It's all sisters, all the time today on the show. You're not going to want to miss this. We're talking about Red Ink. We're talking about Skipping Church. And are you ready? We're talking about selfies. And I seriously just took a selfie. You don't want to miss this today. We'll see you soon. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Sister to Sister. I'm Kathy. And you have the panel of the best sisters ever. Corey, Roxanne, Flo, and Amy. We're here to give you our opinions, and we do want to hear yours too. But the first opinion, as we were kind of rocking out to our opening song, I wonder, what do we like in churches? Do we like rock band worship? Do we like hymns? What do we like? I like a mixture. I like a mixture. But I think that what we have to watch is not being able to enter in because if you show up some people, if they know it's youth Sunday and the youth is going to be leading worship, some people won't come and vice versa. But the real thing of worship is not music. It's surrendering the thing that's closest to your heart as in the law of first mention with Abraham and Isaac. He said, I'm going yonder to worship. And that's when he was sacrificing. You don't matter at mind if it's rock or hymns as long as the feeling. Worship isn't a style. It's a heart that loves God. But I think like you're either born kind of with that a certain style. We just happen to be like come from the school of rock. So like deep down we like rock, you know? And so that's how we prefer worship. That's right. But there's different styles, different people. Our senior pastor always asks us to have grace because it's not about us. It's not about I want this and I want that. I mean, I'm actually a little more traditional. What comes to worship? I like a good hymn every once in a while. And I miss singing hymns. I really do. Were you raised like that? Yeah, I mean, I went to church. Well, I mean, I think we all were. I don't think there was a lot of rock and roll back in the day in worship. And it's come a long way. And I think there's some wonderful musicians and wonderful instruments that they use. And I don't have a problem with that. The only thing I do have a problem with is when they're passing out ear buds to put in your ears because it's so loud. I went to a church. I'm not my church, but I went to a church where they literally passed out ear plugs so that because it was so loud. And I'm like, that's too much. I wonder if it's all 150 when David worshiped. It's that allowed, clanging, simple. I think the Bible is our guide. Yeah, absolutely. No harps, trumpets, guitars, whatever. But also when I looked at this, Revelation 7 also said there's not just revelry, there's reverence, so that the elders bow down before the Lord. So I think there's a mixture of both. But I know raising sons and daughters. You have to be, we have to be careful not to push our own likes on somebody else. You know, men might be more masculine and feel they can't worship the David, the more feminine way to be bouncy and lively. But they're worshiping in their hearts, as Flo said and the women said. Well, I come from a background, a Catholic background, and it was very reverent. So when you said reverent, and now I am in non-denominational, free for all, wildness. It is, pastor, this is my pastor. But what I wanted to say is last, during this Lenten season, I was in a beautiful Catholic cathedral. And as I made my way to the front of the altar, and now there's all the statues and all the candles, I was on my face in worship. And it was this really kind of beautiful, angelic music, it was wonderful. So I do miss reverence. But there's a song that says, it's all about you. I'm coming back to the heart of worship, it's all about you. So wherever you worship, we invite you, invite you in. Diversity is key, diversity is key. That's right. But I have, this next question, I'm probably gonna zip it. Here's why. I am a major sports fan, as all of my friends and family know. But would you let your child skip church to go to a game, or in the Pittsburgh area, to a stealer game, or a sleepover, or is the attendance at church with family crucial to you? In my house, it's a non-negotiable, and it always has been that way. They can't sleep over it anyway. They cannot miss church on a weekend for sports or for a sleepover. Now we do have some flexibility, we go to a church that has Saturday night services, so we have flexibility, and we actually started going to our church because of that, because of sports. But it was never an option to say, well, you're in football season now, we're not gonna go to church for eight weeks. That's not happening. We just, it's non-negotiable. And that's sad for fathers whose children play, let's say, midget football. What do you do? It's Sundays. Hi, you have to go Saturday night. Yeah, what do you have for me? What the Bible says, don't forsake the assembling of yourselves.  But going to church, yes, it says to fellowship together. I know that when my daughter went Saturday, said, Mom, I have to go to the pirate game, we're in Pittsburgh. I have to go to the pirate game with a friend. I said, you're kidding me, you know we want you in church. Well, Mom, make a wish foundation in the pirate. She was a cancer survivor. I said, oh, okay, you're going. It's part of, it was just a, you know, one of those things, I think there's times where we have to have flexibility, because that to me was also a form of worship, honoring her friend who had been sick. Right, it's important too. Right. And she could go Saturday night to Corey's church. To Corey's church.  And just like my parents, I mean they put God's house as a priority above all things. And so we were there, I mean, almost maybe too much, but I'm glad, I'm thankful four days a week. I mean, Wednesday, Sunday morning, Sunday night. So then, you know, we passed down those things passions to our kids. So they love being in God's house. It's like we're born to build church. We're born to build God's house. And this is why you're so happy. I'm sorry. This is like the happy child. And that's how you can be happy. Yes. The happy child four times a week. Church all the time. I don't know. I think it's in the trouble, I don't know. I think that there, you know, obviously the corporate anointing is key. And as Rox already quoted, you know, for sake not dissembling of ourselves together. I also believe just like Jesus said, that, you know, the Pharisees, you got to watch because you can't get legalistic. Right. You know, when healed on the Sabbath, the religious folks start coming in. And so, you know, if something comes up and I definitely think we got to prioritize it. I bought my children up and I have almost like two sets of children because of their age differences, you know? So it's like, it's the truth. So my first set of children, and I'm being very vulnerable because this is real life. And so we bought them up Corey and we bought them up with the iron clad. This is what you're going to do. This is how, and then what happened is, and I've seen this pattern happen a lot with that generation is that our children will not go to church now.  I mean, you couldn't play marbles because the Bible said marble not, right? Did you get it? Did you get it? Did you get it?  Now I see it in a little different perspective but again, I'm five children down the road, you know? And so, wisdom comes with that. What about you? How were you raised? I was raised, you're going to church. If you got drunk on Saturday, no, it was no option. It was, you could be drunk on Saturday but you're going to church on Sunday. You know what I mean? You're going to church on Saturday? Of course. Of course. Don't you remember you and I together? No. You're not going to church. No, maybe she's in church four times a week. We all get saved from something, you know what I mean? That's a topic we need to do sometimes. We will, we will. We will, we will. But I'm going to move on quickly because this is really important.  In the United Kingdom, the teachers were told not to use red ink. Why? Not to use red ink to correct the children. So take that question. Yeah, I think they were trying to say use two or three positive things versus negative. We don't want to hurt, be sensitive to the child. But I'm not sure that that went a little overboard because if you're really thinking about the best, the best interests of the child, I want to be prepared and I want my children and my students to be prepared for the real world. So red will stand out. I made a mistake. I'm not going to make it again because it was emphasized in my mind. What's wrong with that? Right, and you want to know when you make mistakes. That's what school is. It's a learning ground for making mistakes and being encouraged when you do something positive. So I like the fact that they emphasize the positive as well. But I want to quickly ask you this question too because it is about self-esteem. Selfies, Amy alluded to this in the open about the selfies. The world, yeah. Hello. The world is, take it, take it. I did. You did? I did. I was smiling. How's my hair? The whole world. I got it with her mouth open. Can you believe it? No, I'm kidding. The world is obsessed with themselves. With themselves. What do you think? Can I jump to the red ink? Back to the red ink just for a second. Only because I think that we need to understand that color psychologically plays a role. And red can promote aggression. And they did a test where even the teachers, they did a certain set with the teachers, a certain set with the students. And with the teachers, I'm trying to do this really fast. No, that's good. OK, with the teachers, they found that they were more critical. And they found more mistakes. And they gave them like an eighth grader's paper to correct. And so their expectation was beyond what that eighth grader should have done. And then with the child, even in their cognitive learning, it kind of leaves it psychologically, can bring them up under a banner. And you don't want that to happen to a child. So sometimes we have to look just a little deeper into things. You know, too. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. But if you're using a red pen, wouldn't they be judging them each the same way if they're using the red pen? I mean, I just. But it's how it affects the child. I know what you mean. And I do believe we can. Did we all have red pens? Yes. And then you're going to start banning trophies and banning best friends and banning sports because it makes people feel bad. If they win. It's just, I think it's malarkey. Maybe it depends on the kid and their sort of personality and how they're making their makeup. Some kids are really sensitive and are very inward.  But I don't think any human being feels good when you get a mark that makes you feel less than. Red ink can be a word. But not feeling good is a tool to help you do better. That's true. Sometimes being pressured or having troubles makes you stronger. That's right. If we all just take selfies, the world would be better. Well, here's the solution. The solution is we moved over to selfies because I wanted Amy to take our picture. And she did. I have a question. Is it wealthy or ussy when you do more than one person? Oh, honey. It's you. It's you. Oh, good luck, good job. Hey, we'll be right back. That's what the sisters are talking about in this segment. You better sit tight and buckle up, baby. We'll be right back on Sister to Sister. Last segment's questions. What a fabulous audience we have and fabulous girls of God. We want to touch real quick again on the selfies. We didn't finish it. And we always like to bring things from a biblical perspective to you. Rox, what do you have? Well, I was thinking about 1 Corinthians 13. And I do have it written down here. Love does not act unbecoming or seek its own. If we're so possessed with ourselves, it's hard for us to act relationally outward. And then when it becomes, what does the Bible say? You're overcome. You're enslaved to what you're overcome by. True. So when it becomes such a habit that you can't live without, I think we have to watch ourselves. Because then we're loving ourselves more than we are loving our neighbor. Right. Yeah. Oh, the girls loved it. That's really good. The girls loved it. But we do have a good selfie for you, for a face butt. Yeah. I did condone it. What about Facebook? