Feel free to keep chewing, but we appreciate it if you would suspend the conversation until after we're done. I'm Matthew Goodman, as I guess you already know, since I've been introduced, the Simon Chair here at CSAS. So I know many U.S. government counterparts in other countries, especially in Asia, have a lot of frustrations about the U.S. government. One of them is that officials are constantly turning over, so they're negotiating with somebody and the person disappears and goes off to another job or lands at a think tank or something, and some new person comes in and they have to break them in and explain everything to them again. What our Asian friends don't understand is that actually we have a few secret weapons in the U.S. government, and that's people who have been around so long that they have heard all the arguments, they know what all the tricks are, they know where all the bodies are buried, and we are very fortunate to have one of those secret weapons with us today. I am using this form of introduction because I really don't think Wendy needs other forms of introduction. Formally, she's acting deputy USTR, but as most of you know, I'm sure most of you have worked with her over the years, she's been doing this stuff, trade negotiations for over 25 years, focused on a lot of different issues, but in particular she was the chief negotiator for the Korea U.S. FTA, the KORUS FTA, and is now, among other things, driving the TPP negotiations with Japan, and so we're very fortunate to have her here literally while negotiations are still going on to join us, so please join me in welcoming Wendy to the podium. She's going to give brief remarks and then take a few questions, so please join me in welcoming Wendy. Well, thanks a lot, Matt. It's great to be back here at CSIS with some old friends, many of you in the audience. It's good to see Mike Green again and my old friend Ishii Gei from now president of JETRO, but we've worked together closely through the years. I will say when I accepted this speaking engagement, I did not know I'd be negotiating with the Japanese. This is my lunch break, so be nice to me. But I thought it was important to live up to my agreement to come here and it's really my pleasure to be able to talk to you today about the TPP and Asia Pacific Economic Integration. I think I spoke at this conference last year and when I look back over the year and even when I look back over the past month, there's so much activity underway in the region with respect to economic integration. Just over the past month, we've seen a flurry of activity. I was at the recent APEC trade minister's meeting in Qingdao. We had a TPP check-in meeting in Singapore, which was preceded by a chief negotiator's meeting in Vietnam. We had a Japanese agriculture team in about a week ago. The auto team from Japan is in this week. Just last Friday, in meetings with my Chinese counterpart, we were able to have a discussion and share information on the regional negotiations we're both involved in. All of this comes following the president's successful trip to Asia, where TPP was a very important part of his agenda, not only in Japan, but also in Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines. What I mentioned now are just the meetings in which the U.S. is involved, because over the same time period, we've witnessed a number of events, developments, negotiating sessions between our negotiating partners, including China and Korea. Just held another negotiating round. Japan is bilaterally now negotiating market access with many other TPP countries, and there'll be an upcoming round of RCEP in the next couple of weeks. And what all of this suggests is that it's quite an active time in the region on the economic front, with many different groupings of negotiations taking place. I know you've had a long morning and a lot of discussion about RCEP, TPP, and APEC, and I'd like today is just to provide some observations on all of these. And one of the points I just want to make, and I really feel strongly about this, is that we're really seeing an increasing attraction and appetite in the region for high standard trade agreements. If you look back where we were 15 years ago, there were only a handful of major trade agreements between APEC economies, and most of them just dealt with tariffs. And since then, we've seen, depending how you count, between 50 and 100, and maybe even over 100 agreements in the region, and many of them now are dealing with issues that go way beyond tariffs, including services, investment, and then when we get to TPP, a lot of these 21st century issues, which we're really dealing with for the first time in a binding trade negotiations. If you look at the region now, even just look at China, which a decade or so ago, its agreements were largely driven by foreign policy objectives with trade liberalization focused on goods, and then in 2008, in its FTAs with New Zealand and Singapore, China brought in the scope of its FTAs to go beyond tariffs and liberalize in areas such as services. And when I talk to my counterparts from Korea and Australia who are negotiating with China as we speak, they tell me that they're looking to also include other what we call rules issues in these negotiations going beyond tariffs. And we're seeing a similar developments on the Pacific coast of Latin America, where Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico formed the Pacific Alliance in 2012 to liberalize trade and investment among themselves and to integrate with the Asia Pacific. The United States is an observer to the Pacific Alliance, and we will attend an observer's plenary at next week's leaders meeting in Mexico. I understand this morning there's a lot of discussion comparing RCEP with TPP and talking about whether there can be convergence between the two, or which is the pathway towards an FTA. So let me just offer a few thoughts here. When you look at TPP and RCEP, I think it's safe to say, and I'm not going out in a limb and saying, that they're quite different in their levels of ambition, their scope, and in their negotiating stage. Observers expect that the level of market access and tariff liberalization in RCEP will be similar to the agreements that ASEAN members already have in place, although we understand the modalities, the procedures for the tariff negotiations are still under discussion. And we also understand that in terms of rules, that the scope of issues that RCEP will address will be considerably more limited than TPP. Both TPP and RCEP face the similar challenge of weaving together an agreement that includes many different economies with different levels of development in different political systems. For RCEP, perhaps this challenge is even greater, but it's a challenge that both negotiations are facing. So it's not surprising that most observers see RCEP's declared deadline of 2015 for conclusion of this negotiation as more of an aspirational goal rather than a realistic deadline. But notwithstanding these differences, allow me to be clear that we don't see TPP and RCEP as being mutually exclusive. In fact, the way we count, there are seven countries that belong to both negotiations. And in fact, participation in the RCEP negotiations, just like participation in our initiative with the ASEAN countries called E3, could help some economies really prepare themselves for eventually joining higher standard initiatives like TPP. I understand maybe it was Jeff Schott this morning called RCEP, if you didn't say that someone here did, they called RCEP maybe the prep school for TPP. But we believe that high standards, comprehensive coverage, and high ambition matter. And this isn't just for the United States and our objectives, but really for the interest of all the countries who are parties to these agreements and the region as a whole. And we believe the countries are increasingly turning to high standard agreements for four reasons. First, high standard agreements generate greater economic benefits. In a recent paper published last month by Peter Petrie, Michael Plummer, and Fanger, they modeled the expected global benefits from different pathways to a free trade area of the Asia Pacific, and their analysis showed that expected income gains would vary depending on whether TPP or RCEP standards were used. And they estimated that global benefits for an FTAF based on the TPP template would be about $2.4 trillion, much higher than that for one with lower standards. Second, higher standard agreements drive domestic reforms that boost productivity and competitiveness, which often cannot be accomplished by governments on their own without an outside force to make such reforms happen. In Latin America, the gap in recent economic performance between the open, liberalizing members of the Pacific Alliance and the other more closed economic economies of the Mercasur trade blocs is remarkable. New Zealand's trade minister, Tim Grocer, said in a recent speech that New Zealand's had a real change of heart starting the 1980s from a defensive posture in trade negotiations to embracing liberalization, and he explained how this transformation made a huge difference for the New Zealand economy. And I recall before we launched the free trade negotiations with Korea that then trade minister Kim made a real point of Korea being interested in an FTA with the U.S. to really develop a first class services industry in Korea, and the only way to do this was to open their services sector to competition from the United States. The third reason for embracing ever higher standards is the desire for agreements to reflect the realities that businesses face in a 21st century value chains. This means not only pursuing regional rather than bilateral agreements, but also addressing such issues as regulatory practices, supply chain connectivity, e-commerce, and fair competition. The economists I cited earlier see this as an important reason for the much larger economic benefits of a higher standard free trade agreement of the Asia Pacific. And fourth, for the United States, we also see the pursuit of higher standards in areas such as labor and the environment as a reflection of our values, which are increasingly shared by many in the region. Let me turn now to the valuable contribution that APEC has and continues to make in promoting regional economic integration. At the recent trade minister's meeting in Qingdao, the FTAF and regional economic integration was a lively topic of discussion as the host put forward a number of ideas on how and over what timeframe an FTAF could be achieved. The United States was an early supporter of FTAF when APEC endorsed the idea as a long-term prospect in 2006. And since 2006, APEC has undertaken a lot of important work in promoting regional economic integration and in laying important groundwork for an eventual free trade area of the Asia Pacific. In 2010, when Japan hosted APEC, the APEC leaders outlined their vision for pathways to an FTAF, and they made clear at that time that APEC itself would not be the negotiating forum, but rather they pointed to other negotiations underway in the region, such as TPP and ASEAN plus three and ASEAN plus six, which now is RSAP. And at last month's trade minister's meeting in Qingdao, the APEC economies reached a consensus that APEC would focus on how it could contribute to an FTAF consistent with its role, recognizing that negotiating pathways towards an FTAF are taking place outside of APEC. And APEC's work in this area will include stepped up information sharing, capacity building, further analytical work, and working on what we call the next generation trade issues. And what the ministers discussed, but they did not agree upon during that meeting, was setting a deadline for the realization of an FTAF, nor launching a feasibility study for an FTAF, which is a tool routinely used in the region to prepare for launching free trade agreements. Given that there are promising regional initiatives like TPP and RSAP underway in the region, the ministers did not consider either idea to be appropriate. Now, let me turn quickly to the issue of the TPP negotiations and with a focus on the U.S. and Japan partnership in the TPP negotiations. Japan joined TPP less than one year ago, and their participation has added considerably to the economic heft of the TPP. We, the United States, we do not have an FTA with Japan, and TPP really gives us the best shot in a very long