At Audiology Associates of Prestonsburg, you can live your life the way you want and find the freedom of better hearing. You'll experience patient care that is specific to you with exceptional follow-up care that ensures your hearing and balance needs are being met. Audiology Associates at 1428 Northlake Drive in Prestonsburg. The McCall Art Gallery, located at Big Sandy Community and Technical College, will be holding the opening reception of Appalachian Quintessence Traditional Appalachian Art by Terry Birchit Wednesday, January 25th. Birchit is an artist from Lawrence County and attributes Eastern Kentucky as one of his greatest influences. So Terry's work, and we do tend to see quite a bit of Appalachian work. It's not always Appalachian work, but it pretty often is. It's a lot of regional stuff, and that's what his stuff is. One thing that's a little bit different is that Terry studied under Tom Whitaker, and Tom Whitaker has been a big influence on him. Tom Whitaker has kind of prided himself as one of the biggest Appalachian artists he passed away just a few years ago. So I think honoring Tom's legacy through style and also just kind of a visionary sense that Terry has is really important. Birchit's exhibits include canvas paintings as well as barrels, hand saws, and other traditional objects from Appalachia. The exhibit is free to view and will remain at the McCall Art Gallery until March 1st. I just think it's very important to support the arts, and you know, it's one of those things that people are always complaining in Eastern Kentucky about not having enough to do. And it's just something really good to do. It's something the families can come to. It's something that I think really what the kind of work that Terry does, all ages can enjoy. And it's just a great opportunity to get out and do something in the community. The reception is free to attend and will begin at 3 p.m. at the McCall Art Gallery. For more information on the exhibit, go to McCall Art Gallery of BS CTC on Facebook. Reporting for Mountaintop News, I'm Brianna Robinson.


You're practiced one time. Alias. Jessica Jones, Alias. Greetings and welcome to Books for Busy Students. I'm Lauren, a librarian at the Ray Howard Library. Jessica Jones, Alias, is said in the Marvel Comics universe, but the protagonist is not your average superhero. The gritty, somber tones give the feeling of detective noir with references to the famous detective film Chinatown. The illustrations are entirely full color in deep earth tones with hues of dark grays and reds bleeding in. The urban Marvel universe is established when we discover a heroine is a private detective with photos of herself fighting crime alongside other famous superheroes on her office walls. Her cynical attitude and battle with depression hint at her conflicted nature about her powers. Things get more complicated when she takes on a case of a missing sister who turns up murdered and ends up videotaping Captain America's secret identity during her surveillance. Jessica knows she has to sleuth her way out of this mess when she's implicated for the murder and a larger conspiracy is slowly revealed. Thanks for watching.


This segment of CalTV News' Offscript where reporters share behind-the-scenes stories from in the field welcoming him as Tomas Manglone, the co-director of the department. This is our last segment of Offscript for Fall 2017. Thanks for joining us and we're going to get right into it. So Anna, today we have a full slate of reporters here today speaking about their stories. First of whom is our new reporter, Anna, who will be talking about a story you just shot recently regarding basic needs. Do you mind telling us what the story is about and how you went about covering that story? Yeah, so this week is the Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week. So the basic needs team had an event that's called Basic Needs for Mental Health and it's meant to be a very comfortable and secure and protected space for students to just come together and talk about their experiences. And I think the event also introduces a bunch of resources that are available for the students and there is also a panel of students who are able to speak about their personal experiences as well as the tips and tricks that they could provide for the students who showed up at the event. All right, thanks so much for covering it. Do you mind sharing with us some of the tips and tricks you just mentioned and what were some of the students' experiences? This is part two of the Basic Needs issue that we're talking about. The first one was with the ASUC EAVP's office. What was the main takeaway from this event that you went to? I think the main takeaway was just all the resources that they provided. I think part of the discussion, a lot of people brought up one significant problem is that there's just a lot of resources and it's hard to navigate and find them all. So then the ASUC Senators are talking to Cal Central to have one centralized information system with just everything there, so they're currently working on that. And one of the stories that the panel has shared that was the most memorable to me was just there are services, but it's hard to get those services. So yes, there is health insurance, but the co-payment for health insurance is a problem itself, so it's just the little things that we don't think about when we think about these benefits. So I feel like that's the main takeaway from the event. Wonderful, thanks for sharing. And so just a quick reminder to our viewers, after Offscript is ending, we will be sharing all the links to these stories on the post itself, so be sure to tune in for that later on. And right now, thank you, Anna, for sharing. We'll move on to our next reporter, Kara Holbrook. Kara, we actually just finished working on this story before going live right now. So you're working on a story regarding women being able to drive now in Saudi Arabia. Do you mind giving us a brief background about that story and how you went about putting it together? Yeah, so for this upcoming video, that's such release on Monday. I am doing a BuzzFeed style, so I'm not physically in the video, but it's a voiceover and then lots of B-roll from Saudi Arabia. And in order to do this video, I did a lot of research on the Crown Prince who was just appointed a few months ago, Mohammed bin Salman. And he serves underneath his father, King Salman, who's now 82 years old. So the Crown Prince kind of is dictating where the country goes next. And he's implementing a lot of reforms. One of them is the royal decree that passed in September, allowing women to drive without the presence of a male, which is a huge deal because Saudi Arabia had previously been the only country in the whole world that had banned women from driving. A lot of that is tied to the strict Islamic code that the country follows. And Mohammed bin Salam has also mentioned that he wants to moderate the form of Islam being used. He also influenced another decree that was passed recently that is allowing women to enter into sports fields and go to like large events that previously only men could go to. So I covered that as well. And he's also, he recently launched at a tech initiative, I think last week, his plans for a $500 billion mega city called Niyam, which is supposed to be a huge technological, innovative hub on the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia. And it's supposed to link all three continents in that region and just be a hub of diversity. So I covered all that in the video. Right. That was a fascinating story to help you with. I really appreciated how in-depth you went with the research. I want to also talk about we do have students who are directly affected by this news. It's very personal to them and where they're from. Do you mind also sharing behind the scenes stories about reaching out to the groups here and if they made any comment at all about the matter? Yeah. So I tried to reach out to various professors and a speaker who actually came to campus who is a Saudi Arabian poet and all of them refused to talk about it for the most part. He, I actually went to this said poets. He gave a speech on campus for the Near Eastern Studies Department and he talked about how other poets that he know in Saudi Arabia have actually been imprisoned for years under the reign of King Solomon due to them speaking out. So I think many people are a little hesitant even in America to speak out against the regime and just talk openly about it. So that's why something like how to be is great just to spread the word about it. For sure. And so the story isn't up on our YouTube or Facebook page, but will be next week. And so stay tuned for that really delves into the recent news. And again, all these contradictions that we're hearing with even input we're getting in Berkeley. Next, I want to move on to our next reporter, Mia Villanueva. Mia, we also worked on a story regarding Trump's recent trip to Asia and more specifically his attendance of the conference in the Philippines. Can you talk about why you chose to do this story and also a brief background on it? I chose to do the story because I'm actually part of the Filipino. So I have a lot of a lot of family out there that's been affected directly by the presidency and just how on edge it's made a lot of people, especially people in lower economic brackets. And to be clear, President Duterte of the Philippines. Yes, of the Philippines. And it's put a lot of people on edge just he's been very radical in his crackdown on drugs. And it's led to like tens of thousands of deaths of drug dealers, users, and then a lot of bystanders have been. So I mean, he has statements that have been released along the lines of like, you know, if you see someone doing drugs or dealing drugs, you have my permission to kill them. And so it's really been unnerving for the people in the Philippines. So that's why I felt passionate to cover it because a lot of my family out there is politically involved. So it's shugging things up for sure. Interesting. And so your story will actually come out at 9.30 am tomorrow on both of our platforms. Another thing I wanted to talk to you about is that