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're all taking selfies. Also, the audience, you should see it. It's really fun. Selfie, as long as you're not selfish or self-centered. But I'm a picture person. I see things in life in snapshots and pictures and post-it notes. And so I think. And Instagram. Yeah. So I'm like, Instagram. I don't think it's inherently good or bad. It can become something that you worship. Right. But you know what? I'm speaking of things that are good and bad. Did you hear the story about the father? And I think it was in Pittsburgh. See, it wasn't in Pittsburgh. No, Pittsburgh dad would never do that. I know him, Pittsburgh dad. It was on Pittsburgh TV. It was on Pittsburgh. Right. And the father was so angry at his daughter for not cleaning up the room that he took all of her materials, everything, bed, dress, everything, put it in the driveway. So when she came home, I just said, oh, boy, it's cleaned up. She's getting what you want and put it back. What do you think about a public display like that? The father making a public display of his daughter's messiness. I think I might actually do this. When I get home, because I literally every day am having this ongoing battle with the rooms and the cleaning. And I don't know. I just think I think the public display is so much better than a public display of screaming at a child or belittling them or being abusive in your language. I think this was like a wake-up call. I'm all for it. Go, dad. I think he was a military dad. And later on, he kind of thought, well, maybe I should have did it that way. But I'm kind of with Cory. I've done some things to make my point with my children that I'm not going to tell you on television. Did it all us? Tell us. Did it work? Oh, it definitely worked. I want to know if it doesn't work. One day I'll let you interview my children. They'll tell you how much it worked. But no, I think the punishment needs to fit the crime. And I don't know where we got into this. If my children act up in public, they get corrected in public. You may feel differently, but you know. That's really good. In the grocery store, yes. As a person with adult children, once they start buying their own things, they'll take care of them. So this too shall pass. I know the Bible says train a child up in the way they should go. You should be training them not to be messy. But once they start buying their own things, they clean it up really well. So there is hope for it. That's true. Yeah, except I'm not messy. Have them buy their stuff. That's true. Buy your own stuff. I want to ask you about this, because this has happened with me. When a friend would start to complain about their husband, about their spouse, and really venting, and the audience starts shaking their head, oh boy. Do you listen? What do you do when a friend starts doing that about their spouse? I am impassioned about this. I think that's a subterfuge for gossip. What is it? A subterfuge. A subterfuge. It hides gossip. I don't think you should be venting. When you work out things with your spouse, I think that should be private. Would you want your spouse talking about you to another man? Well, men don't do that. Oh, yes, they do. Do you? We'd have to ask the camera guys. Do you? No, I'm hearing no. It's not called venting. That's the difference. Listen, Roxanna, I have a different view, honestly. I have some really awesome godly friends, and some of them are here right now. And I tell my husband this all the time, he should be thanking them. Because they put me in my place. They say you need to apologize. You need to humble yourself. You need to go work things out. They give me the good advice. And I kind of disagree with you, because I think it's dishonoring to talk negative about your spouse to another person unless you're talking up to a counselor, to a person that can help you. And like a close friend, I don't think that that is their business. I think honest confession is good for the soul. And I think there's safety and a multitude of counselors. And let's just be real. There's some things that you're going through you don't even know how to articulate it to your spouse because you're growing. I've been with my husband 30 years and certainly our relationship is different than it was 30 years ago. And I do like the principle that you share, that you try to share up, you know? And you need to watch the contents of how you share it and all of that. I think that's important, but it's imperative that you have a opening to share so that somebody can speak into your life. You're not designed to fix everything by yourself. I'm going to share, but not venting. Right, but Godly friends are the key there. That's the key. But you know what? I have Godly friends, but I also have 1,700 Facebook friends. If you're watching, I don't know who you all are. And I say yes because I don't want you to feel bad. That's probably true. It's the truth. So what is going on with this friend stuff? What do you think? Is this giving us a false sense of friendship? Or does it strengthen the bonds? I think it does. Sometimes it does. Well, I don't accept any Joe Sally off the road as a Facebook friend. Well, do they know that you don't like them or say yes? No, they don't know. If I say Cory, be my friend, and then days go by, and you don't say yes. If I don't know you, why would you want to be my friend? They saw you on Sister to Sister. I don't know. Just like us, sister to sister on Facebook, you can get all this. I think that this, along with the selfies, promotes imagery instead of intimacy. And I think that friendship is relationship. Sometimes we kind of butcher because the way we use it. And a friend to me, like the Bible says, faithful are the wounds of a friend. And a friend can speak to me when an acquaintance can't. And there's a difference. And I think sometimes we have taken acquaintances and said, this is my friend. But it is a great way to, like, I mean, when you can't connect all the time and you're busy, I know what's going on in Cory's life.  This picture does say, better is a friend close by than a brother far off. And I think if you could keep that closeness and that sharing as flow said without the superficialness.  And sometimes when you're in there, you know what I'm going to say. It's like, what are they thinking? Because I want to be different from what I got. You know what? I need you to be my friend on Facebook, too. And I need you to be my friend, too. I know. I'll talk about Facebook. These are not social media, either. I know, Zant. I know. Zav, you're so perfect. Mom, I'm asking your mother. Mom, is she perfect? I'm just kidding. But you know what I want to? I do want to ask you. You have such an amazing way of bringing scripture into everything that we talk about. And so do you flow, go flow. Do we have a favorite scripture? Quickly, give me your favorite scriptures, girls. That means the most to you. I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me. Amy, that was going to be so happy. That's why she's so happy she could do all of this. That was going to be mine. We must. What do you have, Cory? My mind's Romans 826. In the same way, the spirit helps us in our weakness. We don't even know what we ought to pray for. The Holy Spirit is intervening on our behalf in groans with that words can't be understood. The first time I read that verse, I cried. It's so powerful. The Holy Spirit 24-7 is interceding on our behalf with the Father when I have no idea what to pray for. And I know there are people out there. You don't know what's wrong. You don't know what to pray for. The spirit is interceding to you. I like it. Go, go. When you pray, Ecclesiastes 311, he makes everything beautiful in its time. It gives us hope. So when we pray, we have hope. I like that. Because we know he's going to make it beautiful. I like that. Flo. I don't really have one. It depends on what I'm going through. What? It's the truth. It depends on what I'm going through and what scripture is applying it to, you know, applicable to me at that time. But I can't honestly say that I have a favorite one. Well, we all have scriptures that we love. And you know what? The scriptures that we love can help you too. I need you to call that number that's on the screen or find us at CTVN. We have a saying here. And this is a scripture I really love and it pauses me because it's so true. And it goes like this, as iron sharpens iron, so does the countenance of a man or a sister sharpen the other. Do you understand that these girls have made me a better Kathy? We're sister to sister. We're so happy you're with us. Tune in next time. Oh my goodness, that was an amazing show. That was, we're so glad you are with us for sister to sister. And my sister and my pastor, Amy, has another scripture I think. One of my life core verses is Psalms 92, 13, that those planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. I love it that God didn't just leave us alone and say, here, figure it all out. But he actually plants us in a house where we grow relationships. We grow in the word. We can grow as wonderful women of God. Get planted and flourish today, my sister. That's what you're watching. Right, right. And what I say to you all the time is this thing we end with, which is as iron sharpens iron, look it up, look it up. It's fabulous scripture for you. That means the countenance of a man strengthens the other. We want you to connect with us and send us an email, S2S, at ctvn.org and tune in every Wednesday for sister to sister because we love sharing our lives with you.


Our safety thinking commences at the entrance of the depot. We do bus pre-checks, our presence in that environment, the car park, the fact we have moving buses in confined spaces. We have hazards like slippery surfaces or broken surfaces. We're encouraged to break up our shift and that is be at a 5 minute break or 10 minute break.  And the more that you do that it does encourage drivers to be a little bit more alert in their shift. We have an open door policy with our depot manager, our work health and safety officer. And we also have two drivers who are our WHS delegates. So we do have a stream of opportunity to actually go and talk about a hazard or a potential risk. And indeed if it needs to be elevated it's done in a formal process of feedback form and then passed along to the relevant manager. Many hazards present themselves through road conditions, road damage. It could be accidents or traffic situations, indeed poor weather. There's always risks with passengers as well as other traffic. I suppose you never know how a passenger is going to react in certain situations. Some of them do get on and they're quite angry. You know you might be running a minute late or two minutes late. There has been personal attacks on drivers in the past. We do actually have a duress button so as soon as it sort of looks like it's going to get nasty or anything you're going to be pressing the button, we have instant communication. If I'm being attacked or whatever I'm obviously going to press that button I can give them information, they know exactly where I am and they'll send supervisors straight out. October is National Safe Work Month. Visit the website and find out how you can get involved. Safety is everyone's business and your knowledge and experiences are worth sharing.


