously. So independently of price dynamics it's not a bubble if it's legal tender. So in Japan it's a legal tender and now we can start changing the minds because since 2017 Bitcoin is a legal tender in Japan and Japan as far as I understand in top three economies in the world. I would... Sorry it's not... Sorry let's get back to this. Sorry it's not legal tender but it's actually accepted as a means of payment which is slightly different. My understanding of a legal tender is that there's a monetary policy behind it. Oh that's not the case. That really suits it. That's maybe why it's different this time. There's no monetary policy. Yeah and this is the reason why I'm skeptical. I'm sorry. So it's not a bubble if there is a political decision for the supply. I mean I think... I think you can argue about monetary policy. You can love or hate central banks. I don't... This is an emotional question. You can hate them. But I think it's indisputable that a variable amount of goods needs a flexible monetary supply. So a fixed money supply with a growing amount of goods it doesn't work. So you can hate or love central banks I don't care but I think you need to have a flexible monetary supply. How has the Bitcoin economy gone from $150 billion from zero over 10 years with a fixed money supply? Great story. Great story. Great story. Just an experiment? You need 20 million Bitcoins. I don't know. Well what number of people will take you to admit this is more than a story? If a billion people are using it... I mean if it's... If the government goes out of business and the government curses go out of business but Bitcoin is still there. Will you revise then? It's not the agenda. Not the chart. I mean... That's an internally consistent definition. Yeah. That's a fair point. I know it's not very popular here. Sorry. It's a very interesting point because I'm still actually with my accounting financial services hat on I'm still struggling to understand how if it's not any type of asset and it's some kind of bubble it's not okay to kind of invest in it but it's totally okay to invest in the derivatives that invest in the asset. I'm like how do you actually marry the two of them up? So it's an interesting theory. All right. Listen, this is very interesting. We have 10 minutes to go before beers and Satoshi Nakamoto has just sent in a question and slide. Oh, that's okay. So we're going to erase that one. So it's a question for Hans York-Nomer. Bitcoin is simply religion. Is Satoshi God? What do you think? Let me think about it. Probably more kind of a devil. I would say because those who call themselves God are usually more kind of a diabolic type of person. I wouldn't say it's Satoshi. Of course, don't get me wrong but the question is such as rubbish. Let's get a bit more serious. Bitcoin markets are liquid and prone to heavy manipulation. Does it need the traditional system to root out the bad actors? I go first if you want. My opinion is no. The side effect of regulation is always to make it easy to manipulate everything for the friends of the regulator and to create a barrier to competition in order to evolve toward a more transparent and self-regulated system. So right now, this is not denying that the Bitcoin market, especially the exchange-based market is super manipulative right now. It's very low liquidity, very low debt. The exchanges can see their stop-loss and go down and take them. Most exchanges, not the... Not the horrible. There are some differences in custodian-ship strategies and stuff. There are some exchanges which are doing a better job. But the point is this. I have been born in Italy and there is a bank there, a very ancient bank, it failed probably 50 times and the government bailed out people to regulate and so moral hazard grows and it fails again and again. Then I had some, like, tribit coins on empty gox. No government bailed me out for my tribit coins and I'm super happy because that created the opposite of moral hazard. That created a period in which people started to think about exchange security. So when you don't regulate and when you don't bail out, when you don't manipulate, when you let people learn from their mistake and they can suffer from their mistake, you have an imperfect process of learning while when you try to step in and to central plan things violating the normal feedback loops, then you just create... Maybe the system is perfect at the beginning but then it degenerates at the end. So regulators are always increasing moral hazard. They are never serving everything. Even if in the short run they are going to stop some scam, they will produce bigger scam in the end. Well, let's... I think we'll just set there. Giacomo goes really well with the discussions we had earlier on today as well about how Bitcoin is the social contract part of an experiment. So when you're actually putting all that together you can understand why maybe it's not a normal asset, certainly from the view that we're looking from a traditional finance perspective. Particularly because it actually looks at reinventing, re-managing, actually allowing people to have control in their finances. We talked about a market for private money. That's new. What we're saying here is maybe we shouldn't be looking at something new with the lenses of an old world. Should we move on to a question from the audience? Because you seem to have woken up and I really like that. Intrinsic value come on, you should know this, aren't you? Don't you? Intrinsic value assembly is you take, let's say, share an equity part of an enterprise of cooperation and you ask yourself what also returns to be expected in terms of earnings for the next couple of years. And