time to address long-standing barriers to trade in Japan, but also allows us to partner with Japan as we shape rules for the region for the decades ahead. But TPP potentially has even greater significance for Japan, and last March when the prime minister spoke eloquently and made the case for why Japan should join TPP, he said that Japan could not afford to remain inward looking while other countries were opening up their economies, and he pointed to free trade agreements being launched around the world in the region and expressed his interest in Japan joining the fray. He concluded by saying Japan has to be at the heart of the Asia-Pacific century, and now is our last chance, losing this opportunity would simply leave Japan out from rulemaking in the world. In addition to increasing the economic weight of TPP, Japan's joining has also increased the complexity and difficulty of our negotiations, and it's interesting because on one hand we've cooperated very closely with Japan to find pragmatic solutions on what we call the rules issues in TPP, so ranging from issues of state-owned enterprises to IPR to investment to services, we've been working really closely with Japan in leading other TPP countries to really lift the standards and reach agreements in these areas. But at the same time, we are also grappling with Japan as we negotiate two very challenging issues. They both begin with the letter A, one is agriculture and one is autos. We are dealing with the autos issues and other non-tariff barriers in separate parallel negotiations to the TPP, which we agreed to launch once the United States supported Japan's participation in the TPP, and we are holding these autotalks this week and are making some progress, but we still have a lot of work to do. As for agriculture, we knew from the start that this would be a challenging area for negotiation with Japan, but we were also really encouraged because Japan and joining TPP recognized that it needed to move on agriculture. It had a really intense domestic debate on agriculture, on agricultural reform, which is continuing today. We note that Japan's free trade agreements to date have largely excluded a range of sensitive agricultural products, and we are aware of the diet resolution, which is urging the Prime Minister's negotiating team not to achieve tear-off elimination in these so-called five-product areas, which when we count them, it sure sounds like six. Achieving meaningful market access in Japan's agricultural market is critical, consistent with the high standard and comprehensive TPP outcome that each country has agreed to pursue. We were working on agriculture hard with Japan for a while, but during the President's trip to Tokyo, we were able to really enter a new stage in our negotiations when we achieved a path forward on both on autos and agriculture. We made important progress during the visit. On agriculture, we started negotiating on what we call a line-by-line basis for those of you who are not familiar with tear-off schedules. That's what tear-off negotiations are about. And on autos, we moved, and continuing through this week, we're starting to discuss some of the more difficult negotiations in the negotiations, including standards, dispute settlement, and financial incentives. And what we achieved with Japan during that week in Tokyo and thereafter, it not only has propelled the U.S.-Japan bilateral negotiations with respect to TPP, but it also has provided important momentum for the overall TPP negotiations. And this is because a lot of the TPP countries were not negotiating market access with Japan, and they were kind of sitting back to see if the U.S. and Japan could make progress. And as a result, they were a bit reluctant to move in some of the outstanding and difficult rules areas. And as a result of our ability to achieve a path forward with Japan in Tokyo, Japan now is engaging in market access negotiations with other countries. And as this is happening, these countries now can see an outcome possible on market access with Japan and others, which is leading them now to reassess and try to find landing zones in the outstanding and difficult rules issues that remain. This forward momentum was apparent in what we call our check-in meeting in Singapore when the TPP ministers met following the APEC meeting. And since that time, we are continuing discussions at all levels with our negotiators and ministers level and in between. And our chief negotiators are to meet again in July. We are continuing to make progress. We are resolving issues. And we are getting closer to concluding an ambitious TPP agreement that will open markets, boost economic growth, boost exports, and create jobs. And as we are working to wrap up these negotiations with the current 12 partners, others in the region are expressing interest in joining. We've always conceived TPP as an open agreement, which countries could join over time. Korea lasts Thanksgiving. And I always remember, because I got the call during the Thanksgiving meal, that they were interested perhaps in joining TPP. We are in the process of our bilateral TPP consultations with Korea as other countries, other TPP countries are as well. Korea, with the chorus agreement, a very high standard agreement, in that regard, we're focusing on areas that are chorus plus with Korea that they need to focus on to make sure that they will be able to live up to those high standards. And we also have a number of bilateral issues that we also need to work through with Korea. And Korea also needs to formally make its own decision that it wants to join TPP. And a number of other economies have also at various times this past year expressed interest in TPP, including the Philippines, and this was discussed during the recent visit by the President there, and others as well. And with a number of these countries and economies, we are sharing information, so when they are ready to officially put their hands up, at least they are up to date with what's going on in these talks. It's also interesting how far, and I'm almost done here, how far China has come from its early suspicions that TPP was somehow designed to contain China. China is clearly studying TPP intently. It is expressing an interest in the negotiations, and I think this can be taken as a sign that it is rethinking its FTA strategy and considering how participation in trade agreements might yet again spur domestic reforms as it did when China joined the WTO. We are regularly updating China on TPP, and China is updating us on their negotiations, and as I mentioned at the outset, I led such a discussion just last Friday, so there is a very healthy dialogue going on between the United States and China on these issues. Of course, there are still many questions about China's readiness to take on the obligations of a high standard comprehensive agreement like TPP, but there are signs that China may be accelerating its progression towards pursuing higher standard agreements, and we'll be looking closely to see how their negotiations go with Korea and Australia this year, as well as the progress we make in our bit negotiations where China has agreed for the first time to negotiate a negative list. So let me conclude and just say the TPP high standard model is clearly gaining momentum and attention in the Asia Pacific as a force for regional economic integration. The jury is still out on exactly what shaped the path to an FTAF will eventually take, but our view in the United States is that TPP is the most promising prospect for an FTAF because it offers the benefits of being a high standard agreement that addresses the emerging trade and investment issues of the 21st century. It is quite far along in the negotiating process, and finally, it's just attracting a lot of interest among other economies and countries in the region beyond the 12 members. Thank you very much. Wendy's agreed to take questions. I'll come and join her. Wendy's agreed to take a few questions. There are microphones. Please wait for the microphone and please identify yourself and ask a question, Professor Uradda. Wonderful talk. I have a question which you didn't touch upon. That is a TTIP, U-S-E-U. I think rulemaking is one issue or TTIP, and of course TPP rulemaking is a big issue too. How does the U.S. look at these two frameworks from the point of view of rulemaking? You have to make rules consistent to each other, in my view. So again, what is your view on these two frameworks? Well, thank you very much, Uradda-san. It's interesting with the TPP negotiations underway and the TTIP negotiations underway, the activity on our trade agenda between these two negotiations and what we're doing in the WTO is quite exciting. And let me just say personally, for me, it's a really exciting time to be working on trade in the United States and at USTR. Both negotiating teams for TTIP and TPP are coordinating very closely, and there will be similarities between rules issues that we're seeking in TTIP and TPP. But there will be some differences as well in terms of which issues we'll be emphasizing, and a lot of that has to do with the types of barriers we face in the countries we're negotiating with and how extensive and how close our ties are with those trading partners. But whatever we negotiate will be consistent between the two, and we will need to carefully monitor both of those negotiations, but other negotiations we're involved in to make sure that we are concluding the agreements that really bring home the best deal for the United States and for the region, for the global trading system. Yes, sir. Ken Wan from Taiwan OCAC. What's the United States producing about Taiwan joining TPP? Well, as I mentioned in my remarks that we view TPP as an open platform open to the economies and countries in the Asia Pacific region who are able to demonstrate that they can live up to the high standards of the TPP and where we can work through bilateral issues of concern. To make it clear, the United States is not the one that makes the decision on who joins TPP. That's a consensus decision taken by the existing TPP members. Any new candidate at this point would need to be agreed on by the existing 12 TPP members. Okay. Ma'am, I'm André Souvezio and I'm the Chief Representative in Vietnam for a company in Detroit, the Interstate Traveller Company. Now, my question is this, you've just made an excellent place and the representative this morning, wonderful case for TPP, but my question is this, what are the best arguments to use against generally people in the United States who are generally supportive of President Obama except on TPP? And the arguments they use are basically, well, it's bad for the American worker and they make invidious comparisons of what Vietnamese make on salaries working. In short, it's bad for the working American. I was, the only arguments I could make in Hanoi when I was in a meeting with some Americans of this who believed against it and the Vietnamese support it strongly, the only arguments I could make were the geopolitical arguments, we need it for so many reasons that you've cited in others. But what are the good domestic arguments the best? Well, I could give a separate speech on that. Let me just try and be somewhat concise. Globalization and trade is taking place in the region, specifically in the Asia Pacific region, with or without the United States. And so, if the United States chooses to sit on the sidelines or if any other country does, that doesn't mean the activity of negotiating trade agreements and developing value chains and supply chains and granting preferential access to other trading partners is going to stop. So, in many ways, trade agreements are what keep us in the game and allow us in the United States as the trade negotiators to gain the benefits for our companies and for our workers and also to share our values with our trading partners to use our trade agreements to lift up labor standards, to lift environmental standards, to address 21st century issues. And finally, I would just say that TPP, and I'll point to the Peterson Institute Study, which is one of the most comprehensive studies about TPP in terms of boosting U.S. economic growth, boosting U.S. jobs, boosting U.S. competitiveness, all of those economic benefits not only will come to the United States, but will go to all TPP partners. And so, there are many economic, commercial, strategic, and other arguments one can make in