It doesn't even feel like I should say I'm here with everyone knows who you are, Jorge Pazada.  It's good. It's good.  It's like, you know, it's just your people, your, you want to see and it's a lot of fun. Obviously we're going to have everybody here today and, you know, it's good to see the guys again. What are some of the memories that stand out from that 1998 season? We're just, we're just telling Derrick, I don't remember much, I don't remember brushes throwing the ball across. And how bad we started and how well we finished.  And I remember Joe Tory having a little meeting towards middle of September trying to, you can't just turn it on and off. So I remember those things.  How about the parade? I'm sure you remember that too. Yeah, yeah.  So we, you know, seen probably the best team ever and having everybody together. There was no egos, so it was a lot of fun to be a part of that team. I just spoke to Joe Tory and he had talked about the disappointment of 1997. He thought really fueled that group. Did you feel that as well going into spring training? Sure, we had, we kind of like an unfinished business. We got to spring training very focused. We didn't want that to happen again. And, you know, I think the team gel even better together. And we started one in four, you know, and we had that meeting. And I think it was in Seattle and we just started playing very well after that. It just got, you know, we got better and better. We had a great pitching staff. We had a great bullpen. So every day we had a chance. Personally, what was your favorite individual moment of that season? It probably has to be David Wells' perfect game because, you know, it just put me in the map as a catcher, as a caller, as a receiver with, you know, with a great, you know, game calling. And, you know, David Wells was not easy to call it. But it was, for me, it was very easy.  He had a rubber arm and had a lot of weapons. So it helped us a lot. OK, thanks for the time. No problem.


From the CUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. Hi everybody, this is Dave Vellante, and welcome to this CUBE Conversation. Really excited to have Wim Kokertz in. He is the senior vice president of software development at Oracle. Wim, it's great to have you on. And you know what? I often say I wish we were face to face, but if we were, you'd have to cut off my tie because developers and ties just don't go together. No, I know, and this is my normal app. So this is me wherever I go. So hi again, good to see you. Yeah, great to see you. So of course, a lot of people are confused about Oracle and open source, they say Oracle open source. What is that all about? But I think you misunderstood. People don't, first of all, realize you as the leader of the software development community inside of Oracle. I mean, you've been involved in Linux since the early 90s, but you guys have a lot of committers. You do a lot. I want to talk about that. What is up with Oracle and open source? Yeah, well, it's a broad question. So, you know, a couple of things. One is we have many different areas within the company that are dealing with open source, right? So we have the cloud team doing a lot of stuff around cloud SDKs and support for different languages like Python and Go and of course Java and so forth. So they do a lot around ensuring that the Oracle ecosystem is integrated in the open source tools that customers use or developers use, terraforms and so forth. And then you have the Java team and so of course Java is open source. And then the Grail project, Grail VM, which is a polyglot compiler that run Java and Python and JavaScript and so forth together in one VM do really cool optimizations. That's an open source project, also on GitHub. There's of course MySQL, which is, you know, along with Java, they're probably the two most popular and widely used open source projects out there. There's VirtualBox, which is of course, also a very popular project that's open source. There's all the work we do around Linux. And I think one of the things is that when you have so many different areas doing things that are for that area, then as a developer or as a customer, you typically just deal with that group. And what you see is, oh, you're talking to the Java developers. So you know what's going on around Java. The Java developers might not necessarily say, oh, and we also do MySQL and we do Linux and VirtualBox and so forth. And so you get sort of a rather myopic, narrow view of the larger company. When you add all these things up and there would be one big slide that says, this is Oracle. These are all these open source projects there. And there's multiple ways, right? One is we have projects that we've open sourced and all the code came from us and we made it publicly available. We are the main contributor and we get contributions back. There are other projects where we contribute to third party in terms of enhancing things, like I said, with the cloud team. And then in general, something like Linux where we're part of an external project and we participate in the development of that project at large. And so there's these three different ways. When you count up all the developers that we have that deal with open source on a daily basis and in terms of contributions in terms of bug fixes, testing and so forth, it's thousand literally full time developers. And of course, all the projects are on either on GitHub or similar sites that are very popular. So yeah, I think the misunderstood is probably a lack of knowledge of the grasp of what we do. And our primary goal is to provide services and products to customers. And so the open source part is sort of embedded in the development methodology, but it's not a, that's not something we sell or market separately. We just, we work with customers and products and services. And so in some cases, it's not well understood. Yeah. Well, we're talking, of course, we're talking about the state of the penguin. I think it's important for people to understand that Oracle got into the Linux game in the 90s, maybe the latter part of the 90s. And Oracle, of course, wants to make Linux, wants to make Oracle its applications and database run better on Linux. But as you're pointing out, your Linux distro, full support end to end, thousands of people in your open source community. And the contributions that you make to Linux, many, if not most, they go upstream. Everybody can benefit from those. But of course, you want an Oracle distro that is going to make Oracle stuff run better. That's always kind of been the Oracle way. Well, so, yes, two things. The one is that, so everything we do is upstream. So we have no Linux patches that are not contributed upstream. There's no proprietary code in Oracle Linux at all. It's all completely open, publicly available. The source code, the change log, all the commits, everything is fully open and public, which sometimes is not well understood, but it's completely open. And everything we do in terms of feature development or functionality or bug fixes goes upstream to the Linux kernel mail list. It's actually, it's the only way to be able to manage a Linux distribution and be a Linux vendor is to live in that ecosystem. Otherwise, the cost of maintaining your own fork, so to speak, is very high and it doesn't really solve the problem. Now, the functionality we work on obviously is focused on making Oracle products run better, making Oracle Cloud run better and so forth. However, what again, what's important to understand though is in Oracle Database is a program running on an operating system, it does IO, it does networking, it does memory, it deals with memory management, lots of processes. So for the most part, the things we work on to improve that helps everyone else, right? It helps every other database run better or helps every other language run better. So none of these changes are specific to Oracle. There's just things that we found doing performance benchmarks and testing and so forth. But we say, hey, if Linux did the following, it would make boot up fast. Now, boot up has nothing to do with the database. But if our customers run on one terabyte, four terabyte, eight terabyte systems, and so booting up and Linux starting up and cleaning up memory takes a long time. So we want to reduce that from an availability point of view. So here, we're now talking about just enterprise, right? And so there's this broad set of things we work on that definitely help us, but they're actually really completely generic and help everyone else. Yeah, that's great, good. So I wanted to kind of get that out of the way and help our audience understand it. So let's get into it a little bit. What are you seeing? What's going on in IT? What, pick your observation space and your vision of what you see happening out there. Well, you know, it's very interesting. It's sort of, there's two worlds, right? There's the cloud world and the move to cloud and there's the on-premises world where people run their systems on their own. And one of the things that we've learned is, you know, when you talk about machine learning, obviously is something that's very popular these days and automation. And so in order to rely on machine learning well and have algorithms that are very effective, you need lots of data. And so being a cloud vendor and having Linux in our cloud on tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of servers or more allows us to have a view of how an operating system works across incredibly large scale. So we get lots of data. And so for us to figure out which algorithms work well in terms of how can we do network optimizations, how can we discover anomalies on the storage side and deal with it and so forth, we can do that at scale. And what's interesting is how do we then bring that to on-prem? Well, if we can get the data and the learning done, the training done in our cloud directly, then when we provide that service also to people running Oracle Linux on-premises, then that will work. The alternative is to have point solutions where you provide something to a customer and it needs to learn something from small amount of data. That doesn't work so well. So I think having both worlds on-prem and cloud directly allows us to kind of benefit from that. And I think that's important because lots of customers are interested in going to cloud. Many of the enterprises have not yet, you know, they're starting but there's still a huge on-premises space that's important. And so by being able to get familiar with how these things work at scale, autonomy is again important, right? Autonomous database is incredibly popular and so forth. That allows us to then say here, try these things out here. It's a service. We can show you the benefits right away. And then as that improves, we bring that on to a certain extent on-premises as well. And then they can have it in both places. And that I think is something again, that's relatively unique but also very important is that we want to create and we want to provide services and product that acts similarly on-premises as well as in cloud because at some point when people move, we want to make that transition seamless. And what you have today for the most part is one world that's on-prem and then the cloud world is completely different. And that is a big barrier of moving. And so we want to reduce that. You can run the same operating system local as well as cloud, you can get the same functionality. And then that helps transition people over much. Yeah, well Oracle actually was one of the, I think about Oracle was the first company to actually market same-same. You actually use that term. Others put forth that concept but Oracle was the first to announce products like cloud, a customer that was same-same. Now it took some time to actually get it perfective and get it to market. But the point is, and we've written about this, is that Oracle, because of the ascendancy of cloud, flipped and has a cloud-first mentality. And you just kind of referenced that. You just said, and you can bring that to on-prem. So I wonder if you could talk about that cloud-first mentality and the impact on hybrid. So yeah, I think the cloud-first part is, of course, in cloud we work with services more so than products that we deliver. And there's a number of things that are happening. So one is we obviously continue to provide products that we can download Oracle Linux, you can download the database and weblog you