what you're going to generate is earnings and you get data dividends and then you can give it a price. That's explained for equities. You could go ahead and explain it to a real estate whatever you have in mind. So that's not a problem. Systematic as such is quite simple. But it's nothing such with Bitcoin. Tell me what is intrinsic value. Is anyone here being able to say what's intrinsic value of a Bitcoin is? Please tell me. What? CRO. Okay, thank you. Well, I will disagree about that. So first of all, I think a better distinction I think would be between expected exchange value and direct consumption value. So this is a very clear distinction. But even if you do that so if you have a piece of bread you can sell it but you can also eat it while usually a good form of money has very low consumption value is mostly a store of value and a medium of exchange so you want to exchange it. Bitcoin in this regard is different. For example, there is George Sargin saying that this is the first time that there is a synthetic commodity. So this is a good argument. All the commodities we use as money in the history started as something used for something else. For example, decorative purposes or collectibles and then they evolved to be used as money. Bitcoin in this sense has the presumption to be designed directly in order to assume the function of money. So in this sense it is a more bold, it is a better which is more ambitious. But a one Bitcoin has the same kind of consumption value of any kind of scarce collectible. Imagine that you have an autograph by a basketball player or you have the t-shirt of Mick Jagger with some sweat. So what is the consumption value of that? Many pieces of modern art you can say there is a consumption artistic value no, I mean they are horrible. But the only value is that you have that and nobody else does. So the fact that sometimes we say that price value arises from scarcity and demand but the truth is that scarcity itself in some condition in the dynamic of collectibles can be itself a direct consumption even if you don't plan to exchange your autograph of a famous person with somebody. The fact that it is scarce that you have it and other people don't is itself a consumption value. Indeed there is an hypothesis that historically even commodity money didn't really evolve from consumption goods but it did evolve from collectibles. So people were showing off shells because these shells were rare, they could have it and other people couldn't and then they understood that they can also store shells and exchange shells and it evolves with Mises regression theory. But I accept the fact that bitcoin is different because bitcoin was designed to become money while no previous kind of money except for fiat, shitcoin had the same kind of origin. Just explain us nothing else in public economics. Thank you for this because modern arts is just the same as bitcoin when it comes to prices and liquidity. You are trusting the generic market aggregates. You are expecting some kind of behavior from the market and you know the market behavior cannot be changed single-handedly by any single entity and so you expect a typical social long-term dynamic, lindy effect network effects. You expect to invest something. It's not true that bitcoin is trustless. You trust math and you trust typical economic laws. Sorry, please go ahead. For me personally, gold is not a reason, not at all a reason. My question is why do central banks buy gold and why does it merely breed? Buy gold as a substitute for gold? I can't tell for them. We have better asset classes to invest but we are incompetent also to say it's a matter of culture. It's a matter that others believe in and Dr. Waller just put it quite nicely. We are talking for the Federal Reserve that the Fed is able to create its own currency that we should do the same having the ECB. Therefore, your point is a very valid point. Does gold make any kind of sense? No, it doesn't. We are simply believing in it. We are believing in the surprise of modern arts might skyrocket even first. We are believing that fiat money is actually somehow powered by central banks. I don't believe in fiat money at all. I'm just using it to transfer things perhaps to store value to a certain extent. I'd rather store value with real assets. That's what we are going to have outside in forms of drinks but that's what you might also have in forms of equities or something. I'd never believe in anything. Let me make that point. We should start from that. But the thing is when it has an intrinsic value that helps a lot to anchor it and to anchor its value. US dollar taken as such is just a matter of transfer value for it. Excuse me. Maybe you had a discussion from an IT perspective. I believe that the real value of the Bitcoin system is the most powerful compute and storage network which is out there and we have seen through the presentation the fact that of security and immutable data this is where the value grows and it's what people trust that when it comes in it will generate it. This is unmatched. We cannot deny it. And I would see it in intrinsic value as well. Bitcoin has become the base currency for all the other cultures. Bitcoin ecosystem where you have a base layer but there's only a few fractions. Exactly. But I also believe that it's not a Bitcoin only new system. Because we have great use cases out there we take ripple we have people talk about it is a Bitcoin conference. Sorry. Can I add something with the next base of Bitcoin for decentralized so it's small contract systems decentralized apps and all those things. So there won't be prominent use cases but Bitcoin lies the foundation of trust for us