favor of these trade negotiations. Thank you. John San with CTI TV of Taiwan. This is a question. It's a follow-up question to the Taiwan question. The President Ma of Taiwan has made joining the TPP negotiations one of his highest priorities of his administration. Could you suggest any practical ways for Taiwan to prepare itself for eventual negotiations with the TPP members, the U.S. being the primary member? And also on that same note, how big an issue is the port import or port export on the part of the United States for Taiwan? Thank you very much. Well, let me answer that question by just sharing the year of negotiations I had with Japan before we supported Japan's participation in the TPP. We spent about a year negotiating with Japan, and there were really two areas of this negotiation. First was to share with Japan what we were trying to achieve in the agreement so that we would have the confidence level that Japan was really ready to take on those high-level commitments. And second was to work through bilateral issues of concern, which included a number of auto issues, insurance issues, and other issues. And when we consult with TPP candidate countries, and right now, once again, Korea, they've announced their interest, we're having the same type of consultation with them, kind of the two-track consultation. And so that's the approach we follow when holding TPP consultations with prospective candidates. Okay. I'm going to take one more from over here. The gentleman, and maybe if you could take two. Why don't we do that one in the gentleman next to him, and then we're going to have to stop, I'm afraid. Yes, hi. My name is Adam B. Sudia. I'm with Politico. As you negotiate these big regional trade agreements, my question is, when you look at the market access packages, what you're negotiating with Japan, how is that going to interact with the other market access packages? Is what the concessions, the offers you get from Japan, going to apply to the beef producers in Australia that would like to probably have that same level of access, are you going to kind of mesh what you get with Japan and offer it on an MFN basis to all the other TPP members? Okay. Why don't we just take that gentleman there, and then we'll have to stop. Thank you. I'm Yoshikawa from TV Asahi. Some agriculture groups like pork producers have said a strong statement against Japan. If Japan can't open the market, you should conclude TPP negotiation without Japan. So how would you respond to such a statement? And are you considering a TPP without Japan if Japan cannot open its market? Thank you. Okay. Which one of those do I want to take first? Or take it all. Or can we get another question? I can pick which. First with respect to our market, both are really have to do with our market access and particularly our agriculture negotiations with Japan. Japan's agriculture market has been highly restricted to date. Through TPP, Japan is looking to open its market beyond what it's done in its current FTAs. And really the question is how far is it going to go? We are negotiating bilaterally with Japan and our other TPP countries with respect to market access and tariff negotiations. And so we are trying to work with Japan to achieve maximum meaningful market access through these negotiations with Japan. We understand they have sensitive products but we also remind Japan that when it agreed to join TPP, it signed up for a comprehensive high standard deal. So we are working very hard with Japan on agriculture. We are clearly in a very intensive stage of negotiations. No final agreements have been reached. We have a lot of work still to do. But as a result of the President's visit to Japan, we are clearly in the next phase and a new level in these negotiations. With respect to the second question, and I think this is pretty easy to respond to, we are really focused on concluding TPP with Japan. And that is why we are spending so much time with them. And we are working with them closely on rules issues. We are working with them closely on our parallel bilateral negotiations on autos and other non-tariff measures. And we are also working very hard with them on agriculture market access. Okay. Well, Wendy does have to get back to her Japanese counterparts to continue those conversations. So we are going to have to let her go. But I think that confirmed my point that she is a real secret weapon and a national asset, frankly, for all of us here. And we really appreciate your coming out, Wendy. I must say you said in passing this is a really exciting time to be involved in trade. And for those of us who have been following U.S.-Japan trade relations in particular for over 30 years, we have been waiting for this for a long time. And it is very exciting that we are on the cusp of an agreement that I think ultimately will be achieved and will be just a tremendous thing for both countries and for the region. So really, we are counting on you. And we are channeling a lot of our enthusiasm through you. So thanks very much, Wendy. Thank you. And please join me in saying thank you. So we appreciate you all coming. We will do this next year. We learn something every year. I think the big things we learned this year are that the general trend is convergence, not competition of RCEP, APEC, TPP. But probably not a merger. That much is clear. The pieces here in the U.S. politically for TPP and TPA are there. It's going to take presidential leadership and work from the Congress to put them together, but it's there. And it comes down to the U.S. and Japan in many, many ways. But we're getting closer. Unfortunately, we're now one hour further away because we pulled Wendy Cutler out of her negotiation. But we're getting closer. And Ishige-san, when you meet President Obama next time, you can give him a report on our conference and then ask him if he'll be done with this by next year's conference. Thank you to the assignment chair and Japan chair staff, to our interpreters, and to our friends at JETRO. And thank you to all of you.


Hello everybody, I'm very happy to see you all here and to have the TRIPLA F Showcase starting today. What I will do is to talk you a bit about the present TRIPLA F implementations within large scale infrastructures we serve at the Göttingen State and University Library to support research and especially the digital humanities. I'm leading the research infrastructures program at the research and development department of the library here and so what I will show you a bit what we are doing here. But for a start to indicate the importance of TRIPLA F in this interdisciplinary field, we can look at the most important international conference organized by the Alliance of Digital Humanities organizations and search just for the term TRIPLA F in the conference books of abstracts and if you look up over the past few years, we can see here starting at the age 2013 conference, there is an increasing number of hits from 0105 to then really 22, 28 and in last year's conference in Mexico, 46 mentions of TRIPLA F in the books of abstract. Here at the Göttingen State and University Library, we started in 2013 working with TRIPLA F first in a project called Shared Canvas Implementation and launched our first TRIPLA F image server and corresponding presentation API for the tax grid infrastructure, which I will talk a bit later on also in 2014. So since then we are steadily increasing the use of TRIPLA F framework in our projects and just to present you the latest one, it's a project focusing on really outstanding material. The project is called Maps of God. It was recently launched and is going to use and extend our TRIPLA F implementation for preparing annotations on large scrolls. To encode and annotate the cabalistic tree in its variety of manifestations is the goal of the project and together with partners from Israel, we are going to prepare the platform for the topographical encoding and the semantic annotation of the large parchment scrolls and also smaller forms. And to set up a database like this, we will use of course a combination of states of the art technologies and TRIPLA F really plays a major role here. We can build upon the infrastructure and experience that we have developed in the last years and which I will present you a little bit. We provide digital infrastructures especially but not only for the digital humanities here at the SUB and within two national joint ventures we started early on and continue which are Dariya DE and text grid. First on Dariya DE. It's Germany's contribution to the European wide collaboration between universities, memory institutions, computing centers and so on for a digital research infrastructure for the arts and humanities. And Dariya DE operates a repository as a digital long-term archive for human and cultural scientific research data and this is a central component of a whole research data federation architecture which aggregates various services and applications. And of course for image objects we are basing it's based on TRIPLA F. It uses the TRIPLA F APIs for the publication of image objects. The presentation API is fed by Aura RDF metadata and collections metadata entered via the web application. And on websites describing the published data we serve image previews via the image API as in the following example and it's really any kind of images from research data that we feed here. This for example is a visualization of the network of publications and the field of computer vision and pattern recognition stored in the Dariya DE repository. It could be any image. The Dariya DE repository is a more generic version of the text-crit repository which we started first and recommend for textual data like digital scholarly editions. Text-crit offers a long-term archive to explore textual resources and their facsimiles were the help of TRIPLA F via the digital image server and the presentation API is prepared by converting MatSmart or TRI files and uses a specific metadata schema based on FRBR. Currently we are hosting 459 manifests for the presentation API and our image server provides access to 183,000 resources as we are usually not ourselves. The content provider it is of course up to the community to increase the number. Currently there are seven projects taking advantage of these functionalities. Besides others the domains covered here are history, code ecology and German literature and an example can be found in a pretty new publication where TRI data is available. The TI file is equipped with links to the facsimiles and for these files the HTML representation in the repository offers a link to the manifest and to a few in Mirador too. The text-crit repository is supplemented by a client software, the text-crit laboratory and together they are forming a virtual research environment which provides serving tools for preparing digital scholarly editions. Text-crit is made for text-based humanities and stands for interoperability by design so obviously that's why the TRIPLAF implementation for the repository really started as early as in 2013 and addressing the whole research data life cycle many other tools are offered preparing the data and I just picked out those who are TRIPLAF related tools from that tool chain. We support several ways to ingest data to the text-crit ecosystem all well documented and for some formats we are replacing file references by URI during the ingest so as to make them referenceable over the web. The image server is available to the client as well and to prepare and combine the resources and we have a text image link editor which is ready to connect textual data and XML files with sections of images via shape marks layered upon the image. With a graphical user interface you can then select shapes on an image and connect it to an XML resource. We provide this tool since 2011 already and use TRI files to store the information and now the next step obviously is moving this tool forward to open annotation and TRIPLAF which is now to come and colleagues of mine will present a prototype in their talk here in the conference on thirsty, combining TEI and TRIPLAF in a virtual research environment. So really we are building on TRIPLAF as core for all our research infrastructures and all our projects and I can tell you you can take advantage of all what has been mentioned before it's great work and great fun with TRIPLAF in the research and digital humanities community and thanks for listening.