the relationship Trump and Duterte have been compared in some instances. You mentioned that in the report, but you also address the last administration, the Obama administration. Can you talk about the aspects of that that you mentioned in the story? Oh, yeah. So a lot of people in the Philippines, a lot of politicians believe that this is a step forward for US-Philippine relations because Trump and Duterte kind of have some sort of like camaraderie. And there was a lot of backlash from people here in the US saying, why didn't he address human rights? The Secretary of State for the US stated that he did briefly in context of the Philippine drug war, but Duterte's spokesperson denied that. So there's really, we haven't been able to get a clear answer on it. So, but President Obama was very, very upfront in speaking about human rights and Duterte is pretty much known for being very like, does not want to be challenged essentially. So I guess this is a better relationship between presidents for sure. All right. Thanks for doing that report. Again, more in-depth research done by Mia on that and really recapping what this trip to Asia means. It was Trump's first trip there, so it was historic. That story, again, will be coming out tomorrow morning. Be sure to check out for that. And now we'll be moving over to our reporter, Polina, who is doing, I want to say one of our more spirited stories and it has to do with a group on campus. Do you mind explaining what it is? Yes. So my video is going to be a behind the scenes look at what goes on at Zellerbach Hall. It's Zellerbach is so central to our campus physically and also just the events that it holds and the performers that they're able to invite here. And coming from a performing arts background, I thought it'd be interesting and also valuable to show the Berkeley community just like how much work it takes to get a production on the stage. All right. And so you will be meeting with, you know, so many plays happen at Zellerbach. What specifically are you going to be covering when you do meet with them? Or do you know? Yes. I will be covering the hard nut, which is kind of a modern take on Tchaikovsky's nutcracker. So that will be at the end of December or middle December. All right. Wonderful. All right. We're looking forward to it. And lastly, Talia, your story will be coming out much later, but we thought it was important since this is our last segment of Offscript 2, share some time to talk about it. You have some, I would call it developing breaking news. Do you mind sharing it with our audience? Sure. Yeah. Just knowing that the interview is actually happening this coming Monday, and it'll probably be released within the next two weeks, probably. I don't want to share too many details to encourage you to go and watch the video that's going to be released. But the gist is a few weeks ago during my American Studies discussion, my GSI Eva started talking on the subject of the recent allegations against many celebrities regarding sexual assault and rape, and how that has been a concern in the past here on our UC Berkeley campus. But that has kind of dwindled away with time. And that kind of got to me because I had a lot of opinions and thoughts coming out, as did many people, about these recent allegations. So she talked a lot about the current battle she's going through against the university. She actually won a case against this particular professor who is tenured and very high paid and very highly regarded here. So it was a really amazing and big step for this whole movement. But even after that news came out and was proven that he was sexually harassing a student, he was not excused from the university and is still employed here on our campus right now. So I think this is very timely and kind of just takes attention to the fact that we don't we see these things coming out about people that we see so frequently, but we forget to see the people here around us who are facing the same allegations. All right. Thank you, Tali. Of course, you have your interview coming up. We're looking forward to it. Such an important story that I think has often been overlooked. So we're going to spend a lot of time looking into this and making sure this isn't the only time we talk about it. And with that, we thank you for joining us this past semester of Offscript, where we share behind-the-scenes stories from in the field. Thanks for tuning in, but we will be back in the spring with new stories and Offscript isn't going anywhere. So stay tuned for that for this and more regarding sports, entertainment and news. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Thomas Melania.


I knew the market was going to fall, and I thought actually it was going to happen yesterday. I thought we were going to gap down yesterday, so I was one day early, but again, we didn't do any market trades, but we absolutely are going to fall, and they're probably going to, they're probably going to announce a Biden one today, and then the market's going to tank. So the reality is that you've got to stay short. It's really, it was really a great read on this to see that we weren't going to go over the high, and you could have gone long two days ago, the day after the election, and even good economic data this morning isn't going to help this market. So I did not want to do a million things though today, because I might carry some things through into the weekend, so again, but I might change my mind and do some things later. I'm talking about options. So for now as far as what we're going to do out of the gate, you know, I'm torn. EA is a good gap, but this is that one that could possibly open late. It also is going to be really spreading. All the other ones everybody wrote I don't like, and you know, I'm torn between this and just doing the market. Like I kind of wonder if we should just do the market here. I promise, I don't know what time this sets up, but this is going to just completely tank. I mean, I I knew what happened. It's just I knew what happened. I knew what happened even after we rallied Wednesday, and even even after we rallied Wednesday, we were all the way up here. I knew this was going to happen. I just I didn't know when, but I thought it would this week, and this was Wednesday, and then when we closed show week, I said, wow, it's probably going to be Thursday, but then we got up Thursday, and I said, well, okay, and then last night it started. I mean, it started last night. We were selling off last night. I ended up doing a very late TB hit last night, and I said, oh, this is it. I mean, we just tanked tanked right into the clothes last night. So this is this is what I expected would happen here. I don't I don't know what I'm doing. We're going to watch the spy. We're going to watch EA. I'm not leading on my keyboard here today because I'm really not sure what I'm going to do first. All right, this is actually open. Wow, it's really spreading, though. All right, we'll go back to that. Get up to roll with me here today. I don't know what we're doing. 100% conviction. No chance of failure. Market will fall. Market's going to tank. So let's try to get it. Okay, stop. It's going to be 350 65. And I don't have the entry yet. 350 65. Let's do let's do 50 by 65. 50 by 65. 50 by 65. I'm on the spy here. I'll go back and look at that EA then. And don't drop the gun on this either because the entry could change and the stop could change. 50 by 65. And then I'll go look at EA. Here we go. Here we go. This is going to hit. We're going to tank today, people. It's going to happen one day or we're going to fall. This is just so crazy. Let's do 59 by 65. 59 by 65. There, do it. Do it. Just get in. Put the stop in and make sure you have the stop at the right place. We're here we go. Here we go. Just broke under here. Here. Here. We're going to tank. I just I don't want to do too many things. Gosh, darn it. Just nothing really was setting up the way I really wanted it in the gap, except for the market, quite frankly, except for the market. No, I'm just going to stick with the ones I had here. This is going to. This is going to. I have to do the spy, but this went. Had a huge stop, but this went. Did anyone do EA? Here. I was looking at the spy. You could have done this. You could have done this. It's going. Here we go. We're getting it. Tank, tank, tank, tank, tank. Market's going to tank. Market's going to tank. And they're going to announce a bottom one today, whether or not he legitimately did or not. I don't know, but I know the media controls the universe. The media controls the world. You know, the people that control content control the world. And guess who that is? Social media and the media, television, newspaper, those who control content control the world. A very important lesson to learn what's going on here in the last week and really the last year, 2020 between COVID, all of it, the censoring on Twitter, the people that control content control the world. Here we go. We are going to tank. I wish there was more to do, but I just want to, I just want to do the things that are 100%, but we can have an easier day that way. Gyro did it. Ooh, Gyro did it. Gyro, I didn't even see what time you signed in there. I didn't even know you were there. This could go to 115. If you did it, you did it. The spread was like 50 some cents, and then I kind of moved off of it, but it definitely was profitable and it definitely worked. And it definitely could go to 115. And this is going to swish around. All right. I didn't pay attention here, 348.36. All right, let's do this. For the day trade here, one more push through the low and out. Call it an easy day, call it a quick day, call it a fast day. Did anybody just get out of this actually? Did anybody get out of this quickly? Did anybody get out of the EA? I guess besides Gyro. Very interesting times we live in. Very, very interesting times, but the volatility is here. It will not disappear today. It's going to, it's going to continue regardless even if they announce the bottom one today. This volatility is here and it is not, not going away. And somebody told me why really I'm saying we're going to fall off a planet. Like why am I even saying that?