to connect to that and could work on coins to the other. So I switch into your side of nihilism can I add something to the gold question? I just want to quote Warren Buffett one of the best investors of our time he just wrote in his letter but a very smart guy and he said he's 88 years and he said during his lifetime the national debt of the U.S. has grown by 400,000 percent in 88 years and there have always been people fighting monetary policy buying gold and overall the people who bought gold had the worst performance over 88 years. So usually entities which are very deep in debt eventually they fail but this time it's different right? No, no, no, no I would say an asset class an asset class in my view is an asset pays your dividend for your interest. So is the company the presenter from the Fed he said he would rather buy the S&P so do I I would rather buy the S&P and hold it for like decades. I think I might stop it here because it is time to go out for a beer I'd like to thank the panellists but I will like to leave you all with a thought which I'm going to read out straight out it's the first sentence from Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper and the sentence says a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution so just consider that. Okay, thanks Thank you It was good


is exclusive the 18-year-old by racial woman who says she was attacked by four men while white man while she was driving out the emergency and says she was set on fire and Alex pres joins us with latest on the investigation good morning Alex. Hey good morning George the 18-year-old says she's studying to be a paramedic and some of those skills kicked in at the horrifying moment she was attacked. I haven't really slept and I don't really have an appetite so it's just I don't want anyone to ever feel like this. 18-year-old Althea Bernstein says she was on her way to her brother's house around 1 a.m. Wednesday morning. She says she was stopped at a red light and listening to music when she heard someone yell the n-word. According to the police report her driver's side window was down and she heard someone yell out a racial epithet she looked and saw four men all white. She says one used a spray bottle to deploy a liquid on her face and neck and then through a flaming lighter at her causing the liquid to ignite she drove forward and patted out the flames. Now in active and ongoing investigation medicines mayor saying while we are still learning more about the details current information suggests this may have been a premeditated crime targeted toward people of color and authorities say they are reviewing surveillance images from nearby cameras hoping for any clues that might help them track down the attackers Cecilia. So disturbing okay Alex thank you. Unfortunately for this liar in her corrupt enabling media it never happened. I know I know unbelievable right according to the Wisconsin state journal quote an exhaustive search of video from the city and privately owned surveillance cameras however turned up no evidence of the attack and the investigation identified a number of inconsistencies in Bernstein story inconsistencies like all the city's cameras being checked and no group of white men fitting that description being found. Oh and also there was no burning around Bernstein's car inside it or on it and the police dog that checked the area found no evidence of accelerants that should have been there if she was telling the truth. This is all sounding very familiar isn't it almost like they did a small at reboot and decided to recast the role as a female is it any wonder that there are so many of these fake hate crimes to me it's pretty obvious why this is happening for one we have this 24 seven media narrative and from the Democrat Party that white people are inherently racist by virtue of them being white the constant fear mongering about why people has created mass widespread paranoia just think about it like Bigfoot if the media was out there every day reporting about Bigfoot everyone would be seeing him everywhere but instead of Bigfoot it's racist white monsters everywhere.   You know I'm going to say the three words you're never allowed to say on cable news which are I don't know I can't say that it's a hate crime because Chicago police won't say it they're saying f white people f Trump how can you say it's not a hate crime against the white person. So first I want to say this is absolutely sickening it's it's unfathomable that so much hate and anger can fill up a person where they go out and they think that this is okay and then it was stupid to do it on Facebook live but that's a whole nother story so this is absolutely sickening but I'm going to say something that's probably not very popular we cannot callously go about classifying things as a hate crime and who is Simone Sanders that name sounds familiar oh yeah she's a senior advisor on the Joe Biden campaign so the media's rationalization for not reporting on these stories is that they don't want to create any negative backlash towards so-called communities of color which begs the question do they want to create negative backlash against so-called white communities and three the media creates heroes champions and martyrs out of hate crime victims there's attention to be had money to be made and political agendas to push forward this liar got the attention of the national media and Democrats like Joe Kennedy who ran his mouth without knowing any facts urgent work of this mannelling white supremacy wherever it finds shelter but our work is far from finished and in the days since we passed the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act a young biracial