For the first time, those who did not have a place to go for Valentine's Day were welcomed to Calvary Chapel in Bemidji for a community meal. The fellowship hall of the church was decorated with hearts and balloons to welcome their guests. Members of the church's congregation prepared a full spaghetti meal along with a variety of desserts. This is the third community meal the church has held and the church uses these meals as a way to connect with people in the community. For us it's the motivation that God loved us first therefore we're showing love and so it's the love of Jesus Christ that we want to show we want to feed people we really want to do more than that we really want to love on them and connect with them and talk with people. Calvary Chapel plans to continue holding special community meals throughout the year. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Good morning, and welcome to another episode of Rotary in Hawaii, People of Action. My name is Janet Sheffer, I'm the public image chair for Rotary District 5,000 here in Hawaii, and I am very pleased to introduce our very special guest today, Ms. Christine Westmoreland. Welcome, Christine. Thank you. Christine is joining us today from the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation, which we're going to talk a lot about. They provide scholarships to high school students here in Hawaii, so you're going to find out how you can help your high school student in your life get a scholarship from Rotary. So lots of important details, please stay tuned for the next half hour, you're going to learn a lot. Christine Westmoreland, again, is the president of the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation, and the topic is scholarships for Hawaii high school students. Good morning. How are you today? Good morning. I'm fine. Happy to be here. Wonderful. Thank you again for joining us here on Think Tech. The Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation has been around for a while, and so first I guess we're going to start out with the history, which is very interesting, and find out how people can get involved. So talk to us about the history and what it is. We were founded by Sully Sullivan, who also founded Foodland here in Hawaii. He was a Rotarian here in Hawaii, was president of his club, and went on to become district governor. During his year of district governor, this was 1976, 77, he founded Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation. I think he wanted to do something for Rotary as well as the children of Hawaii, and he certainly did that. Fantastic. Tell us a little bit about the details of what his vision was, and how you continue it today. Okay. Well, he wanted to provide a way for children here in Hawaii, high school graduates, to go on to a four-year university of their choice. He did that by creating the scholarship fund. He not only contributed his own money, but he did a lot of fundraising. He had golf tournaments, concerts. So he built up the endowment, and we're still here, 42 years later. So it started in 1976, 77, 42 years later, great. So I know that you have goals each year, and you're still touching, well, you've touched thousands of lives over the years since Sully Sullivan started this. Tell us about what your goals are for this year. We have set a goal of $40 per Rotarian as a contribution to HRYF. We aren't there yet. Last year, we ended about $36 per Rotarian. Now that's a lot of Rotarians that give a great deal more, and Rotarians that don't give anything. So we'd really like to achieve that $40 per Rotarian this year. Okay. Great. If you have any questions out there, make sure to contact Christine about that. Christine has been on board with the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation for several years. Tell us why your passion led you to the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation as a Rotarian, and a little bit about yourself. Okay. Well, I've been a Rotarian almost since they let women in a long time. I think that was in the 80s? Yes. I came on in 88. They let women on in 87. Oh, you didn't waste much time. But when I moved to Hawaii, I ended up in the same club as Sully Sullivan, the Alamoana Club. So I knew Sully not well, but he came occasionally to our meetings at that point. And he was so, I've never seen anybody so happy to be able to use his money to support worthy causes. He just loved being able to help. And so he was an inspiration, but there was another member of my club, Stanley Togigawa. Stanley is unstoppable. He wants to do everything he can before his time is up to help all around the world. And he has won the Rotary's highest award, the Service Above Self Award. So those two gentlemen inspired me to become part of Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation. And what type of professional background brought you to the, gave you the experience to be able to run such an important organization for Hawaii students? Well, my first career was in television. Really? Yes. So this is not too formal, too foreign for you. You worked at KITV? Yes. Years ago. And my second career was in credit unions, which may seem like a totally different thing, but then I was in a management position, so that helps in doing this job. Not so different. You have to raise money and be familiar with the financial side of things to be able to provide these high school students their scholarships. So lots of experience. And of course, the TV didn't hurt. Okay, so since the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation helps Hawaii high school students, talk to us a little bit about how a high school student out there looking to fund their four-year career can get involved today and take advantage of a scholarship to start college, maybe a senior that's ready to start college in the fall of this year specifically, or how their parent, or grandparent, tutus, and aunties can guide them to receive these scholarships. And a little bit more about the specific scholarships. Okay. Well, high school students, graduating high school students this year, can apply. They can apply to only one Rotary Club. They can get that application from their high school counselor from a Rotary Club or from our website. Our website is hawaiirotaryyouthfoundation.org, all spelled out, and the application is there. They can download it or there is a fillable form. It includes two letters of recommendations, high school transcript, the SAT or ACT scores, a copy of their SAR, or the FASA, which is a financial form, and then a personal statement of eight to nine hundred words. They have to gather all that up and get it to a Rotary Club by next week, Wednesday, February 6th. Yeah. Right. Okay. So high school students are very familiar and a lot of kids that are in need financially have been going through this process. A lot of the information that you just cited, they already have. They have the letters of recommendation. They have or know someone that's in a Rotary Club, so they can select that Rotary Club. There are 53 Rotary Clubs on this island, Oahu, but I mean in the state of Hawaii. And so there are clubs on every single island, including Lanai. That's right. And we have had applicants from Lanai. Right. And so you've got every island that has a club that you need to contact the person. And I think that if you go to the Rotary District website, that will list the different clubs, but actually Christine's website, HawaiiRotaryYouthFoundation.org, list all the clubs and the representatives and their phone numbers and email addresses. Yeah. Yeah. And even physical address. Right. And so I'm going to repeat that website again. Okay. HawaiiRotaryYouthFoundation.org. Correct. And if you'd prefer, go to the Facebook page or the Instagram page, and that will link you right to the website to be able to get that application in in the next week. Wednesday the 6th is the final deadline. That is. Okay. Very good. How many applicants typically a year make advantage of this opportunity across the state of Hawaii? I'm sorry. I don't have that number. Okay. And within the Rotary Club, it varies quite a bit. We like them to have at least three. Some get over 20. It just depends on how tight they are with the high schools in their area. Because those high school counselors kind of are the ones that work at getting the students to apply. But we also let the Rotary Clubs work together. So if one club isn't getting very many apps and another club is getting an awful lot, they can swap them. Fantastic. Yeah. So counselors watch Think Tech. They use this platform in high school classrooms.  So now we're going to get into the type of help. As we learned, Soli Sullivan with Foodlands started this back in 1976-77 as a Rotary Project. It has grown for over 43 years this year and is providing massive scholarships as far as the total amount for these 53 clubs. So talk to us about what a scholarship value is and how many applicants, how many recipients you award scholarships each year. Okay. The scholarship amounts are $5,000 except for two. We have two $10,000 awards. A one recognizes Soli Sullivan and that's for a student going to a mainland college. The second one represents Joanna Sullivan. She did attend UH. So that is for a student staying here in state to go to school. We also have money from the Weinberg Foundation. They gave us a $1 million endowment. We have the interest to award scholarships each year. So right now that's running about three scholarships. Those three scholarships require need has to be demonstrated. The other scholarships do not, but I can tell you that the majority of our scholarships do go to someone with need. With need. Okay. And that's a majority of high school students here in Hawaii that need scholarship and financial aid. So we're going to talk more about that and we're really going to talk about the special aspect of the Weinberg Foundation, which is celebrating something special this year with the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation and we will be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Sounds like scuba divers are the poor man's astronaut. At DiveHeart we believe that to be true. We say forget the moon. DiveHeart can help children, adults and veterans of all abilities escape gravity right here on earth. Hey Aloha and welcome to the Think Tech Hawaii studios. I'm Andrew Lang, the host of Security Matters Hawaii. I'm airing here every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Hawaii time and I'm trying to bring this community information, security information specifically that will help you live a safer life, help keep our community safer and help keep our businesses safer. So join me because Security Matters, Aloha. Welcome back to Hawaii Rotary People of Action and we have one of the greatest peoples of action, persons of action in Hawaii Rotary today and that is Christine Westmoreland, president of the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation. Welcome back to the show. Thank you. We're going to get into a few more details. Thank you again for joining us today. The show has been focusing on how high school students across the state of Hawaii can get a scholarship, apply for a scholarship. The deadline is coming up. It is next Wednesday, February 6th to apply. It is not hard to apply. High school students that have their scholarship and financial aid packages together simply go to the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation.org website. You can fill out the application right online and submit it right there. And Christine is going to talk a little bit more today about how our viewers out there can get involved, how the community can get involved and you can get involved to support Hawaii high school students with these scholarships. What can people at home do to provide support to Hawaii's high school students? Okay. Well, we love your money. I don't know if you want to hear that or not, but this year we will award over a quarter of a million dollars in scholarships. Now we have a very healthy endowment. It has a little over five million dollars in it, but we're pulling out a quarter of a million dollars every year. So you can see that we need to keep it up. And we have a formula that we use. It's five percent of the endowment amount over twenty quarters. And so they tell us you can take out this much and not, you know, hurt the fund. So this year we can take out two hundred and thirty six thousand dollars. We need to come up with two hundred and sixty thousand dollars. So we need a little help from the Rotarians or people in the community. We love your money and we put it to good use. Now the best time to give is during the Give Aloha campaign that Foodland puts on every September. And the reason it's the best time to give, one, it's easy.  