Welcome to Toffy TV. It is the Everton News Day. The Everton, and once again, have been linked with a move for Duvan Sopate, the Atalanta forward. A couple of times now we've been with them this week. Apparently Everton and West Ham are after them for a loan. He apparently would prefer a move to London, which makes it all very more interesting that we are playing West Ham this week. Everton don't seem like they have any money to spend and it is all going to be about the loan deals, isn't it? After this game, Everton have got ten days and no games to try and sort something out. It does show you the kind of market we are now playing with. We've been linked with three or four players who are again loans with the possibility of buying them, who are involved. They are like a forest, they are like a boomer. They are all looking at different players that we have been linked with, all the usual suspects really. The only one Everton really seems to have been linked with and no one else is Dembelly from Leon and that has not really gone anywhere to be honest. It was a story yesterday which we put out and we haven't heard any more on today. We will have to wait and see where it goes. A lot of these players will have been offered to Everton as well. Let's not forget that agents will be putting these names out there and seeing if anyone is desperate enough to sign them. That's the way it works and sometimes clubs are desperate enough to sign them. Who knows maybe if Everton did bring one of these players in. It could be that little spark that Everton needs to get the season going so we'll have to wait and see on that one. There is another story going round today that if West Ham get beat on Saturday that David Moyes would actually lose his job that is going round today. Nothing on Frank Lampard than if Everton lose but there you go. So there could be a potential of David Moyes losing his job if Everton were to win on Saturday. That sounds like in the realms of fantasy Everton actually winning a game. Further on from the reports over the weekend about the niche bar at Baxendale, the athletic actually done an article last night putting more context into it even though Everton said they were never going to talk about historic events ever again. They did. In the reports it says that the board stayed away because of threats which we were aware of. The media room were told and were given a statement before the game and then were essentially briefed on what some of those issues were concerning Bill Kenright and Denise Barrett Baxendale. And seemingly out of that the story about Denise Barrett Baxendale being put in a headlock was obviously communicated to somebody in the room by somebody else in the room. That's all we know. This story now has just gone absolutely stupidly mental. Let's get it right. With reports suggesting that Denise Barrett Baxendale did not want to take that any further which is a right but it does seem to undermine the safety of other people in the stadium if there's random people just walking around headlocking people and not being punished for that. So very very strange. Athletic have put that out last night and it all just seems very very strange and Everton just seemed to be getting themselves more and more tied up in stupid stories that don't paint them in a good light especially amongst the fans. And so amongst the fans Everton, Everton shareholders association have put out a petition for a vote of no confidence in the Everton board.  If you want to sign it you can sign it. You don't. You don't. That's up to you. That's your right. But they have put out a vote of no confidence in the Everton board and obviously with a vote of no confidence in the Everton board. So with everything going on people have clearly had enough now and this isn't going away and that's what makes Saturday's game actually so pivotal. Pivotal because the implications of Everton losing obviously could be absolutely huge but we'll have to wait and see on that. In a little moment of good news Everton under 21s played Southampton under 21s today and won 3-2 earlier on today. So that is some good news for them and for Paul Tate. That is a good win at Southampton. So we're well done to them. There you go. This has been the Everton news daily. The stuff happening all the time on the channel because there's news happening all the time. So yeah make sure you subscribe. Click the link if you want more great videos on Toffy TV premiere and also if you want to scan the QR code which has come out now do so to subscribe to Toffy TV premiere. See you later.


What are you doing? Hello, I was looking at how much time we've got. One, two, one, two, three, four weeks. Till Oscar nominations. When is it? January 24th. That's, have you gotten, speaking of nominations, have you gotten a single screener yet? No, I don't think we'll get it till the beginning of January. I know, we're gonna have like three weeks to watch everything. Yeah, they keep sending them later. Later and later and later. They used to get them, I used to have them to watch during this holiday period between Christmas and New Year's. I used to enjoy taking this down week to watch them and now we're not even getting them until after the first of the year. It's weird. I don't know why they're doing it that way. It's, why wouldn't you want them to, why wouldn't you give everybody as much time as possible to watch everything? Idiots. 24th? January 24th. That's probably the day we're watching Pothon. They won't happen at the same time because Pothon won't have a 5 AM showing. Hey, welcome back to our Stupider Exits of Gordon. I'm Rick. And you can follow us on Instagram, Twitter for more juicy content. Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yo, that's a little hard, yeah. Oh. That wasn't on the bottom, it was on the bosom. Ouch. Stupid. And today we got a game. What? Yes. Cool. One of our subscribers of the channel has made games for us in the past. Yes, I love these. He's made us a different game today and this one is called Bollywood Bootlickers. Yes! Better or worse. Ah, I love it. The Bollywood Bootlickers, eh, eh, with the Bollywood Bootlickers, eh, eh, the Bollywood Bootlickers, eh, the Bollywood Bootlickers, ah, ah, ah. But this is a fun game that decides which actor is best, play along. Okay. So, I think it'll explain, but it's kind of like Ellen's Would You Rather game. Oh, okay. And so, like, I would rather him and then they add a different person to the side. Okay. And like, so, it's like Johnny Depp or Tom Cruise, I would say Johnny Depp, and they add a, or Will Smith, Johnny Depp or Will Smith. And, but I think this is, it's who's the better actor. Who's the better actor. Okay, so you have to say, here's one actor and then they'll show the next one. And by the end, we'll get to the best actor we think, I guess, okay. This is gonna be controversial, I suppose. Very controversial. I did not make this. I'm just doing it. This is just for fun, kids.  Even Shah Rukhati's gonna win it all! Here we go. Get ready, my doll moves like this. Okay. Nice. Okay. Oh, better, preferred. I haven't seen a lot of you, the Varun, I guess. Me too, that's where I would go. Varun. I haven't seen enough of either one, but that's my... Oh. Okay. Okay. I wish we got to see his one beatia this year of the Werewolf one. Yeah. But it was in theaters for like a week. Yeah. Oh, Siddharth. Yeah. Agreed. He would be the better actor of the two. At least from what we've seen. Well, once again, haven't seen a lot. Right. Ooh. Tough. I go with Little B. Little B. Just because of Ludo. His performance in Ludo. Oh. Oh, Ollie Faisal. None of them comes close. Yeah. He's way better than all of them. Sorry, Little B. Love you. And a toast. Ooh. Ooh, that's a good one. That's really good, because Farhan's really good. I'm still gonna go Ollie. He's sticking with Ollie Faisal. But that's a good one. That's a good one. I could see an argument for Farhan. He's a phant... Wow, that's tough. Ollie Faisal. Ollie Faisal. Lovrithic. Lovrithic. He's a fantastic actor. Oh. Oh, that's hard.   Ah! Jim. I'm going Jim. Pick one. Ollie. Oh. Let me think here. Hmm. Tough one. It's a toughie. This is the most difficult decision I've ever made in my life. It's still Jim. Oh. He's such a fantastic actor. Unfair, because it was cut short. But he's so fantastic. He is a fantastic actor. The amount of great performances we've gotten from him. Yeah. Oh! I'm still sticking with Ollie Faisal. Yeah, I'm Jim. You're still with Jim? Okay, we're talking about sexiness. The kids, it's Zaddy. Zaddy is the sexiest of everybody that's on here. And he's done, of what we've seen, I've really enjoyed, but I'm still sticking with Ollie Faisal. Jim, for me still. Oh, Akshay. Jim. Fun. Fun factor. And getting wet, nobody touches the king of cheese. Nobody. Yeah, it's hard to compare these. But we're talking thespians. Actors. Ollie Faisal. I'm Jim still. Oh! That's tough. I'm going Jim still. Shit! I go Ayushman.  Just buy it. Oh! Oh! That's tough too, but I stick with Ayushman. Jim still. I'll tell you what. If Irfan's on the list, forget about it, everybody. Oh, there's no. Oh! I'm going to have to switch to VJ. Me too. I'm switching to VJ. I'm going to have to switch to VJ. Fuck! Also, it's been all of our toast. And this is not on purpose, just because they're our toast, by the way. No, we would never do that. Oh, crap! I'm going to have to go Vicky. Shit, me too. I gotta go Vicky, but that hurts. It's starting to hurt me now. Yeah. Oh, that's cool there, man. That's a tough one.  But I'm still going to go Vicky. Me too. Me too. I'm still going to Vicky. It looks great there, though. I love his look there. I'm still going to have to go Vicky. I love me some Jai Deep, though. These are getting great. That hurts. I'm with you, Vicky. That hurts. Ah! I'm going to go nice. Legend. Legend, but still Vicky. Legend, fun, fantastic. I, too, still lean Vicky. But if you start getting, like, noises or ponkoshes in here. Yeah. Geez. Ah! Legend. I gotta, I gotta, I can't. Now we're entering legend status. I'm with, I'm talking Stilthespian. I'm still picking Vicky. I'm with Amrishpuri. Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh. Why don't you do that to me? I'm going to hit. I am too. Header does it for me alone. Fuck! Header does it for me. Oh. She-Head still. One of the most underrated actors in Bollywood. Yeah. Because of the depth that we've seen from him in his last few years. Vicky and She-Head hurts me, though. A lot. But I'm still going with She-Head. Oh. RIP. Still going Vicky, though. No, I mean She-Head. Yeah. Oh, that's tough. And we really haven't seen enough. Are you still on Amrish? No, no, no. I jumped to She-Head because I hit her. Oh, gotcha. Oh, man. Oh. What are you going to do here, Rick? What are you going to do? I can't. It's Amir.  It's Amir Khan. Yeah, that's tough. That's gotta be for me. That's tough, man. Oh. That's a good one, too.  She-Head versus Ren Beer. I'm still going She-Head. I have a personal heart connection. She-Head against Ren Beer. I love you, She-Head. I'm going Ren Beer. Fuck. Oh, man. I'm still in that hurdle. They're about as even as they get. Oh. Niraj. Thespian. I'm talking Thespian at it. Could he do what? Ren Beer did in Badmavad. Yeah, he could. I'm going to Ren Beer.  