your approval, to opt out of, ta security. they can have a private security company come in. i know you have oversight, but you don't have day-to-day management as such. so is this something that is a concern in terms of insuring that there's a secure place at every single airport, or do you think that this is a trend that more airports will go for? >> there are 16 airports currently out of the nearly 450 that have privatized work force. we still have tsa management on scene to oversee, and they have to follow the exact same protocol and standards that we have. and we find them to do an excellent job, and so the security is not an issue as much as the cost because it does cost the taxpayers, um, a little bit more to have those work forces. so other than that i am interested in any best practices they develop or other things that we, perhaps, could learn

from that we could deploy nationwide. that being said, i see tsa as being a u.s. government counterterrorism agency, that's why we were created. and so i think it's important for the flexibility in terms of as new information comes in, new threats we can get that out quickly, modify our procedures quickly and doesn't require contract changes and is things like that. >> tsa is constantly trying new things, and some things work, and some things don't. i remember the puffer machines. those are history now. but what about things such as air marshals? is that really cost effective? does that provide the deterrent that you want it to? >> yes. i'm, obviously, a strong supporter because of that deterrent effect. impact. so we don't know how many terrorists have said, well, i would try to do another 9/11, but there might be federal air marshals onboard, so we don't have that information. i suppose it's somewhere to the

secret service and protecting the president. so every day that goes by, we don't know what people didn't try because of the great job secret service does day in and day out. so what we try to do is make sure that we are random and unpredictable in how we go about doing things, especially in the mass transit area where we have what we call vipir teams which are interagency, law enforcement agency, uniformed officers, perhaps k-9s, behavior detection officers who are there, for example, perhaps at union station just up the road here, and they may be there tuesday at 10 p.m. a.m. so -- 10 a.m. so if a possible terrorist is there to do casing, if you will, and they see that. okay, let's not try tuesday at 10:00, it may be thursday at 3 p.m. that another team would be there. so the idea is that terrorists can't go to school, if you will, on what we do to try to beat us.

>> much of the o focus, obviously, is on air travel because there's so many people who do it. but there are some who are concerned about the vulnerability of particularly train travel, but also cruise ship travel. on the trains, for example, you don't have positive id all the time. you have people getting on with knapsacks that have not been searched. do you see this as something that is an area of tension? >> it is something that we try to work very closely, for example, with amtrak, with their own police force and then with the metro transit chiefs around the country, for example, subways and buses and things. we recognize tsa can't be all things to all people, at all places at all times, so how can we effectively augment or enhance the things they do? because they know the threats, they know their local population better than we do. so our job is really an enabler of what they do whether through transportation security grant funding or training of officers or additional k-9s or things

like that. so those are some of the challenges. we recognize that trains, buses, subways, it's a much more open architecture than aviation, and there have been a number of attacks around the world, hundreds of attacks since 9/11. and so that's something that we recognize, and is we have to -- and that's why the vipir teams are so important and working with state and local authorities. >> what about the cruise ships? a number of people go on that. not everyone's aware of the changes there, but what -- >> so every cruise ship line has their own security force, and we work with them to make sure that they do proper screening before people get onboard including all the crew so there's background checks and all those things are done. fortunately, we haven't seen an attack planned on cruise ships and, of course, none carried out. there have been some successful attacks on ferries overseas carrying lots of people.

so that's something, again, given the more pope nature than -- open nature than airlines, it presents an opportunity for us to really leverage those resources. >> the technology is evolving, for example, in the body imaging machines. those are getting better. >> yes. >> but what do you see over the next ten years as the things that we will be experiencing at airports, at rail stations? >> i think at airports, i mean, there's been talk about a checkpoint of the future, that there's an international air travel association, iata, that is promoting that which i strongly endorse. , the technology is not there yet, but the idea is to differentiate people between known travelers, low risk and high risk, frankly. and then you, basically, walk through that checkpoint which is, basically, a tunnel, if you will, filled with sensors that would be able to pick up explosive things. so you would be able to keep all

your jacket and your carry-on bag and things perhaps and shoes on, things like that, and detect that. so that's a great concept. it's not there from the technology perspective. my perspective and my strong belief is that the best tool that we have in this fight against terrorism is intelligence, so it's information on the front end whether it's from the intelligence community or, for example, in the yemen cargo plot last fall. that information which actually was the tracking numbers for two packages from yemen to chicago, that was actually provided by a foreign be intelligence service -- foreign intelligence service. they provided those tracking numbers, we were able to track them, one in the middle east, one in the u.k. and, actually, find those packages. and on first inspection they didn't look like bombs, they just looked like computer printers. but upon careful inspection we found how well they'd been designed and concealed and were able to disrupt those so they didn't cause catastrophic damage.

so that's what we try to do to make sure we have these multiple layers of security in place and work in a collaborative fashion both with our partners overseas and within industry. >> i have a dozen more questions, but i've been told i have to share with our audience. >> okay. >> so if anyone has a question, we'd be happy to entertain some from the audience. we have a person with a microphone, so just raise your hand. and if you would give us your name and your hometown or your affiliation if you're media. >> valerie, i live right across the river in arlington. i used to say i traveled for pleasure. that's kind of an oxymoron now. but going to various airports, there's really a difference in how they treat what i like to think of as consumers of airport travel. for instance, charlotte's wonderful. i think everybody will agree with that. orlando, which is private, is just terrific. they've got screaming children and tired travelers and long lines, and they're always nice to you.

atlanta's terrible. national, good days bad days. i've found that if i give somebody or as i pass through security if i distribute hershey's kisses, they're much nicer. but they probably should not take candy from strangers. [laughter] right? >> [inaudible] >> what kind of training do you have or do you do any kind of training to say let's be a little bit nicer to the passengers? >> thank you for that question. and one of the things i learned when i came to tsa last year is out of the 450 airports around the country, they said if you've seen one airport, you've seen one airport meaning that each airport is laid out differently, the checkpoint configurations are different, the airport authority use their space in different ways, and so tsa is, basically, a tenant in there depending on what that checkpoint is. what we do is provide training for our security officers in how to provide the most effective security, and there's been a

customer service aspect of that, but that's been secondary to the security focused on everybody wants to make sure they arrive alive at their destination, so how do we do that. what we're working on now is how to do that in a more collaborative fashion, getting a lot of feedback. we have a tsa web site and a blog where people can share their experiences, and those airports that you mentioned i would venture to say that if we asked a thousand people, we might get a thousand different opinions about how those work and how others don't work. just based on their own, on experiences. so the idea is how can we provide the most effective security in the most efficient way facilitating the passengers, the customers' travel recognizing that the vast, the very vast majority of travelers do not pose a threat in terms of catastrophic failure to an aircraft. >> do we have other questions? yes. got a couple up there and one down here.

>> i'm jane -- [inaudible] from new york city. and i was in the city with my husband and son when the planes hit the twin towers. and now post-9/11 we're all aware that a lot of information had been circulating about possible planes being flown into the world trade center. richard clarke being one of the people who was in the administration and in his book, "against all enemies," states that he was trying to get that information to the bush administration. and, basically, said, to paraphrase his book, that he wasn't being heard. and can you share any information that you had or that you know now post-9/11 of how things could have been handled differently? >> yeah. i think what i would do is recommend the 9/11 commission report that the 9/11 commission did. they did an outstanding job of

tracking down information, um, and piecing together information that, frankly, some of which i didn't know. i was not working in counterterrorism before 9/11, i was brought in afterwards, so i didn't have those insights in terms of what richard clarke was or was not saying prior to 9/11. but the 9/11 commission report is an outstanding report historical monograph, if you will, of what did happen and some of the background. there's been a number of other good books in addition to richard clarke's written that i would also recommend but, no, i don't have any personal knowledge prior to 9/11 on that. >> another question right there. >> abi spindel. it's well known that israel has an extremely effective deterrent program, and should one travel to ben-gurion airport, for

example, there's a screening that takes place which is distinctly different from that which we experience here in this country. have you investigated any of those particular best practices, and can have you -- have you any comment in that regard? >> yes, we have had a number of discussions with the israeli authorities, and they have a lot of things to be commended. there's, obviously, things they do that go beyond what we are allowed to do here in terms of profiling and focusing on certain groups of people based on ethnicity or religion. so we, obviously, don't do that. but there's a lot of things in terms of engagement with passengers that we, that i believe are good tools, and we're actually doing something at boston logan right now that is based not only on the israeli model, if you will, but some other aviation authorities around the world, best practices