can install it on your app, right? You can do the traditional way of working. Then in a cloud world, what typically happens is, oh, I use a database service. I'm not installing anything. I push a button and I get an IP address and a SQL neck and neck string and I connect to the database. And we take care of everything underneath with autonomous database. Now, in order to do that, you need a whole infrastructure, right? You need logging agents. You need a backend that captures all that stuff. You need monitoring tools. You need all the automation scripts for bringing this service up and monitor it. And so that takes a lot of time to do, right? And we learn a lot by doing this. And so the cloud-first part of these services means that we get to experience this ourselves with direct access to everything. Now, taking that service with all of the additional features like autonomy and bringing that to an on-premises world, we have to make sure we can package that so that all these pieces around and go along with it. And that takes a little bit more time. So we can't do everything at the same. And so what we've done with autonomous databases, we traded everything in Oracle Cloud. We have the whole system running really well. And then we've been able to package that and shrink it into something that can be installed on-premises, but then connect it into Oracle Cloud again. And so that way we can get all the telemetry, all the metrics. And that allows us to scale because part of providing a cloud service that runs on-prem in the customer environment is that we need to be able to remotely manage that similar to how we manage something that runs in our own cloud, right? Otherwise it doesn't scale. And so that takes a little bit of time, but we've done all that work and now with cloud-accounted database that's really in place. Yeah, you really want to have that same cloud experience, whether it's on-prem, you know, in the public cloud, hybrid, et cetera. So I want to explore a little bit more who is using Oracle Linux and what's the driver for using it. Can you describe maybe some of the types of customers and why they buy? Sure, so we started, you know, 14 years ago, right? 2006, October 25th, 2006. Remember that day very well. Penguin's on stage and a big lunch for Oracle Linux in San Francisco at the Moscone Center. So look, the initial driver for Oracle Linux was to ensure that Oracle database customers or Oracle product customers had a good operating system experience, right? And the ability to be able to handle critical issues when that occurs because typically a database runs the company's critical data. The most essential stuff that a company has is typically in a database, an Oracle database. And so when that thing has issues with the operating system, what you don't want is to talk to multiple vendors and have finger pointing and having to explain to an operating system vendor how the database works. In the Unix world, we had a good relationship with the OS vendors and the hardware vendors. They were the same and they knew our products really well. And in the Linux world, that was very different. The OS vendor basically did not want to understand or learn anything about the products living on top. And so while to a certain extent that makes sense, it's in an enterprise world where time is of the essence and downtime needs to be limited, absolutely. We can't have these arguments and such. And so that was the driver initially for doing Oracle Linux. It was to ensure there was a Linux distribution fully backed by us that we could fix and we could fully support. That was completely the original intent. And so the early customer base was database customers, database and middleware, mostly database. So, but that has then evolved quickly. And so, sorry, what happened was people run, people would say, look, I have a thousand servers, a hundred run Oracle. So we'll run Oracle Linux on those hundred and we run something else on those other 900. Now, after a year or so, they realized that our support was really good. We fix all these issues. And so then they're like, why are we having two links distributions? This thing works really well. It runs any application, it's fully compatible. So we'll just go a thousand with Oracle Linux. And so the early days, the first few years was definitely Oracle Database as the core driver. And then it sort of expanded to the rest of the, to the rest of the estate. And over the years, you know, we've added lots of features and functionality like case supplies and so forth. We have an attractive pricing model for running on servers. And so now lots of our customers have a very small Oracle percentage running and many other things running. So it's really become a all or nothing play in the Linux space. And we're well known now. So it's been actually very good. You just mentioned case splice. We've been talking about cloud and on-prem and hybrid. And let's talk about security because security really is a differentiator. But particularly if you're going to start to put stuff into the cloud, talk about case splice specifically but generally security and your posture there. So security first is sort of, you know what you hear us say and do in everything we do, right? The database obviously security on the Linux side, security matters. Case splice as a technology is there to do critical bug fixing and make sure that we can apply security vulnerability fixes without affecting the customer and not have downtime. Right? And if you look at, you know, most of the cases or many of the cases where you have security vulnerabilities and exploits, it tends to be because systems were not patched. Why were they not patched? Well, not that a customer doesn't understand that it's important, but it's a whole train of events that needs to happen. You have to, you know, you get notified that this is security issue and you're operating some more application. Then, well, an application typically means it's a multi-tiered setup. So if you have to bring your database server down then you first have to coordinate with the application users to bring the app server down because that talks to the database. So to patch one system, you basically have to bring down whole application stack. You have to negotiate with the DBAs. You have to negotiate with the app admins. You have to negotiate with the user. It takes weeks to do that and find time. Well, during that time, you're vulnerable. So the only way really to address security in a scalable way and reducing that window of time is to do it without affecting the customer. Right? And so Case Splice is something that, it's a company we acquired in 2009 and have since evolved in terms of capabilities. And so it allows us to patch the Linux kernel without downtime, right? We locked the kernel for eight microseconds. It's literally no downtime. You don't have to bring down applications. The user doesn't see it. There's no hang, there's no delay. And so by doing that, you can run the Linux operating system or Linux and you can be fully patched on a system that hasn't rebooted for three years. And you don't even know it. And so by doing that type of stuff, it makes customers more secure and it avoids them. It saves them a lot of money in terms of dealing with project management and so forth, but it really keeps them secure. And so we do that for the Linux kernel. We do that for some of the libraries on top that are critical like OpenSSL and GLFC.  So one example is Heartbleed was this bug in OpenSSL a number of years ago. And so everyone had to patch their SSH server.  With K-Splies today, if Heartbleed were to happen tomorrow, we would be able to patch this online for all the Oracle Linux customers without any downtime. No reboots, no restarting of applications, everything that's running. The amount of money saved would be massive, right? And also of course the headache. Another example is, and this was in Oracle Cloud, when some of these CPU bugs that happened a few years ago that were rather damaging on the cloud side, right? Where you could basically see memory of potentially of other machines running, but the cloud is incredibly critical. We were basically able to patch our entire cloud within four hours, and the customer didn't know, right? 120 million patches or something that we applied within four hours, all online without any downtime. And so that technology has been really helpful, both for us to run our cloud, but the exact same patches and same fixes go to customers on premises as well. But this comes back to the whole, what we do in cloud, we also do for customer. And I think that's a unique thing that we have at Oracle, which is quite fascinating, right? The operating system we run for our customers, the operating system that's the host for the VMs is the exact same binary and source code that we make available, just to be clear. The exact same binaries are the ones that you run as a customer on premises. So if you run Oracle Linux with KVM, you run VMs, you're actually running the exact same stuff as we do for our, that we run underneath our customer stuff. Nobody else does that. Everyone else has a black box. So I think that helps a little bit with transparency as well. Yeah, and that homogeneity just creates an environment and you're talking about sort of that security mindset. It's just critical, you're not just bolting it on. It's part of the culture. But you were started your career, and then of course you were a Linux person when you came to Oracle, but then I think you spent some time in database back in the day when there were some serious database wars going on before Oracle became the king of database. So now you've got obviously this great portfolio and a lot of really sharp software developers. What should we expect going forward from Oracle? What should we look for? You know, I was talking to some, I was welcoming some interns to the company for their summer internship yesterday. And one of the things that I, I'm sorry, one of the things I mentioned to them was that one of the, so cloud obviously gives us a lot of opportunities, but there's a number of things. One is we have such a breadth of applications and software and hardware together, right? We have the servers, we have the storage, we have the operating systems, we have the database layer and so forth, and we have the cloud side. And one of the great opportunities, and I think we've shown a lot of this happening with the ability to create something like autonomous database is to combine all these things, right? We have such a broad portfolio of really cool technology that by itself is okay, but if you combine the things, it really becomes awesome, right? You cannot create autonomous database without having autonomous linux, right? You cannot create those two and make them really safe without also controlling the firmware on the hardware and so forth. So by being able to combine all these layers and by having a really great relationship across the teams within the company, that opens up a lot of opportunity to do stuff really quickly and having the scale for that. I think that has been for the last few years a really great thing, but I can see that being one of the advantages that we have going forward, right? We have Oracle Fusion applications, which is incredibly popular and has great growth and then we have that running on Oracle Cloud, it talks to our autonomous database. So we bring all these pieces together and no other SaaS vendor can do that because they don't have these other pieces. They have one area, we have all of them. And so that's the exciting part for me is basic. It's not so much about making my own world better and having linux be better and case flies and so forth, which is important, but that becoming part of the bigger picture. And that's the exciting part. Well, Oracle's always invested in R&D. We've made that point many, many times, whether it's database, Fusion was a painful, but worthy effort, the whole public cloud piece, many obviously many acquisitions, but the investments that you've made in open source as well, Wim, you're a great spokesperson and a great representative of the open source community and generally in an Oracle specifically. So thanks very much for coming on theCUBE and sharing with us the state of the penguin and best of luck. You're welcome. Thank you, thanks for having me. All right, and thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE. We'll see you next time.