You went in mechanism in the democratic with Paul Nahimas, did I get that right Paul? Okay, who joins us from Turkey. And by the way, Turkey changed the spelling of its name or took an old spelling. It's now Turkey A, but it's pronounced Turkey on May 22nd, then asked the United Nations to approve that name, and they did. But now Turkey is Turkey A. What's interesting is the reason, and the reason is that they didn't want to be associated with the turkey bird, because turkey bird had taken on a meaning in the English language to mean something silly that fails. So we now have another name for Turkey. And he joins us from Istanbul, which is one of my favorite places. Thank you for coming on the show Paul. Thank you for having me. So, you know, from the point of view of your work as a lawyer, investigator for the Project Expedite Justice and others, I want to talk to you about the UN mechanism in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Democratic may be the wrong word, because it seems like there's another war every time you're looking. I guess the question I put to you is, can you have a Democratic Republic when you're constantly at war? Can you do that? You can have a Democratic Republic when you're anything but Democratic. So I guess, why not? They can call themselves whatever they like. Are they Democratic? Normally, yes. They try to be, I think, for the most part. The country is beset with problems, but it's certainly in the previous election, it's considered a, I think, a very flawed democracy. It's trying to be a democracy. It has, it's not a liberal democracy in human body means, but they are, they're doing their best with what they've got under the circumstances that they find themselves in. Why can't they do better? You know, it's not only Congo's Rwanda, it's all the countries around there, Sudan and so forth. We've covered a number of them. Sub-Saharan Africa, East Africa, it just seems like they're always in violence. Let me go for another truism. If you're in violence, it's hard to build an economy. Am I right? Well, yes. If there's no stability, there's a reluctance on the part of those that might build industries to invest. And that's not just something that you find in the DRC, but in most underdeveloped countries are underdeveloped for a reason. Yes, there are other factors, but if there's no certainty, if there's no rule of law or no belief that there is rule of law, then investors are unwilling to put the big bucks in to build factories or steel mills or pineapple plantations or what have you because they could lose it very, very quickly and not have a return on their investment. And when they do invest, they need a very big return on their investment to compensate for the risk that they could lose everything. And they do lose everything. Well, it's true. A going concern in Congo is really worth a lot less if you sell it up front in terms of its profit, the amount of profit it generates over years. For instance, 20 years of profits might be the full value of an investment in the United States, whereas in Congo, I think it would be considerably less because you could lose it tomorrow. So you take the risk you need to extract as much out of it as you can. What I don't understand is the violence and the genocide I was mentioned before the show. My limited reading on this suggests that the problems in Congo are connected with Rwanda and Rwanda had a genocide back 20 years ago, which people are still talking about and which the United Nations was unable to do very much about. And it's almost like it's connected, it's infection from one country to the other. And then you find that there's a guerrilla group, an opposition group in the east of Congo called M23. That's from March 23rd. And they're very active and they've been active for a long time. And the president of Congo is trying to raise an army of young people somewhere between half a million and a million people to go fight with them. And he's bringing troops in from other countries from Sudan and Kenya and I don't know where else to have a map on the screen. From, yeah, from Zambia, Tanzania and so forth to try to help him do that. It sounds like he's really under threat of some kind of national conflagration. Am I right? To a point, yes. There's a United Nations mission based in Congo for over 20 years now, which has largely, well, has been playing a role in combating M23 for the most part. Certainly they undertook some offensive operations in 2012, late 2012 when M23 got into the city of Goma in the east of Congo, just very close to the Rwandan border. Yeah, so it's, but it's not the only group that's behind instability in that country. There are multiple other ones, especially in the east. The Allied Democratic Forces, which is largely considered to be a Islamist offshoot associated with Al-Shabaab, although the links between those two, again, it's not my field, not exactly as solid as they might be painted out to be. Why are you in Turkey and not in Kinshasa? Oh, time zones. Well, I've actually finished the project that I was working on in Congo a week ago, and I'm taking a bit of a break because it was five years, so I need a bit of a breather before I go back there, but we've been working remotely, but we were working remotely since COVID on the mechanism, and the time zone here is obviously better than the time zones in Australia, which would require me to work at ridiculous hours of the morning. So it was more consistent to be based here. Well, a couple of things we're going to try to connect in this show is one is a few years ago, I want to say 2017, two United Nations workers were killed, murdered in Congo, and so the discussion here today is about the mechanics of the UN in dealing with that, and other atrocities and the like. I mean, it's hard to investigate or deal with atrocities in a given country if they're going to murder your representative. It's not encouraging to your representatives and it's not encouraging to the people who rely on UN representatives, the real problem. So why were they there, why were they killed? So the two experts, as they call them, Zayla Katalan and Michael J. Sharp, Swedish and American respectively, were working on the group of experts for the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is a group of independent investigators that report to the sanctions committee of the Security Council in relation to sanctions that the Security Council enforce on individuals, countries, companies and the like. And the purpose of that group of experts is to inspect various situations in Congo to find evidence of crimes against humanity and atrocities that they would submit in their reports to the sanctions committee in support of sanctions against certain individuals and the like. Kasai was a relatively calm area of Congo, central Congo. And the city in question is Kananga, well it's the closest city to where the incident took place. I don't know if that shows on the map, but why don't we look at the map for a second. Get a handle on that. So this would be right in the center of Congo. Yeah, it's in the center. It's generally marked. It's a city of between half a million and one million people depending on who you ask. No electricity and no running water, which is interesting to say the least. And this region became somewhat unstable in 2016, primarily due to or subsequent to the accession of a new chief, the Kamuna Sapo. His name was a Pandi who who acceded to the throne and such. They call him a king of prince and a chief depending on who you ask and was not recognized by the central government and sought recognition. And that dispute festered up until the point where central authorities deployed a task force to let's say deal with him and he was killed. As a result, his guard scattered and an uprising commenced where elements of the state, police stations, military convoys and the like were being attacked in various parts of central Kasai province and eastern Kasai, Kasai oxinontar. Over the course of late 2016 and early 2017, there were some atrocities committed allegedly on both sides and the group of experts who were principally based in the east of Congo took an interest and wanted to get down to determining where this conflict had originated, what was happening and who was doing what. So allegations of mass graves, child soldier, recruitments and massacres committed on the part of state elements of the army and police as well as militia related elements attracted their interest and they deployed to Kananga in very early 2017 in January to make introductions, inform local authorities that the group of experts were going to conduct an inquiry in the region and then returned in March, in early March of 2017. And in the course of a mission to a regional town outside of Kananga, they were ambushed and killed. Subsequent to the killing of video emerged and it appeared to show that elements of the Kaminosapu militia were responsible for the killing, largely based on their accessories being red bandanas and a chief or what appeared to be a chief wearing red cloak who were involved in the operation as they call it. So that was the... This is some great concern to the United Nations when they're... Indeed, they effectively report to the highest deliberative body on the planet. So the killing of two UN investigators who report to what is essentially a little sanctions committee of the Security Council is extremely significant and the Congolese military authorities conducted an investigation because a couple of days prior to the killing an operational zone was declared because of the insurgency which effectively put the crime and the military jurisdiction because in the context of an insurgency. So an investigation was conducted on the basis of the video and on the basis of a star witness whose name was Jean Bosco Mokanda and the investigation continued for some time more than two months prior to being handed over to the court. Now what happens when an investigation... What court is that? It's the military court. In Congo? Yeah, well it's the military court of the province of Kasai, X Eastern Kasai which has been broken up into three provinces but they still work as if the old province existed. It's a little bit complicated. So it's a lower level military court, the North Street Tribunal at that point which then became a court to deal with the militia men responsible, allegedly responsible for the killing. However, the international community as they like to call themselves weren't satisfied by the manner in which the investigation was conducted. There was a lot of scrutiny by some journalists who were basing Congo at the time, rightly so. And this put pressure on the UN to create some form of a capacity development mission to provide technical advice, technical support and monitor the investigation and trial. But the complication was that the investigation had already been handed over to the court which means that the investigation can't continue anymore. They can't continue to investigate once the dossier has gone to the court. But what they hadn't done was, and what I felt to mention, is that along with the two experts were three motorcycle riders and one interpreter who accompanied them, who have since vanished. Now, the bodies of the two experts of Zayla and Michael were recovered about six weeks after the fact. No, actually, no, sorry, several weeks after the fact. And but the bodies of the companions, traveling companions were never recovered. So a new dossier was opened in relation to the deaths of alleged presumed deaths of disappearance of the four Congolese companions of the two experts, which allowed for the reopening of the investigation. What was the presumptive reason for killing them and why was that offensive to the local authorities and also to the UN? Originally, in the initial investigation that the Congolese military authorities conducted, the allegation was that they were robbed and killed and basically robbed. The motive changed as the course of the investigation unfolded. And what's been presented to the court now is that there was a level of conspiracy whereby elements of the militia conducted the killing. At the behest of certain other persons, not necessarily based in militia areas. At the moment, the matter is still before the court. The investigation is still underway. What I can say is that the initial investigation that was conducted by the Congolese military authorities was stopped. The trial was stopped when the mechanism deployed at the end of 2017 to resume the investigation and find leads above those that were on the ground to commit the killing, which resulted in the arrest and charging of the star witness whose name was Jean Bosco-McCunder. I think I mentioned him before. Do you have custody now? Oh, yeah. He's been sentenced to death at the lower court, but now it's before the court of appeal as the orchestrator of the murders. I have to be guarded in terms of what I say in relation to the investigations. Let's go to the policy point about the United Nations. We've seen a lot of the United Nations. It's kind of surfaced. It was not particularly effective in dealing with global COVID, I would say, and global vaccines and the like. I mean, it was a fair amount of criticism on that. And then more recently, the affair in Ukraine with the International Criminal Court, which is, I know it's not a part of the United Nations, but it's close. And I saw a frontline just a couple of days ago, a frontline documentary on it, and they pointed out that the International Court has not issued a single indictment against any Russian involved in Ukraine.  