Welcome to the metal voice. You know a real special guest the guy I've wanted to have on for a very long time Been following the band agent steel for many many years John Cyrus, what's going on John? Hey, thanks for having me on Yeah, good to be here Some cool exciting news You're working on a new album correct Yes There's a go find me page for the new album, which is cool, right? So fans can get involved Um, I'm gonna ask you about the new album and then we'll kind of dive into a little bit of the history of the band And your beginnings if that's okay with you Sure sounds good So first of all, uh, tell me about the new album, you know Where you're going with this? Uh, when do you expect to release it? And uh, you know all the information about it You know that you can't in terms of federal sound direction ETA Yeah, well, um ever since uh We finished up work with some Some new talent that I just stumbled upon in 2020 Um, this this last album Uh, no other gods before me Um when Even before it's release. I thought, you know, well, you know You know, we're we're up against some pretty heavy hitters nowadays because there's so many bands out there Um, it's the competition is incredible. I mean, I don't consider a competition because there's so many, you know There's so many great new bands and so much talent.  I guess Is where it depends on um You know the future of Of of the uh outfit Um, but you know, yeah, there's just it's a lot of bands And you can see that there's, you know, the the festivals you got the the big guys, you know, the head haunches of people that have You know stayed that've been resilient and stayed on You know the mega debts and uh You know hate breed and you got all, you know, the standard bands that have stayed with it And have been lasted the test of time and then you have a hundred other bands That you never heard of so, you know, based on that sense of overcrowding um I mean considering the overcrowding I thought that um, we might you know, I'm if I was going to do another age steal album they would have to be something that was unique and stood that and and somehow was able to stand up to the um The uh, how would I say this the the legacy of the early albums? Well, yeah, well what not uh, no actually I was thinking outside the box as far as that. Okay. All right Yeah, yeah, I was thinking I was thinking I you know Nowadays, you know just if you compare for example exodus Which is one of my favorite bands of all time gary holds an incredible guitarist, you know great stand-up guy and everything um If you compare, you know some of the first albums even bonded by blood and you compare The the latest albums or you know the albums he's made in the last 10 years I mean the guitar work has evolved incredibly I mean, it's still great music bonded by blood is just Ultimate classic album and that started exodus Journey that's you know blasts so long and you know, but the evolution of gary's Guitar work and his songwriting um and the band's overall skill You know in the evolution that you know during that journey is really Of there's a wide there's a large gray area between That first album and the material that he's been making the last 10 years and even the latest album so If you're gonna be there and you're gonna stand up to You know if you're gonna be able to cut the mustard um And even if you're somebody that's got a name or you know somebody that's you know the megadeth or whatever um You're gonna have you know basically that's what you're up against. You know i'm saying so it's like Any new bands that are part of that 100 Band shuffle that comes on these festivals that nobody's ever heard of that. There's some great talent there and there's some You know others that I don't know. I haven't seen them all so So I so I thought with Well, I thought with no other gods before me. I thought you know, I need to go a notch above I need to do something That I need to come up with something that is going to put me in a category where Um, there's an evolution there. I didn't want to make you know, in other words, actually, you know Basically what I'm trying to say at the end of the day here um or at the beginning of this interview is that um exodus isn't going to make Isn't going to re-record an album like just like bonded by blood in 2023 They're they're they've continued to evolve. They've got there's new recording technology now. There's different equipment um, nobody uses um uh, the uh, the old audio the old, um uh, real system, you know, the Yeah, exactly. But yeah, it's just all everything's done digital There's all kinds of advanced technology that's coming out every day, you know with pro tools and uh There's a lot of editing that's, you know, incredible.  Everything's more compact because of digital and it's um It's less, you know There's a less there's it's it's not as as roomy as it used to be but at the same time Nobody's making albums like heaven and hell and bonded my blood anymore. That's a good engineering wise production wise So I needed to do something that was different with no other guys before me So I think that I you know, it came out pretty good in my opinion I think it's one of the best agents steel albums now. Yeah, the thing about the new album is is that it's It's going to be more raw. It's not going to have as many it's not going to be as you know effect based as nor the gods was because um The material itself was written in a very raw format The the the songwriter that is the main songwriter that that compiled most of the material is very Old school as far as his his sound and and his writing It's not much room there to really make it really You know high tech space spacey really effects wise, you know, it's it's going to be more raw It's going to be more like uh mad locus rise and so to say The p but at the same time, there's a lot of ambience. There's a lot of you know, tempo changes and he's an incredible guitarist and You know, yeah, it's just like uh, Nikolai the guitarist. I had another guy performing. He's an incredible talent and You know great guy on top of it and it was great working with him and You know this in this situation with the new album, it's even more Um, it's going to be more even more unique, but it's it. Yeah, it's going to be a surprise because There's a lot of material there that's um Actually a little darker than all the other agency albums. Um, there's some material under the resembles Let's say, uh, you know a 20, you know More like uh 2023 Merciful fate or um, oh nice, you know Yeah, so yeah, there's going to be some different kind of things on there and some subject that Definitely darker than than the other albums Including no other gods. So yeah, we're where are you at sort of in the recording process? Is it you're just have the songs they're recorded the songs you're at the mixing stage Like what stage are you at on this new new album that we're talking about? The songs. Yeah, they haven't done for a while for over a year But um all the material all the basic tracks that were recorded. Um It's been patched in and then recorded by different, you know, it's recorded by different engineers, um That have actually used amping in the studio to you know, recreate the the some of the guitar sounds and um It's all basically done uh, except The you know, I've gone through different mixed down phases Where um, you know, I thought well, let's try to add some more effects But then an engineer that I work with suggested that I I um add less effects You know that make it more raw and just overall just more, you know More 80s old school so to say but um I You know, the yeah the vocals are are pretty much done. There's some things I do over Because I keep coming up with different ideas and I think you know I wasn't able to do that with no god. There's kind of in a rush situation because of a Of a plastic head You know the the label they were in a rush to get it out. So Um this time, you know, I'm going to take my time and I think I'm going to make sure that everything I'm going to be you know go over all the um details and if there's things and I'm going to just I get mixes and I kind of Meditate on it and then I leave it for a couple days and I get back to it and I listen to it again And I see I hear things that I think could be done better And um, you know, I flip flop a lot about it But I I want to make it as perfect as possible as far as the vision that that I had For you know, it's for the final product. So Uh, which you know changes a lot So I'm just trying to make it better and better as I as I go along and that's and that's the reason for the go fund me too because it's been difficult to um To land a label for its release because there's um some strange things going on out there um in You know the scene or the industry whatever you want to call it that uh, it just seems like there's some opposition for uh releasing Another agency album or for having released one at all even no other guys before me in 2021 There's just seems like I don't know exactly where it it comes from who is involved But you know call it conspiracy theories or not Or whatever you want to call it. Definitely there is some some form of conspiracy for if you want to call it an opposing cabal Of some well pure Asian steel fashion, right? What are you gonna do? Yeah, well, you know, I think this time it's coming from It could it could be coming from It could be anything from It could be peers to uh Some you know Some politically correct or you know politically correct group that is stern in their philosophy and they think that I I'm just My thinking is just too far outside the box because I've mentioned this in interviews that were uh published That were interviews in in in text In magazines not like this audio interview And I think that there's an incredible hypocrisy That is alive In the metal music industry today You know, um, I don't even know if I should go there But I would like to talk about this because I was thinking about what I should talk about during this interview and I'm kind of go You know kind of just sprouted some wings here. I'm like flying in between all the trenches like if he's ever seen the You know the the exorcist to the heretic a long time ago that it was a second exorcist Lotus at the lotus lying my friend Exactly and you got the the locus flying in between all the all the the canyons and and all the The mountain canyon rock, you know mountainous rock trenches in between In the mountain where the the priest had You know Try to lift up this african boy all the way to the top to keep him up there A couple months for the exorcism and then the locus comes and he you know He gets on the locus. Somehow he's surprised with them and he shows them all these different places So it's like I keep looking around and seeing everything that's going on and I think That everything that I'm seeing That there's an incredible You know contra contradiction hypocrisy that was claimed by a um a group of of musicians or you know the of some some cabal that's You know that maybe we see or we don't see maybe they're not the guys on stage playing that have crusaded since the you know the onslaught of venom and then merciful faith and slayer with the kind of um more um the the the the I wouldn't say darker because you know, but you know, they would call it that but You know a different philosophy and alternative to Religion and especially christianity