that involve more passenger engagement. so it's more information intelligence screening than leaving everything to the physical screening. what i don't want to happen is have, um, the physical screening be a single point of failure. so what i want to do is make sure we're informed by the latest intelligence techniques and things like that so that somebody, a possible terrorist, is identified well before they get to the airport. and that's, that's the best defense we have. obviously, we don't get that type of intelligence very often, and so it becomes a question of how can we use the tools available to us within our u.s. constitutional framework, of course, respecting privacy and civil liberties to make sure we're doing the best possible job. >> there was a question down here. >> thank you. adam nixon with middle east broadcasting. i wanted to ask specifically

about an interesting contradiction. if we look at polls of arab-americans, they're very well integrated, very happy. they seem to be, um, well off in this country and that they in large majority don't support the al-qaeda ideology. but then we have in contradiction to that the problem with domestic home-grown terrorism. and i wondered if you could comment about how significant a problem that is. do you think that there is a large percentage of the population that supports home-grown terrorism that could potentially be active in the it, or is it really just a small fringe element? >> i would stay very broad on that and, actually, refer and defer to both the fbi and the national counterterrorism center that does a lot of work in that. but in a very broad sense, no, i don't think there's a broad support network for either al-qaeda or other terrorist groups, and there are these

one-offs, if you will, whether you call them lone wolves or individuals who want to make a name for themselves or something, or they've been rat spies on the internet or something like that. so there are individuals out there across the country, it's a big country, obviously, and given the freedoms that we have here, um, fortunately, those individuals are almost always identified prior to them trying to do something. >> yes. >> rob -- [inaudible] congressional quarterly. you mentioned cooperation with airlines, and i'm just wondering as far as checked baggage fees go, tsa has said that the baggage fees have driven up carry-on bags, clogged points at checkpoints and that, possibly, makes screening more difficult. have the airlines expressed any desire to cooperate on that? is there any sort of dialogue between tsa and the airlines on that issue? >> we are not discussing that directly in terms of a security

issue that's taking place, i believe, at other levels of the government. the fact is that the number of checked bags has gone down dramatically in the last few years, and the number of carry-on bags -- now, i'm sure nobody in the audience packed a lot of things in their carry-on bags so they wouldn't have to check the bag, but the fact is that each one of those carry-on bags that is packed makes it more difficult for security officers to te text what -- detect what may be a fairly innocuous-appearing item on an x-ray, for example, it may be some orr begannic material -- organic material explosive that when combined can bring down an aircraft. so that is a challenge that we face and that we work closely with all of our partners to try to address. but as to your, the first part of your question, that's being done at different levels. >> there's a question way up there, red hat.

>> i don't have a question, per se, i just wanted to thank you for helping make our country a safer place, and i wanted to say hi to my mom who's watching live on c-span. [laughter] >> and what is your name? >> mike from miami, florida slash cape elizabeth, maine. >> excellent. does someone have a real question there? [laughter] >> yeah. i'm charlie clark with government executive magazine. with the coming unionization and the bargaining with the american federation of government employees, do you expect any major changes in workplace behavior or effectiveness? >> i think some of the changes will not be apparent to passengers. i think it will deal with how we evaluate our security officers, things that are much more administrative in nature, if you will, how they bid on a shift,

for example, or the uniforms which there may be some changes that they may want to make. and be so that process -- and so that process. but as far as the passenger experience, i don't think people will notice anything other than whatever may come about as a result of some of those changes. so i think it's more an internal issue to tsa rather than a public perspective. >> any other questions? >> thanks, administrator. my name is joe from the new york daily news. my question is about trusted traveler. security experts are big fans of tiered screening, um, but as you, of course, know the pilot focuses on frequent flyers, and it stands to reason that most of the enrollees will be frequent or professional travelers. the security experts also note that certain travelers, let's say for example children and the elderly, um, run the risk of having a high-risk score because

you don't know a lot about them because they might not travel as much. so is there a racket call solution -- practical solution that tsa has about heightened screening for these, apparently, lower risk groups, and how can tsa manage perceptions of that in the media? >> yeah, i think you've identified some good points and some of the challenges we face as we try to move from a one size fits all construct that the more information that people would share with us, just basic information if they're in a frequent travel program, that can help us make some informed judgments and decisions about whether there's a possibility of expediting their screening there the physical stand poircht. standpoint. as it relates to children, again, i think we have some good initiatives underway to the try to recognize that in all likelihood they're not terrorists and, hopefully, their parent or guardians are not using them as such. and the same with the you elder, again, recognizing that the

likelihood is that a very senior citizen is not a terrorist. we know there have been two 64-year-olds who were suicide bombers, and can there's a number of people on the terrorist watch list who are older than that. so it's, anytime you do a blanket exemption, if you will, then you run the risk. so that's why i always want to maintain the random and unpredictable, even though somebody is in a known traveler program, they will still reserve that right. and i would say the borders and custom entry with the mexican entry points is a good opportunity for somebody who wants to sign up, if you will, for a known or trusted traveler program. and so that give people an opportunity if they are frequent travelers that, and especially if they're traveling overseas, gives them something to sign up for. and the likelihood as we roll this initiative out is that they would receive expedited physical screening at those airports where we can do it.

i do want to manage expectations that this is going to take a while. this is not something that just changes overnight, and any change we make we have to recognize that it is, um, an enhancement to security because we're using our limited resources and focusing those on the unknowns and trying to make some good judgments and decisions about those that we do know more about. >> one final question. because our time is running out, sadly. here as the newseum we like to talk about the media and history and government and news. how helpful or harmful has the media been to tsa's mission? [laughter] >> obviously, the media can do a lot to help inform the traveling public as to what is going on, um, and so that's a positive side of it. i think when we get focused um, on these individual situations that, um, are taken out of

context, frankly. so we have nearly 1.8 million people traveling every day that we screen here in the u.s. more than two million during busy travel times. so if you think of how many times over the last six months or year that you've heard something, hopefully, t not something every day. but it seems like there's something once every few week or something. so the context of that is that we have screened, um, going on nearly six billion people here in the u.s. since 9/11, and anytime you take anything where people are engaged, um, with the public six billion times, there's bound to be some things where we could have done a better job. so it's not the media's fault for reporting. my only issue is to keep things in context of what we're trying to do, and it's all for the benefit of the traveling public to keep them safe as they travel. >> administrator pistole, we want to thank you so much for your time, and i want to remind

the audience we have another program coming up on saturday, august 20th, at 2:30 p.m. the guest will be new orleans timeses picayune columnist chris rhodes talking about cover am of hurricane katrina, and i urge all of you to visit our katrina exhibit. it'll be here through mid september. thank you all for coming and thank you, administrator. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [laughter] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> president obama's traveling to michigan today to talk about technology jobs. he'll be taking a tour of johnson controls, it's an advanced battery facility. you can see live coverage of the president's comments starting at 2:40 eastern on c-span. the president will then travel to new york city to attend two democratic campaign events. live coverage here on c-span2 will continue at 4:30 eastern when we take you to the u.s. institute of peace here in washington for a discussion on u.s. military operations in the afghanistan. and tonight on booktv prime time, american folklore. it starts at 8 eastern with howard means, author of "johnny appleseed." at 8:45 michael wallis who's written a book about davy crockett, and an hour later jeff guinn, his book "the last gunfight."

this weekend on booktv on c-span2 frederick law olmsted is remembered for designing the u.s. capitol grounds and new york city's central park, but justin martin looks at his life as journalist and abolitionist. also from washington booktv stopped by a launch party for fox news analyst juan williams' latest, "muzzled: the assault on honest debate." and on "after words" the home of night vision goggles. jay takes you inside the world of "the pirates of somalia." sign up for booktv alert. up next, the creators of twitter. liz stone and evan williams sat down to talk with walter izaakson about the future of the internet. they announced the relaunch of the obvious corporation that led to the creation of twitter. this discussion about technology

and what's ahead for internet users is from the annual aspen ideas festival. it's just over an hour. [inaudible conversations] >> all right, everybody. i want to introduce jerry murdoch so that jerry murdoch can introduce me. >> yes, that's right. i'm jerry murdoch, i'm a trustee here at the aspen institute. and this session is entitled what's next for the internet, and, um, steve jobs once said if you want to predict the future, the best way to predict the future is to invent it. and these three gentlemen have all had something to do with the creation of the internet and post-internet. our illustrious ceo, walter izaakson, back when he was editor at "time" in 1994 released pathfinder which is still out there today.