Go to Rajkumar Rao. Just go to Rajkumar Rao. Now we're talking about technicalities and aspects that transcend my emotional connectivity. Hey, it's Ren. Yeah, it's Rajkumar. You would have beaten everybody that's- Yeah. Still Rajkumar. It's Rajkumar. Love, SRK. Nobody is a better star. And he is a great actor who's underappreciated. Still Rajkumar. I agree. You have to get into the Nasir's and the big bees. That's how I'm on top of Bacchum. No, I'm going Rajkumar. I'm still going Rajkumar. I'm still, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm big bee.  Tasty nuts.    I feel like Rajkumar would be mad if I didn't pick KK Menon. I'm picking KK Menon. I'm still big bee. But if we're getting into the legends, I'm picking Vijay Raj. Vijay Raj.  I hate it.  This is well put together. Oh, my. Shit. I'm still, I'm, I'm very painfully hanging on to Vijay Raj. Yeah, I'm still Vijay. But that's difficult. Oh. I'll go with Manoj. The last film. It's Manoj. Boy. Great order for these to be done in. I know who's going to end it. This is giving me agitate.  Sorry, Manoj. It's Nawaz. It's Nawaz. Just can't keep squishing it like that. Both. Give me, give me them both. I don't want to pick. We're getting into the echelons where they're so good. They're even. I'm sticking with Nawaz. They're even.  What a legend. Nawaz. This is baby making music. Still Nawaz. I'm so sad right now.  No, but that's easy. Yes. He is, for me, the most impressive thespians in Indian cinema history. It's Irfan. It's Irfan. That's not hard at all for me. Legendary, worthy of all praise. I've never seen a better practitioner of the craft with ease than Irfan Khan. Although that's pretty good. That's a great one to compare.    And Pankaj. That's why I just went with Nawaz, because they're even for me. And I was already with Nawaz. What do you do? What do you do? They're both drowning in the ocean and you only have one life. I save them both and I kill myself. That's what I do. Well said. It does enter into an echelon where the only difference, it's the way it is with most Oscar nominations. It isn't just about the actor because every nominated actor is a magnificent actor most of the time. It has to do with the kind of role, the timing of the role that differentiates a performance in any given year. And also this was just Bollywood as well because if you would have included Kamal Hassan, Fahad Fasil, Mohanlal, these other amazes, and this was just males as well. Yeah, if you had thrown Kamal Hassan in there, I would have had a conniption. Yeah. Like you could have included like Radhika Update, Taboos of the world. Yeah, we only got the, I was anticipating a male and female. If you had Irfan and Taboo, I don't even know what you do at that point. No, but that's kind of a no-brainer. For example, I have a deeper emotional connection to Amir Khan, but I have never seen a more natural, mesmerizing, believable actor than Irfan Khan. Yeah. I agree. But it, and not just in Indian cinema, he's in my greatest actors of all time. I put him in the Denzals and the Daniel de Lewises and the Meryl Streeps and... Can gun? And Kate Blanchette and just some of the greatest practitioners of the art form ever. Yeah, absolutely.  That was terrible. That was painful. I hated it. I hated every second of it. The order was what made it great was because we had to make the decisions immediately back to back with some, like putting Pankaj after Nawaz. And then you include Shahid and Ranveer, who just like Pankaj and Nawaz, I consider it's almost an even playing field with Shahid and Ranveer. Agreed. With how good each of them are and obviously they're at star level as well. And their commitment to their work and their love for the craft. They're both equally amazing actors. Yeah, agree. And so those are the ones that are really difficult. And then DJ Frick and both VJs. Yeah. And then Jim, Raj Kumar. Yeah. Come on, Nasir. But if you include like Fafa in there, I don't know. And the problem with Shashan is it's like James Dean. Yeah. What makes them so great was what we could have seen from them, seen with Ledger. Yeah. But we did see from Ledger, thank you so much. One of the greatest performances of all time. Indeed. And Philip Seymour Hoffman. Oh. One of the legends of all time. Well, that was great. I hated it. I feel sick. Don't ever do it again. Are you all blocked?  Let us know who you ended up with at the end. And if it wasn't Irfan, why you're wrong. In any of the games we could play, let us know down below. Josh!


Hi everyone it's Paul Smith CFA CEO down here at the Royal Children's Hospital. Today we're kicked off with the Royal Children's Hospital Appeal. We'll be once again part of that appeal over the next four weeks. CFA has a long and proud tradition of being a part of the Royal Children's Hospital Appeal. We've raised over $32 million over many years. Last year we topped $1.7 million. My challenge to people this year is to see if they can top $1.8, $1.9, maybe even crack $2 million. So if you're out there and you see CFA people rattling cans collecting money please dig deep and do your best because it's all about the children at the Royal Children's Hospital.


to be going live and we are recording now. Excellent, brilliant. So welcome back everyone and to the third of our book launches series and as I have been saying now for our two past events and I think in these times of pandemic and going back to exploring this as an opportunity to pick up a book and read something while our spirit in as we wait to find yet again some measure of normality is perhaps one of the most useful and sort of stimulating opportunities that we have and I am delighted today to welcome Jeremy Yellen and from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and and even though the format the webinar format that we were discussing this moment ago what are the advantages that it's a lot easier in this type of format to have a conversation and with about books and with orders that otherwise would be slightly more complicated and today I'm particularly pleased that because I am sure that the seminar is this webinar is going to be a success because of the book and because of the order but certainly we can say I am happy to say that it's probably going to be the it's going down in history as the most aptly timed webinar ever since I've just finished like two minutes ago to change a class on this very topic and the topic of the general's empire during war time so I'm very pleased with that and hopefully this will be the beginning of a nice conversation that we'll have throughout the hour and if some of our students sort of elect to join us and Jeremy completed his PhD at Harvard University before moving to Hong Kong and he implicitly correct me if I'm wrong I have the impression that you belong to the group of historians of Japan of modern Japan and they really sort of have been very important and populated the trans-historian space right that 1945 moment it's not a break it's not where things sort of end or begin but needs to be placed into a broader context and a lot of Jeremy's earlier research is really designed to flesh out some core issues whether it is about how the Japanese military and government elites decided to change course of action in 1945 and how the war was understood to perceive that among people in Japan during the war time period and then again some of these threads come together in the book that you can see on the shelf and my back which is fascinating for a number of reasons but from my perspective it does something that was absolutely missing in the storytelling of the empire and is exploring the empire from the perspective of the places that are that become part of the empire during the war and therefore these are the places where initial ideas that are coming together and in a piston condition sort of come to cash with the reality of of total war so for me it's an exciting opportunity to engage with the topic of that that that is not only sort of fascinating from an intellectual point of view but also extremely timely because the repercussions of that sort of of that negotiation of that sort of encounter between war time Japan and the territory of this newly acquired and expanded empire the the impetable act continues continuously with us today and so it is a wonderful opportunity to throw us through a book that historically introduces us to the complexity of a reality that continues to exist today and so for this reason i am absolutely thrilled to have Jeremy and to welcome him at King's looking forward to your presentation and we agree that that's 25 minutes roughly give or take to introduce some of the threads in the book then we'll start having a conversation and opening up the floor to everybody and what i would like you to say is that as usual you can use the Q&A function which will be the designated natural function for questions if you want to ask questions or submit comments but feeling that you can also use the chat which i will be monitoring throughout. Without any further ado Jeremy the floor is yours again welcome to King's. Okay thank you for such a wonderfully kind introduction i appreciate it. I appreciate being invited out by Dr Patalano and by King's College London as well as the grand what is it called the the center for grand strategy that's what it's called. Let me share my screen first and i have a power point today i think it'll be easiest to just start with this hold on you can see this right okay great so um i'm excited to have the chance to talk about my book today and i'm honored really to be the the last in this term as well and i've um i have been given 20 to 25 minutes to give this talk um but i'm going to air on the side of brevity that way we can because obviously the Q&A is always much more interesting than the talk itself but before i even begin my talk um hold on a second before i even begin why is this not working uh here we go i'd like to plug my book um i've given so many talks where i forgot to plug my own book so i decided this time i'm going to create a slide and um do so with the discount code you know on it for you guys so um if you if you are available you can just take a screenshot of this um but uh 09 flyer or if you're in the UK or Europe or Asia CS09 flyer and that will get you 30 off so i think the center for grand strategy is going to follow up by sending out discount details after the talk but better safe than sorry so i can guarantee to you guys that this is the best book i have ever written and that's the best plug i am going to give myself all right so let's start talking about the book so my book is on the greater east Asia co-prosperity sphere um it was declared on august 1st 1940 by japan's foreign minister at the time matsuka yosuke by the following year july 1941 the co-prosperity sphere became the central goal of japanese policy what's really interesting here is that this is despite the fact that very few people had any clue as to the specifics um after the outbreak of the pacific war in december 1941 the sphere which um it got to be quite big as you can see here i became the epitome of japan's wartime goals still this did not mean that people agreed about what it meant but since the end of the war the co-prosperity sphere has had a much much much