woman named Althea Bernstein was set on fire by four white men as she sat in her car Elon Omar also took full advantage and spoke out before all the facts were available obviously jumping on a story that fit all of her preconceived notions and political agenda even Megan Merkel injected herself into this for some reason you know that black lives matter Megan Markle continues using her platform to combat racism and inspire change this time by making a personal phone call to a victim of an alleged hate crime I haven't really slept and I don't really have an appetite so it's just challenge you know for her right now Johnson told Wisconsin local news channel three thousand that Megan chatted with Bernstein about quote the importance of self-care and allowing herself to heal adding that the Duchess quote applauded her for the way that she responded since the police in the Fed started talking about their findings or rather lack of findings the liar and her family have stopped talking to the press one has to really wonder why there's so many of these fake take crimes in a country that supposedly races to the core that's all for this episode I did want to quickly remind you all that it's finally horror movie month and each week I'll be streaming a horror movie on both the live and on discord so make sure to head over to the official drone tech politics discord so you'll be aware of when all these events are occurring if you enjoyed this video please hit that like button share and subscribe if you want to support this channel you can do so on any of the links listed in the description or in the pin comment thanks for watching keep coming back


Right on pick Jay, this is pick-pocket James. James, what got you into pick-pocketing? Well, my joke line is I got tricked into it. You got tricked?  It really caught my interest. Turns out, after a couple years of doing it, I found out my dad used to do it in England. So apparently it's genetic. And is this something you've ever done illicitly? Have you ever? No, my moral compass is a little too strong. I always give stuff back. It's just, I just do love the challenge of it and I do enjoy seeing people's reactions to when I give their stuff back. So, and what does rogue village mean to you?  Why do you do this? Why do you teach this? Well, really it's like martial arts. Everyone always thinks like, oh, now people are gonna go out there and learn how to pick everyone's pockets and they're like, that's not the case. What I'm trying to do is show you how it's done so you can prepare yourself to not have it happen to you. Try to mitigate damage, basically. Ethical pick-pocketing, ethical hacking, right? I'll learning the defensive techniques here, so. I look forward to earning my white hat. Yeah, are there any exclusive tips that you can show us? Well, I will say this is that obviously we're not gonna be running into these kind of jackets in Vegas too often, okay? But my best tip for you is when you have stuff that's gonna go in pockets and everything, make sure it's the bare minimum because anything else that's in there is going to be ops, basically objects to try and take. If you have more things in the way to try and make this more difficult, then I'm just not gonna bother. Reaching in and taking something that's half out of a pocket makes my life easy, so it's gonna be easy to do. So how would you rate my setup as far as defensive, as far as how easy, obviously this is around back. Yeah, so I was just gonna mention that. You have zippers, which is nice, it's a small deterrent. However, your fanny pack or messenger bag, however you wanna call it. It's a sling. There you go. It's a sling. Listen, at his height and weight, he's allowed to call it a purse.   The same goes for this lovely little thing here. Yes, popping that's gonna be difficult, but it's off your person, so if I've put the time into dealing with the quick release, I don't think you would notice too much. So it's things to just be aware of. If I was in an elevator, I would make sure that's in front of me, is all I'm saying. So what lessons can you draw from being a pickpocket? A life lesson, that's an interesting question. I find that as much as we talk about being, moving into this, oh, like people don't like being touched. People don't like having people in everyone's vicinity. I've found that that's not the case.  So if someone is charismatic and you don't know who they are, you know, Wolf and Sheep's clothing and all that. So we're at Defconn 30. What do you have coming up for Defconn 31? Uh, who? So for, if I'm able to make it back, a little bit of more of the same of getting people to understand how it works, but also trying to get sort of, it's sort of hush-hush at the moment of trying to have like a starter kit. So you have all the tools you can take with you to practice, whether it's at the hotel. Well, here or at home. So we'll see if we can get it done in time. This is Rogues Village? Yes. So what do you consider the modern day gentlemanly rogue? Gentlemanly rogue. Well, it's as much as I would love to be able to wear a three-piece suit and don a hat and monocle and all the rest of it. I think just, they are nicer than they should be. Ah. Social engineering. It is a social engineering touch to it because you are only upset or angry when you don't have control of the situation. So when someone's really nice and you don't know who they are and all the rest of it, again, it boils down to if they're nice, what do they know? The know-it-never. Mm, very interesting. Pickpocket James, you are on every social media with Pickpocket James. Yes. Pickpocket James. Thank you very much, sir. It's been fantastic. Great information.