And when you get up to the checkout stand, you just say, I want to make a donation to Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation. Our number is 77199, but you don't even have to remember that because they have a little booklet and they can look it up and you can make your donation. When you do that, they give you a receipt. They'll give you two if you would like. So one is for your tax purposes and the other one can be sent to our office, particularly if you're a Rotarian. And then we will make sure the club gets the credit for that donation as well as. Now, the reason it's the best, that was why it was the easiest. The reason it's the best is because it gets matched. And it's a complicated formula, but it comes out to about 20%. So if you gave $40 to H-R-Y-F, we would receive $48 approximately because there's a match from Foodland and Western Union. So that is something we're very excited about. We do have another thing, it's newer, and that's Amazon Smile. So if you buy things with Amazon, you can sign up and the website is actually Amazon Smile Opposite, but it's called Smile, no, I'm sorry, the website is Smile.Amazon.com. And you have to sign up the first time and say that you want Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation to benefit from your purchases, and then it's a small amount, it doesn't cost you any more money, and that goes to us. And it's not a lot, but if we get more people doing it, it could be substantial. And how long ago did you start the Amazon program? I think it's only a year or two old. So it will grow. Pretty recent.  And I don't know about you, but when I shop on Amazon, I actually get a notification who would you like to support. So I always select Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation.  It started out when we supported our schools, our schools that our kids went to. If your child is about to graduate, it's time to support the foundation that can help them with a scholarship to college. So again, Foodland, thank you very much. And Western Union, which I wasn't even aware of, not only is Foodland providing the venue to make the donations, regular, everyday people, not even Rotarians, but they're also matching, it sounds like a certain percentage along with Western Union, anything that you give to Foodland, so fantastic. We have a lot of recipients out there over the past 43 years. And of course, the reason you do this is because it makes a difference in kids' lives, in children's lives. Here in Hawaii, the kids, the high school students need support to be able to get to that four-year college, whether they're staying here in Hawaii or going to the mainland. So I know you have success stories about kids. I know you have stories about the needy kids and the well-deserving kids, children. Please talk to us about some of those stories.  You got it.  There you go. We'll do. All right. One of my very favorites, maybe I shouldn't have a favorite, but I do. Her name is Tashana Wright, young lady went to Waianae High School, was brought forth by the Rotary Club of Waianae Coast. This young lady had a disabled mother, father wasn't around, older sister was supporting the family. In her personal essay, Tashana wrote that she studied hard and she got good grades because it was one of the few things that made her mother smile. This young woman joined Junior Rotsy ROTC when she went to high school. By the time she graduated, I don't know what the term is, commander, but she was the top person in Junior Rotsy for the entire state of Hawaii. A young lady that had no advantages just blew me away, chicken skin. And I was able to introduce her at a district conference and that was a real pleasure. So she was one of my favorites. Another young man from Maui named Dorian Rabo McGowan was a $10,000 winner and he came from Kamehameha School on Maui. He was one of four children, father was incarcerated, mom was doing her best, a single mom trying to raise four kids. So he went to live with his grandparents and from his grandfather he learned to work hard and just keep going. From his grandmother he got love, unconditional love and she just believed he could do anything and he's pretty much proving that right. Almost a 4-0 is at Stanford University. This is his second year. I talked to him before Christmas and he was doing fine. His senior project was he reconfigured a lawnmower to run on ethanol and he used it to mow the lawns of his elderly neighbors. Wow. Yeah. Pretty cool. Fantastic. He sounds very smart. Yes. Very smart too. Yeah. Any other stories you want to share? Oh yes. Okay. Now this young lady, I don't remember her name. I interviewed her and years ago we asked for pictures. We don't do that anymore but this was years ago. And the young lady in her picture had really long hair, just beautiful hair. And when we interviewed her it was very short. Well in the course of the interview we found out she was a swimmer and after the interview was over I walked her downstairs out of the building and I said oh is your mom picking you up or did you drive? And she said no I took the bus. And I said oh okay well I'm glad you found us. And I said I noticed that in your picture you had very long hair and now it's just very short.  And she said no. I have a friend who had cancer and so me and another girlfriend cut off all our hair to support her. This is a teenage girl. Do they care about anything more than their looks? I just that blew me away and I will never forget it. What an inspiration. I hope that she was a big winner. And this is the scallops from where?  On a walk. Yeah. Okay. Well I hope that you have such inspiring stories for the recipients and winners this year. I'm sure that you will. I will. Yes we will. So talk to us a bit about the process that the Rotary Clubs take across Hawaii again 53 clubs all donating to the scholarship fund every year and actually as a club being given the opportunity to participate in your program. How do they support it? How do they help the process? Find the recipients? What is the process? Okay. They have to pay $200 that is their membership with Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation. They do that. They're able to award a scholarship. Their names are on the website with each club has a rep. So that rep's information is on the website. They gather the applications. They interview the students. It should be at least three club members that do that. And then they have to choose which is really, really hard. But many of the clubs have their own scholarship fund. So they can only give one H-R-Y-F scholarship but they can fund another child with some money of their own that they put aside. Then after they have chosen their winner it's going to get at least $5,000. They send that student to an area judging. There are nine areas in the state. And what the area does is they re-interview. So each student is going to be interviewed twice. And they have to rank them which is again a hard job. Then we H-R-Y-F board receives the number one student from each zone or area. And then we choose the $10,000 winners. So that board? Some of the board members, not the full board. As a Rotarian with the Waikiki Rotary I actually had the opportunity to participate in the interviews. We'll tell you these students will blow your mind. Their resumes, their activities in the community, they're so deserving. And so I remember it was very, very difficult for our club. Maybe it was four years ago when I was the president of Waikiki Rotary. I got to participate in that. And it was very difficult. We wanted to give every single one of those applicants the money. But we do have our own fund too. So that made it a little bit easier. So Rotary Clubs out there, make sure that you're a member of the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation. And I know that clubs are interviewing right now. Well, not now. They have to wait till the applications are ready. Oh, after the deadline of February 6th, they'll be setting up the interviews right away. What's the timeline for awarding? These kids are trying to get off to college in the fall. What, talk to us a little bit about, and if you don't have the exact dates, we can just direct people to the website. What will happen first is they will set up the interviews. That has to be done by the end of February. Then the areas have to do their second interviews. So that happens in early March. The areas send their number ones to us. We have our judging for the $2,000 winners on, it's either the 25th of March. And then we will get back to the clubs. They are not supposed to announce anything until we get back to them. And then we let the students know in April and the checks go out in July. The checks go out to the school with the student's name on it. But they must be notified before that. Yes, they're notified in April. Because then they can select their school. What have you. We have to know the name of the school or we can't send the check. Well, I just want to commend you for the good work that you've done. Thank you. I know that this year, one of your supporters, the Weinberg Foundation, is celebrating something very special. Yes. Let's hear a little bit about that. Okay. Well, it is, this 2019 is 25 years since they gave us over a million dollars. And actually what they did, they gave us a million, 25,000 the first year so that we didn't have to wait for interest. We could award their scholarships the very first year. So we did. We used that money. And now every year we have the interest off the million dollars and we're so grateful for that. It's just a real blessing. Yes. As a local business person, very familiar with the Weinberg Foundation. Thank you to the Weinberg Foundation for this support. It made it all possible along with Soli Sullivan's vision, which continues today under your leadership. Do I have time to say one more thing? You have time to say two more things. Okay. Well, we've had 1,750 winners.  That would be just a wonderful thing. And also consider becoming a Rotarian. That would also be awesome. And the other thing is, okay, we've been doing this for 42 years. If you were a recipient over that time, would you please send us some information about you? Let us know what you're doing now because we would love to know that. That's a great suggestion and they can do that at your website. Yes. www.HawaiiRotaryYouthFoundation.org. If you Google it, it'll just pop right up for you anyway so you don't have to type all that in. I know that you've made an incredible impact in students' lives for 43 years and your leadership has been very, very important. The Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation deserves the appreciation of the community for the good works that you've done. Thank you. So I will just lead you in that appreciation and as Christine said, join Rotary. Find out more about Rotary by visiting, we have two websites, the district in Hawaii. We have RotaryD5000.com.org as well as Rotary in Hawaii. If you've never heard about Rotary, that is a page that will give you a broad overview of what Rotary does in Hawaii. The Youth Foundation support is just one of our thousands of projects that the 53 clubs of Rotary in Hawaii actually participate in every year. The 2000 approximate Rotarians across the state of Hawaii would love to meet you if you're interested in finding out more about Rotary. So with that, I guess we're going to close and find out more about the Rotary Youth Foundation on the website if you have questions. And I want to thank you again, Christine, for being here. It's been a wonderful chat. And I hope that people out there, family members, students, their support system take advantage of these scholarships. Yes, we do too. Good. Fantastic. So with that, we are going to say a lo-ha for now and wish you all a wonderful week. And again, if you want to learn more about Rotary, please visit us online at RotaryD5000.org as well as RotaryinHawaii.org.