longer life and it's become the euphemism for a specific understanding of japanese imperialism and a specific understanding of japanese order building so this is a concept that actually has had a longer and more powerful post war life than matsuka could have ever imagined a washington post editorial in 1988 hinted that japanese businessmen across asia were now seeking to recreate japan's failed co-prosperity sphere by economic means and more recently people have begun to notice strong parallels you can see right here china's new greater east asia co-prosperity sphere so strong parallels between china's belt and road initiative and shijin ping's community of common destiny they're using the same terms that was used in the 1940s and so there's linkages to the present so for better for worse i think the co-prosperity sphere has provided a language um from which asia has and the world has really drawn and so it was this power behind the slogan and the power behind japan's wartime empire that drew me to this topic and as i was researching it i saw contemporary chinese efforts at promoting regionalism regionalism 2.0 i guess so my research became even more interesting and the prospects of telling the story about what the co-prosperity sphere is it became even more interesting when i started seeing more and more evidence that wartime leaders did not agree or even know what the co-prosperity sphere was much of the war was spent groping towards its possibilities so today i'm going to use this as my lens and my opportunity to talk about some of the main points of my book not all of course so i believe that the co-prosperity sphere and i argued that it's more than a simple economic bloc it's more than a simple slogan for imperialism or pan asian ideology it was also a reaction to the challenges of diplomacy and empire in the 1930s and it was a sincere attempt to envision a new type of political economic order for the region and so i argue that the co-prosperity sphere is best understood as a contested and negotiated process of envisioning the future during a time of total war and it happened not only in japan but in occupied territories as well i argue this in my book by telling two stories the first story is the story i'm and together i'm telling a political history of empire the first story is about high policy in japan for japan the co-prosperity sphere is really the story of imagining a regional order that was to take shape after the end of the war but it never consolidated into a system or an ideology and if you guys are interested we can talk about this later it was never a true grand strategy either it was constantly in flux it was hazy it was vague or subject to debates among core agencies thinkers and policymakers policymakers only agreed upon the central goals for the sphere from 1943 by which time it was almost impossible to implement so for japan this the the sphere was i'm i guess a history of failure a failed process of building asia anew my book also focuses on the reception in southeast asia i focus on two independent dependencies one berma and the other the philippines i'm not going to talk about why i chose those two so if you have a question you can ask me why i chose those two so for southeast asian elites in berma and the philippines the co-prosperity sphere is a different story it's in part the story of shepherding their countries to an independent future in the era of decolonization that followed the war so in all the co-prosperity sphere was brutal and oppressive but it also brought to varying degrees opportunity on bermes and philippino elites they collaborated in caretaker governments or newly independent regimes and it was in this that they pursued efforts at state building where they gained broader experience in national governments and in the process they strove to co-opt japan's empire for anti-colonial ends so these are the two stories my talk will focus on and they're the two stories that are told in my book so historians and political scientists they often talk about the co-prosperity sphere as a real thing as if japan had a plan that it sought to institute for the region there were plans i i don't disagree with that there were many plans the plans were a dime a dozen but they were never finished products so the co-prosperity sphere was a moving target it meant different things to different people at different times so instead of talking about the sphere as a single entity it was more a contest or a fight for visions for the future and those fights the phases in which these fights happened or conflicts happened you can see on this slide i'm not going to talk about this slide much i'll because i'll go into in depth into each one i'll talk about these three phases before i move on to a discussion of burma and the philippines all right phase one was with foreign a foreign minister matzuka yosuke he was the person who had the clearest vision at least initially for the greater east asia co-prosperity sphere so what was matzuka's co-prosperity sphere well for him it was the central component of his foreign policy it was the central it was the centerpiece matzuka believed that the world would break up into a number of blocks led by strong states japan would have its block the soviet union um europe would be under germany and italy the british empire parts of that were for the taking and the united states as well so matzuka then tried to build japan's greater east asia sphere through what i talk of as i call it sphere of influence diplomacy and he advanced this upon becoming foreign minister in august and september of 1940 he pushed for the axis packed with germany really with germany and italy but it was to gain from germany diplomatic recognition of japan's preeminent position in asia this was actually a major reason why japan declared the greater east asia co-prosperity sphere to begin with in doing so it was giving notice that its interests extended to greater asia and i guess we could talk about what that means in the q and a what greater asia means um yeah i'm signposting you guys for q and a so if you're interested you can just ask all the questions that i'm telling you to ask or you don't have to do that if you don't want to but from this point on matzuka sought to extend japan's new order to southeast asia through bilateral agreements and also by convincing the great powers to respect japan's regional hegemony this was the basis for matzuka's diplomacy um the most important thing he did was um try to get recognition of the co-prosperity sphere from the great powers the lynchpin of this strategy was not the united states it was the soviet union he made his whirlwind trip to europe in march and april of 1941 not to bring about a quadripartite pact but instead to bring about greater acceptance for spheres of influence and he was strikingly successful in moscow he secured a five-year treaty of neutrality he got a pledge to respect spheres of influence as well uh japan's was in manchuria and the soviet unions was in the mongolian people's republic this was his sphere of influence strategy and it was only to be the beginning but matzuka's efforts died a quick death just as he was sobering up from his drunken train ride home from moscow station nonetheless his time was critical the idea of the sphere it actually thrived after matzuka's fall by july 1941 it had become the central goal of japanese policy tied to japan's self-existence and self-defense and the ideal of building the sphere it played a role in japan's descent to war with the allied powers phase two happened during the greater east asia war it was only after japan's war for greater and by the way i'm not like a mad right-wing nationalist but uh in many ways it makes more sense for my project to call the war the greater east asia war as opposed to the pacific war but i use them interchangeably but anyways it was after japan's war for a greater east asia began that um the sphere began to take on a new life this makes sense japan was at war it needed to plan or prepare for what came after and as you can see from this map japan's early advance it happened quite rapidly the rapid advance in the euphoria that it created it kind of injected new life into ideas for the sphere so what happened well strikingly strikingly for me and this is what really interested me um leading policymakers were still unclear as to what it was there was a liaison conference between government and imperial headquarters in late february 1942 where prime minister told johideki the man who's charged with creating the co-prosperity sphere he needed he felt it necessary to ask a question what is the co-prosperity sphere and how is it different from a defense sphere what's even more astonishing than the question was the lack of any real response the members of the conference um and they were the de facto decision-making group in wartime japan they thought that or they agreed that further study was necessary this was astonishing to me i'm going to give one more example and i'll try to be short with it um the greater east asia construction council was a governmental council that convened from february 1942 to plan for the future of asia one committee man oh tani cozy he um he could not understand what it was he complained that the government had not provided a convincing definition i'm gonna start from the middle he says i don't know where it is interpreting from a narrow sense the co-prosperity sphere is composed of manchuria and china but before we knew it it had become a co-prosperity sphere in greater east asia i have absolutely no understanding what greater east asia is deeper thinking was sorely needed so it was necessity that bred imagination um from 1942 a broad discussion had begun to articulate different possibilities for the co-prosperity sphere so in this sense it was the outbreak of war for greater east asia that forced policymakers and intellectuals to contemplate what japan ought to achieve with a new order and i'm not going to talk about the many visions that emerged um many of the groups that that created them were the groups on this slide but there were a number of recurring themes um all visions were both political and economic they all saw the future international order as an organic hierarchy under japan and all called for um i guess you could call it exploitative development where they would create a regional economy that would serve japan's needs that's exploitation of course but also modernize or develop greater east asia and unite it into a productive whole so in the end these were just visions they were nothing more they were not implemented into policy aside from the creation of the greater east asia ministry which is pictured here and that was the only thing that the tojo cabinet accomplished during the first year of the war the closest japan came to crafting a new policy for the sphere was with this greater east asia construction council but there were disagreements at the council between the commerce ministry and the cabinet planning board and those disagreements ended up leading them to produce a watered down document that served as little more than reference material so at the height of japan's wartime successes when it looked like japan could overtake asia the co-prosperity sphere remained a vague abstract idea