ev williams, co-founders and co-creators of blogger and twitter, both of those inveptions will be -- inventions we'll be feeling the repercussions of that for another generation at least. so without further ado, walter izaakson, biz stone and -- >> okay, can you put your name tags back on so i can remember that? >> doesn't matter. >> doesn't matter? okay. by the way, we are actually going to start with a piece of news about the future of the internet and, seriously, a significant piece of news. these are the co-founders of twitter, and they have something to announce today. biz, you want to start? >> sure. we, evan and i and our longtime collaborator jason goldman -- jason, right here, the bald man in the front -- >> you're allowed to tweet --

i've traded on this information because the markets are closed. >> no, it's okay. he knows he's -- [inaudible] anyway, the three of us have been longtime collaborators and really good friends, and our dream was always to build our own company where we get to make whatever we want and whatever we think is going to be helpful to the world and make the world a better place. and so we put up a web site today, and we're calling our company the obvious corporation, and, um, we don't have anything specific to say about exactly what we're going to be working on just yet, we're not ready to reveal that, but we're excited to announce that we have started a new company. >> and by the way, i know there's sort of half skepticism here, but this actually is the launch of a new company, the obvious company -- >> right. >> where you're the ceo. >> right. and it's actually a relaunch. obvious was a company that incubated twitter before spinning it off into its own company, and then we decided to

focus on that for a few years. >> five. >> but the original idea with obvious was that we were going to create, you know, multiple things and see where they went. and we didn't, we didn't end up doing that many things. but it's a relaunch of that company, and we're very excited. and our, our mission is really that we don't have specifics about what we're going to build. what we're really excited about is building systems that help people work together to improve the world in the various ways. and we think that's really so much of what the internet promises and what, i think, getting into our topic today with the future of the internet will entail, at least the bright side, is people working together and to become, you know, greater than they could individually or greater than even organizations and institutions can, can be. >> so to try to describe this

without going further than you're ready to go, you're talking about launching a few products of twitter-like quality that would help people collaborate. >> yeah. and collaborate could mean various things. and twitter-like quality could mean various things. [laughter] >> that's true. >> our goal is to have impact, so it's not, you know, maybe we'll launch a few things. if we get as lucky as we did with twitter, you know, that would be great. but really the goal, what we think is possible and i think one of -- there's a whole wave of new companies and services starting today that are about helping people work together to do things. i mean, i think this actually touches on -- twitter actually does this, and most communication technologies do this, and they enable people who wouldn't necessarily act on their own to find like-minded people, and it's one thing to just find like-minded people and talk about stuff. it's another thing to find like-minded people and then do

stuff. and i think that's what we've seen in the middle east, that's what we've seen much smaller examples throughout the history of twitter from stories we heard early on about people saying, hey, let's, you know, it's christmas time, there's a bunch of homeless people on the street, let's go give them blankets and food, who's with me? we heard stories like this, and we're convinced that wouldn't have happened if people didn't have this low-friction communication channel. these thoughts get blocked in people's minds, and they don't get out there unless you give them mechanisms to connect other like-minded people. so that scratches the surface of what's possible in a much bigger arena. ..

the proliferation of who start-ups and what apps doing that now and as we get into the discussion of the future of the internet hopefully this is sort of a lead topic. >> in some ways this is the history of the internet because was started as a collaborative medium and became something different for a while, became a portrait of stuff out there. >> yeah, it absolutely did. the original goal was to help scientists collaborate. and then it took on this very commercial mode where the default paradigm for commerce was one way, and we will push stuff out to people and they will consume. they will buy things and consume our media and advertisement. and then there's a next wave

where we realize it is a two-way medium and people don't just consume, they participate and create media themselves. and there's many great examples of people collaborating on the internet to create software and information like wikipedia. and then i think though colavita -- bring that collaboration back to the real world is sort of the next phase. >> the way i think about it in my mind is there was a share of collaborative seeds in the very beginning and then the sort of three phases of the internet, if you want to fast the generalized -- vastly generalized they pave the internet and build them all, then blogging came along and some of little seedlings started to come through the crack and we lowered the barrier to self publishing so the

democratization of information suddenly flourished. and now we are entering that sort third phase where it's not just an overwhelming amount of information. there's people working on a relevant to get you the best information as quickly as possible, but also this third phase includes taking a virtual and making it real and making it true, real positive global changes in the world. >> why do you call it the obvious corporation? >> originally we called it obvious because for a couple reasons. one, we want to create products obvious and easy to use and straightforward, not tricky, not trying to be too clever because we can't be. [laughter] ones not that clever. and but probably the bigger reason is the bigger reasons only in retrospect.

>> everyone thought for the first nine months of twittered it was just totally useless they said it to our face every day and finally one day end got frustrated and said well, so as ice cream do want us to ban ice cream and all joy? [laughter] >> you're going to be the ceo of obvious but both of you in some ways will be connected with twitter to this chemical three of us, jason as well, adviser to twitter. i'm on the board of twitter and we all have lots of relations to twitter. i serve on the board of directors. all of us are deeply invested personally and financially in twitter, and as an active participant on the board, all i am still working with -- mine --

i worked through this with dick, the ceo, and said you are so awesome i'm going to get out of the way and if you need me just ask me to do something. so i'm going to be working a lot and bouncing ideas of products but that's pretty much it, and benge singh -- it's funny comedy jason is like a guidance counselor because of the employees at twitter are asking jason for a private meeting and so if he is involved and we are all involved and want to see it succeed tremendously, so we want to try to help as much as possible, while, you know, putting our efforts day today and obvious. >> before we get into the future of the internet let me pick up on something you said which is the era of spurring. i know we talked about that and twitter and how it affected -- so malcolm glad wellcome's out with the argument the revolution will not be tweeted. this is all bull which you responded to.

>> first of all it was weird because no one was arguing that so his argument was these revolutions are not twitter revolutions, and no one said they were, so that was weird. and so that is what he was arguing against and then basically i wrote a free bottle that said look, agreed, huge major change like the civil-rights movement comes from people. people need tools. people use -- the telephone was a big part of bringing down the berlin wall but the telephone didn't bring down the berlin wall. i think the argument was kind of a straw man of thing. i think he was angry people kept writing twitter into the headlines so she said look, twitter has nothing to do with it. but in fact a did have a side line part because these people

were ready to speak out. twitter was a tool to help them realize others felt like them, and it emboldened them and allowed them to feel like okay, maybe we can do this. and so, it has a role as a simple tool, but at the same time twittered must remain a neutral technology, not taking sides, not getting involved, not celebrating any, you know, part of helping in any success. >> you call it neutral technology, but let me ask you a question. do you think from gutenberg to twitter the technology that enabled a freer flow of information and communication inevitably bend the market history towards democracy? what do you think? >> i want to know your answer to that. [laughter]

[applause] >> the answer is yes. it covers and enables people. that makes democracy. it's not neutral, it doesn't until all sorts of regimes. >> well you could probably use it to do that, but it wouldn't be as effective i don't think. the thing is -- the thing we are facing now is, you know, like the state department has lead cozy with twitter because they were like we were trying to get this done with ak-47s and you guys did it with tweets. [laughter] can we be friends? and, you know -- but i maintain that it has to be a neutral

technology because there are different forms of democracy coming and you don't want your company -- you don't want your technology -- you don't want twitter to look like it's simply a tool to spread the united states version of technology around the world. and what did i say? democracy around the world. you know, you want it to help for good, but you don't want it to look like you are in the pocket of u.s. government. so we try to do that as much as we can to speak out and say they have no access to our decision making a devotee. >> one thing that makes me think of speaking of the future is as people have been starting internet companies since whenever people started internet companies, one thing that changed a lot is the global nature of the internet, and now if you create a consumer web service, most of your users are going to be all set of the

united states. it doesn't matter if you are in the heart of silicon valley and launched only in english. most users outside the u.s. because most people are outside the u.s. and that changes how you think about things from kind of the get go, and it comes up in all kind of policy decisions as you get big and then the state department starts calling and all kinds of other weird things happen when your company with 40 people and why is this happening. but i think that's an interesting factor in designing anything these days is that you can make something truly global. and there's more global than it was even five or ten years ago with the networks because i went to korea to launch twitter in january, and twitter and maybe facebook now are the first to services to grow substantially