Can China or any other state be held responsible under international law for a failure to exercise due diligence in managing the COVID-19 virus? This question lays bare both the importance and weakness of due diligence. Probably some states, beginning with China where the virus was first documented, have been violating their due diligence obligations enshrined in the international health regulations. To all appearances, China has informed the World Health Organization a bit late about the virus and some governments have reacted slowly and hesitantly or even counter-productively. But it is highly unlikely that interstate responsibility will be activated. The reasons are not only strategic considerations of governments but also the complexity of assessing the damage caused and the softness and vagueness of the due diligence standard which hardly lends itself to create hard state responsibility. I congratulate the organizers for the choice of the overall topic of this workshop, which could not be more timely. Although the COVID virus forced you to transform the workshop into a webinar, it underscored the pertinence of the theme in a dramatic way. And I am happy to get the opportunity to talk about due diligence as one important aspect of your theme of global risks. And I am all the more pleased to do this because Professor Horfew Minalis is one of the contributors to a book that I co-edited on due diligence across international law. Horfew wrote a chapter sketching out a fine-grained cartography of due diligence in environmental law, starting with the Alabama claims arbitration of 1872 in the law of neutrality. Not to contemporary international environmental law, a topic that few know better than him. The book on due diligence will appear with Oxford University Press later this year, and my talk is based on the introductory and concluding chapters, which I co-offer with my colleagues and co-editors of the book of our Max Planck research fellow group, Heike Krieger and Leo Kreuzer, from Freie Universität Berlin, and I thank them for allowing me to use our material. Technically, I was not capable of producing a show with slides and myself standing in front of the slides, so I don't have them, but I have a handout, which I hope that this was distributed to you. And the handout also contains an outline of the talk and references to the legal material I signed, and also to the key literature on due diligence. Let's start with the meaning of the term diligence, which comes from diligence, which means circumspection. The opposite is negligence. Diligence and due diligence is always a qualifier of some other obligation. One could say it is therefore always ancillary. It's a modality of doing something. What does it require? We could distinguish first procedural obligations, for example, obligations to notify and report, for example, the OECD common tax reporting standards. Or obligations to inform, to consult, to cooperate, to conduct a risk assessment. For example, environmental impact assessment. But also human rights impacts assessment as a newer tool. Obligations to monitor, to warn, to publicly explain, or to take feasible precautions are all procedural due diligence obligations. Second, due diligence obligations arise with the regard to a state's institutional capacity. For example, taking legislative or administrative safeguard measures. For example, sanctioning violations by enacting criminal law provisions. Or establishing judicial procedures for persons in administrative processes. Or to establish monitoring mechanisms. For example, periodic inspection measures with regard to hazardous activities. Due diligence, inevitably has a normative coloring. What is due is at least partly defined by other spheres, such as business practice or morals. But this is not different from good faith or legitimate expectations or overall public to mention some other concepts. So we could say that due diligence is a bridge principle between law and other spheres of normativity. Where does due diligence appear in international law? First, in the law of neutrality, in the law of aliens. And in post-1945, so the actual modern international law, due diligence is most pervasive in environmental law. Numerous environmental conventions, starting in 1972, embody obligations to take appropriate measures. This is implicit due diligence, what could say. I mentioned some of these conventions on the handout on page two. Environmental law is still the main field of application. There are also newer fields of application of due diligence. For example, in human rights with regard to private actors, violent men and bad business actors. There is the Istanbul Convention on Domestic Violence of 2011. And the open-ended working group within the Human Rights Council produced a revised draft on business and human rights. And in this draft treaty, they set out that the state parties should adopt measures necessary to ensure that all persons conducting business activities, including those of transnational character, undertake human rights due diligence. So this is also a dual due diligence scheme. The parties of the treaty must be diligent in imposing due diligence on business. Both texts are also mentioned on the handout. In younger subfields of international law, due diligence is also rampant. For example, the World Bank requires due diligence by its clients and is arguably also itself committed to due diligence in project finance. In cyber law, in anti-terrorism law, in tax law, and in health law, in all these legal fields, we find due diligence. Due diligence is always about managing the risk. It's about risks emanating from private actors, ranging from pirates over terrorists to violent husbands to business, or about risks emanating from nature, ranging from radioactive waves to virus. Due diligence concerns notably risk management in the face of lacking knowledge and our evidence, in the face of unclear causalities, and in the face of numerous contributing factors and actors. Due diligence is, legally speaking, a companion of the precautionary principle. This brings us to the legal functions of due diligence. The traditional function of due diligence was to restrict the responsibility or accountability of states in the context of the no harm rule. Traditional international law obliges states to act diligently, so as not to cause transporgery harm. The leading case for this is, as you know, the Trial Smelter Award of 1941. Even if this award did not use the word due diligence, due diligence was its undercurrent. The word due diligence was already employed in other older arbitral awards in the law of neutrality and the law of ailments. The classic no harm rule is breached only when contact is negligence, thus lacking due diligence, and when the unwanted results are present. This is also reflected in the clause of Article 143 of the ILC Article 1 state responsibility. Inversely, harm alone is not sufficient to trigger state responsibility. Even if harm occurs, but when the state was diligent, then the state will hardly have liable. So, the due diligence standard restricts responsibility. The classic function of due diligence to restrict state responsibility is visible in various other fields of international law, also where humans are the risks. States must take appropriate measures to protect premises of a diplomatic mission from protesters. States must take appropriate measures to prevent terrorist actions burning from its territory. International anti-corruption treaties and money laundering law have introduced a cascading system of obligations of supervision which requires state parties to diligently oversee legal entities which in turn have to oversee associated natural and legal persons, same in tax law. Finally, due diligence against risky humans applies an IHL, International Humanitarian Law, and an International Criminal Law. For example, the International Committee of the Red Cross interprets common article 1 of the Geneva Conventions, the obligation to respect and ensure respect, as I quote the ICRC, a general duty of due diligence. But, this is my next point, due diligence does not only serve to limit responsibility, but also, at some places, to create responsibility. Both in the Paltmills case and in Costa Rica versus Nicaragua and the Calder clan, the ICJ seem to keep apart two different rules. On the one hand, the harm prevention duty, on the other hand, a duty to diligently not to cause harm. I realize that you'll hear an expert on this topic, Dr. Leslie Anne Durinch-Powell in, so I'll be short on prevention. Already in Paltmills, the ICJ help at two types of duties, the substantive duties to manage soil and woodland so as not to impair water quality and the like, and procedural duties to notify plants, to warn, and so on, are independent from each other and can be independently breached or complied with. And in Costa Rica versus Nicaragua, the ICJ help the states responsible for violating their procedural obligations but not for violating the substantive duty not to cause harm because in the end, no significant transpondery harm had occurred. A lack of diligence was not sufficient for finding a violation of the traditional in your harm rule. I submit that the detachment of the due diligence obligation from the result, in other words, the complete proceduralization of the obligation is adequate only in specific constellations. Adequacy hinges, I claim, on the possibility to identify and pinpoint the result and whether this result is good or bad. If the result is easy to identify, then the procedural and preventive obligations should not be completely detached from the result. For example, with regard to the obligation to prevent genocide, the ICJ had held that a state can be held responsible for breaching the obligation to prevent genocide only if genocide was actually committed. Conditioning the breach of the obligation to prevent on the occurrence of the bad event is adequate here given that it is fairly easy to determine factually whether the event, the genocide, did take place or not. If, however, the due diligence obligation consists in reaching or maintaining a complex situation which is difficult to quantify, for example, a certain level of education or a low level of corruption and which moreover extends over time and is not a spot on event, then the success is difficult to measure. Here, the preventive and other procedural obligations, for example, under anti-corruption law or under human rights law, should indeed be detached from the result. This then means, firstly, that a state violates its obligations if it fails to act diligently, even if the level of corruption is low or the level of literacy high despite the laxity of the state. Conversely, and as a flip side, a state is released from international responsibility if it takes reasonable, diligent measures even if the desired outcome is not reached. In our example, even when a state is not entirely clean from corruption or when full literacy is not reached in the population, secondly, the state cannot avoid responsibility simply by showing that, in our example, corruption or children missing in school would persist despite all its efforts to prevent it. Thus, although diligent preventive action would presumably not have eliminated the problems, the lack of diligent still counts. If a breach of international law already died here, the state will be able to avoid responsibility all too easily. It is at this point that the gist of the obligation are the means and processes that the state must employ. The due diligence standard here creates accountability. I now turn to the legal structure and legal qualification. The question is whether due diligence is always an obligation of conduct as opposed to an obligation of result. Pierre-Marie Dupuy famously explained the difference as follows, the obligation of a doctor to care for a patient is the obligation, an obligation of conduct, while the obligation of the seller of a car to deliver a car is an obligation of result. Due to the asymmetrical or limping relationship between procedures and outcomes that I just explained, it is a bit simplistic to qualify due diligence only as an obligation of conduct as opposed to result. Due diligence may sometimes but not always be