Dyma'r shop canton fruit market yn Rhegana Cerdydd. Mae'r busnes hwn wedi mynd ati gant y cant gan algylchu popeth, ac mae nhw hefyd i gneud i gorau glas i anogu cwsmeriaid i algylchu a defnyddio i biniau bwyd. I've got a crushing machine which showed the pallets used to have like a big bin. With everything that went in there, you know, all the food, the cardboard, wood, everything went in there. There was so much waste of space in there. We were suggested to have the food bins. We were a bit skeptical at first, but it's one of the best moves we've made. We've done it like you would at home. Your food waste goes into the little caddy bin, your plastic goes into the plastic bin, and your cardboard goes into the cardboard. I think it does benefit everyone because recycling is a really good thing and it's a big topic on everyone's lips at the moment. Busnes bach i'w cant yn fruit market ac mae algylchu wedi rhoi cymaint mwy o le ddyn nhw. Mae'r holl process wedi bod o fydd mawr iddyn nhw.


Hello, hello, all. So who here does not know what the EFF is? Come on, it's okay. Don't be shy. There's some ‑‑ all right.  So I'd like to thank them that I'm here and not in federal somewhere. But our next speaker, right, is from the EFF, an amazing organization and they do amazing work, but this presentation is about tracking the world's dumbest cyber mercenaries and it's going to be excellent. So let's give a round of applause for our next speaker. Hi, everyone. How's it going? Before I get started, I want to mention that at 8 p.m. we have an Ask the EFF panel in track three. So if you have further questions for me after this is over, or our lawyers or anybody else, you're welcome to come to that. Also on Saturday night at 6 p.m. in the chill out room, I am hosting EFF Tech Trivia, which will be a pub trivia style event where you can win EFF swag and also bribe the judges by donating to EFF. So come check that out as well if you're around and have nothing better to do Saturday night. That said, this talk is called tracking the world's dumbest cyber mercenaries and I'm going to tell you about this cyber mercenary group that I've been tracking for the last five years and all of the mistakes they've made but why they're still actually very effective. But to tell this story, I first need to tell you the story of Irina Petrushova. Irina Petrushova is the editor in chief of a newspaper called Respublica, which was at the time in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is not known for its freedom of the press or its general democratic tendencies. So Irina had made quite the enemies of the state of Kazakhstan by constantly publishing negative stories about Kazakhstan's only president they had ever had and also exposing a lot of his corruption and scandals and things like that. She made such enemies of them in fact that they ended up leaving a skull on her, a human skull on her doorstep with a note that said stop publishing. When she didn't stop publishing, they killed the dog and hung it outside of her office window with a note that said there will be no next time. When she still didn't stop publishing, they kidnapped her child from the school that he went to and held him for ransom until she agreed to stop publishing. When she got her child back and then continued publishing, they ended up firebombing her office and after that she ended up escaping to Russia to get a little bit more freedom. So well in Russia, she continued publishing RiskPublica and this site popped up around the same time called Kazaward. Kazaward hosted a leaked trove of emails from the president of Kazakhstan, including emails detailing his campaigns to spy on the only opposition politician in Kazakhstan, his various corruptions and briberies and things of that nature and this was very, and RiskPublica did a lot of reporting on these emails. They made a lot of hay out of it. The government of Kazakhstan, the president of Kazakhstan did not like this and since she was in Russia and there was nothing he could do about it anymore, they decided to sue her in the district court of New York because the website was hosted in New York and that's where EFF comes in. We ended up giving her a legal defense and as we were defending her, she started receiving these strange emails. This is a phishing email she received in Gmail that pretends to be from a human rights lawyer in Kazakhstan that says here's your invoice, please read the invoice. And when you open the PDF, it's this blurry image and then an error bubble, but when you open the PDF, it installs this malware which we call Banduc and we wrote about this malware in a 2015 report called Operation Mantle. Banduc is a piece of spyware and it's in its capabilities not much different from high-end malware like Pegasus. It has the ability to, or any other spyware, it has the ability to capture screenshots, turn on the microphone, start your webcam without turning on the light, upload and download files, get Wi-Fi information, and it has the ability to download secondary infections, which will become important later. The interesting thing about this campaign when we started looking into Banduc is the command and control servers for the malware were running Windows. And specifically, they were running the Windows Apache MySQL PHP stack called XAMP. A fun thing about XAMP is that by default, it leaves directory indexes open. So if you don't have an index.html file, you can see the list of all the files that are in the directory. Another fun thing is that this attacker decided to leave all their exfiltrated files within the web route. So we were able to, using Durbusters, scan these directories, find the exfiltrated files and download them all and figure out information about who was being targeted in this. Of course, Adrina was being targeted, but there were also other targets, other folks in Kazakhstan were targets, and we found what we thought was maybe a Vietnamese cigarette company that was a target. It was all very odd. But we also found web panels, sorry, not web panels, but the web logins for their command and control centers. So we found these two web logins for the command and control centers, and there was some fun there to be had as well. We also found all of these files, backups from entire Windows machines, and backups and files extracted from mobile devices, which gave us the theory that there might be a mobile component to this as well. So it turns out there was. About a year later, some people from Lookout Mobile Security reached out to us and said, hey, that mobile component that you mentioned might exist in your operation manual report, we think we found it. And so we ended up writing another report with them called Dark Caricol, which is where we came up with the name for this actor. And we named the mobile component Pallas, because that's another name for a caracal, Pallas Cat. The Pallas malware, again, has very, has pretty standard features that you would expect in spyware. But it also, in this case, was being distributed as backdoor versions of popular secure messaging apps. Well, secure with quotes around it. Threema, but also Signal, WhatsApp, some other things I've never heard of, Orbot and Syphon, and also a copy of Flash Player, because what Flash Player needs is more malware. But they were fully functional apps that had this Pallas spyware built into them. The Pallas spyware was also able to take photos with the front and back camera, get GPS coordinates, turn on the microphone, upload and download files, make a hot mic, and it was able to collect information about the Wi-Fi access points that were available. Again, this will be important later. We found in total, because again, they were still using XAMP and the files were still within the web root. So we were able to find a total of 81 gigabytes of exfiltrated data from infected machines. About 60% of that was from Android campaigns and 40% of that was from infected Windows machines. But another fun thing about XAMP is that it has a module, it enables by default a module called Apache status. What Apache status does is it gives you a real-time log of everybody visiting the server that is accessible via the website.  So we could not only get the IP addresses of everybody that was infected, because their machines were uploading content, but we could also get the IP addresses of the attackers as they went to the web administration portals for their command and control. So where in the world is dark caracal? Where are all these IP addresses located? There were IP addresses coming, and this was for infected machines, from all over the world, the United States, Canada, some bits of Europe and Southeast Asia, but the vast majority of them were in Lebanon. Specifically, they were in mostly, yeah, the vast majority of them were in Lebanon. Also, when we looked at the admin console logins, all of them were coming from Beirut, downtown Beirut. This is interesting, because when we looked up the authorship for the Banduk malware, which is public, the author of the Banduk malware, who goes by the name Prince Ali, claims that he lives in Beirut. So, hmm, things are starting to come together here, but we found another interesting thing, which was that when we put all this exfiltrated data into a Maltiga graph, there was a giant cluster of phones that seemed to be all the real phones that were infected, but there was this little cluster of phones that popped up outside of any of the other graphs that weren't connected to anything else. And all those phones appeared to have test data on them. All the text messages that were exfiltrated were things like test, test, hack, hack. The only pictures on those phones were, like, up-the-nose shots of somebody in their office. And they all also only connected ever to this one Wi-Fi, oh, and they were the first phones to be infected, and they only ever connected to this one Wi-Fi address, which was BLD3F6, which we thought might mean Building 3 Floor 6. We used an open-source database called Wiggle to map where the BLD3F6 Wi-Fi access point was. And it turns out that it's in downtown Beirut. Hmm, what's going on here? But where is it exactly in downtown Beirut? Luckily, we have friends in Beirut. They went out and looked for us. And what they found was that it's in the only building in downtown Beirut in that area with more than six floors. And it's right next to the campus, France, Lebanon, but it's not that. It is the headquarters of the general directorate of general security, which is Lebanon's CIA, FBI, and, like, border patrol, DHS all kind of rolled into one. So we figured that this is pretty much, we caught them red-handed, right? And we sent the, you know, after we published the report, we sent it to the GDGS, or somebody, a journalist, sent it to the GDGS and actually knocked on their door, which that takes guts. And their response to the report was, this is totally untrue. We didn't spy, but if we did, it was totally legal and we can do whatever we want. But also this report was probably written by the CIA or Massad, and you should ignore everything in it. But also it's all true and it's legal and it's fine. So that was interesting. But what's going on here? Why is the GDGS also hacking a opposition reporter in Kazakhstan? Why are they hacking a Vietnamese cigarette importer? Why, what connection do these all have? And the conclusion that we came to, I have to remind myself of the next slide is, the conclusion that we came to is that this must be a mercenary op. We think that, we think that Prince Ali, who wrote Banduk, who as far as we know is the only one who has the Banduk malware, is working for the GDGS during the day and moonlighting at night, working for other folks, hacking Vietnamese cigarette companies and working for a private investigator who was hired by Kazakhstan to do cyber ops perhaps. But it's really interesting because normally targets that are clearly state sponsored, which we have pretty good attribution, don't also do moonlight doing criminal stuff. So we're still not sure. A couple more reports