in korea that are not from korea, even though they are evidence and have high-speed internet connections and homegrown internet services, there's something culturally that kept most the users on the homegrown sites. and now with things like twitter and facebook, they have local competitors, but people want to be connected to the global network because they want to follow what's happening -- they want to follow bill gates and he's not on twitter. so you can't separate this stuff anymore. it has to be part of one acid system, which also leads to other interesting things like the internet becoming more closed and less centralized, but that is another topic. >> let's get to the topic. is there a problem with the future of the internet that you think it might become more closed? >> absolutely. i think there are a lot of trends that are -- that pushed

towards the more closed environment, and specifically the economics of the centralized system and the user experience benefit of the centralized system are powerful. >> are you talking about apples flexible? >> apple is a good example as is facebook and youtube because let's take the youtube as a less talked out example. youtube isn't close but it's very centralized and ten years ago if he would talk to anyone, any technologist they would have said obviously video is coming to the internet as bandwidth increases and storage costs decrease. but at that time, no one on anno would have said its 80% of the video views are going to be run through one service. that would have been a strange thought at the time because the model was the decentralization as every website come every newspaper, everyone has their own island on the internet, so why wouldn't video work the same way? and now we are looking at a world where if you want to

publish a video you probably published on you to, whether you are -- or you are a major media outlet media published on your own web site. but lots of organizations publish on youtube. partly -- at first because it was a lot easier, but now it's because that is where the viewers are coming and so it has a big network effect, and those network effects will keep it make it more and more powerful, and the same thing with facebook and with apple now. if you want to write a mobile phone application then you'll publish through apple store because that is the only way to get it on the phone and that's great for the users and the same thing over and over again is that the user experiences as its centralized in the region is better and the economics are better. so, what we are getting is a platform or as where there's a few major players that are getting bigger and bigger, and there's opportunities for the

little guys to be on the major players platforms, but i think it's going to be more dependent on these platforms. >> couldn't you put twitter on that list? >> yes, hopefully. [laughter] >> it's almost like there's a bunch of internets and you take the one you want to be with. >> i think by internet, most of us have grown up with the internet which it has been for 20 years as basically http web page internet. before that there were other variations of the internet. so we have had 20 years of a web based internet. now you say we are moving toward a social network based internet, but there will be certain platforms like facebook or whatever, youtube, and that will be more centrally controlled perhaps? >> you can go on your ipod touch and just not have safari and get almost everything you need. -- we've moved away from the web

base. you can get everything. you can get maps, wikipedia, there's an app for that. >> you can do it on your iphone. >> everything is on there. the distinction that's important is and whether it is http. most of the apps used http in the back of, but that confuses the story a little bit. what's confusing as the paradigm completely decentralized. the internet to a more centralized internet that you have to go through the app store to get on your internet. that's very different that anyone can put a website. and if a slight use is facebook connect order accounts to log into the website because people are automatically having accounts and you can tap into the social graf, that's different than the days you created everything from scratch. and i liken it to in the early days everybody had sort of an island, and they tried to live

on that island and attract tourists to the island and sources would show up and they just use a passport and feed them whatever goods, what ever coconuts they grew on that island. and then over time a lot of violence are like we can't be completely self sustainable, as we are going to import things, and one of the first things the import order advertising networks and modernization. dewitt in port search, and a kind of stopped there, but you could import your cms, that's what blogger did, have a centralized cms and published after lots of different places. and now you can import your identity, and you can even -- and now people are saying screw it, we don't even need to own our land. we are going to rent in this small basically and all the services will be provided for us and we are just going to exist in a much higher level, which makes a lot of sense from an

entrepreneurial standpoint. it can be a lot more effective, but that means you're very dependent on the land owner. >> and what's the downside? >> maybe the land owners get too much control. >> so the change the rules or the service. >> like when we started this was a little bit different, but when we started odio is was a podcast service that you record in to your browser and out to anyone who had an iphone and they would think it was their iphone and abel said we are podcast and on all itunes and i said that's crumbly a good place for it. probably better than our website. and so once they made that decision, we were kind of -- you know, we had to pitch. that's a little bit different. >> let me ask you if you are doing it app space as opposed to purely web base it isn't searchable and linkable as much. >> exactly come it's not part of the greater internet.

>> i think in many ways apps are a step backwards from the web because they are not connected to it is before you look old enough to remember speed and compuserve? like walter gordon's. estimate the lighting just got different. [laughter] >> it got more gloomy. >> what else are you worried about in the future of the internet? >> well, you should ask goldman about what we are worried about because he is the more cynical one. as it has been optimistic and jason is always liked here are the ten ways we can get screwed. [laughter] it's true. i'm definitely an optimist. one thing we talked about is quality of content. for the last 15 years we worked on lowering the barrier to the content creation, and all these

positive effects, but it seems like no one has been working on how to improve the quality of content on the internet, and i think this is highly possible. but if you look at what reading an article on the web looks like today, it's basically the same as if you write in a magazine or print out you have the same experience and once it is published it rarely changes, and the collective intelligence that is available in the world doesn't really collaborate to improve it, and the process of creation isn't very much different than the traditional media. it's just the distribution is the only thing that's changed. i think all those things could potentially change because the experience, the evolution of information after it gets out there, the production process could be we more efficient and open to is a that's a really interesting opportunity in a way that things could actually improve that haven't -- the

publishing industry in general, there is a lot of turmoil and a disparity because the internet screwed our business model, which is true, but i'm optimistic there are things, there are more fundamental things than how distribution happens to change about publishing. >> and where does the collaborative miss come and beyond the wiki phenomenon? >> i don't think that there has been nearly enough -- to you have an id on this? i keep answering. >> all i do but you can -- >> i think there hasn't been enough experimentation between the user generated content and professional content. they are pretty much different worlds on the internet today and the best you get is an article and then a bunch of commons under the article completely separated and those comments can be from anybody. though no one ever reads them that's because they are, you know, and so -- i want to read

my "new york times" after walter has read it and highlighted and written in the margin. not everybody in the world but, you know, depending on what the article is, someone whose expert. i don't know exactly what that looks like. but there's all kinds of ideas just like wikipedia there's a collective intelligence that collaborates to make more accurate information most of the time. why doesn't that exist outside of wikipedia? >> to the point about collaboration. there's much more ways of thinking about collaboration on the web than the group where or specific applications to collaborate. just applications like twitter that are wide open where you can follow any interest that you like whether you tweet or not is of to you. but you can follow your mom, you

can follow cnn, you can follow with every does come anything, nike. there's potential for collaboration because people meet others they would never have met if they were on a social network because you connect with people you already know. you are just reaffirming your relationship, but when you're on a fundamentally different system where you are following people you wish you knew instead of people you used to know, -- [laughter] and it's more of like an aspiration of thing coming and we have seen it over and over again. people are holding these tweet-ups where they say we all started following each other on this on twitter. why don't we get together and meet each other in real life? and it has all these wonderful repercussions. i heard about one -- will first of all, one of the earlier tweet-ups was let's get together and raise money for charity

bader. i'm going to start. i'm going to say in my town of leche amit together at this pub and pay a $20 ticket and that $20 will go to charity to build wells for people who don't have clean water and developing nations. and then what happened is that grew to 250 cities around the world and they raised a quarter million dollars on one tuesday night. >> that's a good example, but there are not that many of them. of how you make the virtual world connect to the physical world. in other words, people have their virtual friends and followers, whatever, and there has been a this justice. so the future of the internet is it somehow better integrating the real world and the virtual world? >> yes. >> yes, it is. >> how? >> this does a lot to do that. you know lager have to be sitting at your desk. you can experience the internet

and its more interspersed in our daily life. and the new applications are available with it. so, the simple idea of i now call what taxi is integrating the internet to the location and of devotee. you don't actually have to tell the taxi where you are, you push a button and it shows about your house all that stuff. >> but i think -- what i am excited about is have you heard of carrot mob? >> yeah -- >> carrot mob is so named because it's the opposite of a boycott, antiboycott. the idea is people should vote with their dollars that the only organized way to do that is to say we are going to boycott this business and that's kind of negative and doesn't seem like there's necessarily affect all the time to read this guy got

the idea we should use the carrot instead of the stick and go to business and say we want you to do this and if you do we will spend our money. and so, for simple, they -- this guy from san francisco went to all these liquor stores and got them to bid for how much they would contribute to improving efficiency in their store out of all the people who organized and bought and the highest bid was 22%. and so they rallied the troops and got all these people to show up to the store and bought everything in the store. the dimond $10,000 put 2200 to creating a replacing the late and then all these people with -- not only -- it was a discount from it wasn't a groupon. they presumably bought things they would any way and then they were further invested in dhaka