is and use and its use the the use of that philosophy in through lyrics and attitude and And through metal bands and the metal industry in general um, which was supposed to be we are the um campaigners or we are the crusaders of free thought of free thinking Not restrictive and not and thinking outside the box in You know being able to stimulate Thought and attitude in in an occult way In in a darker way in complete rebellion towards organized religion And which means everything goes and a lot of these bands were inspired like slayer Jeb Hanuman for example by the punk era. So it was like punk with an intelligent kind of Creepy eerie, you know euphoria Added to the lyrics and the attitude and the album covers and all that which I thought was very cool You know being i'm not a devout religious person at all, you know, i i'm more agnostic if anything, but um I do believe in that something exists, but it definitely If there's any kind of energy or power out there, it's definitely It does. I don't believe it has an intelligence It is just an energy and the energy has to be that energy has to have a vehicle through which it is directed Through which it is manifest. So Just you know, just to say that real quick I think what you're trying to say here. I think what you're trying to say correct me if i'm wrong here I'm just trying to sort of summarize this you're trying to say freedom of thought Or freedom of speech has been Compressed and locked down. Is that what you're trying to say? Well, no, yeah, the hypocrisy. Yeah, exactly But in what I want to say is the the hypocrisy comes into play that this group or this Click or cabal or whatever um The death metal the darker because there's death metal that's like punk that just talks about, you know That just where the lyrics are about just hating society or Disliking your your neighbor or whatever, but no when it comes to like The darker elements that have been used as a not a gimmick But you know, most of it is gimmick, but there's very few serious people that are involved in that it's just usually like you know imagery or The gimmick or whatever that's used to make it more interesting that's following a trend that started with venom and then Slayer merciful fate at kind of at the same time But merciful fate came a little a little bit earlier than slayer even though slayer was developing as a club band at the time um that they claim That we are they think outside the box of especially outside the box of organized religion and and or the razor fist the metal bands like um Um, but I can't believe I forgot the guy's name this band's name saxon. Um and also Uh in opposition to the attitude and objective Of whether whether they had a girlfriend or not or whether they're a pissed off society because all the girlies were going over the hair bands that also not following the the attitude and You know the trend of The glam bands the girl girly band the hair band guys that are drawing all the girlies. Okay, so they were outside that box Which means that hey everything goes where the hypocrisy lies is that I believe That it's evolved to become a dictatorship So, you know, you got like a group or a system or a government or as in America a political party that comes in and says and says Hey, we're completely liberal and uh, we like horror movies and we like uh, the darker elements of Psychology and religion and so everything goes, you know, as long as you're not like as long as you're not a serial killer Or you're not robbing banks and you're not shooting old ladies or killing children Everything else is cool and the darker you are you're welcome to join us So we don't care what you say, you know It's freedom all about and then later You see that this government comes in and after a couple years or a decade or two You know, there's this guy that creates um, you know dance music, you know, uh electronic music a dj and he's mixing You know, uh african-american singers or people of you know women of color that sing kind of bluesy with um you know heavy metal guitar and and jazz drums and um You know, they come along and say no, this is wrong. We're only classical music is the only way This is you know, we can I get you. I get you But we're gonna you know i'm saying so what i'm saying is i'm thinking outside the box and no other guys before me You know, I come out and I say hey, this is all cool and everything and it's interesting and I think you know Yeah, it's stimulating the darker elements of philosophy and the religion that you believe in or you know The philosophy you believe that stimulates you and you think it's cool to use as imagery and lyrically Um, it's more creeping in here and it fits more it more fits the aggressive attitude of metal and everything then You know, you know, even though I think sax is a great man And it's one of my favorite bands of all time, but if you think it's more interesting and more creepy and stimulating Then then you know the razor fist the metal bands like sax in or you know The girl here bands that only talk about you know banging underage girls in the backseat of a car Um, so you guys yeah, that's what you guys are doing is cool. I'm into it but why is it wrong if I say hey um Everyone is going to face the inevitable moment at some point in life in their life whether it's later sooner or too soon You know, um that where you are going to disincarnate You are no longer going to be whatever intelligence is it is in that body that that you're speaking through You're making your music through that's dealing with your mom and dad your cousins through or your best friends and that people are looking at and seeing If you're not catatonic That that energy is going to leave that body that that's Whether it's an in there or just your your physical brain or whatever you want to believe um It's not going to be there in eczema in some day at some point In your existence here on this time and space that you're living in the the flesh and in this world of And this arid wilderness of steel and stone um, it's going to go somewhere and nobody has ever proven and even given a glimmer of a laboratory factual evidential conclusive presentation or even a formula a video or any kind of laboratory evidence of Exactly what happens and where you go once that energy that is you whatever it is that speaking and thinking and talking When it Disincarnates from your body because medically it has proven that you are automatically seven ounces Underweight every single human being on the planet the minute your heart stops and you stop breathing You're what automatically seven ounces Underweight and there's no explanation. It is in it is not laboratory Calculable it's not Science and medicine doesn't know why what it is that automatically is seven ounces Underweight where whatever it is that's there that they can't diagnose or You know that can't they can't see on some kind of a You know captive meter of some kind of they don't know what it is Where what it is and where it goes whatever maybe it's your energies. You're intelligent So nobody can say where you go nobody can Determine nobody nobody has ever come up with any evidence that there is a superior being in the universe Some superior power that you know controls us all and controls everything It's a great architect that has created all existence That exists before time and space as we know it has ever existed and will exist for eternity And we are all at the mercy of this incredibly you know This this great power force or intelligence that people believe is god and that it's all just and right and rewarding if you're good and destruct you know Punishing if you're bad Nobody can prove any of that and that that that this energy this being even exists Just as much as no one can prove that there's a satan or negative power that some negative being whether it's you know interpreted as The the the lucifer in the bible that was cast out of heaven because he believed that he was better than god that god was a A nip wit and that he was just you know Not up you know not up to the jones's in that he was more intelligent more beautiful And he made better music and all that that can't that certainly can't be proven and when somebody can produce You know a laboratorial evidential Video or some kind of laboratorial evidence, you know really proven scientifically that you know that there's a satan That he comes out like a huge monster come to breathe and fire or that he there's you know, it's uh You know Al Pacino and John John a bit of pause you right there, okay? Sure pause you right there That's why I wanted to talk to you because I like your deep thoughts, you know, they align with the way I kind of think, you know, I just like to think about everything I'm gonna jump around a bit if it's okay with you I was reading a post You know in your years in mega death and I found this fascinating that this piece of history sort of It's not really discussed much, you know, and maybe you could touch upon that I'd love to hear about it. You know, you're sort of time singing with mega death And uh, david elson or the two daves, right? Sure, so so you're there. I know they're look look i've talked to mustain I've talked to elson not about this, but I've just talked to them in general And I just find that this This kind of this piece of history just kind of gets glossed over quickly, right?  I was in um with some awesome guys Mark Caro guitarist is incredible Genius virtuoso for the time and always will be and uh I was just you know, it was i landed a job with that band, you know From an ad in the recycler.  I want to get into I had to put the guitar away for a while and uh You know, I sold I had a lot of nice equipment. I had a lot of Charvel guitars that were custom handmade, you know for me and I had two marshal stacks and a lot of you know Pedal gear, you know had a lot of Nice, you know pedals, you know effects and everything and I just sold everything and I had you know after I bought what I was You know what I sold everything to buy I saw all my guitars. I saw my marshal everything.    He said no, I swear, man I maybe you do it because you just got used to it singing in the car driving here and there but You got it. You got it down brother, you know, and I was like, uh, okay, man Whatever, you know, but so, you know, I auditioned hundreds of singers in LA From the good the bad the ugly everybody and I never found a singer that Could sing, you know, my lyrics and Sing the parts, you know to the songs that I'd written Um exactly the way or even close to the way I imagine that that the vision that I have for the the vocals, you know to be worked And uh, that's why I thought hey, I'm just going to give it a go I'd never rehearsed a vocal. I just sang along with the sets and in my car And I'm when I bought that $80 mic, you know, I auditioned for Abitur and that's where Dave mustain first saw me I think uh and um, he knew Juan Garcia and uh You know, Juan went from being roadie of Abitur to the guitarist in Abitur Because I brought him in that way, you know, that's another story. Um I met Juan, you know I auditioned when I auditioned for Abitur and he was one of the There was two roadies they had that were the set, you know, godfather roadies for Abitur And uh, I met him out in the parking lot and he gave me a good You know confidence coaching before I went in, you know, just do it this way This is the way they like it try to do these songs this way and don't do the lemmy song with I heard your demo Don't do the lemmy song too much like Halper do the lemmy song It looked like lemmy, you know, because they did uh face of spades It's one of their covers they played and uh You know, and then we became friends and then they had a guitarist that wasn't very dedicated And he was flaky. He was in another band. I think it was in a some hair band actually So a lot of Abitur shows He didn't he didn't show up to he said, well, you know, I gotta move sit this one out guys I'm sorry. I'm playing with my other band. So they were always frustrated With the guy and then Juan knew all the songs he was, you know He had a half Marshall stack and he had a bc rich and he practiced a lot And he knew all the Abitur songs just you know Because he liked the band and he was you know, he knew he had some covers down He played the basic priests made and stuff and uh, he said I really want to be in the band John I don't know how to come up, you know approach these guys I'm their roadie and I'm their friend and maybe they even you know I don't think they're ever gonna accept me as a guitarist, you know What do you think, you know, I I played some some stuff with them some rehearsals But you know, I said, well, let's get you in there man.  