Good afternoon. My name is Augusta Kebunzia. I work for the County Government of Kittwee. And today, I'm presenting national strategy for prevention and control of anthrax in humans and animals in Kenya 2021 to 2036, and bring this on behalf of Zoonotic Disease Unit. Anthrax is a Zoonotic Disease caused by Bacillus anthraxis, sub-bacterial disease. And in Kenya, it is ranked the top most zoonotic disease. This is based on systematic analysis of the burden of the disease, socioeconomic impact, severity of the disease, and the potential to cause outbreak. Based on a records review from the veterinary department and public health from the national level, it has indicated that more than 10 outbreaks occur every year in Kenya with the spillover to humans. And this data is based on passive surveillance. However, it is considered to be underestimating the outbreaks. Because of this nature of surveillance, some of the outbreaks may go unreported or they are detected very late. Lack of one year strategy for control of anthrax has been noted in a number of reports. The OIE performance veterinary service report 2018 and the WHO joint external evaluation 2017 have noted the lack of one year strategy in control of anthrax and therefore recommendation we are meant to develop and implement one health to implement anthrax strategy. The objective of this strategy is to eliminate human anthrax, reduce the incidence of anthrax in animals to less than 1% of the baseline of 2021 by the year 2036. This strategy was developed through a quantitative meeting drawing stakeholders from the academia, from the relevant ministries, and from non-governmental organization. A series of meetings were held, drafts were developed, were reviewed, and are validated through workshops. The strategy is based on guiding principles that anthrax prevention and control requires a multisectoral and multidisciplinary collaborative approach and effectively reduces the negative impact on public health and national economy. And it involves breaking the cycle of infection and that community is key in prevention and control of anthrax. National committees will be developed at the national level, at the sub-count level and the county levels. And these committees will involve various stakeholders from the government ministries, from the county government, the national government, plus or involve professional bodies such as KVA and KMA, farmers and community-based organization. Other stakeholders will involve to be the regional and the national stakeholders. And all this will work to guided by certain thematic area as we discussed to go on. The anthrax and prevention control strategy will have seven pillars on which its implementation will be based. One, coordination, collaboration and partnership. And the objective of this is to enhance collaboration between ministries and other partners and NGOs to ensure that anthrax is well-prevented and controlled. Two is surveillance, reporting, systems and outbreak response. During implementation of this strategy, this existing surveillance system will be enhanced. This to ensure that we receive timely reporting of outbreaks and also response to any outbreak before it spills to the humans. Third will be prevention and control anthrax. These both in animals, wildlife and in human. The objective will be to ensure that vaccines are available, quality vaccines that are available and affordable to the communities. And also that guidelines on ensuring that any cases confirmed of anthrax are well-handled to prevent contamination of the environment and also infection of humans. Resource mobilization, this will be done through advocacy, holding meetings, seeking to get funds which will be very key in implementation and control of this strategy. Recommunication will be key. And the main objective is to increase awareness across the communities, which will be very important while controlling anthrax. Sex will be conduct, promote, operational and applied research. These studies will be very important as they will help us to get data and inform on the progress of the implementation of this strategy. Then the seventh one will be anthrax diagnostics, laboratory capacity. The objective of this pillar is to ensure that the capacity of the laboratories, both the regional and national, they were announced such that they can confirm in anthrax cases as well as promote networking of labs, both in the human and the public, such that they can share information on anthrax. The implementation of anthrax elimination strategy will follow four phases. These phases will systematically eliminate or reduce the cases in animals aiming at elimination of the disease in humans. And in each phase, we will have a set of activities which will be synchronized to ensure synergy and leverage. In stage one, which will run from 2021 to 2023 to involve the preparation and option phase, which will be phase one. And in this phase, it is assumed that anthrax is present, but the socioeconomic impact is not known. The burden of the disease is not known. In stage two, it will involve the implementation of the strategy in the iris zones, which will run from 2024 to 2027. In this phase, the situation is that we know the disease impact, the burden. We have implementation plan in place. And from that implementation plan, we'll have identified areas where anthrax is more, causing more burden. And this will be the iris areas. And this is where the implementation of the strategy will start to eliminate human anthrax in these areas. As we move to stage three, where the implementation