came out in the last couple of years about Banduk, about the Dark Caricol group. ESET put out a report called Banditos at Large, which detailed a big Banduk campaign in Venezuela. And checkpoint research put out another report about Banduk called Signed and Delivered, which detailed another campaign. And then in 2022, we found a new sample of Banduk. And so we decided to take a look at it. Banduk, by the way in Hindi, means gun. So there's a series of action movies, of Bollywood action movies called Banduk. It also, apparently in Lebanese it means bastard. So, yeah. Anyway, so we started looking at this new malware. And like I mentioned, the malware has the ability to download a secondary infection. And it does that from a second domain, which is orthogonal to its command and control server. So I looked at the Banduk malware. I extracted the domains. And the first domain was a .ru domain. And it had the command and control server running. They're no longer running XAMP. They've learned their lesson. They're no longer running Apache at all. The only reports they have open now are the ones necessary for command and control. Good for them. But the second server, it turns out they forgot to register it. They never registered their command and control domain. So being a helpful guy, I registered it for them. They can use all the help they can get. So I registered the domain and set up a sync code. And started collecting all of the traffic from, or not all of the traffic. We're not the NSA. I started collecting the traffic coming from the infected machines to the secondary command and control server. And got a good idea and a good map of all of the infected machines. And also because we're EFF, we wrote a privacy policy for the sync hole to make sure that everybody knew exactly what we're doing with the data that went to the sync hole. But what we saw was about 700 or 800 infected machines connecting to it every weekday. And on weekends, that number drops to like between 100 and 300. So we think these are probably business machines that aren't being used on the weekends. But when we mapped out the locations, what was really interesting was that there were a few infections in the US, a few infections in other parts of South America, a lot of infections in Venezuela. But by two orders of magnitude, most of the infections were in the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic is not usually known as a big target for hacking. But also we didn't really know why. We didn't have a sort of victimology like we had in the Lebanon case. In the Lebanon case, they were hacking people who were on the border of Lebanon and Syria. Presumably over like, you know, spying on people they thought might be going to fight in the Syrian Civil War. In the Kazakhstan case, the victimology was pretty clear, the Irina Petroshova. But in this case, we weren't sure. About a month ago, I was listening to an episode of Dark Net Diaries and they did a report on a guy who works for an assert in South America who ended up finding this campaign, looking into this campaign after we published our report. And what he found was that the Dark Caricol, the Banduc infections that Dark Caricol had deployed were being used to deploy Conti, the ransomware, which the Conti ransomware gang keeps very tight control of.  So you're not going to attract a lot of attention. But we don't know what's going on here. Is this a state-sponsored hacking, wasn't paying enough, so the Dark Caricol gang started turning toward more traditional cyber crime? It's unclear. But it does represent an escalation in their tactics. And if they go back to going after political targets, we might see, I'm concerned that we're going to start seeing ransomware as an attack deployed against political targets to silence them. Overall, I award Dark Caricol the DUNSCAP.  So thanks, guys. But they are the kind of derpy dragon of the group, right? They're not the NSO group. They're not the Dark Matter. But this meme is actually very appropriate because they're still a dragon. They've still managed to infect thousands and thousands of machines over several years. And it turns out that writing reports about malware doesn't actually stop the malware authors from writing malware and continuing to infect people. So I don't know. There's got to be a better way. Despite the number of mistakes they've made, they're super effective. And I think that this is a growing problem. The number of cyber mercenaries in general is growing by a lot. And, you know, I think that there's starting to be a spectrum of it, right? Not everybody has to be an NSO group. Not everybody has to be a Dark Matter. There's a lot of spyware and stockware companies and, like, lower end mercenaries, like Appin and Dark Caricol, that I think are going to start working for, you know, people who can't afford NSO group, people who can't afford Dark Caricol, maybe people who aren't acting with, like, full state authorization or who are, but who don't, you know, even care about, you know, the vague pretenses of rule of law that say, like, you know, Israel sometimes pretend to care about, or the U.S. sometimes pretends to care about. Overall, I think that this is going to grow. And I think that this growth is because of how successful encryption has been. Web encryption is ubiquitous at this point. And end-to-end encryption is nearly there as well. Three billion people are sending end-to-end encrypted messages every day now over WhatsApp and to a much lesser degree signal. But this means, you know, in addition to fighting tooth and nail with horrible laws, governments are increasingly turning to hacking individual devices to spy on people. And if encryption was the fight of the last 30 years, and maybe the fight of the next 10 now, I think that spyware is also going to be a big battle for the next 30 years. And I think it's something we have to start looking at now and stopping now. That is my talk. Thank you very much.


Thanks for coming to the session. I'm very happy to present the paper here at this conference. So I'm going to present you this paper entitled The Geography of NGO Activism Towards Multinational Cooperation. And I will start by showing you these two pictures. I suppose you're very familiar with this picture over here you've heard about them. These are both campaigns by NGOs that focus on international production and or sales. So the one on the left is a campaign by Greenpeace focusing on the production of the input used to produce the chocolate bar. And the problem here is the way that this input is produced and the fact that it is contained in the final product. And the one on the right is also a campaign by Greenpeace that we can find, of course, similar ones by other NGOs. And this one is concerned with the sales of two firms, the Mamut and the North Face, that are problematic because they contain different elements that are dangerous for the environment. So why am I showing you these pictures? I'm showing you these pictures for this reason because academics have been recently and especially since the beginning of the year 2000, very much interested in getting to know the microeconomics of globalization. And in terms of what relates to firms, we've made a lot of progress. Now models are very well published and are able to describe with very much precision what firms do, what they produce, how they behave. And these models have been complemented with data, very disaggregated data, especially customs data, which a researcher can use. So there's another agent that is very much involved in globalization on which this availability of the data and of evidence is not at all at the same stage and this is NGOs. So NGOs are another agent that is involved in international trade just because they target firms. At some point, they claim to influence their practices. So this is what they say and we know a little bit but we don't know much about it. And the other thing that they do, besides trying to influence the practices of firms, is trying to influence the regulation that countries put into place. So why do they do this? They do this because NGOs are involved in protecting and preserving resources, mainly environmental resources or human resources that are used in producing these goods. So an example of the potential, importance of these agents in shaping trade and sales are the recent law. For example, in France here, which is called a vigilance law, which addresses to firms with more than 5,000 employees, what do we know about these advocacy NGOs who act in international trade? Not very much, especially because we don't have a lot of data. We don't have a lot of data because there's no mandatory collection of data on these NGOs, on these associations. And because also it is complicated to collect data on activities that are very different. So you would have to collect data on activities of, for example, service provision by some NGOs who provide health services, who provide education services, or you would have to collect data on the campaigns that the NGOs publish and on the impact of these campaigns. So right now what we have is not exhaustive, of course. But what we have is, for example, this paper by Kutanyi and Ad. So there's this early database on NGO campaigns, on some NGO campaigns that allows to study the communication of activists. There are also case studies, so a lot of case studies. And this Harrison and Scorsepapers at 2010 in the AR is not case studies, but it is the only large-scale study that aims at studying the impact of activism on the behavior of firms. And they do it, and they study it on the wage that firms that produce textiles do in Indonesia. So what I'm going to present you today, and what I'm presenting you today is work on, so it's a whole work program that we have on new data, new data on these activists that campaign against multinational firms on production, on production abroad, but also on sales. So I'm presenting you part of this work program. I'm presenting you today a sort of panorama of activism towards firms. And another paper that I am working on is on this second bullet point. Studies the impact of campaigning on the sourcing decision of firms between different origin countries. So I'm going to show you, not show you, but just explain to you a little bit what we're working on, what we have, because this is really new. You have almost exhaustive data on what NGOs publish about firms. So we know for the period 2010, 2015, who says what about which firms, basically, if I can summarize it this way. So we know which NGO has campaigns about which firm. We know the date. And we know the reason. The cause of the campaign is summarized by a keyword. And also about the country, which we will call here in the rest of the presentation the action country. It's a country where the damage has taken place. So in all, we have more than 3,000 NGOs. These are originated in more than 100 countries, more than 7,000 firms are targeted at least once during that period in 139 countries. So to summarize, we have three different locations that we will use specifically in this work. To summarize the campaign, we have the country where the NGO issues the reports the news. We have the country of the firm, so where the firm is headquartered. And we have the country where the action, the damage has taken place. So this is what we do in these first papers. The first part of the paper is devoted to showing regularity, stylized facts, important stylized facts, because these do not exist up now. So for example, on where are the activists? How many such activists do we have per country? How are they distributed? Do we have more uniform distribution? Or do we have something that pretty much resembles the export panorama of firms? We're a very minority of firms export. And then we have a description. I'm going to show you a description about where NGOs target. And this question of where NGO targets, of course, will lead us to studying the determinants of the campaigns. The first category is a very straightforward fact, actually. These