So you wonder about the International Court mechanics. And we're here to talk about the mechanisms, aren't we? The United Nations has not had effective mechanisms at the Security Council that deal with atrocities and aggressions on a large scale. And now we're looking at a multiple murder of United Nations people that is already almost five years old, six years old. Yeah, go ahead. No, you brought up quite a number of issues that really need to be addressed individually. So the UN is the sum of its parts. And what we've got to be careful about when we criticize the UN, which a lot of people like to do, is not to make the good the enemy of the perfect. We're better off with the UN than without it. Despite its flaws, despite its bureaucracies, despite its ineffectiveness in certain cases, it does create a forum for multiple players to be heard. And that's at least something. The presence of the UN and the DRC, I think, having worked there for the last five years, is a positive across the board. Yes, individual blue helmets have been responsible in some cases convicted of crimes against local people, horrible crimes. But on the whole, as far as when you're talking about some 20,000 people who make up the mission, if not more, at various points in time, I think it's been a net benefit for the country. There would have been a lot more suffering, a lot more death, a lot more starvation, a lot more killing, without the presence of Montesquot at the moment, as it's called, since the late 1990s. Well, it's called Montesquot now. It's been through numerous different rebrandings. Tell me how that works. Tell me why the United Nations has been a positive force in Congo. In terms of, right, in terms of... Whatever, whatever. The presence of the presence of the UN, to some degree, inhibits where they are, to some degree. And again, I'll be, you know, I could be attacked left, right and center for saying this. I believe it does inhibit the sorts of crimes that it's there to prevent, to some degree. I believe that there is a positive capacity development aspect to the presence of the UN mission for the most part. Having been part of a UN mechanism, which is not part of Montesquot, it's not part of the UN mission in Congo, but it's there to offer technical support, advice and monitor the conduct of an investigation by the Congolese military authorities. There has been a large improvement in the manner in which certainly those that we've advised conduct their investigations, even when we're not there. So the way that they apply some of the things that we've passed on, just our practices from where we used to work, has been largely beneficial in terms of carrying out judicial investigations and prosecutions in Congo. It is not perfect by any means. And the trial of those responsible, well charged with the killing of the two experts, is flawed in many ways. There are certainly some problems. We've been, well, I was in my previous life, part of trying to address them. There are different ways in which they conduct business, which we don't agree with. And we've worked to address some of those things and they have largely been addressed, well, not largely, but to some extent they've been addressed some of those things. But every institution is stuck in their own way. They have their own culture, they have their own way of doing things. And it's not just going to change to 180. And it's not that our way of doing business is perfect either. It's just a problem with the rule of law. It's no problem with the procedure in the court. What's the problem? I could bring it down to a few examples, which are quite benign. When the mechanism first arrived, the way in which interviews of suspects and witnesses were conducted is all on paper. So it's question and answer. And it doesn't necessarily take the response of the witness or what the witness says, if the witness makes an open declaration, have to constitute it as a question and answer. And sometimes the answer is 180 degrees different to what was actually said. So the first thing that we did was insist on video recording them. And the response we got was, oh no, it's not in our law, so we can't do it. It's like, well, is it prohibited in your law? No, but it's not mentioned, so we can't do it. It's like, well, if it's not prohibited, then we can do it. And it took a little while, but we convinced them that it would be a way to be more accountable and more transparent. But it's been very difficult to convince the court to accept video recorded evidence as opposed to what they used to. Everything has to be on paper. It's an aid if there's a dispute. The idea was that if there's a dispute in relation to a witness or a suspect saying, oh, I never said that. And the answer to a question is, I was not there or I was there and I didn't do whatever is allegedly said and signed. And if they changed their mind, I said, well, we can play the video. And that's actually been a little bit difficult. But we got there in some cases, and I see that as an improvement. You have to accept the little victories. So you're working upstream on this, but it's been five years. How far into the process are you? Is it done? Is it you mentioned? There's an appeal hearing at the moment. There's the investigation is still underway in terms of other persons who we believe were involved. But the appeal hearing is in relation to those that were convicted earlier this year, some 50 people. Many of them are alleged members of the militia. And really, when you live in an area which has been overrun by militia, you either adhere to the militia or you die or you lose whatever you might have.  But what their processes did was sort of bundle the two together, which was quite counterproductive. And I don't necessarily attribute that to anything malign as such. I think it's just the way that they do business and we're trying to get them to distinguish that. So what happens at the end of this trial, so to speak? You mentioned that the one fellow was condemned to death, but that was on appeal? Many, actually many. Many have been sentenced to death. The Democratic Republic of Congo is a moratorium on carrying out of the death penalty. It's in there for almost 20 years. So effectively, those sentences will be commuted to life imprisonment anyway. The appeal in their system is different to our system. It's different to the United States and Australia and the British system. In that, you can introduce new evidence and essentially evidence that has been collected since the original trial at first instance. After this appeal, there is room for another one, but only on the basis of law. Only on errors in law. This doesn't go to the United Nations then. This is all within the country system. That's correct. The reason why is because the UN negotiated with the Congolese to have some kind of input, because it certainly in my mind, I don't think that they would have been able to set up an independent tribunal as such that would give jurisdiction to international investigators to go into Congo and do what they want. We had to get, they had to get the Congolese on side. I think that they did the best that they could with what they had for the most part to have that consensus, have the Congolese side agree, sign a memorandum and then deploy the mechanism. There's no expression of power here by the United Nations. There's no boots on the ground. There's nobody. Well, there are boots on the ground, but that's a different body. The UN mission in Congo is not the mechanism. They provide some support to the mechanism, but they're not the mechanism. It's mostly advice and consultation and an attempt to improve the Congolese criminal justice system, I think. You'd be surprised what happens behind the scenes, but on the surface, yes. On the surface, it's quite collegial. We try to come to agreement on certain points of difference, and I firmly believe that it's been very successful. Everything has its flaws, but I think at the end of this, when the inquiry investigation is over and the mandate of the mechanism comes to an end, I think there'll be a very long list of successes. There'll be some issues that would need to be addressed in case this is done again, and I understand that that's being considered. That's important. To the extent that you have counseled with them and helped them improve their criminal justice system in these trials, will those lessons vary forward? Will those lessons apply to other trials for murder and atrocities and what have you later on, or will it have to be reinventing the wheel later on? You can only have an impact on those that you work with. I believe that the personnel that we have worked with long-term, I think, have adapted new techniques and taken to them like ducks to water. How far that permeates into their military justice system, and again, it is the military justice system as a civil justice system as well, which deals with criminal trials, but in this case, it's being dealt with by military court and military prosecution authority in the military court. I believe that they are applying those in other cases. Well, I know that they are because I've seen them doing it. I think that they've benefited largely. It's certainly been expressed to us, and we've seen the effects of what we've done, but it's a very small team. It's not a massive support force as such to help the Congolese military justice in a country of what is almost 100 million people, and it's vast. Well, if you brought a lot of people there, I think you might get them pushed back anyway. Well, that is true. That's largely true. This is a very pinpointed mission for a specific purpose, and it's to ensure integrity and accountability of the investigation and trial. What's the difference between this process and a truth commission? We've heard from Project Expedite Justice about truth commissions in various places in Africa and Latin America, and what's the difference here? In this case, it's a standard investigation and prosecution of alleged perpetrators of a crime, being the killing of two UN experts and allegedly the killing of, because the bodies weren't recovered, of four Congolese. It's not a truth commission. Nobody confuses it with that. No, no, no. This is not a truth commission. No, no, no. Let me ask you one other thing. You've been running with this now for several years, and you've followed every step of the way, and you've seen it where it is faithful to the recommendations that the UN experts make, and maybe sometimes not quite so much. If you were going to look at the mechanism that the United Nations has in place to deal with these murders, to deal with these trials, to deal with the political environment around these trials, how would you change it? How would you improve it? If you were Guterres, the Secretary General, whatever, of the United Nations, what would you want to change to make this more effective? Oh, is this