of the strategy will be done across the country, from 2028 to 2032. In this stage, we'll sustain the efforts we have done in phase two and apply the lessons we have learned in the iris zones. And now control this disease across the whole country. Then in phase four, this is the stage where anthrax will be eliminated in humans, such that we have zero cases of human cases and rare cases in livestock. In phase one, these were most of the activities will be done because we do not know exactly the burden of the disease and a number of things have to be put in place to implement, to operationalize the strategy. And one will start with developing guidelines and start operating procedures which will enable us to operationalize this strategy. Guidelines such as vaccination guidelines, treatment guidelines, among others. Then we'll strengthen surveillance to ensure that we receive all the data, all the outbreak on timely, and also response to an outbreak. We'll also have a resource mapping, a resource mobilization, where in this we have to develop resource mobilization plans, have meetings and anti-focusing meetings in the national and the county governments and others decoders to source for funds to implement the strategy. Prevention and control measures in both human, animals, and wildlife to ensure that there is no spillover of the disease to humans and also contamination of the environment. We'll also develop communication plans. I identify the audience and also the communication channel will be identified at this stage and also conduct research so that we may identify the high risk and the low risk areas and also know and understand the economic burden of anthrax in the country. It is at this stage that we'll also form the elimination committees. At the national level we'll have the national prevention and control committee which will be a subcommittee of the zoonotic technical working group and zoonotic disease unit will be the secretariat. This committee will coordinate and oversee anthrax prevention control across the country. This committee will also have members from the international, regional, and other national partners. At the national level, a similar committee will be formed which will be called the county zoonotic committee and the county one earth units will be the secretariat. They will be reporting direct to the national prevention and control committee which in turn will report to zoonotic technical working group and this group will now report to the ministries of agriculture, livestock and fisheries, the minister of health. At the sub-count level, similar committee will be formed which will be direct to the communities where the implementation will be taking place and the information will flow now from the community to the sub-count level, to the county level, to the national level. High risk areas will be identified but from the review of records although this anthrax is endemic in the country it has been reported in some counties more often than others and it's from that review that this map was developed. Sat Narok, Kiambo, Meru, Nyeri had reported more anthrax cases in the past five years than other counties and these were identified as the high risk areas where the pilot of this anthrax strategy will be developed, will start being implemented. However, in the first phase through the operational research the risk map of anthrax will be developed and now it will be updated in the strategy which will be the real risk map for anthrax and it will be used for implementation of this strategy. Within these areas where anthrax will be occurring there will be odd spots and this will range from one to 50 kilometers based on production systems. Raw risk areas will are those areas where anthrax outbreaks has not occurred in the last five years. However, if anthrax outbreaks occurs in these areas it will be now classified as high risk areas and activities taking place the high risk areas will now be done in that area. Phase two, it is assumed that all structures will be put in place and now we are ready to start implementation of the strategy and this implementation will start in the high risk zones where advocacy, communication, social mobilization will be done vaccines will be procured distributed anthrax cases will be collected data on outbreaks will be collected and fed to national anthrax database assessment of economic cost analysis intervention will be done outbreak investigation and response will be done as well as communication across the counties across the border and impact of the vaccination will also be assessed as well as the vaccination survey and also training of the human and the veterinary personnel to ensure that they understand the control of anthrax. To move from this phase to the next phase we will ensure that some indicators will be used to show that we need to move to the next step and this will include vaccination of 80% of the livestock in the high risk areas and three rounds of vaccination will be key during that period that any outbreaks which will be reported in that phase at least 80% of these outbreaks are laboratory confirmed and reduce the incidence of anthrax in both human and livestock by 50% of the baseline also reduce the anthrax case of human livestock wildlife interface by 50% of the baseline at phase 3 it will aim to sustain the achievement of the stage 2 and this will be implemented the anthrax prevention control strategy across the country and here we will apply the lessons which will be learned in the high risk areas and the activities will include advocacy