They said let's switch. Let me carry the guitar You pull the marsh a little bit my back's kind of giving in So we got him there.  It's a big show. So I don't know if Juan's ready You know, he's not a professional guitarist. He plays good But I said, well, you know what guys since you only got two weeks once my friend now We've gotten really close. So if Juan doesn't play this show You're gonna have to find soap another singer and I don't think you can do that in two weeks So I got him in from roadie to guitarist and he debuted with me Opening for slayer. So he kind of owes me his guitar future in a way. You know, I'm not that's just kidding Juan's a great talent Without with or without me. He never met me. He'd be just as far as he is. Maybe, you know, yeah He deserves to be worried. But that's the where he started out as a guitarist. I helped him out You know, and so he's done so much for me and he helped him We worked so hard at the beginning of the band's Histories that it just that's far overshadows Me, you know, debuting him as a guitarist His work was incombrable to nobody would have gotten us as far as we had if it wasn't far as all all his hard work You know sitting at phone booths and for hours and hours talking to new york talking to combat records, you know All kinds of weird But yeah, Mustaine and Dave Mustaine and Dave Ellison that all they were a team They were like sigmes twins. They were always out together. You never saw him. You never saw Dave Mustaine without Dave Ellison anywhere. I've never seen him as many years. I see him in LA and In the day and you know, those guys were having a hard time. You know, I didn't know it They were um, you know, they stayed in my house With with me and my you know, my parents house for a while And uh, because they were you know sleeping in their van And I only found out after I joined the band, you know, that they were um, because they they mentioned something kind of like In secret and they were kind of whispering sitting in the front seat I was in the back of the band and driving me home after rehearsals They picked me up and driving home And they were saying yeah, you got the soap back there and yeah, I just got a fresh bottle of it We got to get to the beach before we got to be up earlier because the police when they come by if they see us They were showering at the beach in the morning. They were sleeping in the van I said, hey guys, man.  I have what I just heard. No, no, no You guys don't need to stay at the beach stay at my house. Are you guys crazy, man? We got an extra room there because no, man We can't do that man. You're like your parents and everything we can't impose that's why we didn't ask you No, no, no, no you I'm insisting now. You guys are staying at my house Let's go and we can we can write there and everything. It's we don't have to do Was the band called mega death at the time? Of course, yeah, it was mega it was called mega death and uh, you're rehearsing with them That's what you're saying and they're staying at your parents house, right? Yeah, yeah, all right That's the way it was and uh, yeah, they love my mom and My mom used to say yeah, it's a it's a pleasure having these boys here. These are really good boys Well, yeah, they are really nice guys are really they're really polite and very respectful of my family. They never you know In fact, I didn't even see them in the heavy party mode. I mean, whatever they did it They didn't do it around me and they were staying at the house.  In fact, I never saw him in the heavy heavy party You know, I've never seen I've never seen them do hard drugs as long as I was in the band rehearsing with them I've never seen them do hard drugs and all these You know their history that everybody was so shocked to eventually learn about if you weren't around them in those days I've never I never saw it. I did they were just super super sweet guys Really nice guys easy to get along with Dave was not dictatorial like people say he's really Very cool stand-up guy very easy Acted very normal. I've never seen him You know falling down drunk or you know, they they'd go out in the vans in rehearsal They knew I didn't like the smoke. So they'd go out and do a couple bong hits once in a while But they weren't you know, like, you know, I got to have a Plastic tube attached to my nostrils and I you know, I have to have a bong attack on my lips John during rehearsals and everything. I you know, if you can't take it, you know What songs were you doing in rehearsals? Like what were you practicing like the killing is my business material at the time or not? There was some material that was outside of that. Yeah, that was I had some stuff that I was writing some lyrics to their to their material that was kind of merciful fate like I was kind of going through a dark period in my life at the time and I really love merciful faith And king diamond and yeah, and I thought yeah, this is a cool band to kind of add some of that kind of Element and I had a song called into the abyss that was really cool.  He's always, you know, he's he's a heavy guy He's one of the he writes some of the heaviest music ever, of course And he's the rift master Emperor, you know and everything and he's just a heavy guy, but as far as philosophically and the whole ambient and You know the being attracted to that darker element of metal Um, it was in Dave. He was kind of creeped out about it So he was kind of he didn't say much but he was almost kind of looking at me like yeah Do you really want to do that with that song? I mean, you know, we kind of like the stuff you did in abattoir and He's you that's why I like you john you're kind of like You know like the on the lighter side You're kind of you're not the guy raises his fist the metal and you're not the guy who's gonna tease your hair and You know put lipstick on in a sailor's hat and sing about girls So I thought but you're not the guy who's singing about satan either And I know you're not singing about satan in this song You're not literally saying satan this and satan that but it sounds kind of creepy, man It's a I wouldn't be sometimes that close my eyes. I think maybe there is king in the room here You know, so I thought you know, so I thought um, well Dave maybe you know And and I he he's always been kind of like a christian kind of guy not a christian so essential, you know Like like he like he became like He was you know Initiated in two later And when after I wasn't at the band later years when that helped him I guess get off his his drug addiction and everything and you know, god bless him for that Yeah, absolutely How long were you in the band like rehearsing with them playing with them? Did you perform any shows? um, no, we never did any shows unfortunately, uh It was a quite a while maybe almost a year, you know, and uh Yeah, it was awesome.  There's um an african-american drummer That was just an incredible talent and a super nice guy. In fact, he was the one that motivated them to follow through with their wanting me in the band because um, I had already had agent steel Uh kick started at that time Even before I joined megadeth and you know, it it it all started by them seeing me in abattoir And then they saw they knew I was an agent steel.  He goes, well, we'd love to have you in a megadeth. I think that that that would give us a shot at definitely You know, that would be one of our greatest hopes And of of stepping over metallica of crushing metallica is if you were the front man That we that would give us the edge that we need to put us in You know in a in a category Beyond metallica More in like the the maiden and priest category. So we were just just devastate Whereas if I'm you know, if I was singing for example, day was saying to me Just like that you're saying to me, you know, you know to tell you the truth singing gives me a headache Give me a sore throat. So I could never imagine it But unless we get you as a vocalist not some other guy, you know, some unknown or some other guy that sings more like aggressively and more, you know Of course With your clear singing in the in the high notes and everything like howlford Singing some in megadeth that would do it. We would be instant Celebrity we just and we could crush metallica. There's no way james could compare with you vocally the range wise, you know and everything and uh I was shocked to hear, you know, I was like they were pitching me Say what you should think about it, you know, and then one came out, you know There's a parking lot you hang out in between rehearsals and everything and then one got a little suspicious That something was going on that they pulled me aside to talk to me and I didn't think it was very serious I thought maybe oh, maybe these guys You know, I it's so it's so um Uh, it's such a privilege that these guys, you know, like my singing and they like what i'm doing and Um, yeah, there was like no words to describe how I felt I felt like a star right then, you know, that these guys have even considered talking I think they would have nailed it. Yeah, I think it would have been amazing I mean, do you have any recordings from those rehearsals? You must there must be some tape recordings of some sort I wish I did i'm maybe they recorded something or dijon recorded something but I don't know. I don't know where they would be.  I mean, it was incredible. The rehearsals were just super You just were you doing like last nights and killing is my business and the skull beneath the skin Like were you doing the material that eventually appeared on the first album? Yeah Yeah, four horsemen Yeah, but yeah The mechanics. Yeah, and I had all different lyrics to it.   