both an obligation of conduct and an obligation to guarantee a result. The next structural question is whether due diligence is a primary norm or a secondary norm to use the doctrinal terms of the law of state responsibility. Helmut Aust and Priska Feier have argued that due diligence sits in between primary and secondary norms. In the Bosnian Genocide case, the court could not successfully establish Serbia Montenegro's responsibility neither on the basis of attribution nor on the basis of complicitly under the Genocide Convention itself or under Article 16 of the Articles on State Responsibility. Therefore, as a kind of last resort, the court developed and elaborated on the duty to prevent under Article 1 of the Genocide Convention as an autonomous obligation of the state parties which is a due diligence obligation. The ICJ thereby sort of strike a balance between avoiding impunity on the one hand and over-broadening third states in face of atrocities committed outside their effective territorial control on the other hand. On the handout, and that's on page one, I explain how due diligence doctrinal sits as a third option in between attribution and complicit. Another structural question is whether due diligence is a customary norm or even a general principle of law. My claim is that due diligence cannot and should not be qualified as a general principle for various reasons. First, because the function of due diligence differs a lot in the different areas of law. For example, in human rights law, the positive obligations in the dimension of protecting, for example, against domestic violence, follow a more structured balancing process dominated by the principle of proportionality. So the type of due diligence assessment is different here. Although a family equal resemblance remains, of course. The meaning and function of due diligence is again different in international economic law. The meaning is here borrowed from private corporate law in relation to business transactions and corporate finance. In that sphere, we might speak of doing due diligence as opposed to acting with diligence. Doing due diligence is an exercise of risk mitigation by conducting a legal environmental or social audit before a visit projects and before other legal undertakings. In order to avoid a bad outcome. The bad outcomes to be fended off include not only potential breaches of the law, but encompass all kinds of negative results. Therefore, doing due diligence is partly outside the realm of the law. Still, from the perspective of a corporation, the diligence exercise seeks to avoid the firm's legal liability and seeks to avoid other legal problems. For example, an investor is expected to assess the present and possible future legal framework of the state where the investment shall take place. An investor who did not conduct due diligence will lose its protection under a bilateral investment treaty. Thus, in investment law, due diligence actually secures the investor's claims for damages. Here, due diligence is primarily exercised to protect the actor itself and not, as in the constellations described before, other actor's interests. In sum, the work that the audits called due diligence performs starkly differs from the functions of due diligence as a standard of behavior in the context of the no harm role. In the Bosnian genocide case, the ICJ countered against the generalization of due diligence-based prevention duties. I cite the ICJ. The content of the duty to prevent variance from one instrument to another, according to the wording of the relevant provisions and depending on the nature of the acts to be prevented and the quotation. In the same way, anyone who wants to identify and circumscribe the due diligence obligations, both procedural and substantive, must always look at the substantive standards of a specific regime. In consequence, due diligence as a general principle would not add much, but simply state an unspecified duty of good behavior. A second more normative consideration against qualifying due diligence as a general principle is that it would not be normatively appropriate as a fallback role. Turning the due diligence standard into an overarching obligation to behave diligently in international relations would imply that due diligence is normatively more desirable than other standards, standards such as absolute harm prevention on one side or mere avoidance of cross-reglessness on the other side. This would create an additional legal argument to deferred for states when they intend to apply a different liability standard. It would also restrict the state's freedom to work out the most appropriate allocation of accountability. The ongoing negotiations on autonomous weapons are a case in point. States and academics are recommending various mechanisms for creating accountability here. Proposals range from a complete ban to a broad permission and include strict liability or a presumption of liability or prevention and harm mitigation duties based on the due diligence standard. But none of these standards is per se normatively more desirable than any other. To conclude, in view of the widely diverging functions of due diligence and its dependence on the primary role which its accompanies, due diligence should not be conceived as a general principle of international law. Rather, due diligence is an emanation or sibling of other structural principles, such as good neighborliness or good faith. And turn to the policy benefits of the rise of due diligence. Despite the shrinking space for the application of the lotus principle that restrictions on the independence of states cannot be consumed, states still need a certain leeway for pursuing legitimate interests. Due diligence has become one of the legal tools granting such a leeway. Thereby, state freedom of action has been transformed from a pre-legal concept into a legally-summed, circumscribed and curtain form of discretion. The apartheid notion of sovereignty is here only a placeholder for legitimate or legally-recognized interests the states may pursue. For example, article four, section one of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change lays down the objectives and goals of the regime. It refers, amongst others, to efforts to eradicate poverty. One in other provision permits the states to consider different national circumstances. This gives developing states more leeway for setting national policy priorities by weighing interests in poverty eradication and development against concerns of climate protection. The balancing process informs the parameters which will then define the due diligence standard in the concrete case. In conclusion, due diligence exemplifies the paradigmatic shift from the state of nature among states to a legally-regulated sphere. At the same time, due diligence reintroduces a regular move which patiently operates as a compensation for losses of natural sovereign freedom. This might be the price to pay for legalization and risks to undermine the benefits of that legalization. A second policy benefit of due diligence is that due diligence facilitates dealing with uncertainty in face of the high connectivity and the diversity of international actors where several actors are in a position to avoid the harm. What matters for the legal response is here not direct causality between action and damage but the proximity of an actor to a risk. I will give examples from three legal fields. In international climate law, risk proximity is contingent both on state resources for action and on their passport revolutions to climate harm. As it is well known in the Bosnia genocide case which I mentioned several times already, the ICJ concentrated on the capacity to influence as the relevant criterion that triggers the due diligence obligation to present genocide. In international environmental law, one relevant factor for defining the risk management capacity of the state is the state's economic level. To conclude, the due diligence standard is flexible enough to allow ongoing adaptation. Due diligence also takes into account the diversity of state actors. It finally permits to grade the responsibility based on distinct degrees of risk proximity. Overall, due diligence works against a too-sumerial and formalist allocation of accountability among international actors which are increasingly connected. Seen from the perspective of the international rule of law, this adds an element of material justice which can be seen as a core component of the rule of law. A third, one might say, policy function of due diligence is in lawmaking. The normative openness of the due diligence standard facilitates treaty negotiations because at least some of the antagonist interests do not need to be enshrined in explicitly the rules. Due diligence here works as a tool for managing contestation. In the design of a treaty, contravening interests may be made explicit. For example, in the preamble or in programmatic articles, but their accommodation is transferred to a later point in the process of implementing and applying a treaty. In other words, the use of a term such as due diligence facilitates lawmaking through the use of constructive ambiguity. The fourth benefit of due diligence is the stabilization of the international order through proceduralization. The creation of procedures associated with or stemming from the due diligence standard has considerably contributed to a proceduralization of international law. And by proceduralization, we mean the extension and refinement of rules on procedures. And that is about steps and ways to proceed as opposed to substantive rights, obligations, command, prohibitions, or guarantees. In international law, we observe a proliferation of procedural rules on hearings, on participation, obligations to explain and reasons, voting modes, monitoring, and verification, which constitute and shape the processes of lawmaking and law enforcement. Procedures generally protect the weaker participants in any given relationship because they prevent powerful players to change the rules of the game at their whim. Importantly, procedures thus outbalance the power disparities. For example, by giving equally long speech flaws to all sides, asking for written justifications by all sides and the like. The antidote to sheer power play is especially important in international relations where the disparities of strength and influence are huge. Second, procedures also tend to increase accountability because they create, compile, and publicize knowledge and thus allow outsiders to hold address to account. And thirdly, over time, processes and procedures within long-term treaty regimes build consensus about how to assess and deal with the risks addressed in the treaties. Thus, broadly trained due diligence obligations and related procedural obligations may work as a starting point for creating more specific substantive obligations under a particular treaty regime over time. An important driver of this trend toward proceduralization is the disagreement among the members of a pluralist and even deeply divided international society about corporate outcomes. The impossibility to reach consensus about substantive outcomes is exacerbated by the complexity of problems and lack of knowledge about their nature and scope, let alone about ways to solve them. In this constellation, negotiators may find it easier to agree on procedures because these are less burdened with ideology and, to some extent, open-ended. The underlying idea is that fair procedures will also lead to normatively acceptable and, in fact, accepted outcomes. Thus, the elements of deliberation inherited a procedural approach complement more traditional forms of justified international law. Seen as a new key procedure, due diligence might bolster the legitimacy of international law. However, this presupposes that due diligence is indeed fleshed out as a procedure and is not only used as a buzzword. Where mere references to due diligence in treaty texts and soft law do not encompass due diligence procedures, then powerful states might simply define what is due. There is the danger that states and other international process simply proclaim due diligence and then do what they want. So the growing reliance on due diligence comes with risks for