a wish list? There's many things that I would like to have have different in the mandate and the like, but I have to be realistic, and we have to accept that in an organization which essentially works, which seeks consensus, you have to have an agreement of all parties. You're not going to be able to impose a special tribunal with investigators who have full jurisdiction to run around in Congo and do what they want without a resolution from the Security Council, which would probably be vetoed by one or two powers that have other interests, and maybe not, but you're not going to get there. The first thing you've got to try and do is get parties to agree, and I think that under the circumstances, they did very effectively. With 2020 hindsight, yes, there are some things that might have been done better, but really at the time, and I was there at the time, I think we got what we could, and it was good at the time. Then we realized what was missing after, but you're not going to go and revisit a mandate. It's not that easy. It's a big organization. It's a very long process to try and get UN and the authorities of a state to come to an agreement, to have a group of foreigners to come in and have access to your prosecution authority in an area and a whole investigation, which might be embarrassing. Again, in this case at the beginning, many of the authorities didn't necessarily know what we might find. It's a case of, to quote Donald Rumsfeld, which I have a habit of doing, is that there are known knowns and known unknowns and unknown unknowns. You have to respect that, and that would apply anywhere. It's not just that, oh, in this case, this particular country would see. Let me say that I wish, and I suppose you do too, that the United Nations had more authority, more effect, more influence on these things. Here we have sub-Saharan Africa, especially Eastern Africa, which is fragmented, which is violent, which is politically dynamic, that's the wrong word, blintered. A continual change of politics from hour to hour. What could the United Nations in a more perfect world do to improve life for the citizen on the street or his safety for public health or the development of businesses that have some sustainability? For political stability, what could the United Nations do in sub-Saharan Africa to make a better world, theoretically? Whatever its member states allow it to do and agree for it to do, ultimately. It's very easy to bash the UN as some separate entity to some of its parts. But you mentioned a while ago that some members of the United Nations might oppose taking affirmative action on these things because it was not in their interest to do so. They might veto it. So the question is, what interests would drive them to veto steps that would lead to greatest stability in an area which is not stable? Do they want to see chaos? Hypothetically speaking, they may have economic interests and it's not always the same players. It really all depends if you follow. If you follow the work of the UN or the work of the Security Council over the past however many years, there's always differences in opinion for valid reasons sometimes. Differences in approach, differences in culture. China, for example, always argues a non-interventionist approach not to interfere with other states. They abstain. They've always had this history of abstaining on the Security Council as they carry a veto. Other states have economic interests so when a resolution is put forward, they veto it. They vote against it for whatever their interests might be and those interests might be a payoff and there might be an agreement with other states that if they vote this way on this one, then other state will vote a different way on another one. It's an organization that relies essentially on consensus. It's not this powerful body everybody, well everybody, so many people attack and say, oh the UN isn't doing enough, or the UN's doing too much, they're going to impose a world government on us. The UN is a sum of its parts and it's all on good for individual state players to throw rocks at it. It can only be as good as those individual state players allow it to be. Very interesting. So here you are, you're from Sydney, a very stable city in a stable country of Australia, an admirable country in many, many ways and you're involved among other places in Congo. It must be somewhat frustrating for you to have to work on the minimalist end of things when it's clear that more powerful United Nations could do more. And so my question to you here at the close, well it sounds like you disagree with me. My premise of your question is a problem because more powerful United Nations is essentially relying on greater input from the state. Okay, okay, I'll accept that. But Query, do you have a certain sense of frustration about this and why do you do it? Oh, it can be very frustrating. Why do we do it? I still remember where I was when I first saw the news report about the two experts who were missing at the time. I was working with the Department of Justice in Utah, in Australia and I never even for a minute thought that I'd be asked to work on this as happened some five, six months later. Because it's something that we're driven and my colleagues would say the same thing. I know that they'd be in full agreement with me. It could have been us, it could have been me. I worked in Africa before that in a similar a similar capacity for a different organization. It could just as easily have been me, it could just as easily have been any of my colleagues. Having looked at what Zayda and Michael in this case had done preparing for their mission, we would have made the same decision. We would have done the same thing as them. Therefore, we can identify with them and we want to get to the bottom of it. We want to get to the bottom of what happened to them and why. At the end of the day, there's a motivation there to protect the United Nations, to protect its experts and people. Well, what's the point? If the United Nations can send experts in to conduct an investigation and they can be targeted and killed with no consequence, what's the point? Let's just pack up and go home. Yeah. We've got to go home now, Paul. Thank you for this really, really important and interesting discussion. Thank you. Thank you for having us to discuss in too little time. Yeah. I really appreciate it. And please, please thank you for your service. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.


Alright, listen, if we don't get Luffy or Arlong in some action this episode, I'm gonna freak out. It feels like it's been teasing us this whole time. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the channel, my name is Jack the Busser, I'm Shinobi. Today we have episode 41 of our One Piece Watchthrough, and now, and listen, like I said, the last billion have been all leading up to this, the entire showdown with Arlong. And now it seems like his cronies, his goons are out of the way. It is time for the big man to really step in. Luffy is still technically out of commission, I don't know if they're gonna be able to free him this episode. Hopefully, but like I said, I think it's mostly just Arlong on his side now. All of his men have pretty much been taken out. And at this point, everyone is kind of like Zoro, Sanji and Usopp are all kind of at their limits, so they can't do much to fight off Arlong. So we kind of need Luffy. And T is not me stepping at the very end of the last one, so hopefully we're gonna get to see, you know, it bringing everything full circle with her backstory, but there's only one way to find out. We're gonna hop right into it. If you're new to this channel, drop a sub, hit that big bell so you don't miss any future episodes. So if that like on this one, let's just hop right into it. I like the no voice lines for the recap. Oh, there you go. Oh, that's gotta hurt. Not the rubber bimble, the hammer, Mike. God. Yeah, seeing all this action made me realize how much like actually went down in the last couple.  Zoro, Usopp, Sanji. I think Sanji's the most memorable, but I'm, like I said, I'm so proud of Usopp. Look at all the bumps, bro. And now we're here. Things not going too well. Oh, he made an attempt. God, dude, the sound effect for it hitting him though, you feel that impact. And there she is, woman of the hour. Skies resolve. Showtime, baby. Luffy. I just heard Luffy. That's pretty much it. I do love our logs laugh though. I'll keep it a buck. Oh, I'm not shocked that there were attempts. Why now? Yeah, he's like, why now? Spider web. That's not her destiny. Destiny is on Luffy's crew. Yeah, that's too foregone, brother. I'm sorry. Oh, he's going to offer something. Oh, no, not really. I was going to say, I mean, he doesn't really need to offer anything.  That's so demented, putting it in her hands, putting if he kills everyone, their deaths in her hands make it so like she can't fight for them. That's so messed up. I said they need Luffy like him to be the one to make a decision. The butterfly going towards the web, I think. Yeah, he's menacing, man. Well, it hit the web. Poor Nami. Saved or killed. Oh, they're ready to fight, baby. God dang. Oh my God. Ziko Ziko's a spider. Oh, it broke out. She's metaphorically free. Oh, shoot. Hell yeah. She said die with me. I mean, Arlo and Loki still needs people to pay him money. He's a one-and-a-half, too, but he will. His neck, man. Come on, guys. You got this. I appreciate the resolve. Hers and Gens. He's awake. Oh, shoot. But can he break out is the thing? A sign of hope. That's it. Luffy's number one fan club. Hell yeah. He's alive and he's mad. Zoro's getting up. That's all he's got. Oh, shoot, he knows. There is enough fountain over there. God, he's so cheesy.  He's got 30 seconds. I love how they know how important it is. They free Luffy. Dying Zoro. Oh my. Go Sanji. They might have a chance. Straight up. Can't even move, I guess. He looks in good spirits. That's the first thing he says. Yeah, for real. Oh, no, you're going to have to get those Zoro. And USA, baby. Just a nuisance. That's what he needs to be though. A nuisance. Like, where did that come from? What a Gallant arrival. Hey, man, they got a sniper in the trees, baby. He looks mad, bro. He's got the blood on his face and the scratches all over him. That hurts his ego. He's like you? The main character who's up arrives. There's the butterfly free from the spider. Luffy's face.  I like how Usab just catches on right away. Octoman. He's up. The bravest in all the lands. What? He's so far away. Was he just going to shoot the rubber band all the way over there and just smack him? Oh, shoot. Oh, no. Oh, my gosh. You might be able to. A scratch at full strength. Oh, my gosh. He says a proud nose is a strong one. Oh, no. Surely this is enough time for Sanji, right? Oh, my. Dude, you can't help but love him though. Mental warfare, baby. Oh, no. Come on, Octoman. I know you have the heart. Don't follow Arlong. I'm really scared of Arlong though, since he hasn't popped off yet.  Dude, my man, Zoro is just going through it. They've kept Arlong's power at such a minimum this entire time. I think the only time it's really shown much is whenever he got really angry. They were like scared of him so he would destroy the whole place. Like, oh, my chest. They're going to have to fight an Octoman. She sees him. Spiraling towards them. The first time that, or not the first time that Sanji's under here, going to have to fight off a fish.  I think he can be outsmarted really easily though. She going to take the blow? Octoman, no. Oh. Did he stab him? Oh, my gosh. Oh, like from Mihawk? Does he recognize it? Yes!  That's insane. How bad is it? Oh, what am I looking at? It's like stitches? Oh, he sees Zoro as like a real threat or someone that could be a threat. He's standing with his body like that, his mental's on a different level. Huh? What does he know? Oh. Oh, he cut him up that bad? Oh, he dead-dead. Oh, he dead-dead. That was kind of violent. Yes! Yes, sir. There he goes. It's coming. This is so weird out of context, bro. Oh, shoot. It's beautiful. Like a star falling to Earth. How old is Luffy at this point in the show? Because I was like, except it's a teenage boy, but is he a teenager? I would guess like 17. Save him. Oh, no. Arlong's just going to hold on to him though. Oh, maybe not. Zoro can't like land like that though. Luffy, you're your rubber. He's not. Oh, he's ready to fight, baby. Oh, shoot.  