I would have liked that. I would have liked that I would have liked that. Who was the guitarist for mega death when you were in the band You know, I brought a friend in because they would they needed the guitarist, you know, and and Dave always said, you know Um, I I would like to have someone in that's more flashy than I am So because you know, they you know metallica he's always thinking about metallica But and he knew that his stuff was flashier and more You know riffy and more jazzy. So He knew he had an edge. He believed he had an edge and I think he's an incredible Yes, legendary talent on guitar and songwriting. So You know, I love metallica too. I love their material. They're one of the greatest metal bands ever Um In the head they started the great heavy riff master kind of stuff They went beyond iron made Judas priest is more melodic and just the heavy metal Original metal gods, you know, of course, but metallica took it a notch beyond and uh Then everybody was influenced by that more aggressive faster Uh tempo genre of metal because of metallica But mega death because dave had been kicked out of the band was in the back You know in the back line not getting a chance to show You know his how fast he could sling his gun So, you know, he was always very excited. I was very energized about yeah I'm gonna blow these guys away man. My stuff's jazz. You're riffy riffier and just more unique You know, I said I absolutely agree your stuff is unique in comparison to metallica metallica was awesome too But you know, yeah with and then with me with my vocal um work in there it is going to be incredible And uh, so he was always, you know, wondering what on that mission It seems like from when you're telling me he was on that mission to like crush metallica Even at that stage, right because I guess he just got thrown out. Is that it? Oh, man Oh, he was you could see his face would light up and he would just He would suddenly get his fingers were tightened up and he'd start Moving his fingers when he talked to you Like like, uh, even if he wasn't holding a guitar and at any time he would just glow He would just you know, it was one of like one of these B horror movies, you know, where the alien You finally figure out that your your friend that you're out camping with, you know um On the boonies that he's possessed by an alien his eyes start glowing and fires start coming out of his eyes, you know, that's how he would He start acting when he when he talked about competing with metallica that he had You know a curve ball ready for them that they would never You know expect and that if they think that his material was the material that they kept that they released that got him To to where they were, you know, selling That he they hadn't seen nothing yet that he had that the new material he was going to come out with was just going to They were just going to either quit or they were going to be ashamed. You know, that's how he talked He was like very confident and very positive. I love james and lars.  Goodbye because i'm just gonna talk to carol off the stage I was to tear the world apart. Yeah You're rehearsing you're confident how many nights a week you're rehearsing rehearsing about for a year Like two three nights a week. Oh, we rehearsed a lot at first. Um, it was at least three or four nights a week Um, they were very dedicated these guys. I mean they live breathe the need to stuff if they're not You know planning You know engineering plotting songs and you know, we we we sat after rehearsal a lot of times we'd go to denny's or There's a place on sunset boulevard la I don't even know if it's still there. It's called ben francs And uh, they used to like go in there instead of denny's somewhere by the you know the beach or something Is because uh, there was a lot of girls like a lot of uh Hairband girls that would that would go there to eat After like some show at um the rainbow or i mean that's not the rainbow, but uh What is that place? Uh, I used the whiskey. Yeah, but there's another place that reduced priest even played In the 70s not the trooper or two, but there was another place I forgot what it was called. There was a little bit deeper into hollywood Where it had a vapor. It was a bigger venue No, that's nowadays. I think that this I don't know if this that was later in There's an there's an actual place. I saw a poster for it the other day and I remember that place I played there when I was I had I played guitar And I had my band we played there. Um, I forgot what it was. Yeah, it's all right. It's all right Yeah, these guys they would go there, you know to meet girls because they knew that a lot of Cute girls would hang out at that band frank's on sunset late into the night because it was 24 hours and They could meet girls there and actually they did they sometimes they'd meet girls there because you know the you know Dave, you know, Dave mustang jr. Has everybody called him and Dave include They you know, they look good.  So yeah, I mean we hung out and uh besides just rehearsal So it would kind of we became kind of pretty close friends in that in that sense of the word and uh It was a great experience man. I loved it.  I would always think that I would always like kind of feel like smiling within myself With these incredible shredders and back to me just headbanging and playing incredible riffs that i've never Never seen before i've never seen any band that i've ever been in or that i've ever seen live in la Or anywhere and subconsciously you did influence them you did influence them subconsciously because rust and peace with I mean their biggest album is you know the alien, you know Yeah, you know the theme of the alien still sort of lurking around there on that album, right? So There was you subconsciously influence them All right, I think that Dave Yeah, because you know dave's a very intelligent person He's a he's a genius.  He's open minded to a lot of Intense subject matter. He was it wasn't just the guys like yeah, man. I just want to play metal It was rock and roll the guy's very intelligent thinks about political issues society and always analyzing stuff and You know in a calm way. He's not like a radical guy about you know, yeah But you know i'm an alt writer or i'm an extreme liberal or anything No, he was always kind of centered and he always just analyzed everything. He's very intelligent about analyzing everything. So he he did You know, he came what happened was that one day I was so involved with an ages deal that I started pulling back And not going to rehearsals as much. We started just becoming more distant They were always looking for me sometimes I'd come home And they'd find they'd gotten a place, you know eventually And they weren't staying with me my parents anymore and sometimes I'd come home and they'd be there again I thought well, are they moving back in you guys are welcome here? But you know, they say no we're waiting for you john.  I forgot man It was kind of like a white lie, you know, I'd have to always come up with a white lie about, you know Man, I forgot no where have you guys been you know, we're we had been looking for an apartment We got a place finally and uh, they kind of knew what was going on I was drifting away Because I was more interested in agent steel as me and mohan were very very close friends and I was so involved with that That I wasn't really interested in in continuing mega that they kind of knew it So with before being day of the way he is very self-confident of and you know, very self-directed um, I think he decided that um He was going to make the first move before I did so that Historically, he could always say yeah, we let john go instead of john quit So one day I came home and my mom was kind of really sad because she really liked them And she she helped she went she goes come over here. Look and she picked up a manila envelope From the kitchen. She said look the the boys brought this over Dave the daves They gave it to me and they were kind of almost crying, you know Dave mustain especially was really sad And uh, dave ellison was very apologetic and he said hey, you know Is john here? No, she said no, he's not here guys want to come in. He said no not today Um, can you just give him this envelope? um Because I give him a copy of my lyrics all the time they had copies on and uh And he said can you just give me we're returning his lyrics because we have to let him go because um It's hard to explain. We love him. We love john. He's become our friend and he's a great singer and We know that he's you know developing the agent steel thing right now and wands are are Good friend too and we don't want to stand their way. But the real reason is is because After a lot of thought I don't know if I it's kind of creepy for me My mom this is what my mom told me anyway that dave mustain. I actually told her this It's it's a little bit too creepy for me. I'm more into like the punk political You know in society kind of like a personal life experience kind of lyrical concept And I don't know if I can really go with this alien thing. It's not only creepy It's it's even more creepy than the satanic stuff. It's kind of weird I don't know if I want to you know campaign megadeth Based on this whole alien thing and you know and and just besides that You know, I don't want to stand any the way of agent steel I don't want him to have to decide between megadeth and agent steel So we're letting them go tell him we love him and he's always welcome To rehearsals or are you still our friend?  Why did you do this to the boys or whatever I said?  I was really Looking forward to you being in that band. I love those guys. They're good boys and They really like you john and everything like one everything. So I said, yeah, well, that's just the way it goes, man You know, I'm gonna do this agent steel thing. It's my own band Me and wan and chuck and uh, we're just gonna campaign this alien thing all the way to the hilt It's new Let dave do let david do his political stuff Like I want to go through the whole agent steel sort of history later on in part two if you're okay with that Sure, let's go back to the new album, right? When do you think this this album will be released? well, it sometime this year the what i'm thinking of doing is um since there's a lot of you know, it just feels like i'm I've been blacklisted and I don't know where it's coming from, you know, I I know that um, you know, some people say that it wan doesn't want me to continue With agent steel because he feels like he worked on it for so long And even being on me in the in the era where uh bruce hall was the singer They made those three albums that were that were awesome. You know those three albums they made That I didn't sing on But you know some people have a theory. There's different theories going on out there Um, but I don't believe that one has always been he's always going to be you know One of my number one best friends, you know, I love wan. He's an incredible human being an incredible musician His guitar workers evolved incredibly. He's You know a master guitarist now in comparison to when he first started which he was already great He's a natural talent, but he's so awesome nowadays and so he's an incredible guitarist nowadays He's evolved and he's so humble and body cow. He's a great. Oh, yeah Oh, yeah And you know all the stuff that he's done You know, he's helped played on different, you know sad and different session work and everything and played different bands helping out and everything but um a lot of people think that um That you know, the theory is that it's wan. You know, he has contacts. He knows a lot of people um, and he's very well liked in the industry and amongst the peers and You know, he's made a few moves, you know, you know In in the shadows and maybe not