store both emotionally and actually financially. and that -- >> it was a fun because the pitchers he showed of the first event or all of these people in line talking and meeting each other and since then there has been lots in germany and all around the world and it's just sort of taken on a life of its own. >> will the future of the internet be better if there was less anonymity or the option to be involved in the internet where people want to be anonymous and you can be secured of who they were? >> i think so. >> and there's a lot of benefits to anonymity, but not most of the every day. leave aside the arab spring politics of it during a i did sometimes in a more dangerous situation you need to be able to protect your anonymity. and in other places where you want to open up and get ahead in life because you want a better job or whatever, you want to use your real name and you want to

open up and show your interest and when you can do and that sort of thing. but if you are more of, like, you know, a whistle-blower in a dangerous area you want to be able to protect to respect the reason i ask is to keep talking about the covered as web. it seems to me that if i actually can trust that i know when collaborating with. >> i think that's true. reputation is incredibly important in society in general, so we need to replicate that to some degree on line. and most large systems to have the concept of reputation. twitter, facebook. i'm sure every -- behind-the-scenes at least most of our systems to because it's the way that they combat abuse, and abuse is a huge problem if you are running one of the services, spam and what not, and so you -- i think if you can -- it's not even necessarily anonymity. you don't necessarily have to use your real name. you can purchase of a, you know,

under a pseudonym or something that there needs to be longevity and the history of your actions. so there has to be costs to throwing away an identity and creating a new one because if there's not, then there's no consequences for acting badly to it >> google today launched google+ or at least on the field, which is trying to be a competitor to facebook and trying to do it by guaranteeing more privacy. do you see the possibility that facebook could beat this place the way myspace was as a foundation for the social networking? >> could facebook be the place like myspace -- the general answer for that is when you get this place is because you displaced yourself. like myspace shot itself in the foot. they took their off the user and focus completely on adams and making a lot of money really

fast. the same thing citibank did. a 200-year-old company, and they've got all involved in these credit people swaps and all sorts of other stuff to tehran of the customers, the people buying homes and starting families and all this other stuff and they almost lost their 200-year-old institution. and now you're on a huge campaign. their new metrics are let's keep 1 million people from for closing this year, and up to 4 million people we know are going to foreclose let's try to preserve their credit and get them into a rental. those are actual metrics they have that they are trying to achieve, stuff like that. so the key is execute, keep your eye on the user, do what they need to do. and myspace tripped up. facebook seems to have a really firm grasp of its users, but they also seem to have a "we are going to do what you like it or not," kind of attitude because we are smart and know the answer

is even if you don't think you do. >> and building a new service or product that needed to be based somehow as a platform of a social network with the identity and whatever. what if you feel comfortable basing it on facebook? >> i mean earlier on we did that and we didn't have a lot of success with it. i would probably use facebook if it were useful but it wouldn't depend on it. facebook is for users and to bring in people you know. i think -- i don't think facebook will be displaced. i sing however -- what they do is fundamental, creating with people, sharing photographs and messaging people you know is very fundamental to obviously most of the world it seems. but that -- i think what is when to be hard for them is the same

thing that's hard for every big company, which is extending that to everything. so, what i hear from people who use facebook on what is it gets to the point where it's too big for certain things, or because you form a network of facebook based on what you do on facebook, and google has been pretty public about their theory is you don't want to share all the things with everybody. and so they can successfully get people to create these different circles or where ever they are calling them of people that will more naturally map to what people want to do. that could be successful. and people will still probably keep using facebook for the stuff to use facebook for today because that will be very, very hard to displace. but something else can come along to be better for some specific other use, which i

think is what happened with tauter. >> also i think to say something like why can't you just say everything in one place? what are you hiding? that's silly because everyone has different aspects of their personality. it's a normal thing in life. >> to be fair facebook has the functionality of the new google circle does. the people aren't used to using it that way and i think that is a lesson that we've seen in creating the service is over the years is the norms of the culture of the system define what people do with it as much as the actual functioning possible. people when they can hook twitter to facebook and published their tweets, and for a lot of people who just use

facebook this doesn't even make sense, let alone the syntax of the user names and hashed had things don't have meetings on facebook but it's also just the type of things people share of facebook don't -- is a different case than for what people don't witter even though the fall nationality, the functionality of c2. >> tom friedman said this week never used twitter, never used facebook or have seen any reason why he would ever do it. do you have a response? >> i would challenge him on whether or not he's actually used twitter because i would ask have you ever watched cnn or read in the other newspapers or "the new york times"? [laughter] there are tweets in "the new york times" and all the time on cnn. chances are he has read a tweet come she is a twitter usurp. [laughter] >> can people get by without social networking? >> can people get by without social networking?

>> yeah. is social networking going to be a fundamental part of our lives from here on out? >> on the web? >> on the internet. >> yes. probably. >> let me open it up. [laughter] either raise a hand and shelled or run to a microphone. the microphone will get you in a minute. >> the other side of the internet is connecting to massive computing power that house a lot of knowledge to read the latest example is ibm and seems to me that maybe we should be thinking about those kind of uses where say a physician wants to get the best practices or something like that you're not going to get it out on facebook where you get a whole bunch of ideas from wacky people. you're going to want to get it from something that has

distilled all of this knowledge and really gives you something to go. so there's going to be a place where that side of computing is what i'd like to suggest. >> that's a great question. i agree. as an example of when it comes to the collaboration that we are talking about, it doesn't mean with everybody in the world. there has to -- most of the systems developed haven't allowed -- it's kind of like user generated content versus professional. it's one of the other. it's a pretty in the world including net jobs and peters who just want to attack everybody else or it is a closed system. and there has to be -- there has to be a nuance in between that to allow people to earn credibility or to be able to connect with only those. >> one of the things we are always excited about with twitter is hopefully maybe one day down the line twitter is designed to work on all 5 billion mobile phones because they all have sms or text in its

140 characters and limit is 160 so it fits within that. we always felt like wow, we might be able to have an impact in the areas where a farmer could ask a question can i get a better price on the screen or a pregnant woman who has to travel 50 miles to the doctor could ask her question. are these symptoms worth the trip and get an answer back from a doctor yes or no. and in fact the tests have already been done in ugonda and other places just simple sms, where, you know, lives have been saved because they have been able to, you know, report, you know, medical diagnoses just over sms. and even from the guys at berkeley invented a microscope you can flip over and iphone and take a microscopic picture of the virus and then send that

picture in an e-mail to a ramshackle kind of clinic, to a fancy clinic and get back within a minute a diagnosis. >> you have a collaborative web the next time where somebody takes a cat scan of somebody, you know, whatever, and says let's have the collaboration of around how to deal with that? could you be creating a high-end product now? >> definitely. probably already someone has. the internet is big. every time we have this we think ingenious idea we look it up and it's like there's already ten guys working on it. [laughter] >> thanks. you started off about the separation of the internet with companies, but there's also the issue of separation of the global common medium with countries. and i'm wondering if you have any concern about that. iran or china or what happened

in egypt in terms of the global common medium of the internet. and if you have any interest in pushing for a single global markets. >> well, yeah. i just -- our philosophy right now is and has always been the open exchange of information can have a positive impact on the world, and we often get blocked by the countries that don't agree with that philosophy. we are blocked in that china now and some other places. the funny thing is people find ways to continue twittering. we found ways to completely shut down people from twittering have to shut down the entire telecommunications service and the internet. and when you do that, you cripple the entire state.

and so, who was it that did that most recently and they were like whoa, you have to turn the thing back on. so it's really not worth it. like even now that we are blocked a in china we still see traffic coming from china, so people are figuring out ways around the block to continue to collaborate and to the tweet and share information. does that answer the question or was there another -- >> this is exactly what you're asking but library about is the separate world within the u.s., and people only paying attention to people who agree with them. that's one of the ironic things about what all these technologies have created is more separation in some ways rather than conviction. there's less of a common marketplace of ideas to some degree because people are just sheltering out everything that is from a different viewpoint.