are two facts that relate to the distribution of campaign. So the first one shows us that the distribution of NGO campaigns is actually very skewed. So this is shown, for example, in these figures. So these figures are very straightforward. They just average the number of campaigns per year, per NGO, in each country. So we see that there's a minority of NGOs who campaigns a lot, and the rest campaigns very few. And another way to show you the same stylized fact, sorry to go that quickly on these slides, is to express the fact that, in fact, a majority of the campaigns are done by a very reduced number of NGOs. So there is not a uniform distribution where each NGO would publish the same number of records. On the contrary, it is very much skewed. We now turn to the second set of stylized facts. And these stylized facts relate to the bilateral connection between the NGO and the firm. So why does an NGO target a specific firm? And here we investigate in particular the fact that an NGO would target either a home firm or a firm that is headquartered in a foreign country. And I'll show you this table. So this table summarizes this internationalization of NGOs, specifically in the third column, where I compute the percent of activists in each country that have at least one campaign that includes a foreign firm. So this number seems pretty high. So we see that there are a lot of NGOs that are, if we can say it like this, internationalized in the sense that they don't target only domestic firms. Another way of investigating this internationalization is in column four, so the percent of foreign campaigns, among the NGOs that target abroad. What is the share of campaigns that are directed at foreign firms? And again here, this is a very high number. So now we turn to the second stylized fact that is related to internationalization. And here we see that the picture is actually a little bit nuanced with respect to what I just said, because in fact we realize that for more than three quarters of the campaigns that target foreign firms, well, the action is indeed related to something that has been done at home. So I'll show you this number. This is the very last column, so the percent of foreign campaigns with home as the action country. So this table and these both of these stylized facts are the basis of the question that we will address in the second part of the paper. And indeed, we're questioning the reason why a specific NGO targets a specific firm and we're asking whether an NGO is interested in targeting a firm that the audience relates. The odd possibility would be to think that the NGO, in fact, targets the firm that is related to the largest damage, for example, completely independently of the nationality and of the firm that is targeted. So how do we do this? We estimate a gravity equation for campaigns. So gravity equations have become the workhorse in international trade to study the determinants of trade flows. And there are now backed up by theory model that describe the determinants in three different terms. If I can summarize it very briefly, there are the characteristics of the source of the flow, the characteristics of the recipient and then the characteristics that are bilateral. So here we're gonna be interested in the bilateral connections, whether the bilateral connections do count in explaining the number of campaigns between two locations. To do this, we assume, so I summarized it in just two sentences here, but we assume that the NGO faces a discrete choice between different targets and her objective, the objective of the NGO is to maximize her pay of the campaign. And we assume that this payoff is maximized whenever the audience donates and the audience donates whenever she is familiar with what is contained in the campaign. Okay, so this is what, this is the micro funded model that is behind this estimated equation that we have. So this estimated equation is aggregated at the country level right now. And so yes, I have to clarify the indices. I is the origin country of the campaign, J is the country of the firm and K is the country where the damage is taken. Okay, so with this full triadic equation, we have these three countries that are involved and we are able to estimate the importance of bilateral determinants, I, J, okay, and I, K in shaping the total, the final number of campaigns. So what the determinants were interested in this equation are the X, I, J, just behind the beta two here. We will control, so doing this, we will control for the unilateral factors. So for the elements that are specific to the country of the NGO, okay, the size of the country and all the other determinants that might explain that a country publishes a lot of campaigns from its NGO and we also on the other side control for all the characteristics of the recipient countries, okay, of the target countries, explaining that the country receives a lot of campaigns or is the object of a lot of campaigns. Just before showing you the table, the regression table, I'll show you just these two table, these two figures that can illustrate a little what we mean by connections or bilateral, not both of them are bilateral, but the one on the left is, the one on the left illustrates the distance between the country of NGO and the country of the firm. So of course it's not an estimation, so we don't control for anything else. We illustrate, we graph the number of campaign received divided by the share of, by the population, by the share of the population, and we graph this on distance for the three different countries, France, the UK and Germany. And so a sort of pattern emerges which we will find confirmed with the regression, which is that bilateral connection here showed, illustrated by distance, bilateral connections do seem to impact the flow, if we can say it like this, with a similarity with international trade flows, the flow of campaigns here, of news flowing between a country and another one. The second figure is not bilateral, but we aim at looking for data that would make it bilateral. Right now it's just the number of brands that is, that pertains to each country. So we can compute the number of evaluated brands that each country have all sectors together, okay? And we just very simply right now just to illustrate our issue graph whether the number of campaigns that is received by a country increases, and it's the case with the number of brands illustrating a sort of pattern of visibility, okay? And so this is what we will investigate in the estimation, so whether the target needs to be visible to the audience. And we will investigate different sort of measures of this visibility. The first one will be really the familiarity that the audience has with the target, okay? Okay, so this is the first regression table. We will, I just highlighted two numbers that I will comment in this reduced amount of time. So just to explain the table, the above variables are the unilateral variable, okay? You see the size variable, population GDP, population and GDP for J, and we're mostly interested in, as I said, bilateral variables, okay? Why? Just because in the last three columns we're controlling for the unilateral variables by fixed effects, which is also conformed to what is done in trade, gravity equation. So I will focus directly on this number of, that is negative, that is the coefficient on distance, on the distance i, j, and this number shows us that controlling for the unilateral determinants of campaigns, well, distance does decrease what the number of news that NGO that activists publish towards another, in other words, firms of another country, okay? So the elasticity is approximately, well, it's of 3% for a 10% decrease in distance. The second fact, the second finding that can illustrate approximately the same behavior is the coefficient on the dummy for the home campaigns. So this means, this positive number and significant number means that in priority, NGOs will target firms from their own country, okay? From the home country, this is computed, computing having an internal distance, okay? So which means that for a given distance, for a given language, for given the rest of the variables, well, NGOs will prefer to target home firms and whenever the firm is not home, well, proximate firms or firms in proximate countries will be favored when choosing the target. So there remains to me just to tell you that these estimations are not fully convincing if I don't explain to you how I control for the third country that we have in the database, okay? So as I told you at the beginning, I have the possibility to identify the three countries, the countries where the NGO is located, but also where the action has taken place, okay? So here you might tell me, yes, but what if the distance between the NGO country and the action country is very much correlated with the distance to the firm country? Of course, this might bias our results, so what we do is estimate the same gravity equation for campaigns on the triadic campaigns, okay? The same table, but now I have not only the similarity with the usual gravity equation involving two countries, but here an estimation on a set of campaigns involving the whole three countries, okay? Which means a very interesting fact, it means that looking, for example, at this coefficient above here, which is negative of 0.205, well, I'm controlling for the action country. So basically I'm asking the question of whenever two NGOs from different countries, okay? Let's say France and Germany target two firms for an action in a given country, let's say Indonesia, okay? Will they tend to target firms from different countries, okay? And the answer is yes, but we know it's not due to the distance to the action country. It is really the effect of the nationality of the firm and this effect is still significant and still negative, okay? The same for the home campaigns. So I will summarize and I will get to the end of the presentation. These are the results. So NGOs do select in priority, in priority, sorry, home firms and this result holds when controlling for the distance to the action to, and this is valid for a given distance, a given size and given income of the target country and the takeaway so is that the number of campaigns towards firms in the 10% more removed country decreases by 2% and NGOs report 30% more on firms from countries sharing their home language on the domestic firms, on the home firms, I already said it and something I didn't point to which is very interesting is that the two coefficients are negative which means that in fact the proximity to the action or to the firm country are substituted, okay? So in order to have a successful campaign so it would mean that I can either have, I need one element of proximity but I can either have it from the firm country or from the information of the place where the action has taken place. The availability of data on NGO was very important for this project and it's still important and we are very much working on it. It allows to quantify and it allows to shed light on the phenomenon of private regulation which is potentially important in international trade. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