directly campaign and gone on youtube and says stop John don't let him continue agent steel agency. It shouldn't be what should not be without without me and bernie and After what happened to bernie. It's kind of sacrilegious to continue agent steel Um, no, I don't believe that's wan's position. I don't believe that he's involved You know in any of some of that kind of campaign against me Um, but some people think it is, you know, like an old friend of mine that knows the two of us from way back, you know um I'm not going to mention who he is by name But he is you know determined to convince me that that is the one is doing all of this Black listing me in the industry and amongst the peers so that nobody supports me and it's almost impossible You know, I'm kind of like uh, uh being put in the position where I'm kind of like the edward snowden of heavy metal You know, yeah, so, uh, you know, the only place I can do is take a secret flight to Moscow and be subjected to the You know tyranny there or you know live in the states and be dissected, you know live, you know, but um You know, that's what you know, it it to to be honest That's what it seems like so but it's not wan involved It's something going on out there that um, I think it's you know, I don't know Some people say it's an ex manager of mine That was kind of an older guy to begin with in the back of the 80s and he's gone bonkers and He's stealing all my royalties and now he's passed away and But I was looking at the other side, right, you know one went on without you, right? So it's kind of like the same thing, you know, like, you know He went on without you with those three albums and you probably weren't too happy about that, right? Now you're going on without him. So, you know, it's the same sort of argument, right? Yeah, well, you know, um, I I kind of authorized after a while I thought well, you know, these guys are my friends and I'm not Doing anything right now at the moment So I kind of authorized the use of the name for those three albums But I didn't expect not to receive anything though.  We got back together and I wish that had worked out, but no, no, I mean, it's uh You know, I I've invited Juan to come on Even before the nor the gods album I invited him to come on if he ever wants to come on the door is always open to him If he you know, of course the agent steel would never would never be the same Agent steel no matter what kind of lineup I got if I got you know, steve i and kerry king to play And uh, you know You know Uh, the paul bostoff is one of the great My it's one of my favorite drummers of all time. It's not even dave lombard. I mean, I love dave He's awesome, but paul bostoff to me In my opinion is the greatest slayer drummer ever I mean he's somebody's incredible jazz progressive You know all kinds of like actual music Being he's like leading the music in the one one of my favorite slayer albums a diabolos and musica It's one of that's my favorite slayer album and it's so outside the box and paul bostoff is an incredible talent on that album It seems like he's Lee in the way like he wrote the songs the guys are playing with him It's just so progressive, but also so heavy and and raw and and dark and it's incredible, but um, If I put a line to line up the other like that it would never compare to a lineup Where Juan was involved because me and Juan I thought we're like the jaggers richard Richard's combination, you know, it's just like we can do our own thing And we you know, we can sell, you know Couple albums and we can reach some kind of you know recognition and success But together we sell out 80 000 cedars every night, you know, I'm saying that's symbolically speaking I don't know if we'd reach that kind of status So but the door's open to him that he's always welcome to play a solo to write a song to come in and just Play a rhythm or to join completely and you know, I would follow his lead He's got so much experience much more than me in the in the business and he knows so many You know incredible He's all the peers support him. Everybody likes Juan. He's a great guy So the door is always open for Juan to come back into the band if I you know, whatever i'm doing with the band That's very respectable. So very respectable. That's good. I'm happy Yeah, well, that's the way it should be, you know, I My commitment to our friendship is not Friendship is not something that is limited by time and space and the length of years He's and so, you know, his commitment to the band and what he's done for me He's been there for me in the toughest times of my life Um, so it goes beyond just music, you know, he's just a wonderful friend He's a great friend to have because if you need a friend, that's one of the kind of people He's the kind of friend that'll be there and he'll jump in front of bullets for you if you need it So Juan's always in, you know, as we have like two minutes left here There's a picture of you with the sort of like alien christmas tree. What is that? What's that image? No, it's all metal. It's all um some Like gold platelets and um Uh, silver, you know, true sterling silver and all metal you know It's all metal objects that were put together and a robot sort of Shape was made from just all metal objects whether it's forks knives plates Platters um everything metal that you could imagine um was put together and a kind of robot was made that's called um the warrior of peace and uh A friend of mine. Yeah created that and it's energized. It's this this person's a very special person. Um, he I can't explain right now in the couple minutes what he does but We'll talk about it next time.  It's impossible to do that with machines. Yeah a machine cannot do that By the time I shared I shared you the picture. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah No, go ahead. I I shared the picture of the ufo that I saw With you. I'm not sure if you saw that or not, but i'll talk about that next time I I picture Yeah, yeah, so listen the new they're go find me page. I'm gonna end off with this So the new album is is almost complete Go find me pages up to help support the album to get it completed, right? And out there you're telling me that there's gonna Yes, yes, I'll put that link there too also The new album should be released in 2023 right as the date you're kind of aiming for correct Right.  Um I think they can make a few bucks, you know rather than going after a lot of these unknown bands, you know That maybe they're not as talented or they don't they don't have a following They don't have you know the following we have so that's what I want to inspire But I have to fund it myself and unfortunately and nobody's supporting me on that and I I haven't won the lot Oh as much as I still as old as I am I still have hope that someday I may get that winning ticket and uh Same year same year. You're not alone my friend So I got to fund the album if the fans want to hear something The finished product that eventually a label if they're intelligent If there's they can you know if the cowardly lion can finally see the wizard they can step up to the plate to um To make a deal with me to release and distribute the album until then I need to fund it myself if the fans want to hear It's completion. Um, they got to help me out with it. That's just the way it goes or else It's just going to take an eternity to get it done Just with you know considering the if I want to use my my job my salary To pay for it, you know, it's going to take a couple hundred years, but um, yeah, I gotta run Thank you so much. We'll do a part two. I'll keep in touch with you And uh, you know everybody out there go hit that find go find me page and support agents deal and john John Cyrus my guest appreciated you really appreciate it been a pleasure my friend. Thank you


okay okay yes I can I can hear you okay mm-hmm yeah I I don't I don't see your face so it's hard to check but I remember such a such a case yes mm-hmm mm-hmm oh yes finally yeah now now I remember you it's easier if with the face you know yeah yeah yeah of course I remember you yeah it's much harder with just a voice okay yeah we can start any time yeah of course thank you thank you mm-hmm okay okay that's why I wear like this right I could put a suit on but I'm not no this is good yeah I have visited Okinawa and Osaka and Tokyo of course and many places in Japan but for Hokkaido I think yeah I thought about visiting in 2015 for the World Wide Web Consortium Technical Plenary and Advisory Committee meeting at a time I think it was in the Sapporo Convention Center but I did not make it one of my friends Bobby Tom did make it I think and so I think it's not me coming to Sapporo it's Sapporo coming to me every time that we have a hackers on with pizza and it's often with beer and of course on the beer you see Sapporo but I don't I haven't personally been to the visits but I really look forward to after the COVID yes that there will be an excellent thing to do actually after COVID I really look forward to visit and stay for a few more days because previously before joining the cabinet I was touring around Europe to many different places many different hackers once but for each place I used to stay only a day or two and so it's much more like just changing the you know wallpapers the backgrounds of the desktop but then after being the minister I learned that in order to really get into a mood of understanding where people's ideas are coming from you really have to spend a week or at least with with other people so I look forward to more longer stays yeah certainly I'm recently interested in a startup called XR space for extended reality it's the first virtual reality headset with no controller I can just control it with my hands and it's very light with its own 5G connection so I can wear it for like three hours or four hours without fearing fatigue or things like that and so I will make together with some artists a kind of synthetic version of me in that XR space so people can ask me questions and Audrey in that space will synthesize poetry based on the transcripts that I had put on GitHub and so it becomes a kind of interactive dialogue art installation but entirely in the extended reality I really like how 5G can bring people closer and feel like a sense of co-presence in the same room as opposed to Skype where we're very clearly seeing we're in different rooms mm-hmm yeah that's a great question I have interacted indeed with people from like middle school and senior high school and all the way to the you know central government and so on in my conferences and there is I think one thing that really connects Japan and the Taiwan view of technology is the idea that society need to lead the direction of technologies the technologies are not just curiosities but as we often say it must become a infrastructure for the society that are to say to serve a societal purpose and that's why I think while industry 4.0 people know about the idea Japan has the idea of society 5.0 meaning that society is one version newer than the industry and the industry needs to upgrade to work with the society not the other way around and so many people ask questions about instead of disruptive technologies can we work on inclusive technologies and I think that's something that Taiwan and Japan has a lot of common yeah it's interesting because when I was asked to become the digital minister in 