Oh my gosh. He's letting it all out right away. What? Is Arlong going to fight back? My gosh, he's back. Not a scratch, huh?  He said, I'm not done. It feels good to have some confidence amidst our team now. He has little sounds. He's doing his little stretch. Does he need to stretch? He stretches already. My question is will he pop off harder than against Don Creek? I think he has to. I think Arlong is a bigger opponent than Don Creek. Yeah, is somebody like, did somebody catch Zoro? What's ha- Oh, they probably just threw him into the ocean. That would still hurt though. High key. Oh, no. The lighter or the match. It's all Arlong's, yeah. Oh, he's okay, I think. Oh, maybe he's dead. Uh, size probably. That's fair. The cotton. That's Luffy though. He's straightforward. True. All of the above. He's just biting at him. Oh my gosh. I don't think that hurt. I, yeah, bro. He caught a cannonball in his mouth. Now you see. Bro, Usob really said, oh, he probably broke his teeth. Clueless. Not a man. Fishman. God, he's intimidating. Heaven discriminated. Oh my gosh. It's going down, baby. Dang. It's going down, baby. Episode 42. Let's run it. Dude, he's so confident. I love it. It makes me feel good, dude. Oh, let's go. Who cares? I hope he kind of keeps that sort of level. I don't know. It's just, it's cool. Like the resolve. He's not scared or anything. He's just Luffy. His smile. He'll blitter right here. Bro, that was dark. The question is, if he ate Luffy, would he chew him like gum? Probably. He's like, that's irrelevant. I don't need to bite pillars. Oh, true. Uh-oh. He's starting to get mad. Okay, but that's just Luffy because of the devil fruit. Dwight's got a crew. It's weird to see him hold swords. Can he? He's kind of just swinging them. Hey, he doesn't know any particular method. But how can Arlong know what he's going to do? Luffy doesn't know what he's going to do. Yeah. What is like the long-term scheme here? Like, I know Luffy's trying to prove he can take anyone on, even though he's a fish man. How much do that actually do though? Let's wait in his cheek. Huh? He's wincing. What? Oh my God. Bro, what? It was showing his whole crew. Yeah. Hey. That's his whole thing.  I guess hitting to him, he's a human.  Bothered by having a combat. Bro, did you see they've been trying to free him this whole time? For this reason, he's actually shattered your teeth, dog. That's why he's perfect.  Let's go. It's fight night, baby. Oh, yeah. Okay. That's why he's not mad. He's not a human. He can, he's built different. Ah, okay. Steel dragon ball, you know, push to your limits. You get stronger.   Stop. He's just flexing his physical traits. No. This is a move? Oh, he just uses them as weapons. I see. Oh, gosh. Those are sharp, sharp. Oh, I'm sorry. I can't. I love Usobs. Oh, wait, what? Huh? He used them as a shield. I love Usobs scream though. That was so good. Yeah, a little bit. I look he wanted to cut to Zoro so he can have like no reaction. He just be like laying there like almost dead. Oh, he's got a plan. Don't don't get your feet stuck again, Luffy. I swear, brother. I was a good kick. Hey, son. That's a good kick to make Sonji proud. Hell yeah. What did he figure out though? He uses weight against them. And they're back. No, Luffy thought about something. Who else but Luffy? The bar wasn't high for Zoro, apparently. But the thing is like unorthodox stuff. Has to work out eventually, right? Right? He's genuinely trying this. He's such a goofball, bro. Oh, gosh. This is not going that well. I'm going to be honest. Oh, he's got him. He's going to crush him. Yo, it actually got a word. Taste of your own medicine. I mean, it was looking smart of him to use these sharp teeth against him. That's true though. Yeah, he's got a human jaw. Oh my God. I thought that was the end of the episode. It's going to be something like Luffy threw a fish in in between his arm and the teeth and he's biting into the fish actually. Something like that. Oh, no, he's actually biting his arm off. Okay. I'm surprised Nami hasn't like stepped in. I guess she doesn't want to just get in the way or anything. And this is a fight of like Titans. Oh, just use that counterweight. My God.  He's thrown Arlong several times. Does the teeth still in his side? Oh, he's got a headache. He was yelling. It's not kind of painful. I'm not going to lie. He's barely done any damage to Usa to Arlong at this point too. I don't know how I confused Arlong and Usa. I'm going to keep the bug. It looks like he's barely even like scratched him. Do you guys not see him jump? Oh, is he going? I cannot dude. I cannot. What is he doing? Why? He's not one to run either. Does he want him to?  He's not going to jump in or anything. Oh, he said. Yeah. Like he has if he has access to water. Oh, he's got like torpedo out. Oh, you better get out of the way. Oh, no. He's going to start like like go to like running in place. Shark dash. Oh, we hit him. I said he can't be stopped. I said torpedo. Okay. How much did that actually do to him though? I can never tell with Luffy at this point. Oh, he did dodge the like the like side swipe him. He's going to have to like insanely out smart Arlong. He has to work against them. And it doesn't even affect him because his nose is so strong. It does not like it hurts him or anything. It feels like at this point Arlong is still sort of having fun with him. He's just going to keep going till he hits him side swiped him again. It sounds like a plane coming in. He looks like one. Oh, this is so sad. I would say I'm surprised he hasn't gone after the townspeople yet, but I think he still wants to use them like in the end. He still wants them to pay him and he realizes he can still use them. Oh, that would be that would be the like winning number. He was able to break his nose. Hold him shark. Like I said, Arlong is still having fun. Maybe he has a plan for it this time. Like he's going to like let it hit him. Oh, like block it. Yeah, that wouldn't stop it. Oh, no, here he comes. Can he actually he knows his limits? I would think. No, he blocked it. He's got his fingers like wrapped around him now though. What do you do from there? Oh, he can just use that every time he dashes. He was like kind of like limit testing himself. He's literally a plane. Oh, no. Oh, he's falling through the water. He's just disrespecting Arlong now. He's gaining momentum. Oh, just kick him into the ground. No shot. The precision. Let's go. Nami knows it's not enough. Nope. Definitely not. Definitely not. Now he's just angry. Was that seeking show? Oh, oh shoot. He's angry. This is what I think he was getting to at that point when he first went to the village we saw. He's getting like really mad. Oh my God. Get up, Luke. Get up, baby.  His eyes are terrifying. Grabbed a blade. He knew. That's not just a blade. Shark saw. Oh my. Oh my. That is sick though. What's your plan, Luffy? He's just climbing the building with that.  Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, what did she realize? What room is he in? Oh, is it Nami's? Oh, yeah, all the maps and stuff. Oh, there's so many. Dude, hundreds, thousands. One of the most important things. Oh. No, she is not. I don't think you know what that word means all along. Oh, Luffy's mad. Luffy's like this ain't this ain't a friend, bro.  And the battle continues onwards. I like how Nami instantly knew what room they were in. I wonder if it's going to draw any more significance other than the fact that Luffy is fighting for her. Like that's what it all draws back to in the end. He's fighting for her to be their navigator and he sees the potential in her and how talented she is. And that's why he and the others are going to this length to keep them together as a crew despite being together not that long thus far. But I like this fight so far. It's really kept me on my toes. Everything that's happened from Luffy breaking his teeth and then him just growing him back to him grabbing the weapon out of the building. I like the design of it. Oh no. I've been looking forward to this Luffy Arlong 1v1 the entire arc. Despite everything else being very good. I think it's all been building to this because Luffy's the only one that can take him on. Guys, that's been it for episode 41 and 42 of our one piece watch your drop. Comment down below the episode we thought my reaction and it's always a hope you guys have a one for us. Should I ask for you? We'll look at you in the next one. Peace, peace.


We did a field trip with the ICRC team to central Syria, to the area of Homs and Hama, Salamiya and Al-Rastan. It's an area which has been definitely affected by the fighting and still is. We saw very, very different levels of destruction. We went to the opposition-held area of the city of Rastan, which was basically almost totally destroyed, where people live among the ruins and it's almost amazing that people can survive there. We met the civilians, we saw how they lived and strive to get by, but we also went to government-held areas where people are also struggling because there was a big water canal that was broken. But you could see that everybody was affected by the violence, but certainly it was not the same destruction all over you. You saw beautiful fields and you saw terrible destruction within one hour's move. The thing that struck me most was the destruction in the city of Al-Rastan, talking to doctors who had almost nothing and working desperately to serve the needs of that population. And then there were the people at the water points in Salamiya, who every day had to go to the water point outside the house to get just the limited amount of drinking water available that we had arranged for. Those were maybe the two most striking experiences, different situations, but everybody on both sides of the frontline affected by the war in the country. Well, we visited field hospitals in the opposition-held area and basically they need everything. They're working under extremely difficult conditions and I had to tell the doctors who were struggling there and say, I would like to give you everything and I can give you nothing because at this stage we're not allowed to bring in medical aid to medical structures in opposition-held areas. So the needs are there. It's obvious when you're in the middle of fighting and you have wounded or normal medical cases in the population, you need support. And this was just one place, but clearly there are huge medical needs. Many places in Syria, there are thousands and hundreds of thousands of wounded and particularly it's difficult for us to get across to the other side of the frontline. I went there in the field now to look at water and this is an example where we can really do a lot, both on the government side and on the opposition-held area. Water is flowing in all directions to all people and together with the SARC, local authorities, we can do a lot and we do a lot. So this is working very well. But of course we're pleading with all parties to have access. Let us go to all the places which are affected by the fighting, whether it's a destroyed city or a relatively well-functioning village. People are affected everywhere. We will assess and we will try to meet the needs according to the needs on an impartial basis. So we're just pleading for this humanitarian space in between the fight to which we are not apart. I see today together with the SARC has considerable access in Syria and we can do a lot and we do a lot for millions of people. But then there are areas we cannot access because the fighting and the conflict is very intense and we're not given permission to access. In particularly we have a dialogue with the authorities because we want the need, access to meet humanitarian needs on the opposition health areas for the wounded like the place I visited, the field hospital and other places around Damascus. So the needs are there. The capacity on our side is there. But we're not able to do what we would like to do to serve the Syrian people under the current conditions. The needs are enormous. We want to do more when things open up.