and the technologies encourage you to build these of you have to shuffle the deck so that some of the twitter stuff that we are doing is starting to get tweets in front of people that from others have not been falling. so one of the dreams of ours has always been to say like okay, you know, we know that you live in berkeley and you drive over the bridge every day. maybe you don't follow the bridge on twitter but it's like 4:45 and thought you might like to know that the bridge fell down. [laughter] and you would be like okay, yes, i did like to know that. thank you. you wouldn't be like screw you! why are you tweeting me? there's a devotee everyday and definitely information for everybody that's relevant, and you just have to work really hard, the twitter team has to work really hard on delivering those will tend tweets to the

people who need them right now where ever they are on their mobile device so their lives can be made smarter, richer, and better for it. >> yes, ma'am? >> this is for all of three of you. [inaudible] sorry. for the three of you, could you speak to the conversation about the cingular ready and the role that you have adopted that this is coming into maybe a lot of them simply have accepted that this merging is going to happen? >> the singularity, that is a book that i read in sixth grade. go ahead. >> i'm not that well versed in a single lardy. walter, what's your take? >> i've read a lot about -- [laughter]

i don't think we have to worry about i don't think we have to worry about yet. i don't think -- you know, i've read the wired magazine and other accounts of it. i just don't think that we are about to lose control. and we will find out. next year we will put it on the agenda and find out whether we are right or not. >> i will say from running systems that involve thousands of computers it's really hard just to keep them working, loan -- let alone. >> singularity as when the machines finally don't need us anymore and they can work on their own. i almost think the opposite is that we keep seeing the limitations of the machines every day as opposed to the fact they can run amok. we still haven't gotten the voice recognition and facial recognition. >> - cui to learn how to work together before we can teach machines how to work together.

i mean, one of the things that -- when twitter first broke out its because they went to a -- we went to a conference in austin texas, and it was early on and in twitter's history we're basically it was just nerds on the twitter and at the conference and was a huge overlap, and a few things happened but i will just really one. there was a guy at a pub. he wanted to talk more freely and openly with his colleagues but was really loud and that pub, said he used twitter to send a tweet but says it's too loud how about we walk over to this other pub on sixth street. in the eight minutes it took to walk to that pub it was completely filled to capacity. there was a line around the block. his plan to italy backfired but what had happened was in eight minutes 800 people had converged

to one spot from one the tweet because he said to his followers and his followers felt that was a good idea and so on. the metaphor that came to my mind was that a flock of birds moving around an object to tell us. when he looked at it looks like it is incredibly choreographed and it looks incredibly complicated and difficult, yet it's not. the mechanics of flocking are to win a rudimentary. just simple communication among individuals in real time that allows many to behave as if they are one, almost as if they are one organism. and this for the first time ever we are seeing people behaving almost as if they are one organism like this. and we had never heard of a tool or never seen anything like this before coming and that is a chill down our spine because we felt sure, this is a party but what does it have been more serious, a disaster, you know, a political situation? and we actually went back and

think it was two days later and we informed twitter incorporated because that was the first big realization that we are on to a new form of communication among humans that could potentially change the world. >> my name is jason, i am a film maker and twitter added. i currently have 90,000 followers and it's changed my life in so many ways i can't even begin to describe. [laughter] thank you so much for creating it. one thing we always read about is there's a lot of people like me on twitter that use of a time but are actually a minority of the user base and a lot of people know what twitter is but not many of them are active users every day. so i guess i'm wondering how you guys are tackling that issue. >> it also depends on how you describe active user because we like to say that you can get value out of the internet and you don't have to create a web page. you want to necessarily tweet to have twitter.

6 billion tweets every six days is a lot of info and there's 1.65 billion searches a day. there's a lot to find. but what were you going to say? something smart. [laughter] >> - that there's a few answers to that. one is that most of the reports that have come out about the percentage of active users or on twitter are only looking at tweet creation and we see this come a little bit of a misunderstanding that people have when we talk to people all the time. yeah, i don't use twitter. i don't know what to tweet. i have nothing to say to the world. and it turns out they actually either read tweets all the time or start interviewing and say what are you interested in and it turns out we can create them a twitter stream they love and go back to all the time. it turns out i think to out of three twitter sessions result in no tweets being created but the use it as a source of information. so, most of the measures do not look at that.

twitter as a company cares about the people who are getting the information from it just as much as the people creating the information. and that percentage is increasing over time because a lot of times the early adopters were more likely to create. so, there actually are a lot of active users. they may not know about. and number two is because of that sort of misunderstanding that we have been trying to correct for a long time and people are getting more and more of an understanding. i think the osama bin laden thing was for twitter a great milestone for a lot of people that thought this information came out on twitter. twitter is a news source, i get now. it's not about the clich here's what i have for lunch today. it's about getting information that cares about the world, and i may not even have to have a twitter account, but this stuff is here and it's real time and it's relevant to me no matter what i do or where i am.

>> just me alone, i checked twitter and tweet once a day and i think that you can define engagement in two different ways, and i think for a long time a lot of interest companies have been defining engagement the wrong way. i think if you define engagement as hours spent staring at a computer screen on average our users spend eight hours staring at our site. we are all some of engagement. that is unhealthy to measure engagement. i think that if no users are checking your service 20 or 30 times a day for ten seconds at a time to make a quick decision or figure out what they want to do next or what have you, that is a way better type of engagement. that is a calfee engagement that shows that our service is

helping them make choices every day efficiently and smarter and saving time, etc.. i prefer that level of engagement over that slumped over a computer screen for eight hours playing a game or something. johnny mcnulty? >> i have a question which applies to twitter, but also the internet in general, which is when it is misrepresenting yourself or sort of creating a new identity good and okay and in part of fair play, and when does it change to manipulation that is not okay? so flexible obviously people who are protesting should be allowed to create falsehoods about who they are, and i am a canadian. and so why twitter personality is not a real person by any

measure and i also misrepresent for example the company boorshead. i have a relationship that preserved on twitter and etc. but, when does it change when my companies are doing it, or if they misrepresent support, like yesterday professors were talking about sites like mechanical turk. they can't make it trending topic where i am sure you would see it but can you go on mechanical turk and pay a thousand people 10 cents to make a trending topic and would that be okay? order of the war, you know, misrepresenting themselves as citizens when in fact they are working for a corporation, etc., etc.?

>> so just to recap the question. [laughter] >> i think the answer is pretty clear, you're creating comedy versus trying to manipulate the world for profit. that's probably one is okay and one is less okay and this is happening a lot, and the number of astro turf campaigns going on on facebook and water and the internet in general is probably a lot greater than any of us have an idea because a lot of it is very, very hard to detect. and so, that is a problem and it's a problem that relates to walter's question of reputation and authority and that is something that all of the systems are only getting started out and pretty primitive at and so eventually i don't think m account that is created

overnight to be a mechanical turk for 10 cents is going to have very much influenced. influence has to be learned over time, and there is a little bit of that in twitter today. i don't know about other systems. but i think that is the inevitable for the internet even to the or otherwise, you know, it's not going to have the trust and the authority that is capable of. also, i don't know if this release or not the parody account allowed on twitter street up impersonation accounts are not. but we had during the cbp oil to -- bp oil spill someone created a global puerto rico and started saying like all of these, you know, sad but funny things like as if bp couldn't care less, and bp did not call us to take it down, and i thought -- i actually thought i was a brilliant move because it was

letting off some steam. and if they had like gone all the way down to the minutia of shutting down a little twitter accounted would have been like they were just completely and utterly evil beyond all means. [laughter] but bppr.com was clear that it was someone doing a parody. it have the logo but it was dripping. laughter ) and would you shut it down if it was somebody pretending to be bppr.com? >> if it had a logo that said we are bp, we artificial and here is our tweets, we would have said that's impersonation, you can't do that, that's against the rules. >> twitter shuts down impersonation accounts thousands per week. >> in general, inventors of new technology don't have a great track record in anticipating what the impacts are. alexander graham bell -- >> it does for us.