2016 we talked a lot within the Gov.0 movement and there's at least like five other people who I think are equally qualified and of course you know some of these people if you have come to Gov.0 summit there's Jia Liang Gao there's also professor Chen Shenwei who have been with us since the beginning of Gov.0 who actually went to the interview with the premier with me and so on so there's no shortage of like digital minister caliber people in the Gov.0 movement and I'm I think only because I'm already retired I'm only 33 34 when I joined the sunflower movement and work on it for time so people see me more I become sort of like a public face but actually there's many people working together and it's interesting because in Gov.0 Japan there's a lot of chapter leaders and regional leaders that could I think in my mind serve equally well as the digital minister and that's I think why in Taiwan we have this system called reverse mentorship where each minister in the cabinet can work with two people usually under 35 as mentors to that minister and so I worked in this office for a couple years with minister Jacqueline Cai and at the time also another Gov.0 collaborator Tony Q also work in the same capacity and so just build a intergenerational solidarity between the cabinet member who are older on one side and the younger people on the other side who already have a digital native connection in the Taiwan case it's Gov.0 but in your case it's Gov. Japan I think it could make changes happen it doesn't have to be me but anyone who serve in that position need to have a very strong connection with the civic technologist community. Yeah it is easier if you are in a place that's clearly marked as the youth advisory council that is to say the Confucianism extends to the respect for the institution so without institution of course seniority is the norm but if you design an institution that's very easily let people see oh this is the essentially the young people's council and the elderly are here to provide resource and support to the new direction that the young people the reverse mentors are creating then people yield more to the institution than to the seniority so having a clearly spelled out institution is very important. Yes on the national level there is the presidential hackathon in which the president gives five trophy every year to five teams and this year the five teams the five data collaboratives only one is from the central government everything else is from the social sector and from the local groups this is great because it elevates the status of the regional social innovators they can start with only working in a very small area and there is actually a social innovation from Japan I think it's called Maimitsu that makes people refill their bottles instead of buying new plastic bottles and the Maimitsu team did a map so people can see where are the refill stations around them and so a Taiwan team did something very similar called Fengcha or serving tea but the difference is that they connect them not only to the water refuel stations but also to the regional place making shops as well as the drink shops that actually provides the social entrepreneurs products to for example those out of spec agricultural products and make it into jam and and then make the jam into drinks and things like that so people understand the social purpose of those place making shops in addition to getting their bottles refueled and their habits changed and so almost immediately after receiving the presidential heckles on trophy which was a micro projector if you turn it on the projector president Tsai promising you whatever you did in the past three months will become public policy in the next 12 months so the people install the app increase tenfold and many many more people start to think in different ways when it comes to using water bottles and habit changing and this is a small example but it shows that just having a executive branch power as a commitment pre-commitment to a heckles on can really change the follow-up because without this commitment maybe the environmental protection administration will not follow up to such a high degree but because everybody know that the president has promised publicly to make it happen in the next year in a nationwide rollout everybody in each precinct and district feels strongly about joining this network yeah there is a strong interest especially in places where it's harder to get the humans staff required for like spraying pesticide and so on to switch those work to drones and I understand that in the Japan agriculture cooperative Makubetsu and Hokkaido Obihiro agriculture high school and also the technical high school have also worked on education classes that involves the drones to spray pesticides and was a very large like 16 liter tank and in Taiwan we made sure that when we deploy 5G technology which will bring such drones into everyday use not just experimental use we start in the places where the like the fisheries are and where the farmers are in the more rural places because in the larger municipalities we already have a backbone of high fiber optics and Wi-Fi and the Wi-Fi is very dense so the case for 5G is less pronounced but in those more rural places because it's harder to get fiber optics everywhere you farm right 5G makes a lot more sense and so when designing our auctioning for 5G spectrum we make sure the 5 telecom have to pay a lot of extra money which then we reinvest starting this year back to the more rural places to reward the local cooperatives and social entrepreneurs to work with the telecoms on what we call the sandbox for 5G deployment and these include of course self-driving vehicles but also tele health and teleeducation as well yeah just in late September in 19th of September I had a call with the JCI Japan the Okinawa IT Forum for the junior Chamber International I think and there's a lot of ideas being brainstormed around this kind of collaboration we talked about how when I last visited Okinawa there was a typhoon and so for a day I was essentially quarantined in the hotel but I could still see the very beautiful ocean and there's a really good internet connectivity so we brainstormed that even if we had to endure 14 days of quarantine we went flying to Okinawa how to make this 14 days relevant as a tourism kind of experience working with the quarantine hotels that's something the Taiwanese hotels do and they offer a kind of authentic experience of night market and so on even though you're high in a quarantine hotel they can still offer you experience like you're a tourist and so there's a lot of things that broadband and technologies can help to make tourism still relevant and after COVID after we get the vaccines like people-to-people relationship stronger instead of making it like more distance and remote during the COVID days so I still remember fondly of the JCI Japan Okinawa conversation yes and also it's very practical because the sandbox regulations in Taiwan also mandates that there must be a societal problem to solve a societal challenge to be met when bringing those sandbox cases and as I mentioned 5G in municipal areas are good to have but in the rural areas they have many use cases that are must have and so in those must have scenarios there's easier argument for the investors to bring their resources to better the place instead of just being one of the many choices alongside fiber optics and other connectivity methods and so it's both out of a kind of equality based worldview when it comes to especially health education and communication but it's also based on a very practical view of a higher social return of investment in the longer run is also a better return of investment yeah I think it's not necessarily a very high return of investment but it could be a lot of inclusion ideas that came to foster the innovation for the company itself especially if it's a small or medium enterprise most of the innovation happens in the ecosystem outside of the R&D department of that small and media enterprise anyway and so this is the core argument of the open source movement by having access and contributing to an open innovation ecosystem you don't earn money but you reduce cost you essentially crowdsource your R&D and to reduce the cost on betting on the infrastructure investments that could be very costly and very high-risk for example experimenting with distributed ledger technology you can try 10 different DOTs and they don't work as well as the original solutions but maybe you end up with the one DOT that works for a very specific use case and that actually provides business value but if you have to do all the R&D yourself then any SME even the medium size or even larger enterprises cannot afford to run so many experiments in the same time but by teaming up with open innovation communities such as the Ethereum community or the hyper ledger community and so on essentially you only benefit from the cases where it makes business sense to you but you also empower your own staff to understand the latest and the greatest in open innovation so that when they see a new challenge coming they will not say oh these are not invented here they will say oh I know this maintainer and I would just give them a poor request or give them a call and then we'll work on this emerging technology all together so the case is not on an immediate ROI case this is not an investment case this is a business development and a HR case yeah Trent Micro is a really good example because they have a few staff members that just voluntarily in their spare time work with the Gov Zero project called Covax that's crowdsourced the end-to-end encrypted channel is called line it's also used in Japan it's actually also a social contribution because of the earthquake right so on the line system there's many people sharing misinformation and that's where most of those disinformation came from they basically look at what misinformation gets trending and start designing intentional disruptive campaigns out of it so the Trent Micro after taking a look at the Covax project where people can crowdsource the fact-checking around the trending reported spam and other misinformation on social media they roll out their own version of Dr. Missage which has a mascot it's a very cute dog maybe not as cute as Hatsune Miku but still very cute and so people just share it and invited the Dr. Missage dog bot to their chat room so any time they share a misinformation the dog will actually sniff it and then respond with clarification sometimes very funny clarifications immediately and so that makes the disinformation campaign much harder to spread when people are vaccinated with a cute dog it's called a humor over rumor and so even for small and medium enterprises owners such open civic tech communities are still there right so you can have for example when I worked with the social text company they have their own open like I think it's modeled after the food camp but they call it the bar camp so because bar after food right so the bar camp is a kind of friendly hackathon where people are invited to use the social text campus for open innovation and also we have what we call a weeky Wednesday where we can take like 20% time off and work on such social innovation projects and on the Wednesday there's a demo to show the company what social innovations we have produced with the community