the international rule of law and global governance, to which I now turn. On the handout, this is on page two, the dark side of due diligence. Broad, indeterminate normative standards such as due diligence may undermine the capacity of the law to govern behavior because the vague and blurry terms of those norms give plenty of leeway to those interpreting and applying the norms. This undermines the international rule of law. When due diligence obligations are introduced through secondary law or interpretation into treaty regimes which had previously provided for substantive standards, then due diligence may delude with trickness of those regimes by reopening states discretion. This may give room for more subjective, self-selected and self-justifying processes and for self-serving narratives and thereby contribute to a detachment of states on international legal commitments. An example is the application of due diligence to cyber space here. Russia and China have focused on the risk of cyberterrorism in order to forge an international consensus to restrict freedom of expression on the internet. The international code of conduct for information security of September, 2011 may be seen as such an attempt to legitimize restrictions of free speech that actually disregard international human rights obligations. The duty to monitor and prevent cyber harms may also serve as a narrative to bolster further disproportionate surveillance measures. Another at least ambivalent consequence of due diligence relates to private actors. We have seen that the traditional and probably still major field of application of due diligence relates to the activities of private actors, which have thereby been at least indirectly brought under the purview of international law. Thereby, due diligence contributes to the rise of informal international law, notably professional and industrial standards, which are often issued by transnational non-state actors such as professional associations, business interest groups, frequently in collaboration with NGOs or with government agencies. Such standards are often crucial for determining which conduct is actually due in a given issue area and they heavily influence the interpretation of the relevant hard law. However, informal lawmaking processes are often associated with negatively-converted concepts such as managerialism and technocracy. These processes must answer calls for new forms of legitimizing local governance since these are not covered by state consent. I'm now reaching my conclusions and we'd like to return to COVID-19. I venture to say that it will be impossible to pin down and assign responsibility to one or several states for harm caused by the new virus. So in the end, due diligence here in global health law does not provide any clear solution to a concrete problem. However, on a more general level, as my talk tried to show, the rise of due diligence across all areas of international law can be seen as a response and also as a manifestation and at the same time as a driver of structural change in the international legal order as a whole. The most notable structural change is proceduralization as I described. This change is overlapping with new types of risk management in the face of complexity and diversification of factors. Seen through the lens of global constitutionalism, which I could not give it up, the rise of due diligence as a tort law-like and criminal law-based institution at first sight might suggest an undue privatization or due constitutionalization of the international legal order. However, in the era of global capitalism, constitutionalism can and should not be confined to states. The rise of due diligence both in interstate constellations and in so-to-speak diagonal state non-state constellations such as human rights, investment protection, international criminal law and anti-terrorism law can be interpreted as one feature of a global societal constitutionalism. Overall, due diligence is responding to the current technical and ecological insecurity, to the global political and economic power shift, to the rise of economic private actors and to probably growing ideational and ideological strife. But in doing so, it not only meets these developments but might even push them further by offering cheap talk and empty rituals. Due diligence is as young as faced as current international law as a whole, oscillating between a hollow hope and a guarantor of peace and justice. Thank you.


Without saying anything else. I'll begin here in the book of Esther in chapter 1 at verse 1 we'll read to verse 8 And I'll give you some introductory comments some things to help you To contextualize what's taking place here. They're going to be some historic things historic references This is in no way going to be a thorough Introduction in the way that if you were to read a commentary you would get but this will give you enough information To have an idea of what is taking place here at this time In the life of a young woman by the name of Esther, so let's begin reading at verse 1 I'll read verses 1 through 8 in Esther and and we'll get into our study Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus. This was Ahasuerus who reigned over 127 provinces from India to Ethiopia In those days when King Ahasuerus sat on the throne of his kingdom, which was in Shushan Shushan the citadel that in the third year of his reign He made a feast for all his officials in servants the powers of Persia and media the nobles and the princes of the provinces being before him When he showed the riches of his glorious kingdom and the splendor of his excellent majesty for many days 180 days in all and When these days were completed the king made a feast lasting seven days For all the people who are present in Shushan the citadel from great to small in the cord of the garden of the king's palace There were white and blue linen curtains fastened with cords of fine linen and purple on silver rods and marble pillars and the couches were of gold and silver on a mosaic pavement of alabaster turquoise and white and black marble and They served drinks in golden vessels each vessel being different from the other With royal wine in abundance according to the generosity of the king in accordance with the law the drinking was not compulsory For so the king had ordered all the officers of his household that they should do according to each man's pleasure Let me give you the background information The writer of the book of Esther is unidentified Some believe that it was written though by Esther and Mordecai in Esther chapter 9 verse 20 It says Mordecai wrote these things and sent letters to all the Jews near and far who are in the provinces of King Ahasuerus in verse 29 of Esther chapter 9 It says Queen Esther daughter of Abahal along with Mordecai the Jew wrote with full authority to confirm this second letter concerning Purim and so Many believe that it is possible that that Esther and Mordecai were the ones who had written there this but there are various Others who have been brought into play But this is the only book in the Bible which in which the name of God is never mentioned The New Testament never quotes from Esther Nor have copies of it been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls The law of Moses is never mentioned nor are sacrifices or offerings Prayer is not specifically mentioned though fasting is So there's a question concerning that and the answer has been that this may be because the Jews in Persia were becoming Persians and we're slowly losing their identity And in this book God is going to give them a reason to return to him So at first Esther was not recognized as mentioned is inspired. It was regarded originally as a historical record Now according to some this is the reason the book Vesser doesn't contain any reference to God Mordecai and Esther knew that the Persians would take this account and include it in their history books But would substitute the name of God with the names of their own deities So they therefore decided that it was more respectful to God to just leave his name out The book Vesser records events during the time that Persia dominated Israel Persia dominated Israel from 539 to 331 BC So the events that take place are taking place during the reign of the Persian king Ahasuerus, he's also known and better known I think too many as Xerxes Now Xerxes reigned from 486 to 464 BC. So the events of this book take place during those years Now during this period many Jews who were exiled from Israel to Babylon had returned to Israel to rebuild the temple and Reestablish temple worship, but most Jews did not return and Within that number who had not returned to Israel were a man by the name of Mordecai and his cousin a young woman named Hadassah Hadassah means myrtle. I'll show you something about that in just a moment also known as Esther Esther is a Persian Word for star and some commentators would say that Esther is Persian for the planet Venus Now Esther reveals how God provides protection for his people We find these kinds of insights in this kind of promise of protection in the Psalms Psalm 62 verse 6 He he only is my rock and my salvation. He is my defense. I shall not be moved Psalm 89 18 the Lord is our defense and the Holy One of Israel is our king Psalm 94 verse 22 the Lord is my defense my God is a rock of my refuge and So God provides protection for his people and that is demonstrated as we go through the book of Esther In Esther There's an evil man by the name of Haman He plots the destruction of the Jews yet God is using a courageous young woman and the wise counsel of her cousin to thwart his plan The result will be the deliverance of the Jews and the establishment of the Jewish Feast of Purim the celebration of deliverance that God gave to the Jews over their enemies in The book of Esther God's sovereignty his supreme power is displayed Psalm 103 19 says the Lord has prepared his throne in the heavens and his kingdom Rules over all and that is made abundantly clear in this book We'll see how God raises an unknown Jewish girl to become the Queen of Persia Protects her when she without permission approaches the king and Then counters the king's command to annihilate all the Jews in Persia and So here in the first eight verses were introduced to this king king ahasuerus He is a powerful king. He rules from India to Ethiopia and now I'm going to give you some basic things verses one and two The points out that This is taking place in the days of ahasuerus and he's in a place called Shushan Which is the citadel the capital city of that day the capital city of Iran And it says in verses three and four in the third year of his reign He made a feast for all his officials and servants the powers of Persia and media the nobles the princes of the provinces being before him He showed the riches of his glorious kingdom and the splendor of his excellent majesty for many days 180 days in all so he has this this party that he has that includes all the powers of Persia and media he invites all the nobles including the military officials and he's showing them verse four the riches of his glorious kingdom and It's splendor. So what does that give us a picture of it gives us a picture of an extravagant feast? He's showing these people how powerful he is There are those commentators who believe that this may have been a planning session because he was about to invade Greece Which he did in 481 but notice how long this banquet lasted. This is one long party Six months Yeah So in verse five it says when When these days were completed the king made a feast lasting seven days For all the people who were present in Shushan the citadel the palace From great to small in the court of the garden of the king's palace There were white and blue linen etc. It already is described to us how beautiful it was And so this is taking place in the garden notice in verse five They were in the court of the garden of the king's palace Historians will say that this court when you go outside and you look at the courtyard here in this fellowship And and we've got a few a few acres that we occupy and all that's a fairly large court The court of the Persian king was 60,000 square feet 44,000 plus a few feet are one acre. So this is 60,000 square