Well, what do you think? And did we have any controls? No, and as I said, we've done no negotiating on that at all. And I'm not going to hazard any guesses to why they turned him loose, not as long as we still got hostages there. Are you pleased that he's out, sir? Of course. Do you have any hopes that we'll have additional hostages in the next few days or so? Any indication? I haven't seen any indication of that. Mr. President, what should the next step of the United States government be to build on whatever signal might have been adhering to the release of Mr. Singh? I'll just tell you that this has been a great problem for us and it's been something that's very much in our minds and that we're not engaging in negotiations with the captors. I'm sure you must know who was intervening. I just can't talk any further about it. Are they talking to the Native American election? Do you think so? What? Do you believe that the terrorists are trying to manipulate the American presidential election in some way to the hostages? Well, if they are, I hope they're on the right side. Mr. President, forgive me for my brashness, but this would appear to be maybe the last leadership meeting that we're going to have during your presidency here, at least to discuss the legislative agenda.  Have you give us our charge each week or every other week or so? And then go out there and do the best we can. Now, Bob can speak from a little bit different perspective when they were in the majority, but we in the House have always been in the minority. Let me tell you, Mr. President, the only leverage we had in the House of Representatives in the last eight years has been your leadership and what you've been able to do by supporting that bandit minority that we have in the House of Representatives. I just want to express my personal appreciation and thanks to you for what you've done by way of giving us the inspiration and the spree decor to do the best we could even in a minority role. Of course, Bob can speak for himself from the Senate's vantage point, but that's our view from the House. We thank you, Mr. President, for what you've done. Can I just say, Mr. President, America's a better place because you've been here, and we're all proud to have been a part of it and we'd go the extra mile for you any time just as you've done for our country. Well, I had to thank Bob. You're going to get the drug bill for anyone, Senator? Well, no, I've got to start the meeting. I am most grateful for what I've heard and I've been very proud of the relationship that we have all had for these several years. And now that the 13 annual appropriations bills have been enacted and I commend all of you for that achievement, I think it's time for the Congress to go home. Before you do, I would urge the Senate to pass a responsible drug bill. A House passed a good bill 12 days ago to strengthen our fight against drugs, but it's been sitting on the Senate calendar for days. I urge the Senate to pass that drug bill so that it can be quickly conferenced and enacted and then I'll wish the 100th Congress a very hearty adieu. And yes, the judge has approved too. Thanks, ladies and gentlemen. Hope to get on this week. You're getting an arm too strong. Johnny? Well, all right, I'll own it last, I'll continue. And let me welcome Nick Brady to the cabinet table. Anybody can keep the treasury sound, he can. All right, Nick. And once again, I want to thank all of you for the fine job you did in getting those 15 separate bills. Bob, we deserve our special thanks for your leadership in getting those bills moving that ran some last-minute trouble in the House. We salute your statesmanship. Now, if we can get a few more things done, we can go spend some time getting Republicans elected to the House and Senate and putting George Bush here in my chair. Everybody seems to have a must list of legislation at the end of the session. I have a list of musts and must nots that I would like to share with you. As I said with the press here, the nation needs a good drug bill passed before you leave town. Bob, when we get the general discussion, I hope you'll give us your assessment of whether we'll see a good drug bill before adjournment. On the textiles bill, you plug your ears. Well, I still think we must stop this protectionist bill.  And I'm hoping the House will sustain my veto. But our labor legislation, Bob and others have been doing a great job keeping away from my desk bills that extend mandatory federal regulation into every business in America. And Bob, please stick with that. On judicial nominations, Strom, I hear that and Mel Simpson that you've both been working some magic and I hope that the both of you will fill us in in a few minutes. We'll get to that. But now let me turn to Bob Doe and then Bob Michael for comments on the outlook for the remaining days of the 100th Congress. I'll keep talking here until you swap them out. So, for starters, gentlemen, please tell us when would you adjourn? I just told Bob... They're trying to stay in the chamber because he doesn't have floor privilege and so they can stay in there and avoid it. But he told me yesterday, he said, well, if we don't finish this week, maybe we'll finish a week from Saturday. Mr. President? Well, Mr. President, thank you very much. Thank you. Good to see you. Thank you, sir. And the Minister of Commerce, Mr. President. How are you doing? And our Foreign Minister, thank you. Good to see you. And then the Ambassador of the South Washington. Hello. Nice to see you. And Ambassador Black in the car. Good to see you. Good to see you. Well, good to see you. Come in. I know we only have a few minutes. Let's talk folks a moment. Let's see over there. This is the President. Thank you. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. Well, it's a great pleasure to welcome you to the White House. Knowing this is the first occasion of this kind since the United States gained independence. I also note that arriving in your nation in the first Peace Corps volunteers for most of the time I welcome the improved relations which reflects we appreciate very much your government and your personal effort to bring about more recognition in your goal. Chairman of the Lucifer I pronounce that correctly. May I? May I? You may. I know the United States is expanding Its relations with western countries and is engaged in important economic reforms at home. And this is Larry Rivers. Hello, Larry. Congratulations, thank you so much. happened in August at the Chicago Convention. It's a real pleasure to meet you, sir. Well, incidentally, thank you and thank the veterans for some of those resolutions that were passed there at that convention. Thank you very much, Mr. President. Make sure you get some of us. Oh, Mr. Cooper-Holt, Mr. Director. Mr. President, this is you again, sir. Mr. President, how are these our friends?  I know they've been most supportive of things that we've been trying to do. Thank you. Mr. President, if you would allow me a copy of our resolutions passed at the convention. I know some of them had to do with our efforts in Central America. I know a number of other things at that time. We appreciate your efforts in Central America as well. Since I'll have the opportunity of being the last commander-in-chief to meet with you, first of all, thank you on behalf of the other aid that you've greeted so cordially in the Oval Office. And we would like to present to you with our certificate of merit, which has been brought in as well as the gold medal of merit. Thank you for your user service. Yes, yes. Yes. All right. All right. Well, thank you very much. You said very much. Well, you certainly did be greatly, and I'm very proud to have this. Thank you, Mr. President. And this. Thank you, sir. Didn't we both, though, you've been back in North Bush again. We endorsed you twice already, and we got you first back. Hey, that's great. Can we hold the medal up one more time for a picture? Yeah, I'll tell you where it is. All right. Thank you, sir. Well, thank you. Mr. President, thank you very much. Well, listen, a great pleasure. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Good luck, please. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. So good to see you. I'm out of all my body. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President. Well, President Zuma is against drunk riding. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My secretary of transportation, Jim Harrington. Good afternoon, President. How are you? Good. Mr. President, we're delighted to have this opportunity to visit with you today. We've got a special presentation that we want to make. You know, we've had joint effort on the national and local level and state level about getting the drunk drivers off of our nation's highways. You're familiar with not only the mothers against drunk driving, the mad organization, and the students against them. So that whether they're mad, sad, or glad, they're going to get the drunk drivers off of our roads. And I wanted to have the honor of presenting this pin to you and pinning it on you if I may do that. Well, all right. That's our national chairman of government leaders against drunk drivers. Yeah, and I know some of the success, too. I know there's been a 14 percent decrease in teenagers under 21. And of course, I know what one of you would help do in getting all 50 states to then save a liquor to 211. And then there has been, I believe, from teenage. I think it's dropped 34 percent. Yes, sir. With that.  It's important. Now that I'm the property-dressed, whatever. Okay. Yes, sir. North Carolina's really complete. I'm a leader. That's all right. You're just mad at her, Princess. But she has helped to help us promote this. We love it, government leaders. Governors and legislators, I'm glad, too. It's a former government. We can appreciate that. I think about 30 states now. And we are trying to get all 50 states to, we've had some that order as many as 100 kids and one state ordered only four. They said, we don't have many government leaders in North Carolina. That's a beginning.  Oh, my God, the products. I wanted to tell you that all of the men that know that I am coming up here wanted me to tell you, hello. My youngest son said he voted for you twice. He wished he could vote for you again. Pretty good for a 10-year-old. No. And all the women wanted me to give you a hug. May I give you a hug? No. No. We love you. We really do. I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you all for all that you're doing here. As a national chairman, I'm glad that I'll help us to get this promoted all over the country. Thank you, Mr. President. Alcohol is our number one abused drug. Yes, really. It is. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Goodbye. Good to see you all, too.