in fact the ruling elite could not decide on what the co-prosperity sphere meant until it was almost too late to create what led leaders to finally agree was geopolitical crisis this is actually a picture from 1942 but it kind of highlights japan's geopolitical crisis because by 1943 the war was not going well at least for japan and this led japanese leaders to rethink their wartime strategy and to create the only widely accepted vision for the greater east asia co-prosperity sphere and that's the vision that gets the most play these days when the netto yoku the right wing net people start talking about what japan did for asia so no man was more instrumental in the shift than shigemitsu from 1942 while he was ambassador to nanjing he produced a number of widely circulated position papers that were harshly critical of this unidimensional military first ham-fisted nature of japan's war to shigemitsu um he wanted he wanted japan to win of course but he thought that victory depended on winning hearts and minds across asia and to do this japan had to support actual independence and equality japan must craft a new vision to rally asia behind japan and to convince japan's enemies to make peace so by april 1943 tojo called on shigemitsu to become foreign minister and with his help japan supported limited independence among select countries like the philippines and berma and formulated a new internationalist language for economic cooperation and they also and it also called for respect for independence respect for autonomy autonomy and they tried to promote a cooperative regionalism and this culminated in the greater east asia conference and it was attended by the independent with scare quotes around the independent states of the coprosperity sphere and it also led to the production of a highly idealistic joint declaration that promoted a new liberal internationalist vision for the sphere that stressed independence autonomy peace cooperation economic growth this was the new and ultimate vision for the greater east asia coprosperity sphere liberal internationalism the motives behind this liberal internationalist turn were largely pragmatic leaders they sought to rally asia to make war and to convince the allied powers to make peace so what's interesting here and what's really interesting for me was that the closer japan came to defeat the more japan's leaders began to pair its coprosperity sphere with liberal internationalist norms so this far i've only really talked about the japanese side i don't have that much time left or i'm trying to end kind of early but i want to switch briefly and spend maybe like in five minutes on the southeast asian side of my story um my book it questions why nationalist leaders in the rangoon actively collaborated with japan and the ways in which they sought to benefit at least in the short term from such collaboration those philippinos and bermes who chose to collaborate with japan they received nominal independence within the coprosperity sphere in 1943 it's easy to dismiss them as puppets but they were not mere puppets and i um i ended up choosing to call these elites in the colonial capitals who worked with japan patriotic collaborators bermes nationalists in rangoon they worked with japan to seize independence from great britain which had refused over a period of time to give either assurances of future independence some type of constitutional advance or dominion status philippino governmental elites in manila they also went over en masse to create a caretaker regime and most sought to use the japanese empire for anti-colonial ends these patriotic collaborators were a major feature of world war two i was going to say world war two in southeast asia but you could i mean uh if you look at robert paxton's book you can make the same argument for france or if you um if you look at indonesia and and all the work that's been done there they were a major feature of world war two their prevalence it owes to this fact that political elites especially in southeast asia they found themselves caught between two empires the invading japanese and their former colonial masters so many found much to gain by temporary cooperation to ensure that they could bring about positive effects afterwards and and my book it shows how this cooperation with japan was in part a pursuit of nationalist ends both countries received independence in 1943 it was sham independence but sham independence brought opportunity so i highlight how um filipino and burmese collaborationist governments they use their independence to engage in state building projects to um both governments created new functioning diplomatic establishments with new foreign ministries and embassies they created new central banks that ended up not doing very much and burma was unique here in the institutionalization of a fully functioning defense establishment symbolized by the burmese army and headed by a ministry of defense and these were providing hands on training and giving valuable experience as well so i try not to overstate the historical impact of wartime state building that said there were um there were some legacies for the philippines the main impact of the co-prosperity sphere was the creation of the diplomatic establishment and a number of people major players in the the wartime ministry of foreign affairs went on to serve in the post-war department of foreign affairs for burma the main legacy was more military in nature um it was really more than anything else the rebirth of the burmese army and after 1942 it was military men not politicians or colonial officials that would dominate the political stage in burma so to end this um the greater east asia co-prosperity sphere it was not wholly one-sided um certainly the sphere was oppressive it was domineering it was brutal but it also provided limited space that enterprising leaders in the periphery could use to their advantage the patriotic collaborators in manila and rangoon they used this space to create new governmental institutions and to gain experience in governmental affairs now the defeat of japan in 1945 and the return of the colonial um empires to the philippines and bermas they actually undermined most of these efforts but the wartime period still had lingering legacies well into the post-war era of decolonization so the co-prosperity sphere is thus um best seen as a contested process that served both imperial and anti-imperial ends and it left its traces on asia well after its collapse so i went a little bit over time but uh thank you very much and i guess i will stop my screen share here wonderful thank you so much um but to be honest like you could have carried on for another 10 minutes i was there like this is really cool i'm really enjoying myself this is wish that yeah don't stall go on hong kong hong kong academy has prepared me for well for giving very short talks but um i was hoping that uh we could talk much more about this in the q and a as well and there are questions that are starting to sort of come in so i would invite anyone who is um on the webinar today um if you have any question or or or sort of comments please by all means do so i would start to do while while we're collecting the first few questions together there were two things that destroyed me but first of all um you know you mentioned the the question of um when you look at what is happening in the philippines and berma and then reading your book my mind is well run to france and sense that this is not just something that is happening in that part of the world but but this this sort of like a expansion of empire and and it creates creates a at national level opportunities challenges oppression all sorts of different words come to mind but i really i was very pleased that that's that you made that sort of that quick reference in the talk because it really it spoke to me and and particularly sort of the berma case that that one is perhaps less familiar with it it's absolutely it comes across as a striking thing and and for anyone with with the japan expertise of traveling towards south east asia that's also one of the reasons why sometimes in your own personal experience you're very likely to see very different reactions and those differences really draw back on the complex and sort of contested nature of of how the simple idea is a articulated process and then regurgitated and but it is happening in a wartime experience which in itself is a very complicated thing so that that to me is is a massive sort of massively important point but i also was struck by something that you you mentioned in the book and then you were talking about in in in the talk how the japanese elites themselves are struggling well in the 1941 and 1942 as to what exactly is there we're talking about and as a military historian for me one of the very interesting elements of the story is how there's a lack of at least on the surface of things up until 1942-43 the great copper sphere to sphere doesn't seem to reconcile with the long-lasting sort of yamagata it almost inherited the idea of a line of sovereignty as opposed to a line of influence and i think there is a passage in the book in in which is sort of like you briefly mentioned it and i was wondering whether while you were researching the greater corporate sphere because it is something that is also coming from the ministry of foreign affairs was there any sort of like place where the values departments of government were interacting with each other or the confusion that you see at the imperial conferences level is a genuine reflection of the lack of exchange among different stakeholders over these sort of geopolitical visions of the future so your so if your question if i understand you correctly after well i'm glad you talked about france because uh mark pack was it mark paxton is that his name who wrote the book on vichy france he got me thinking about collaboration in new ways but your main question if i understand you correctly is how were ideas being formulated and then how were they being hashed out and transformed into actual decisions well so that's a very interesting and difficult question to deal with because it was i mean you can think of there were plenty of stove pipes that were leading up to specific bureaucracies the general staff had its own ideas of what should come after they they produced a document in march of 1941 that became the the initial policy for japan's occupation strategy in southeast asia it was drafted by three people who had no clue about or no experience in southeast asia but they somehow decided that this was what japan would do if it came to war and that sat on you know a shelf collecting dust for eight months until it was resuscitated in november of 1941 and that is one case where a group of three officers their ideas on the future actually had an impact the other ideas for the sphere were being created by multiple different groups but it was left largely to political intellectuals and to government overall government groups which joined intellectuals with businessmen and whatnot i mean the big thing that was supposed to create the greater east asia co-prosperity sphere was the greater east asia construction council which was supposed to create a plan for the next 15 years but the problem was was that all of the