Welcome to George H. Smith's Excursions into Libertarian Thought, a production of Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute, narrated by James Foster. From optimism to pessimism, the case of Herbert Spencer, Part 4. In an autobiography, Herbert Spencer commented on his political opinions at the age of 60, considered in contrast with those I held in early days. Spencer asked, have my ideas been modified by the conservatism of advancing years or by the wider knowledge acquired, or have both operated in causing the change from a sanguine view to a desponding view? Spencer continued by saying that, while I have not relinquished my ideal of the future, I have come to see that its realization is far more remote than I had supposed. The indignation against wrong, the hopefulness of youth and the lack of experience had joined in me, as they do in many, to produce eagerness for political reorganization and the belief that it needed only to establish a form of government theoretically more equitable to remedy the evils under which society suffered, hence my juvenile radicalism. By juvenile radicalism Spencer primarily meant his political views during his early and mid-twenties, as expressed in The Proper Sphere of Government, 1842. By the time social statics was published in December 1850, the first edition by John Chapman gives the years 1851, the opinions of a 30-year-old Spencer had already begun to change. I had come to see that institutions are dependent on character, and, however, changed in their superficial aspects cannot be changed in their essential natures faster than character changes. It had become manifest to me that men are rational beings but in a very limited sense that conduct results from desire, to the gratification of which reason serves but as a guide. Spencer elaborated on this theme in many different books and articles in which he denied the curative effects of teaching. It is plainly wrong to say that, when men are taught what is right, they will do what is right. Humans are largely motivated by their moral habits or sentiments, so the effort to improve moral habits through the teaching of moral truths reverses cause and effect. After it fully understood that the emotions are the masters and the intellect the servant, it would be seen that little can be done by improving the servant while the master remains unimproved. By all means let us have a tracing down of morals to the laws of life, individual and social, and a continual emphasizing of the truths reached, but it must go along with the understanding that only as the discipline of a peaceful social life slowly remolds men's natures, appreciable effects be produced. Spencer frequently made the same point by saying that human character, not abstract beliefs, determines the course of social change. Any ethical theory worth its salt must take the factors that influence character seriously into account. Spencer's reference to remolding human nature brings us to some difficult and troublesome features of his overall approach. It is always easier not to mention more pleasant to explain ideas with which one fundamentally agrees, but I have never agreed with certain aspects of Spencer's fundamental approach to philosophy and social theory, so let's get this over with. Although Spencer never expressly identified himself as a determinist, he tended to shy away from the traditional controversy over free will largely because he believed that the ultimate nature of reality is unknowable. He was a determinist by any reasonable standard. Spencer's social determinism is evident in many of his sociological writings, and it caused significant problems when he shifted roles from sociologist to moral philosopher. For example, when Spencer discussed the early stages of social evolution, he would sometimes note the beneficial if unintended consequences of various wars and conquests. He regarded such activities as barbaric, of course, but he stressed that barbaric actions are normal in barbaric societies. It would be unreasonable to expect anything more. Consider the point at which conquering tribes after realizing that more loot could be gotten from the living than from the dead, stopped slaughtering their victims and began enslaving them instead. According to Spencer, this represented an advance in social evolution, as did the later transition from slavery to serfdom. So how did Spencer, qua moral philosopher, characterize these developments? This is where things get a bit tricky. According to what Spencer called absolute ethics, slavery and serfdom are wrong, period. But according to Spencer's notion of relative ethics, such developments were less evil and therefore relatively good when compared to the stages that preceded them. As Spencer saw the matter, slavery, serfdom, and similar developments were necessary stages in the progress to free societies or regimes of contract as he sometimes called them. Spencer borrowed this expression along with regimes of status from the legal historian Sir Henry Sumner-Main. When dealing with militant war-like cultures, it would be absurd to expect free societies to spring up out of nowhere without the necessary libertarian sentiments and ideas to serve as foundations. Spencer believed that the beneficial effects of war and conflict were a thing of the past. Europe and America had undergone crucial transitions from militant forms of social organization, regimes of status, to industrial forms of organization, regimes of contract. The compulsory cooperation that characterizes militant societies had largely been replaced by the voluntary cooperation of industrial societies. When Spencer observed later retrogressions into militant forms of society, he called this disturbing trend the re-barbarization of Europe. Spencer used the militant and industrial forms of social organization as ideal types or analytic models while acknowledging that no society has ever embodied a pure type. But he also believed that the attainment of a purely voluntary society is inevitable given the deterministic forces of social evolution. Human nature, according to Spencer, is indefinitely variable and modifiable, so as people adapt to the requirements of voluntary social interaction, their sentiments will change accordingly. In the final stage of social evolution, not only will individuals desire justice for themselves, but most people will also desire equal justice for others, so they will favor restricting governmental powers to the protection and enforcement of individual rights. I qualified this statement with most because Spencer typically spoke of the average sentiments in a given society while noting possible exceptions. In social statics, Spencer stipulated that the principles of justice therein explained apply only to the straight man, that is, only to people who have attained the ultimate stage of moral evolution. It is at this stage and at this stage only that Spencer's law of equal freedom will become fully applicable. Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man. This is why Spencer titled his book Social Statics. His principles of perfect justice were meant to apply to the static or stationary stage of social evolution, the ultimate stage in which we will find morally perfect human beings. His principles of justice were not meant to apply, at least not in a strict sense, to the dynamic transition from an imperfect to a perfect society. In the perfect society in which the sentiments of most individuals will correspond to the law of equal freedom, that law will function as a principle of equilibrium and thereby prevent freedom from degenerating into statism. Consider a chapter in social statics, the right to ignore the state that has been admired by generations of libertarians. Many libertarians believe that Spencer's omission of this remarkable chapter from a later edition of social statics is the best indicator of his retreat from radicalism in later life. That this is a misleading interpretation becomes clear if we read the last section of this chapter. This section begins, the substance of this chapter once more reminds us of the incongruity between a perfect law, that is, the law of equal freedom, and an imperfect social state. The practicability of the principle here laid down varies directly as social morality. In a thoroughly vicious community its administration would be productive of anarchy. In a completely virtuous one its admission will be both innocuous and inevitable. Although the inevitable progress of man's moral sentiments will eventually render governments impossible, it is also true that the tendency to repudiate governments will increase only at the same rate that governments become needless. Spencer concludes, let not any be alarmed, therefore, at the promulgation of the foregoing doctrine. There are many changes yet to be passed through before it can begin to exercise much influence. Probably a long time will elapse before the right to ignore the state will be generally admitted, even in theory. It will be still longer before it receives legislative recognition, and even then there will be plenty of checks upon the premature exercise of it. Thus, as with other matters discussed in social statics, the right of individuals to secede from the jurisdiction of a government will become operative only at the ultimate stage of social and moral evolution. This brings us to an obvious question. What is the point of Spencer's law of equal freedom if it cannot be applied to one's current social condition? Spencer addressed this question not long after the publication of social statics, and he repeated the same point at various other times. The absolute principles of justice, he said, are ultimate goals that function as moral beacons. They guide us in the complex world of political activities by highlighting the long-range goals we wish to achieve, goals that are too often sacrificed for apparent short-term benefits. If we should keep the demands of absolute justice in mind when evaluating a particular political proposal, we should also understand that a perfectly free society, though inevitable, according to Spencer, lies somewhere in the future. It is absurd to demand that the principles of absolute justice be implemented in the current imperfect state of society. This is absurd because it is impossible, and it is impossible because our contemporaries have adapted themselves to the imperfect social state in which we currently find ourselves. Consequently, their imperfect sentiments will not motivate them to support the law of equal freedom, however much we may attempt to teach them about the principles of absolute justice. We may therefore preach to others as much as we like about the value of liberty, but with the exception of a relative handful of people who understand the importance of ideas, our preaching will fall on deaf ears. Not until freedom has progressed to the point where people can experience the beneficial or harmful effects of their own actions, while understanding that government will neither deprive them of the fruits of their labor nor save them from the folly of their own voluntary decisions, will people fully adapt to the conditions of freedom and develop the moral sentiments necessary to sustain a free society. All this will take time, of course, and time was the factor that essentially differentiated the early optimistic Spencer from the later pessimistic Spencer. As Spencer put it at the conclusion of the discussion in an autobiography that I quoted at the beginning of this essay, human nature must be better than it at present is before a much higher civilization can be established. Though I believe that, in the words of the song, there is a good time coming, it now seems to me that the good time is very far distant. Some readers may feel frustrated by Spencer's theory of social progress, and if so, I empathize with them. But such is the nature of the beast. The problems in his theory will be apparent to attentive readers. For instance, why would people with inappropriate moral sentiments pay any more attention to the law of equal freedom as an ultimate goal than they would as a proximate standard of behavior? I noted earlier the tension between Spencer, deterministic sociologist, and Spencer, moral philosopher. There is no credible way to resolve this tension, and I say this after decades of searching for a resolution. There is a ray of light in the theoretical darkness. Like many first-rate minds, Spencer's common sense frequently enabled him to overcome the logical pitfalls of his theoretical system by stepping over them, as if such pitfalls did not exist. In other words, a great deal that Spencer had to say about the political world and the prospects for liberty can be abstracted from his philosophical and sociological principles and applied to problems that libertarians face today. I shall discuss these more useful points in the remainder of this series.