feet. It's a huge courtyard And what we're getting here is a picture of breathtaking opulence It was beautiful and it's described that way They took the time to tell us about the white and blue linen curtains the Fastened with cords of fine linen purple on silver rods marble pillars couches of gold and silver It's an amazing picture. It's kind of like like my house. It's just an amazing It's just breathtaking and and not only that but it says in verse seven They serve drinks in golden vessels each vessel being different from the other with royal wine in abundance According to the generosity of the king in accordance with the law the drinking was in compulsory For so the king had ordered all the officers of his household that they should do according to each man's pleasure and so He's revealing the immense wealth That he has the treasures that he has control of when it speaks of royal wine It's speaking of the best wine that could be could be had You know, it's not we used to call it red mo red mountain. It's not Bipple that was beer and ripple It wasn't some of you're too young to even know what those are. I Could give you a lot of those cheap wines. I won't it will just put it this way It wasn't cheap. It was the best that they could get and it's showing us again the quality of This of this party now each was able to enjoy themselves in Drinking if they wanted to or or not drinking you see normally each would have been forced to drink but not this time Nobody was forced to drink each one was given opportunity to decide for themselves So here's your picture of what is taking place Well, verse 9 Queen Vashti Also made a feast for the women in the royal palace which belonged to King Ahasuerus Now the word Vashti for those who take notes the word Vashti means beautiful It's a word that describes her So Queen Vashti this beautiful Queen makes a feast The King had a number of wives. You're gonna see this in a moment But she is what would be referred to as the preeminent Queen Now men and women did not feast together the men were in the open courtyard But the women are in the palace and so she's taking care of all of these others Well on the seventh day verse 10 When the heart of the King was married with wine He commanded me human Vista Harbana big toe Abhagdha Zathar carcass Some dead guy Seven eunuchs Who served in the presence of King Ahasuerus to bring Queen Vashti Before the King wearing her royal crown in order to show her beauty to the people and the officials for she Was beautiful to behold but Queen Vashti refused to come at the King's command brought by his eunuchs Therefore the King was furious and his anger burned within him Yeah King's been drinking And as he's drinking he's beginning to be out of the kind of control where he to have remained sober and it seems that alcohol Had allowed him to act in pride He's already shown off his wealth and now he wants to show off his wife The wealth wasn't enough. He wanted to show off this beautiful woman that he was married to and he's doing so out of his pride and So he gives this order for her to come but she refuses his order When she was called now here is something interesting In going over this a second time one of my commentators that I use pointed out that she had the right to refuse It wasn't something that she had to come to but she had she had made a decision that she wasn't about to be looked at by the King's men and all in the fashion that he desired and So she decided not to come It wasn't proper for her to be be seen especially by by drunken men One commentator said it may have been because she was pregnant with the son by the name of Arduxerxes, but what happens verse 12 is the King wasn't putting up with this the King was furious his pride was provoked is his inebriation encouraged an angry response and so He's his anger verse 12 is burning within him because he has been humiliated in front of all of these men that he was showing off in Front of it's a good thing that men don't show off in front of people anymore I heard all those women's voices Verse 13 then the King said to the wise men who understood the times for this was the King's manner toward all who knew law and justice Those closest to him being here we go again Karshina Shethaar Admata Tarshish Maris Marcena and Memucan and Bill George and Ringo and the seven princes of Persia and Media who had access to the King's presence and who ranked highest in the kingdom What shall we do to King Vashti according to law? She didn't obey the the command of King Ahasuerus brought to her by the Unix and Memucan answered Before the King and the princes Queen Vashti has not only wronged the King But also all the princes and all the people who are in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus for the Queen's behavior Will become known to all women so that they will despise their husbands in their eyes when they report King Ahasuerus commanded Queen Vashti to be brought in before him, but she didn't come This very day the noble ladies of Persia and Media will say to all the King's officials That they've they've heard of the behavior of the Queen thus there will be excessive contempt in rats She's been a bad example, and it's going to affect all the others and that's the point that they're making And so as he's speaking to these counselors, he's doing so because they know the history of the Empire He wanted really to know what has been done in the past by other Kings who were in this situation Is there any law that has been broken that I can now enforce and Their comment was quick Queen Vashti wronged the King the princess and all the people in other words Her example is going to cause chaos in the kingdom, and if the King's orders can be refused how much more so with ordinary people And so that's their advice and so in 19 if it pleases the King Let a royal decree go out from him and and let it be recorded in the laws of the Persians and the Medes So that it will not be altered that Vashti shall come no more before King Ahasuerus and Let the King give her royal position to another who is better than she When the King's decree which he will make is proclaimed throughout all his empire for it's great All wives will honor their husbands both great and small And the reply please the King and the princess and the King did according to the word of Memekan He sent letters to all the King's provinces to each province in its own script and to every people in their own language That each man should be master in his own house. I Heard an amen And I heard the wife say I'll talk to you later Master his own house and speak in the language of his own people Let a royal decree go forth You see according to the law of the Medes and Persians You're going to see this later on even more clearly According to the law of the Medes and Persians when a law is enacted. It cannot be overturned and So you need to make a law that is binding and their advice have already posed Because that will cause all women to fear their husbands Now I want to say something for a moment about that that kind of pagan advice was pleasing to a pagan man if you want to be King if you want to act royally if you want to be the The leader then you have to be cruel That's basically what they're saying and that's pagan advice The Bible speaks differently to husbands. Let me give you one instance of this first Peter 3 verse 7 What's it say it says husbands likewise? Dwell with your wives with understanding Giving honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel and as being heirs together of the grace of life that your prayers may not be Kindred to all with your wives with understanding Treat them gently Paul in Ephesians 5 speaks about cherishing and nourishing the wife You don't bully your wife You don't control her like she's a one of the pets in the house You love her you treat her tenderly you care for her you comfort her You sacrifice for her you don't bully her You don't treat her improperly a pagan in the pagan mind that sounded like a good idea Yeah, I'll show show everybody who's the boss and that's pagan advice and unfortunately that kind of advice is still taken We have seen we have seen I've seen young men who think that leading a home means to bully the wife And I've never seen that to be effective I've said this before I'm not gonna go too long on this. I'll just say a couple things I've said this before when I've taught on on marriage and family when I've taught Christian marriage and the role of a husband. I've said this and and I don't mean it to sound It may be a An illustration that that may be misunderstood. I hope it comes out clearly but I have seen Even somebody's dog even a pet You can go someplace and you can even tell when when the pet is not treated kindly You can do that. You can see that, you know, you put your hand down to pet a dog and it moves and maybe gets and And you can tell someone's not treating this this animal, right? If you can see that with a dog You can see that with children. You can see that with a wife You can see that this person is not being treated well The Bible teaches husbands to dwell with our wives according to knowledge when he says dwell that means make the house into a home It's not your motel. It's not the place where you hang your hat and then go into the garage to spend the rest of the night with your hobby You make the home into a home dwell with your wife's dwell live with them Make it a home not a not a motel to all of your wives according to knowledge Use your opportunities to study her to understand her so that you may really know her a lot of men don't really know their wives Because they don't study They can tell me the batting average of their favorite ball player or how many touchdowns this quarterback through But they can't tell me what her favorite color is They can't tell me things about the wife. Why because they're not studying their wives. They're studying other things So you dwell with your wife according to knowledge You treat her with kindness why because she's weaker normally physically the woman normally will be weaker than the husband It's not because you're stronger and batter. It's because there's a tenderness involved in caring for someone who is weaker than you So you actually love them you spend time getting to know them And why is that because you are heirs together in the kingdom of God? Because loving one another is a benefit not just to each other But to any children and it can be a model to others with King Ahasuerus.  