groups that participated in this they all had their own core ideas based off of economists based off of businessmen's ideas of what the future regional economy should look like and they could not agree and when they could not agree it went all the way up to liaison conferences and the liaison conferences were the major decision makers of wartime japan they had to make a decision about whether to use it or not but you know because the document became so watered down in the process of you know consensus building nothing ever happened so this is a kind of a long-winded way of saying you know there were many plans there were many groups participating but there was no coordinated centralized structure that allowed for a true vision to emerge it was only from 1943 when japan was panicking that a true vision began to emerge does that answer your question it does but it also reinforces is something that in the liaison conferences comes across very strongly and that's this the fact that when you had big decisions to be taken they would have to come up to that level but the problem was that the body was not designed to make that kind of decision and the people leading in it had different priorities in terms of what what you should take a decision upon and so and so and so in a way kind of like it's it's it's incredibly interesting that the stovepipe nature of the system right wanted everything to go upwards but then he did not deliver on the on the body that was supposed to make this kind of decision exactly and that body was not it was not an official body it was a de facto body that was supposed to coordinate all the elite groups that said there I mean I did talk about it a little bit in a book I wrote a paper on grand strategy more recently where I elaborated on this idea a lot more um the very aspect of liaison conferences made decision making possible because if somebody could hijack the liaison conferences someone like Matsuoka Yosuke who was very successful in doing so they could guide policy and this is why Matsuoka's iteration of the sphere was successful until around late April or May of 1941 where he kind of lost control of the beast that is because he was able to corral everyone onto his side do you think so so on on top of my head I mean I was working on the imperial conferences minutes and one thing that always distract me is that one thing that sort of comes across is that if you look at the headlines of the agendas for the values of meetings what happens is that from that midspace sort of May June 1941 the military side of the story takes over because what they started to talk about is the operational sort of aspects of expansion and so you see ideas or figures like Matsuoka not being able to keep control if you want of the narrative of the discussion simply because the agenda is not one that places the topic they can sort of gain leadership upon and central to the agenda would you would you think that is sort of somebody that that came across the room experience well that was actually how policymaking was supposed to work you know documents would come up if you're with the army it would be from the the ministry the bureau of military affairs and it would come up to the liaison conference and the army minister would want to rubber stamp it and they wouldn't spend much time talking about them and they would rubber stamp these things and that's actually one of the processes that led Japan to war but more the the sidelining of Matsuoka it really came because people started to think that he wasn't handling us japan's negotiations with the us well he was stonewalling it and then once the war against once the german-soviet war heated up people started to think that he went crazy so it's so there's a number of other reasons why he wasn't able to shepherd policy in the direction that he wanted to brilliant okay so now we've got lots of questions and just for the purpose of those who would be typing the question into the chat i will i will try to get them all and and sort of create a bit of a narrative that follows on a disconversation which leads to two initial questions that's that really sort of follow up on what we've been discussing and one thing of course is um Bill Hayton is asking could this fear have ever become a progressive egalitarian space was it always predicated upon the sense of Japanese superiority that's actually a very good question and i kind of i tangentially deal with it in in my book um so the question is what point are we talking about if japan was able to establish the sphere in the middle of 1942 and they were able to you know gain control over much of asia in the process and they got the great powers to recognize them then no it would not have been an egalitarian space it would not have been progressive it would have definitely have been um predicated as you said upon the sense of superiority but from 1943 things change and in this point where in the lead up to the greater east asia conference where japan begins to promote limited independence to places throughout the sphere and promotes a new ideology of cooperation of regionalism of um ideology that's promoting the abolition of racial discrimination i mean that's more if we're talking liberal internationalism this is more wilsonian and wilson um you could make an argument that they might have been bound by this new ideology that they were creating you know whether they want to the co-prosperity sphere to remain um you know a japanese dominated space is one question but would they have been able to do so and what's really interesting and what i talk about a little bit in the book is how after um japan promoted this i i call it the pacific charter because it's in relation to the atlantic charter but it's really called the greater east asia joint declaration that's the official name of the document after they promote this all of a sudden their partners across asia start coming out and saying well what about us why aren't we getting independence too so the vietnamese come out and they say well what about us why aren't we going to the greater east asia conference and the philippinos who did go to the conference they um president jose laurel he um sent a message to the japanese saying well look at what you're doing in the philippines you are beating us you are um you were slapping us you are requisitioning laboratories that we need to advance philippino production how is this a line with either our pact of alliance or the greater east asia joint declaration and the same thing happens in berma as well so there's no there's no evidence or at least i didn't find any evidence that the japanese budged in any way on these questions but um the very act of creating this ideology i feel it might have bound japan um had the empire survived into the post war and there is also a point there that by 1944 the the evaluation of what you can and cannot allow to do is very different because the resources are not coming through or not as they used to so the the the value issue the calculations in tokyo as well as changing incredibly so you're absolutely right that is a there's a question of timing right the moment they start coming out as you said and with this important statement is also the least congenial point for them to act upon it because everything that they need to do push them in a different direction yeah so i mean you could look at it as a statement that supports empire and undermines it at the same time bravo exactly that's that's exactly the thing that i have okay so we've got based on this i'm going to take two questions together that are really interesting and they speak to of to some of the the uh the background to your story in the sense that in in the talk you very much sort of start with 1940 and the rule of matzwalker has because that's where formally this idea is is um is declared but i've got two questions one from jeff and another one that is slightly different from eufaly but they are related in the sense that where does matzwalker's idea come from is this something that was already part of ideas that within the ministry of foreign affairs diplomats were discussing um was matzwalker's own thing that came at that point um and was there any sort of process of borrowing from others say for example hate less concept loosely defined as a new order um so was what happens in 1940 something that is matzwalker's child or is part of a bigger process that one needs to look a bit further back and if so where are the sources of inspiration and and eufaly pushes this even further with the specific question of manchuria if manchuria at the beginning is part of the original sort of definition of the greater corpus ferrity sphere does that mean that the ideational logic behind it is the same that you could push back down to 1905 and the beginning of the continental expansion of japan or mainland china not me yeah these are very interesting questions if you are going to push back as far as you can i think the critical turning point is world war one i wouldn't go as far as the russia japanese war um but to and i talk about this actually in the introduction so if you get the book and if you feel like reading it then there's like maybe five or six pages in the introduction that are dealt that are dealing with this but where was matzwalker getting these ideas from um well it didn't just emerge in 1940 there was a much longer process a lot of it had to do with reactions to the washington treaty system that had been constructed in the early 1920s with the destruction of the washington treaty system in the mid 1930s really 1937 japan had already decided to go its own and create you know a regionalist vision for east asia and it was called the new order in east asia and that was part of the brainchild of the konoe administration in um in yes in 1937 38 38 i'm sorry 1938 so um there was a longer history behind it um i don't think that matzwalker created that and this is i'm going off an attention here i don't think that matzwalker created the term um greater or east asia co-prosperity sphere i found it in um foreign ministry documents even a few months before matzwalker stated or announced the establishment of the co-prosperity sphere so i think you know he was just um borrowing terminology that was pre-existing but i haven't found you know the source of this term co-prosperity sphere if that's what you were asking um it definitely has traces back to ideologies of um what is it coexistence and co-prosperity that japan was promoting back in the world war one era as well so i i don't know if i'm answering your question well but uh no i think this is the you know i think that that allows us to sort of get a sense and and i think the critical point is really to take away is that the exercise of going back you need to be very very you need to be careful and you need to sort of engage you with the specific of the content of these ideas to the to see the extent to which there are continuities or just accidental sort of places that there are more the you know the brainchild of geopolitics and geography rather than a conscious to sort of going back and stretching back as far as the early 1900s now um there's um i'm conscious of the time and um we've got quite a few questions still coming in but there's one thing very quickly um one of the