>> alexander graham bell felt the great thing about a telephone is listening to concerts'. so i'm just curious what has really surprised you about what twitter has become? i'm assuming the scale of it and the magnitude and the diversity is maybe a little bit beyond what you might have anticipated, but what has really been a surprise to you as twitter has become and the emergent phenomenon and changed over time? and what do you think it might become in the future? >> can i answer the first question? >> yes. >> so, there is an element of "wholley crop we didn't know it was going to be this big a deal." but we had worked on border for so long and knew that giving people a voice, giving a voice to the voiceless allowing them to create a page for free that spoke about injustice or was in many ways the only way they could get their information out

was important, and we supported that and we designed our laurels and fought against parent companies to keep it free and open and air on the side of freedom of speech and all this other stuff because we knew that it was important in the world. and so, we had a feeling when we were working even though it was fun in the beginning that there was a potential of its also having that same kind of impact in the world. what wasn't expected was we lowered the bar so much more down a flight from west blogger you have to have an internet connection and how to even fdp and stuff like that. with twitter you just have to know how to do a text message which the world was getting to know very quickly. and so, that said that what really surprised me any way was

the speed that the twitter grew and the speed at which all this stuff was adopted and the way that it sped up democracy and sped up this mess and sped up all these other things. >> let me ask was it a holy shit moment for some the says hi i'm from the state department and would you please not do maintenance this weekend because we are having a revolution somewhere? [laughter] >> there was some energy in the office when we did that, yes. [laughter] but again, my primary thing on that was oh boy, i don't want people to think that we are doing this because they asked so i wrote a blog that said we had hundreds of e-mails, we have hundreds of tweets and lots of phone calls, and one of those phone calls in the middle of all of this was from the state department, and we decided to change the maintenance because

all of these users thought it was a good idea, and frankly we should be of any ways. but we were -- we are not doing this because the state department asked us and they don't have access to the decision making capabilities. we wanted to have that global natural vied but yes, there was a lot of energy that day. >> just another thing that's surprising to me is the casualness of a large number of well-known people that use twitter but a lot of accounts are handled by pr people were in interns but there are people like lady gaga and justin beiber. [laughter] >> we have gotten almost to the end without saying that dreaded name. it's been a part of what i had in mind was the casualness of the usage. [laughter]

people are just out there saying stuff. in the very beginning i had an argument with somebody and i said celebrities are not going to use twitter because the reason they are celebrities is because we don't have access to them. we only get to see the movies and therefore they are special and we look forward to that and we don't want -- we don't want to see their regular lives because then they want the special. and then they all started to go on twitter like crazy, and some of them probably shouldn't have. [laughter] but it was great for us because celebrities have built and large groups of people that love them and they follow them on twitter. >> lagat then ignoring this side of the room in the way back. so somebody way back there near the microphone. >> my name is peter and i work for 2 degrees. i was wondering -- >> its quality, not quantity. >> not treated either. [laughter] our company has a mere 200 or something and i was wondering on

places like twitter and facebook how does the small business kind of get more recognition and get followed besides from being bigger? >> well, -- go ahead. >> the beauty of small business and twitter has not eased a test from the very beginning because you don't have to have a lot of followers. early on i was in new york city and i walked by a bakery that most needed cookies, and they had like a cardboard -- part of a cardboard box with a magic marker that said "follow us on twitter when the cookies come out of the oven warm and we will tweet." i was like that is genius because only if 98 people in the neighborhood follow that account, when they say chocolate chip cookies coming out of the of them right now at like, you know, 3:00 in the afternoon or something, everyone just gets out of the office and runs down

there. even if it's only 90 people, they just sold all their cookies. they can either go home for the day or make another batch. [laughter] .. >> last question. >> my name is eric. i'm actually a talent agent dogs

in social media. present iran social media for cnn. my question to you is there's a lot of talk about the tech bubble, isn't going to burst. i'm not going to waste my question to ask when are you fine for ipo. that i love to know your thoughts about where you think we are in the bubble. >> that's a good question, as usual. >> i'm not as, a speculator about the stock markets but i think there's a lot of excitement right now, because a lot of stuff is getting real, that was always, that the people thought or so with the internet from the first.com. it is central in people's lives. and now the user base you can reach a billion people on a service and you can actually make a lot of money is very clear to people. so as usual, maybe investors excitement is outpacing the

development of the businesses. long-term i don't think there's a problem. i'm holding my twitter stock long-term. so i think if there is a direction, if, you know, things always go in cycles. so that will be fine. but there are fundamental businesses that are here for the long-term. >> jerry and gina? where are you? hey. first of all i want to thank jerry murdock who helped get the twitter guys here, and i think is on the board, right? [applause] >> he's a board member. and jerry and gene will come up. gene will come up in a second and talk about the yoga that we can do. but first, let me thank our people who. let me think evan and biz for

doing what they did it we really appreciate. [applause] >> what is the hash tag? >> the hash tag for this? i don't know. >> aspen ideas is the hash tag for this. i've been reading all the tweets on the board, so thank you all very much. appreciate it. >> president obama is traveling to michigan today to talk about technology jobs.

>> the court of public information officers hosted a discussion on the impact of new media like facebook and twitter on courts. former judge dennis sweeney and committee patient professor genelle belmas talk about a new generation of chairs that are digital natives. the 45 minute discussion with the final day of a three-day conference held here in washington. >> okay, again i want to say right on, on schedule. i want to do some quick introductions, sit down and let, i guess as buffett would say, let's get ready to rumble. i've got a really, really all-star group to my left. let's start with judge dressel. judge william dressel is sort of my dotted line boss. my office is upstairs. is downstairs at the national judicial college on the campus of the universe of nevada real. he is a friend, a confidant.

he's been for 20 years a judge in a state of colorado. he's a smart, funny, interesting guy and i really enjoy his company. judge dennis sweeney is a jurist of some note as well, and has handled some of the most high profile cases in and around the area of maryland. he sat on a case in 1989, subsequently in 2009 the corruption case involving mayor sheila dixon. and he bookends those two cases in the article that is in the journal, volume one issue two, to look at the facts that the world has really changed in 20 years with respect to what ip i have to do, what a judge has to do and how you managed jurors. deep in the article he talks about the facebook five where five of his jurors after that it was okay to friend one another over thanksgiving during the tropics something would probably

find sort of funny but that went up on appeal and then it settled. but those issues are clearly headed towards the higher court or perhaps the high score. finally, doctor genelle belmas. anyone who's looking for reason to justify their trip here, you need to both read her work and perhaps during a break or after words doctor. she has written what may be the seminal piece on the circumstances under which judges should, mass., to recuse themselves in the current environment based on social media and similar context. when i talk to judges, i talked to a lot of them, that's the thing they're most afraid of, that they'll accidentally triple wire and get themselves in trouble with all the social and media noise. so up and down, this portion will be moderated by judge bill winter. >> we have another winter.

>> banks. i just want to make sure that he keeps that upstairs, downstairs thing in mind and realizes that downstairs is really the upstairs we will just let that be. and kathy, it's always good to see you. whenever the national judicial college brings judges to washington, d.c. we give kathy a call and say what can you do for them? she truly is amazing for how she, --.com rates the judges when they come here for educational programs. i hope that all of you have had an opportunity to have access to and read these journals. i brought a couple of them with me. one that contains articles to present here this morning, and i think that you would agree with me that what ben and the folks at the center really, and eric, have achieved your is a terrific combination.

it is both a very sound and intellectual examination of the subject which you would want to find in a larger. it's got great site. it's late that wonderful. but also a combined i think something that is often lacking, especially for trial judges and others in the justice system, and that is it gives practical, useful advice. so you've got a good sound journal that you can cite, but also something that you can take and you can apply to the profession, no matter what you do in the justice system. and that's not an easy balance to achieve. my role here this morning is really just to get out of the way and let two of the authors in this journal talk about their work. and i'm going to call on them and ask them to give a summary. going to ask them a few questions, but mainly they're here for you to ask questions. i think the two topics, and i

see some of the folks that are at the conference, chief justice is in state court and ministers that occurred recently in atlanta where they really exported the subjects. and i went of to many of the chief justices, and when i addressed both of the conferences, i took these and and i said, you know, everything you talked about, and had presentations, i said is contained herein. if you really, back in your state, want to have an examination, there's a person you want to call, and that's ben holden. take a look at this journal because it's going to really help you examine a lot of issues that you are facing. and especially one issue that is really more than time is the recusal one. the aba just adopted a new standard this week. i will tell you that i think the day in age, the states taking an

aba standard in adopting it, whether it is this sort of thing else, they are long gone. the states are going to take with the aba puts out, but they would to an examination. they will look at what is right for the state. specially in this area of recusal and disqualification. they are going to really say, what should be the standard in our state, and what the aba put out and what's in this book will i think be the guidance that they will look to as the examine these important issues. but first let's go to judge sweeney. and, judge, i think what you could hear, it is, the title is a good win. you do have a collision of worlds here. the various age, change, court world, and a media that is just going at warp speed.

what is the out of your article that you would like people to understand? >> let me say sort of while, about that because there is so many, so many things that are connected to this issue. and let me just sort of set the stage here, if i could. i got into this whole issue because of the dixon trial. and in the dixon trial, let me just if i could take a minute, couple minutes, to go over this. in the dixon trial, mayor dixon was on trial in baltimore city. and i was not a judge in baltimore city but because all the judges in baltimore city recuse themselves, they asked me to come in and do it.