So get rid of her and that was their advice well verse 1 of chapter 2 After these things when the wrath of King Ahasuerus subsided he remembered Vashti What she had done and what had been decreed against her the king's servants who attended him said Well, that beautiful young virgins be sought for the king Let the king appoint officers in all the provinces of his kingdom that they may gather all the beautiful young virgins to Shoshan the citadel into the women's quarters under the custody of Hegai The king's eunuch custodian of the women and and let beauty preparations be given them Then let the young woman who pleases the king Bequeen instead of Vashti and this thing pleased the king and he did so Now this according to commentators may have taken place somewhere around two years. It wasn't just the next week It wasn't the next day when he came out of his inebriation. It took him some time It may have taken place about two years later It is estimated that this feast that we spoke of here took place around 483 And he went off to fight Greece in 481 so it was right around that time So he's cooled down and he realized that he's been foolish So what's he do it once again? He seeks counsel and here's what his advisor say replace Vashti with a newer model since marriage is not guarded They counseled him just to replace her Well, they obviously wouldn't want her back. Why is that because she might seek vengeance on them So let's replace her with somebody who doesn't know what has happened Well as this is taking place the king is pleased with this first five in Shoshan the citadel There was a certain Jew whose name was Mordecai the son of Jair the son of Shimei The son of Kish a benjamite Kish had been carried away from Jerusalem with the captives who had been captured with Jack and I a king of Judah Whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away Mordecai had brought up Hadassah that is Esther his uncle's daughter for she had neither father nor mother The young woman was lovely and beautiful when her father and mother died Mordecai took her as his own daughter So it was when the king's command and decree were heard and when many young women were gathered at Shoshan the citadel under the custody of Hegye That Esther also was taken to the king's palace into the care of Hegye the custodian of the women now the young woman pleased him and she obtained his favor So he readily gave beauty preparations to her besides her allowance Then seven choice maid servants were provided for her from the king's palace And he moved her and her maid servants to the best place in the house of the women Esther had not revealed her people or family for Mordecai had charged her not to reveal it and Every day Mordecai paced in front of the court of the women's quarters to learn of Esther's welfare And what was happening to her so at this point were introduced to Mordecai as well as Esther Now Notice it says in verse 5. There was a certain Jew. I'm just going to touch on this for a moment normally the word Jew is Used to speak of those of the tribe of Judah when you go to Israel to this day They'll tell you that the word Jew is usually referring to those from Judah the tribe of Judah but not in this case one commentator pointed out that all who were captive were called Jews and So he's just spoken of as one who is a captive now Mordecai is from a tribe a prestigious tribe tribe of Benjamin Verse 5 gives us the names of his father grandfather and great fun a great grandfather And so Mordecai according to verse 6 is the great grandson of a man by the name of kish Now kish was exiled to Babylon in 597 in Nebuchadnezzar's second campaign against Israel Verse 7 tells us Mordecai had brought up Hadassah as his own daughter now. I mentioned that Hadassah means myrtle But that has significance. I opened up a Jewish commentary on this I wanted to hear what the significance would be of this name and according to this particular Jewish commentary She was called Hadassah Because as the myrtle spreads fragrance in the world So did she spread good works and as the myrtle does not dry up either in summer or winter So the righteous have a share in this world and in the world to come So her name was myrtle and it was very significant notice verse 7 how it describes her not only was she lovely But she was beautiful Lovely she was lovely in outer appearance And she had in the word speaks of this She had a shapely figure She was built like a brick house. No, she was It's a blast from the past. It just Came in this year and just floated out. I'm sorry So she was lovely she was built beautifully and Just to look at her it was pleasing. She was beautiful to behold Mordecai had adopted her and treated her as if he she was his own Daughter now I want to point something out in verse 8 It says it so it was when the king's command and decree were heard When many young women were gathered at Shushan the Citadel under the custody of Hegye Now look at this. I'm going to share something with you real quickly here That Esther also was taken to the king's palace into the care of Hegye the custodian of the women now when you're reading your Bible and you read that Esther was taken. Well, what's that word mean? It simply means that she was transported, right? She was taken there. I I was looking at a commentary and then I looked it up in in various helps that I have to understand this and this I found Very interesting when it says that she was taken again Esther was also was taken the word taken means removed by force That says a lot. Let me develop that for a moment. She was taken by force That was the power of the king. They took people for their own pleasure This was not her choice as I was thinking of that Sometimes circumstances arise in our lives. Here's your application That we wouldn't choose for ourselves Sometimes things occur That we didn't volunteer for Sometimes things may happen That were we to have been able to make a decision concerning what was happening and the outcome of that We would have said no, I don't want to have any part of that. I Don't want any part of that Esther was not by choice willingly moving into this direction and As I was reading that and preparing the study I began to think of there's so many But I began to think of other other people in Scripture. I think of Joseph in the Old Testament Now that Joseph who is of he is one of the the tribes of Israel became one of the leaders of the tribes of Israel is Joseph Joseph had been basically sold into slavery by his own brothers He was taken off into Egypt. He became a slave. He was there for many years He would not have chosen that for himself if you just said Joseph Would you like to be sold into slavery taken and sold and then used as somebody's house servant? Would you like to do that? He would have said no and yet when it comes out later on when he's been there for many years when later on it comes out and his brothers come There to Egypt to try and buy grain and and and Joseph looks at every bit Egyptian He's dressed like Egyptian. He's walks like an Egyptian. He these old things keep coming back. I'm sorry Even speaks to a translator Brothers don't even know who he is they think he's just the One of the most powerful men in Egypt and they're afraid of him it turns out he finally has to disclose to them I'm your brother and They were afraid that he was going to show take take his vengeance on them and he said no What you intended for evil? What does it say? God intended for good Did he did he choose? No, that was not his choice But he was taken and was used later in a great way We've been looking at the book of Acts and book of Acts in chapter 8 It speaks of how under persecution the church dispersed remember that and it says that the church dispersed throughout Judea and Samaria It says in Acts 8 verse 4 those who were scattered when it went everywhere preaching the word So even under the pressure they didn't choose on their own. Let's get up and go out and preach They were supposed to they hadn't but under force under persecution They went out and what happened? Multitudes of people came to faith in Christ sometimes the things we don't choose for ourselves are used by God to accomplish his will It's interesting. I was thinking of Paul and in the book of Galatians how in chapter 4 verse 13 Paul said as you know It was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you. I Was on a ministry trip. I got sick that gave me an opportunity To preach the gospel to you. Do you think that Paul said I would love to get sick about right now? No Who likes to do that? But did he choose the illness for himself? No Was the illness used for God's glory? Absolutely. He was able to preach the gospel to the Galatians Someone once said if you want to make God laugh Tell him your plans in Romans 8 28 We know that all things work together for good to those who love God to those who are called according to his purpose Esther Now becomes part of Ahasuerus's harem Now verse 9 tells us that This young woman Esther pleased him and obtained his favor She was beautiful. She was likable. She was attractive and she was charming and she had She had obtained the favor of Hagia. This isn't speaking yet of Ahasuerus And so Hagia I liked her and he gave her special treatment as well as what would have been her allowance In other words, she had the best beauty care the best diet And the best women who could attend to her needs Now he knew that the king had preferences. He made sure that she was properly prepared when she met him Now Esther was unlike Daniel. Daniel didn't defile himself with the king's food But she did She ate the food and she was even willing to marry a pagan Now in verse 10 it says to us That Esther had not revealed her people or family. She had been told not to by her uncle Mordecai said you need to keep your Jewishness concealed Remember her Jewish name had been changed to a Persian name And the persians didn't regard conquered people with respect And so perhaps she'd be mistreated or perhaps those in her nation would be mistreated But God was moving behind the scenes. He was about to accomplish his will Jeremiah 29 11 says it like this I know the thoughts. I know the plans I have for you declares the lord plans of peace and not of evil To give you a future and a hope I have plans and these plans are going to be worked down Well, how did Mordecai feel well verse 11 every day Mordecai paced in front of the court of the women's quarters To learn of Esther's welfare and what was happening to her He was known to the king and he had freedom to do that As in the time of daniel he was respected because of his character and thus he was allowed to do that Well in verse 12 each young woman's turn came to go into king ahasuerus after she had completed 12 months According to the regulations for the women for thus were the days of their preparation apportioned six months With oil of myrrh six months with perfumes and preparations for beautifying women six months in a In a spa You ladies would probably like like that, huh? marion occasion has liked massages and things like that She could never get me in there I don't have some man wrestling around with my Do that Keep your hands off me Well, they had a year of preparation There was oil to smooth the skin perfumes remember in in a hot climate the skin dried out And bathing was infrequent It's a nice polite way to say She could have had bile well Verse 13 thus prepared each young woman went to the king So she was prepared that means she had the finest of clothing and jewelry As well as the best attendance I was reading how she could even bring musicians to sing and play songs in order to make her entrance better And the time with the king better. She was in other words doing everything she could to become the favorite That's what the other women were doing Well, it says in verse 14 in the evening she went And in the morning She returned to the second house of the women to the custody of shagas The king's eunuch who kept the concubines She would not go into the king again unless the king delighted in her and called for her by name So each one would have a night with the king and then come out if he wanted her back that was showing favor now Verse 15 when the turn came for ester the daughter of abahel the uncle of mordecai who had had taken her as his daughter to go into the king Listen to this she requested nothing But what hagiah the king's eunuch the custodian of the women advised and ester obtained favor in the sight of all who saw her She did nothing. This is really an important point that I could really Share a lot about I'll try to be careful. I do want to go through this chapter She did nothing to make herself desirable She went in just as she is She took the counsel of of the individual that that she respected and who liked her But she didn't do anything To beautify herself. She didn't put extra makeup. She didn't do a single thing She just basically didn't have She didn't have that longing desire She just went in as she was That shows her modest nature that shows her humility, but it especially shows the lack of selfish ambition You see all who saw her admired her beauty She had no need of anything To enhance it She didn't rely on her outer beauty She was beautiful in every way I think that's a great lesson for not just women but for men and women It's the heart that matters She had the beautiful. I mean she had a beautiful appearance, of course But her heart was beautiful too and everybody who knew her loved her well verse 16 Esther was taken to king ahasuerus and into his royal palace in the 10th month, which is the month of tibet In the seventh year of his reign And the king loved ester that word loved means was very attracted to her The king loved ester more than all the other women She obtained grace and favor in his sight more than all the virgins So he set the royal crown upon her head and made her queen instead of ashti He was more attracted to her There was something about her that connected with him and what he did is he made her his chief wife the