so one of the one of our guests today says i'm a filipino and in school we had talked about this uh with the japanese having the intent of asia for Asians but didn't really cover your view um as an opportunity for nationalists to actually experience gain experience of self-governance do you think it has helped to further to develop the the anticolonial sentiments during that time or because he's saying even from my perspective it for the Philippines it doesn't seem to be the case as we were pro-american in our perception then as we are today what is your sort of um uh feeling in terms of how much it fostered that national all right so the Philippines is a difficult story it's it's a very difficult story and the reason it's a difficult story was because um it was not a place that was largely pro-japanese they were highly pro-american they were highly pro-american and it was the place with the biggest um guerrilla movement i mean i'm sure you learned about the hawk bala hawk movement as well it was the place where you had millions of people who were fighting against the japanese as well so it's not like all the sun the filipinos raised up their arms and said oh we welcome you with open arms they did not so the story of the that i'm telling of the philippines is a little bit different than the story actually it's very different than the story i tell about berma because the philippines they did not welcome the japanese but empire arrived and they had to deal with it and the ways in which they dealt with it um allowed them in some ways to gain specific types of experience in governmental affairs they had no they had no central bank beforehand and they went to japan to learn about creating central banks they had no department i'm sorry a ministry of foreign affairs before and under in the wartime regime of jose laurel they had their first ministry of foreign affairs with an embassy in tokyo and they had to engage with this process of dealing with foreign countries um and before it was all the nasi onelista oligarchy that was doing this on a personal level but now it was institutionalized and what's interesting with the philippines is that the um i i think it's like something like 60 of the higher positions in um in the bureaucracy in the foreign ministry bureaucracy during the wartime they ended up moving directly into the department of foreign affairs after independence so and you know the perfect example of this is leon guerrero who ended up serving as vice minister of foreign affairs in 1954 so i'm i'm trying to more highlight these connections between what japan did or rather what filipino collaborationists did and their future in building institutions that um went on to have post or afterlives in the area of decolonization the philippines was still very pro-american and they were one of the real cold warriors in asia because of this so i'm i'm not i maybe my argument came across a little bit differently because i'm i'm painting with these big brushstrokes but i go into a lot more detail in the book brilliant and two um i wanted just to go over with you on on a couple of any short questions really quite quite specific and and then we we move towards the sort of like if you want the long-term relevance and impact of the book with a couple of questions about links with today but before we do so two very quick things did japan ever view india as part of the sphere or was there more of the propaganda opportunity against the britain and and in that regards that's from judas and also john is asking about um whether it would extend the point you made about in the talk that there was no you know the the great um core prosperity sphere was not really a grand strategy was it due because it never really reached to a stage that you had a coordinated grand strategic statement with clear priorities in it and and more and sort of it remained like a stove pipe process that you were so okay a quick question was india part of the gig or was it just for propaganda reason and was the stuff by nature of the decision-making mechanism reason why you don't see this a grand strategy all right um so can i share my screen really quickly yeah go for it so um where was it here sure boom let's get rid of this so um why is this not working uh because it's slow uh there you go so i mean if you notice at the at here you have um you have subhash chandra boz here at the greater east asia conference that's what i wanted to show you um i noticed somebody else wrote a question about subhash chandra boz um india was too probably it depends so it was probably to be a part and that's actually really one of the interesting things is um why did berma get independence well the reason they got independence is because japanese leaders thought that berma having independence would spur on indian nationalist to demand to seize independence from the british and then to join forces of course japan also sponsored the indian national army um which eventually was led by subhash chandra boz so you know there's a very real reason that japan saw india as a huge part of the sphere in fact it was so much more important than berma and it's why berma got independence um the second question was on grand strategy and why you don't think that the corpusperity sphere was not a grand strategy so um grand strategy needs to have two components it needs to have vision on the one hand and then tactics that are you know reasonably understandable tactics that you can use to achieve that japan had vision in spades but it did not have tactics and even when it had um a clear cut policy japan was never able to control the um the central government was never able to control the actions of the army and navy in the periphery so without being able to coordinate elite interests there's no way grand strategy would have been possible so i mean this is one of the one of the interesting things um this was a wartime creation because i noticed somebody might have asked i think someone asked about um the the contemporary chinese version and the differences between the japanese version so the japanese version it was a wartime creation and because of that um it was very difficult for leaders to get their acts together and to um to affect control over the variety of policies necessary to institute a grand strategy whereas china today this is a peacetime thing so for lack of a better word so because this is a peacetime entity it's much more likely to have a more long lasting influence on the regional structure of asia than japan could have when it was engaged in global war and i suppose also it ties with the question of a sense of urgency of having to prioritize and think long and hard the world to prioritize which wartime is essential and this time you've got time you know time is on your side very briefly and and i'm going to apologize to those uh because some of the last questions left are very important and excellent questions but also kind of complex and i don't think we have the time so i will close on on this last one what are the traces of the greater east asian co-prosperity sphere that can be linked today with the concept of asian regionalism well um so lots of the same terminology that was used in world in world war two era japan is now being used in contemporary china um i'm gonna type in the chat for which should i panelists and attendees is that how i do it the the term for those of you who read it is um i don't know what is in chinese so i'm just typing it in japanese that is what shijin ping is touting at least from 2017 as the fundamental ideology behind his new bri initiatives that that there is a community of common destiny community of community of fate the difference between that so there's a very clear connection there in the the lexicon that's used to describe it that said they're very different things in world war two it was minzoku it was minzoku sorry for writing in japanese minzoku that was the the people it was the the ethnic groupings that so really it was the japanese it was the japanese themselves that were the community of fate whereas um shijin ping's his is a very different entity because i what i assume he's trying to get at with this is um the community of fate is or community of common destiny is all of asia that is working with china so in in some senses they're they're very similar and in other senses they're very very very different even the similarities are different so that uh i don't know if you call like the the japanese coprosperity sphere coprosperity sphere version one and the current one version two people have been doing that but um because one was a wartime entity and the other is a peacetime entity you have to see them as totally separate beasts no i couldn't agree more and and the fact that they talk about um a sense of community or they're trying to appeal to a sense of community it's part of it seems like a logical choice rather than a conscious sort of effort um in that regard and and the point you were making about the difference is the idea of minzoku very much has got a ethnic connotation that it does not have in the in the more contemporary sort of a reincarnation of this notion of original spirits and jeremy as i said we could carry on for a couple of hours it would be unfair to you even the fact that in hong kong is quite late and you've been extremely generous with your time and but but it's been an absolutely genuine pleasure and thank you so much for your time and and and sort of engaging with us on this for this wonderful conversation um again a fantastic book um and um best of luck with it and and we're looking forward to more of your work and some more opportunity to get together thank you very much and before i leave um if i could just say thank you as well and for those of you who who um want to engage in conversations with me i'm on twitter and i'm also easily accessible online so um i can vouch for the answers on twitter so it's it's it's true um my phc students uh my phc students say it's easier to get a hold of me on twitter than it is in real life mine too i mean this is it's easier to get a hold of me on whatsapp and twitter than it is in real life so the times we live in uh having said this thank you very much for everyone to stay on with us today and for the absolutely terrific questions and comments that we got through uh thank you very much goodbye for now we'll see you soon thank you bye bye


This sounds so weird, but I've been on a journey. Ross said today is here, come to visit the school, he's even got a school uniform on. And we're going to teach Ross how to flag. There's some nervousness here, but we reckon we can actually get this guy a human flag a lot quicker than he is back in his cell. Oh, I did it. So the next phase of starting to get our human flag nailed down is a ribbon patting. We need to teach the brain what the shape is we need to get into and how to to nail down the connection that we're trying to look. What do you feel a little bit further away so this goes on more than angle? It's the best of this school. Nice. That's it. Yeah, yeah. There you go. Nice. Okay. There you go.  Ha! Ha! On my hand gone. Yeah, yeah, there. That's the flag. Look at the hat. Yes. He previously put in Ross to come in today, 45 minutes ago. Something like that. And he has graduated in his human flag.