communication and social mobilization items surveillance to make sure we get information on time of any outbreaks vaccination figures sustained livestock vaccination will review and update the national anthrax risk map and evaluate the effectiveness of programs or the intervention which will be applied as well as communication across the counties to move from this phase the last phase the incidence of anthrax in animals and livestock will have reduced by 80% of the baseline as well as reduction of human livestock wildlife interface by 80% and the country will have at least vaccinated life 80% of the susceptible animals against anthrax elimination of anthrax in humans will be the last phase and this will be defined by having no human anthrax in a certain region and in this region there will be surveillance going on to make sure that there is no human case which is missed at the same time there will be sustained elimination activities in areas where the anthrax cases will be reported these areas which have not reported anthrax cases at least for two consecutive years will be declared as anthrax free this implementation will monitor and evaluated both internally and externally and for the internal monetary it will be led by a zoonotic disease unit whereby they have developed very viable indicators they will measure the progress and assess the achievement of the program in line with the strategy while external evaluation will be independent to assess the program and identify any modifications we want to acknowledge this organization for financial support while developing the strategy thank you and this is the strategy thank you very much Dr. I am sure that my good friend Dr. Nningi was happy to see the strategy Mr. Nningi Mark just a few questions for you which might be critical for you to address before we move on to the next session one a former DVS doctor is asking the strategy has moved to 2031 to 2036 what has shifted maybe you might not be the competent authority to answer there is a DVS representative who might help you the second bit of it is we are in the preparatory adoption phase which should run from 2021 to 2023 2021 is over 2022 might be lost due to elections how far have you done the preparations again you can pick those together and the last bit of it is how far have you gone for private sector in the strategy and have they been sensitized engaged because I think a lot of strategies have been developed internally as a government but maybe the to drive PPPs private sector that might need to play an important role need to also be engaged and is that part of the process and lastly there was a question by Maureen the challenges in getting vaccines and essentially the strategy is hinged on vaccinating a certain number of the population so would you have any comments around the vaccines and vaccination bits of it I'm sure Dr. Ayas might be able to put in one or two but we'll start with Augusta then Dr. Ayas can put in one or two then we can close the session thank you for the questions we are in phase one and we have undertaken some of the activities we have developed guidelines and we are developing the risk map as well as preparing to undertake other activities in the near future we have involved the private sector during the development of the strategy and is also one of the key stakeholders which will be involved in implementation of the strategy we aim at vaccinating at least 80% of the population and we believe that this will build the idea and such that this will be 70 to 80% vaccination coverage is always made to be effective in control of our disease thank you can request Dr. Ayas to chip in thank you Dr. Kebunze for the good presentation on the anthrax strategy mine is to react to the comments that have come in one was the question of when will it start I would say it has already started in the sense that for us to come up with a strategy there is a lot of epidemiological work that has already been undertaken so the first phase of knowing the extent of the threat of anthrax has been undertaken and from there is when we now move to developing the strategy itself so it's evidence based the various pillars that have come up based on evidence that has been collected over a long time the strategy itself has not been officially launched but we are planning to have it done within the next coming one month with the launch of the document we will now go full steam ahead to do the roll out with our country the challenge is that we have 47 governments disease control is devolved the money to do the control is out there in the counties but this is a priority and that they need to now work on it as one of the key deliverables in the coming years the private sector role again with the launch we expect that we will bring them on board there will be part of the people who will be invited to the launch key private sector people so that they can contribute they can take it home and look for their niche within the programs that are there I must admit vaccines can be a challenge but we do expect that once the counties take it up in their CIDP as one of the activities we can then work with them to access the vaccines the OIE has made a good offer that they can supply vaccines at a very good cost if we go as a country so we can take the various requirements of the counties the OIE and get the vaccine at a reasonable cost thank you you can be engaged on the chat and I'm sure your office is accessible so those of us who are interested can easily get to that space can easily get to that space can easily get to that space