queen And he relegated the others to his harem When he made that decision verse 18 the king made a great feast this guy likes to eat The feast of ester For all his officials and servants and he proclaimed a holiday in the provinces gave gifts according to the generosity of a king and so This marriage was magnificent And ester is made his queen He releases the provinces from financial tribute for a short period. So that shows his generosity Well in verse 19 when virgins were gathered together a second time Mordecai sat within the king's gate now ester had not revealed her family and her people just as mordecai had charged her For ester obeyed the command of mordecai as when she was brought up by him And so the king is still adding concubines to his harem And at this time verse 20 tells us that ester has not yet revealed that she is jewish While as this is taking place verse 21 in those days When mordecai sat within the king's gate two of the king's eunuchs big tharn and teresh doorkeepers became furious And sought to lay hands on king ahasuerus The matter became known to mordecai who told queen ester ester informed the king in mordecai's name And when an inquiry was made into the matter it was confirmed Both were hanged on on a gallows and it was written in the book of the chronicles in the presence of the king So few last comments in this Mordecai, I want you to notice this verse 21 is Sitting within the king's gate That is a phrase that that way americans probably Wouldn't relate well to don't understand it Why because this isn't something in our own culture when you go to israel though you learn this When you go to israel you'll enter into a walled area If you able to go sometime you're with us for example in cesarea You go in excuse me, and there is a wall that you a wall and you enter in it It's actually a wall around an amphitheater, but Within it is an alcove And so you've got the uh an open space and an alcove Then you go on in down into the amphitheater That's where the judges of the city would be seated The judges would sit In these alcoves and the people who had any cases would come to the judges And they would have their cases decided in that way This gives us insight into mordecai. He is an official of some sort there a lesser official But he's an official And that's a place of prominence and it gives us insight into what he's doing. So he's there Sitting as a judge Well There are two that were very upset It speaks of these two the king's eunuchs Big than and teresh. They were doorkeepers. So they were upset They were furious with him now. Why would they be furious with king hasweras? They may have been loyal to vashti And when vashti was deposed and ester replaced her It may have made them so angry They wanted to take out the king for doing that the disrespect Well, what happens is mordecai It's made known to him and what's he do he speaks to ester and I want you to see this i'm going to close with this It says when verse 23 when an inquiry was made into the matter It was confirmed and both were hanged on a gallows I wanted to see what that hanged on a gallows spoke about. So I looked at I looked up persian forms of capital punishment There are so many different forms One of the things they would do is they would tie prisoners down And they would skin them alive Yeah, they would skin them alive sometimes just small pieces and sometimes just entire rows of flesh They were very very cruel It was so sickening to read this that I I I read two or three of them and I thought oh, this is this is Unbelievable, but one of the other ways when you read of the gallows And the reason I did this I wanted to see what the word gallows means because to me the gallows is where you know You're hanged.  That's our gallows. That's not what the word speaks of The gallows is speaking of a torture stake And what they would do and I won't go into much detail. I have to tell you this is so gruesome just read it But I'm serious. I mean, I thought oh my goodness talk about man's cruelty to human beings But they would they would take them There were two different ways. I won't go into a lot of detail one would be the place on it And another would be to put them on the ground and drive something through him And they would begin from his bottom and go all the way up And then they would hang him And they would leave him there and sometimes they could stay there for several days Not it wasn't an instant death It was a horrible death So that gives you some insight Into when the jewish people entered into pagan lands why they exterminated people that gives you some insight into that These were the things that they did to other human beings And this king Ordered these men To be put on the gallows not necessarily being hanged but being impaled It was something that they would want Everybody to see why? To see him screaming and writhing and to walk by the next day and they're still doing that It put fear in them. They were not going to disobey. They were not going to break the law They didn't want to end up like that And so what is an interesting part of this book is This is something that was noted I want you to see it it says it was written in the book of the chronicles in the presence of the king This is going to show itself later on Just just this one phrase it was written it's going to show you the value Of something like that again how what appears to be little things Actually add up to greater things You'll see that as we go through this


Hi guys welcome back to my YouTube channel this is Daniel Rossell here and I want to do for today a video about how to connect multiple external microphones to your Canon Vixia HF-R800 camcorder. Now the Canon Vixia HF-R800 does have external mic input and that allows us to connect external microphones which is super useful because not a lot of camcorders at its price point even have that feature however the external microphone jack is on power so therefore you can't you have to use a certain type of microphone that means that the microphone has to supply it on power that can either be a battery microphone like the shotgun microphone it has a little AAA battery there and therefore this provides the power that makes this microphone work a lot of microphones expect power from the camcorder either phantom power 48 volts or plug-in power which is a lower DC current those will not work out of the box but there is a workaround and that's that is actually using one of these mixers a certain type of mixer the other type of microphone you might see or attach is one that will have be charged these days via you know USB like the comic track shot so that will work too the microphone just has to be powered now with one microphone input you can only get one microphone unless you use a mixer there's two types of mixers camcorder mixer is that you'll see on the market one of them is an unpowered or passive mixer this doesn't actually have any electrical circuitry within it what it does instead it'll take in 3.5 millimeter inputs and it will mix it down or preserve them as separate tracks now that's why there is a mono stereo switch so if you have this switch to stereo you've got your two microphones and it'll keep each input on a different track of the stereo track at outputs and that'll allow you to change levels in post-production which is super useful and it's got two gain trims on the front so you can adjust the levels for each microphone so what I'm going to do for I'm just going to build out the setup quickly I've got an L bracket here I've got my Canon Vixi HFR 800 on an L bracket now I also did another video showing how to connect an adhesive cold shoe and that's another approach that you can take I'm going to put the passive mixer on the L bracket just today it's a little bit more solid so this is a passive mixer it's again pretty it's not so expensive but if you want to use an active one this is why I mentioned the microphone problem is the Vixia because this is actually a workaround what you could do is if you have an active mixer and Saramonic make one called a smart rig that has XLR and it's got a battery so that will actually provide there's a little phantom power switch on that product and that will actually power a microphone so once you've got an active or powered mixer camcorder mixer you could actually just use that for one microphone you don't actually need to use it as a mixer and that would allow you to use absolutely any microphone with the Vixia HFR 800 so just a tip but I'm actually going to be doing real mixing today so firstly the second tip is you want to have the gain trim so this is my rig I've got my lens here monitor screen here so therefore I want to have my gain trims accessible in a way that I can touch them so that's why I'm going to put it this way so a little bit tricky to do this with one hand I'm just going to pop down the or pop up the lens cover here that's stable enough as best as I can do it for this demo so I've got the output from the passive mixer I'm just going to run it around the back and into the microphone input on the Vixia so here's what that looks like from the side so it's running into the microphone jack now now the this passive mixer which is the and doer uh ws v2 actually handily has three different cold shoes kind of built into it so just for the purposes of demonstration I'm going to firstly attach a shotgun microphone a really basic one like this I'm going to run it around the side and put it actually mounted on the passive mixer again I could get these a lot more secure I'm just doing a minimal valuable product for the video and I'm putting it into the left channel so now I've got one microphone going into the passive mixer I'm going to be using just for demo again but here would be a more logical setup you could have this so this is your shotgun microphone and that's going into left therefore I adjust it with the left channel here a more logical setup would be to have let's say a shotgun microphone recording outwards and let's say you wanted to rig up an interview subject with a lavalier microphone alternatively you could have a shotgun microphone facing back and you could have the lavalier the purpose of that setup would be that if I rotated this shotgun microphone 180 it would be recording me and picking up audio from me the interviewer and let's say another shotgun would be picking up audio from the interview subject or that could be a wireless lav receiver is the other example I gave so those are real life instances where this kind of two microphone recording into the camcorder would make sense and all you have to do to adjust the proportion of audio is play around whoops with the gain tab so I'm just going to connect a second microphone here I'm going to connect the comic a track shot slide it into the colchee here and I'm going to connect that to I'm not even going to tighten it I'm just going to slide and hope it stays there we go so now it's connected so I have microphone one facing outwards microphone two facing back and I'm going to actually show you guys something cool despite the fact that the passive mixer is unpowered it does carry electricity through so once your once your microphones work or can be powered they're going to work with the vixia so I'm just going to show you guys right now there's no audio level you can see the levels are zero in fact if I flip this right and it'll be better so no levels are being picked up because both microphones are turned off but neither microphone is connected directly they're both running through the mixer watch what happens when I turn on the shotgun microphone here turn on the switch and now one sec now we should be getting levels through the mixer and if I turn it up we can see those levels are getting higher and watch what happens if I just turn down the level on the mixer to zero we're getting no levels again into the camcorder and now I'm playing with the gain tab and the levels are picking up again and I can turn on so this way I can adjust both microphones using these tabs and I've got two microphones connected so that's a way to get your two microphones connected to the Canon Vixia HF-R800 camcorder I hope this video was helpful and if you would like to subscribe hit the subscribe button for more videos thank you for watching