and I think it's exactly because of that system Trent micro promoted the doctor message from being a side project into being a institutionalized section within their company so that's what I mean by open innovation yes I think it's a interesting topic to talk about inclusion when you come from an indigenous viewpoint the ideas are very different from a like civic participation because the exclusion was not because of your age like you're too young to vote people understand okay one day I'll be old enough to vote and it's not about this enfranchising like because you're a woman you're not allowed to vote well now we know now that with the stuff for gates working and also intersectionality in mind the voting is the basic power that the women can express themselves and so on so these are like natural progressions and although different jurisdictions in Asia have different timescales we more or less agree that we should be more inclusive when it comes to public participation but that's because each one of us have been a teenager and half of us went through the female puberty me included and so there's a large amount of people but for for I knew or from the moedict viewpoint Amis and other indigenous languages it's not like that right if it goes to a referendum people who have even heard of their cases is strictly in the minority so the usual direct participation of referendum or representatives in a parliament and so on are not guaranteed that with time it will get better in fact it may get worse because less and less people remember the culture and there's also the worry of appropriation like if people see this as mostly a tourism thing or as a kind of cultural diplomacy thing then it actually deprived the indigenous people of their own agency of their own willingness to to act and so I think this is a complex topic that cannot be tackled in five minutes but I would just very quickly say that it makes sense to start from that point of view from indigenous point of view and code not for I knew but with I knew and the code for mentality works differently and must adjust when you're working with indigenous people it's not for them it's with them and even after them that's the right attitude yeah sometimes it's a matter of language in Taiwan we call programming software design so I'm a software designer we don't say that we're software engineers and it's just a simple word change and admittedly in programming there's the part of us that talk to other people which is more like design and there's the part of our way that talks to computers which is more than just writing code is also engineering the architecture but by emphasizing that it's about program design that's to say working with people not only we have gender balance in the people who choose software design as their career but it also enables us talk to other designers like interaction designers service designers and so on and which are all very important to the practice of designing software and with the AI assisted intelligence programming I think the code generation part the actual writing code part is more and more automated nowadays GPT-3 you can just tell it the specification the user story and say here are the react code to make this and then GPT-3 will actually just write some react code for you so it's very apparent to me that's the people to people skills the autonomy to find and define these issues by yourself and also listening to others to interact and then finally to find those common values out of the different positions these are a designer and a facilitator skill and if we see software programmers as more designers than engineers then I think that we enable and prepare us for such a future yeah I think just like we are not expecting all the children to become coders but it's important to understand computational thinking right the abstractions that we use to simplify a very difficult situation or a difficult challenge into manageable ideas so is design thinking important even if not all children end up becoming designers and design thinking which is a ideal idea is basically saying if people have variously different positions we can always discover their feelings and then define a common feeling a common value upon which we can then innovate and develop and then deliver something of value to the people and so this double diamond shape of course it can go on and on if you are an open innovation the delivery is just the beginning of another iteration but the idea that people have common values and here is a set of thinking mechanism that people can arrive to common value despite their differences this is very important even if you're not a professional designer so I think computational thinking and design thinking these are just like universal vocabulary that we can use more in our day-to-day social innovation and that will empower people even with zero coding experiences to contribute more of their time in a way that basically lifts up everybody's perspective because with each contributor you see a new perspective on the project that we're working on together it's much more inclusive this way yeah when I first participated in internet governance projects I have my email address that's what people understand that they can communicate with me most people I communicate with has no idea I'm just 15 years old or 16 years old so the internet doesn't know your your age right and so even if I'm a teenager right now I think I can still work well as a ministry in the cabinet and also maybe as a member of the open government partnership national action plan council which just formed and this is not a hypothetical answer because we do have a teenager in our open government partnership council and she was brought into the council because she initiated a very famous initiative about three years ago when she was just 16 years old and asking for the gradual banning of the plastic straw for bubble tea and in Taiwan because it causes a lot of damage to the sea right to the ocean and also the carbon footprint and it was very successful and so basically we don't know when the petition came whether this pseudonym I think her pseudonym was I love elephants and elephants love me so I don't know the age of this initiative's proposal and but they very successfully mobilized more than 5,000 people and we brainstormed the ways that the single-use utensils makers can make the straws in a way that are maybe from organic straws maybe from plastic maybe redesigned so you don't have to have used a straw and so on in a way that is truly co-creative and her contribution was a lot to say to the popularity of the platform the joint platform and so now she of course is our national action plan board council member but she's still a teenager 19 years old at the moment her name is Wang Xuanru and so I use this example by saying I don't really see necessarily a difference between teenagers and adults and elderly people when it comes to social innovation each of us have something to contribute and as I mentioned often I quote Lena Cohen that there is a crack in everything and that's how the light gets in people who have less preconceptions see the crack not as part of the building but as something that the light can get in and of course a fresh perspective always works well but you don't have to be a teenager to have a fresh perspective just step outside of your comfort zone and then work with people who you don't know well and then very quickly they will see the crack in you and you will see the crack in them and together the light will come in and that's my message now I actually have to go I have another meeting on the APR IGF like in 13 second minutes thank you thank you yeah me too live long and prosper yeah okay bye yes see you bye


و هناك in any thing there are a lot of talk of what is called identity politics going on و امريكا اه If America is a place whose identity就劫 roles not only as a country اي دمانكوسي اي place where people were expected to live free but a country that defined itself on the basis of racial discrimination of racial differentiation but we have today even more complicated was more complicated than even racial identity politics but gender identity politics exist as well to the extent that there are those who believe that you can just simply change your sex by thinking it that if you wake up this morning and you are biologically a man and you think that you're a woman then that's what you are today a vice versa but at any rate don't point being that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ he came into the world he came into Mecca and Arabia and revolutionized their sense of identity and one of the things that Islam is known for is for what is sometimes called its radical monotheism it's our heed it's our heed Islam is not only opposed to the worship of physical idols but Islam is concerned with anything that the human being will attach it in her heart to which is other than the one who deserves the attachment of their hearts the creator of all so this is why the Quran talks about how an individual can take their awa as their ila their lusts or their will as their guide because the Islamic monotheism is radical it is something revolutionary something that when it enters into any given society if it comes in this pure fashion it revolutionizes society it changes people it changes society it makes us not only look to ourselves and become selfish because Islam is not a selfish religion rather Islam is concerned about everybody that is about honoring God but also aren't honoring the neighbors that in the Quran when Allah speaks about this umla and what makes it the best of umla the best of communities he mentions that that that you enjoy what is good you forbid what is wrong and you believe in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala but that's what makes you the best of umla because you begin with enjoying good if you're forbidding wrong but what is this good what is that who defines what that is the Muslim believes that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala defines the good and he defines the good that which is bad Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala determines that even if we may we ourselves may be able to perceive the general harm that something may bring to us or the general good or benefit that something may come to us if we indulge in it just because we perceive that doesn't make the actual thing good or evil because sometimes there are some things that are good in the beginning but in long term they're bad or they're bad in the beginning but in the long term they're good there's hardship that comes from not eating and drinking during the daytime but Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala didn't consider that to be an evil if anything considered it to be a good we fast among the Ramadan but Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is giving us the criteria on the first of Mecca we had a conquest of Mecca the Prophet ﷺ we stood up and gave a speech and this is what he said oh people, oh men Allah has rid you of the vain glory of the pre-Islamic days and your magnification or their magnification of their fathers men are of two types people are of two types one type of person is one who is righteous upright and has value in the sight of God and the other is a wicked person who is wretched who is insignificant in God's sight all of you or each of you is from Adam and Allah created Adam from dirt now begin this way of course because I'm leaving it up to something and the most important question I think that I wanted to was the question of the value of being a Muslim what value does being a Muslim have in our time when we think about the ideas of identity what sort of identity do you have what is the most important ask of your identity what is the value of being a Muslim is a Muslim anything that a person who calls him or himself a Muslim says it is and we say no Islam is not a culture Islam is not a race Islam is a religion and you can't just decide what Islam is or any given day Islam is what it is I wanted to tell a story but after reciting a verse from Surah Al-A'ram Allah SWT says he said he said recite to them the story or the news of the one we gave our signs to and then he was stripped of it and then Satan was given power over him and later he was among the Muslim those who are Muslim well I'll share now if we had willed we would have lifted him up with them meaning these signs and I'll come back to talk about what this is a reference to ولكنه أفضل واتبع حواه however he cleaned to the earth and followed his desire and his will فمثاله يلهف أو تفرقه يلهف أن تفرقه if you place something on his back to carry it'll just put its tongue out in a patent and if you leave it or you put anything on his back it'll put his tongue out in a patent ذلكة المثاله ومثالهم قوم الأدينة شكرا لك that is the similarity of those who rely those who don't believe فقصص وقصصا لعلهم يتفكرون. لذلك الله يقول. لذلك يخبرون السؤال. لذلك يتفكرون. لذلك يتفكرون. المفصلين يقول. يخبرون بعض الأشياء. أشياء about this verse in terms of who is it is a reference to. Who is this person that Allah gave his signs and he was stripped of them. Who is this person? The majority of them say that this particular person was a man from the children of Israel by the name of بالعام ابن بعغورة. بالعام ابن بعغورة. According to one story بالعام ابن بعغورة was a follow of Musa A.S. And Allah had given him knowledge of the greatest name. Now the greatest name was a name specific and hidden from most people that for those who discover what that is of Allah's then if they call on Allah with that name Allah will give them whatever they want and anytime that they want. You will be that you will be an individual whose prayers are always answered immediately. And بالعام ابن بعغورة was a wali in that sense. That he was saintly in that sense because he was from the family of Mood A.S. And so Musa A.S. according to this first story he sends بالعام to the king of Median calling him inviting him to the way of Allah but the king seduced by بالعام by offering him lands and بالعام accepted and he left the dean of Musa into the dean of the king that's one version of the account of بالعام. The other more popular account of بالعام is that the بالعام was from the people of Areeha of Jericho and we know this story in the Quran when Allah spent time inside it after Musa A.S. had brought the children out of Batnich and Allah had asked them to go into a town and to fight the people and Allah سبحانه وتعالى will give them inheritance of that land and they refuse to say No They are from Jehbatin and they are from Jehbatin that there are some these massive these giant these people there right and so because of Allah He punished them to wander in the desert for 40 years but I was amongst these people but He was a believer in spite of that from the people of the book and so Musa A.S. according to one one version and another version Nusha Ibn Nuh who actually the prophet who came after Musa A.S. had come to to liberate or to gain to acquire what Allah سبحانه وتعالى had promised the chosen of this idea naturally the people of of Ar-iha-Jaraco seeing these massive numbers of people coming they're going to get ready to fight because this is the type of world that they existed back then that if you didn't know these people they didn't have treaties and people would just get gotten that was the way that it worked but at any rate they're on their way the people see and hear that Musa A.S. is coming and so they go in appeal to Ba'a knowing that He was in an individual when He asked Allah He talked to Allah for something that Allah gives it to Him and they asked Ba'a prayed against Moses prayed against Musa A.S. asked Allah to destroy Him and destroy the army Ba'a of course was uneasy about this he said how could I do this this is God's messenger coming and I can't pray against God's messenger so He He turned to Allah according to what am I expecting in the story He makes a du'a and expects a response and He receives a response and the responses that don't fight against Musa A.S. the people they are uneasy He tells the people no I can't do anything here the people they insist and insist and they offer him gift after gift after gift and so His wife suggests to him to ask Allah again to see what He says so He again He turns and asks Allah about what He should do this time He doesn't receive a response and once He tells those around Him about it they say well this has to be a sign that if Allah didn't tell you know that what's being is okay right so but I am He goes out to the battlefield and He starts to pray against Musa A.S. and His people but Allah does not allow for His tongue to speak the words or the prayers of the prayers that would be against Musa A.S. but actually every time we try to make a prayer against Musa the prayer was made against His own people and when He tried to pray for His people they would be in the favor of the people of Musa A.S. and as a result of this and because of His cleaning to the earth and His His heart being attached to wealth Allah سبحانه وتعالى قرار this this sign his sign from knowledge of the greatest name and his his sense of or sort of the status of of same-hood now I mention all of this because I think one of the lessons we should learn from the story is that that Allah سبحانه وتعالى that He will test all of us to see where our hearts are as He is now with many of the believers that He is testing us and we continue to test this and just because we see ourselves as Muslims we may not actually be as committed to this book as we should be there was a time there have been times from ancient times there have been people who would say that okay but prayer is enough that's all we need it might be a shaffer it might be some so people say all we need is the Quran we don't need the Hadith but I'm afraid that we're living in a time now where many Muslims they added to that you know we don't need the Quran anymore we don't even need the Quran right or anything in the Quran that's problematic problematic then let's be at the toss inside find a way to make some claim about it or at least we just cherry pick present the books I'm fine with these verses and with those other verses I'm fine with the Prophet he predicted this this is similar to what we find amongst the Christians amongst the Jews the attitude with their own books you know and the Prophet said لتتبيعون سنة لما كان قبلكم حضر القدوة حتى لدخل لدخل طموه that you will indeed follow the ways of those who came before you exactly identical to them up to the point that if one of them were to go into a school that you would follow you will follow them in tune كُنَّا مَنْ هُنْ يَعَرَسُمُ اللَّهِ أَلْ يَهُونْ بَنَّا سَعَرًا they said who are these people mentioned by Allah the Jews and the Christians call us a man he said who else am I talking about but they talked about this and sort of attitude that Muslims have with the Book of Allah how much do we even read the Book of Allah سبحانه و بِالسعاره do you even know was there but what we have today what I've noticed I feel it's become very dangerous is that many Muslims seem to feel that I'm just simply a Muslim if I say I am or I can define as found and Muslims anyway that I want to and and as long as I call myself a Muslim then I should be okay so instead of me rejecting the Quran outright and openly what I do is I try to redefine what a Muslim is when I actually set the chain to definition of a Muslim seeking that and doing so that Allah سبحانه و تعالى is not going to hold me accountable for rejecting His Book for rejecting His Book that we have we live in a situation or a time when you have Muslims making certain things lawful on lawful and vice versa you find many Muslims who are pro-LGBTQ but they're anti-Polition and you may have an issue with Polition but it's really interesting in how something was clearly Quran and the Quran Muslims themselves are advocating for it and they're against the opposite which Allah سبحانه و تعالى clearly allows under the right conditions that we find people saying they don't want to feel different between a man and woman they say Allah سبحانه و تعالى what can you say the males are like the females and we're not going to talk about issues of superiority but there's a difference between the two you can't be a woman just because you think you are you have to actually be one of vice versa you can't just if Allah that He brought you into this world and you have certain organs on your body that you belong to that particular sex you can't choose whatever you want but there are many Muslims who are Christian forward with these ideas well even the idea that really there's no difference between Muslims and non-Muslims anyway we're all human beings which is true of course we all share our humanity but you're not going to tell me that if you place an atheist beside a believer and even if you say both of them they say the atheist person is a moral person and the believer is a moral person do you think that Allah is there's no difference between those two Allah He loves Eman He hates Khufa He loves Eman so don't tell me there's no difference between a believer and an unbeliever of a man kind of of a man kind of a facifal is the believer like the the transgressor right you are not equal that's what Quran teaches us أفضل على مسلمين كمجرمين ما لكم will you make the Muslims like the criminals what's wrong with you how do you judge questions as in the Quran about that and again this is not to say that we should have an arrogant attitude to look down upon people or that we call on our Muslims maybe we've just said in the criminals and people are criminals against God they commit crimes against God but not believing in God right that is a crime right but but there is a difference Allah is talking about He loves Eman Eman is part of our identity we are Muslims we are believers right and it should mean something to us that there is a Muslim way to look at things but we won't know that if we don't read the book and then even if we read the book it won't mean anything if we don't believe in the book if we don't believe that this when we reveal about Allah سبحانه وتعالى then what really is the point you're not you can't trick God you can't trick without God but you're simply trying to redefine Muslim right redefine Muslim you can't you're not going to trick God Allah سبحانه وتعالى has his definition of Muslim he has his definition of movement he has his definition of Omasin you can't trick God by creating a new definition to make life easy for yourself somehow because you have some type of attachment to this world so we asked the Boston panel to Adam to help us to live in this world from from faith and to lead this world from faith when we have some we welcome that