and in that trial, she was basically tried, to kind of summarize it, in adequately, but to summarize it very succinct way, there have been some gift cards that have been donated to the city to give to kids at christmas time, to pass that to poor kids at christmas time. and she was accused of using those gift cards that were given to the city for the poor children to buy christmas gifts for her own family. and so she bought an xbox for a nephew, and a couple other gifts like that. i can't hear. if you're doing a comic gift cards are very hard to trace. but what she apparently did according to the evidence is she went to best buy and she had a

rewards card from best buy that had her identification on it. so she usually gets cards but she wanted to get the rewards. so at the same time she is the gift cards, she used her rewards card here and that allow the state prosecutor to try to gift cards back to her. so watch out on trying to get that last discount when you are doing such things. [laughter] well, after the jury deliberated and reached a verdict in the case, she was found guilty of one of the counts. she was acquitted of three other counts but found guilty of one of the counts. and that was a guilty verdict on any count meant that she had to give up her job as mayor of baltimore. and as a judge who does a trial like this, one of the things that you're always interested in

is getting a verdict, regardless of what the verdict is, getting the trial over and done with. and hopefully having it with no issues involved. that are going to lead to you having to do this trial again. doesn't usually get better the second time around. so i was feeling pretty good that we have gotten a verdict in the case, but the day after the verdict came in, our legal newspaper in baltimore, maryland daily record, an enterprising reporter there, brian carney, had gone and got -- just put this in context -- i withheld from public disclosure of the names of the jurors during the trial. and i released it the day after

the trial. i released the names it and as soon as he got those, he went to facebook and found that one of the jurors had an open facebook with no privacy protections on it. and he found that five of the jurors had friended each other during the course of the trial. and i had actually anticipated the social media issues, to some degree, because i had told the jurors that they should not discuss the case with anyone, that includes family and friends. they should not engaging in any over the internet discussion of the case. they should not engage in any social media in which they discuss the case. and i particularly referenced it to the case. and what occurred was, the

reporter saw that they had friended themselves during the course of the deliberations in the case. the deliberations actually went over to -- i think it was nine days that the jury deliberated, included the thanksgiving weekend. and he reported the next day that they had friended themselves, and included some of the comments, which we could discuss because this gets into the whole thing of was this a violation, was this not a violation? but they had been discussing with each other their thanksgiving day dinners, inviting each other over to the house after thanksgiving dinner for, you know, social get-togethers, things like that. and so this comes up, in the newspaper. the defense understandably raises this right away, asks for

a campus conference with me we have one very quickly. we get everybody in to the chambers conference, and the attorneys, they distinguish white-collar attorneys in baltimore, arnold weiner, and hoberman, they are in my age group which is, let's say mature age group, and the prosecutor, bob rohrbach, the state prosecutor also mature fellow, we are saved in my chambers, the five or six of us they are talking about this. and we quickly realize we have no idea what we were talking about. we have no idea what facebook is. [laughter] we have no idea what this means. we just know it's a problem. [laughter] so luckily i had a law clerk fresh out of university of maryland law school, you know,

26, 27 years of age. so i can achieve this we call him in and say, what's this facebook thing? [laughter] and he very quickly said oh, yeah, facebook, do you want to see my facebook page? unicom he puts it up. he puts his facebook page up on all of his pictures of him drinking and whatever. [laughter] and we're trying to figure out what this all means. and it's begin we try -- we begin to realize there's whole other world out there and in this world is collided, as i said in this article with the world of trials as we understand it. and i can talk a little bit more about how the world of the internet and the world of social media is kind of the antithesis

of the trial world. everything that is of value in the social media, internet world, openness, access to everything, unmediated, anybody's opinion is out there. nobody's opinion is necessarily worth more than somebody else's opinion. you evaluate -- you, the user, evaluate everything. the court world it's exactly the opposite. everything is mediated. you get access only to information that has been scrutinized, been redacted, been gone through, various authority levels, lawyers, judges, before you see it. on the internet world, if you are not satisfied with what you've got, you go and do another search, use other search terms, go to another search

engine. you consult other people, maybe around the world, about your particular problem or issue. in the court world, you don't do any of that. no, you take what you got, you get no more. you are told, even though, we all know there's a lot more information out there. no, you can't do that. and so, this is a real collision of different perspectives. >> thank you, judge. dr. belmas, about your article and what you are about. >> i have a powerpoint because i teach and they like pictures. do we have powerpoint up? >> not on this with. >> i can speak without. you just don't get to see all my pretty pictures. >> i'm sorry. let me get it. >> thank you very much for your invitation and for the very kind introduction. my article in the reynolds court

is entitled that's what friends is for. judges social networks stanford to look at what got me interested was doing research with a colleague on anonymity online. i teach me a lot, so this is outside my comfort zone. but we were looking at the standard and when can isps et cetera be forced to reveal anonymity, anonymous people online and the likes. we stumbled across a case of a judge in ohio and surely. she has a personal e-mail address. and the e-mail address was tied to a moniker of long as. long as it posted a number, anonymous comments on a variety of cases, including the case before her court having to do with an alleged serial murderer. there was this whole flap about did she post a comment at her daughter use e-mail account?

should the dealer had outed judge saffold after they determined it was she who is posting these anonymous comments about cases before her court, as was some very racist ones. and again, the allegation was her daughter had done it and although is a bad thing it was really her. she did not recuse herself despite requests. but the ohio supreme court stepped in and did it for her. the judge said, i think it is worth quoting here, the reassignment of the case is necessary quote to avoid even an appearance of bias, prejudice or impropriety, and to assure the parties, their counsel, the public, the question of neutrality of an impartial judge. this is what got me interested in the notion of judicial recusal and how it interacts with social media. i tend to define social media product of my students are in between the ages of 18-25. they really heavily use facebook. linked in, flickr, they often

joke to me that if it's not online, it never happened. and given the ubiquity of cameras and cell phones that has that sort of capability, maybe it didn't, i don't know. but what got me interested was thinking about, not just the legal issues but some of the ethical issues of judges or other judicial personnel engaging in this sort of online commentary anonymously. and what fiduciary duty does the journalism profession have to out judges who engage in this sort of behavior? and, frankly, what standard should there be for judicial recusal in the age of social media. i defined pretty broadly. facebook, lincoln, blogs, blogger, twitter, of course the ubiquitous tweed, flickr, youtube, bulletin boards like judge saffold at allegedly posted on. and a twit about online community as judge sweeney suggested. there's this whole world out there that characterizes the inactivity and often anonymity as well as community. so, that brought me to the case,

supreme court case, i will keep the remarks brief. judge benjamin, justice benjamin had received $3 million for his judicial election from an executive in the case before the court. there had been a movement for recusal, it went back and forth and back and forth. finally, the spring court stepped in and called it an extreme case. justice taney said frank and most recusal issues are not constitutional issues but this is extreme. a huge amount of money, a big impact on the election. and, frankly, the public is raising eyebrows. he writes the court is as whether under realistic appraisal of the tendencies in human weakness, the interest poses such a risk of actual bias or prejudgment that the practice must be forbidden it a guarantee of due process is to be adequately implement a. so he is essentially saying this is just be on the pale. we don't recognize that most of these cases will go into

constitutional issues. and he is a likely that of actual bias standard versus the usual appearances of propriety. a little stricter and we'll see how that plays out. in dissent justice roberts raised 40 question to have that covered going to implement this and we have a whole bunch of motions? two questions were relevant for me. and his close personal friendship between a judge and a party or not give rise to a credibility of bias? these questions suggested it ain't just about the money. of course, beckham issues of recusal due to at least personal relationships whether they are electronic relationships, face-to-face relationships, or any thing in between. as all of you know, the aba has a model of judicial conduct. it does not correctly address social media. it is fairly broadly written however that has to and some of its others have to do with personal bias and prejudice including lawyers our knowledge of facts, et cetera.

canopy adapted? a number of states had issues as it could going or have had situations wherein judges have either voluntary self censured or have been censured for inappropriate uses of social media i'm going to summarize a few. they're all in the book. the north carolina trial judge got his hands for an inappropriate relationship with an attorney and client whether all facebooking chad and quoting each other on each other's facebook. not so good. there are situations where judges have used facebook to hook up with defendants. pay their rent, get the heck out with them, clearly problematic. in a very large controversial issue, the state of florida, judicial ethics adviser to a state even friending was problematic. i read a number of discussions of that, and one attorney call that nonsense on stilts. he thought that was taking it way too far.

but that is sort of an outlet. kentucky had a ruling your both of the carolyn's had really speak but what i found interesting was the ohio river. ohio had a 2010 advisory committee opinion that produce a really thoughtful and detailed list of guidelines. that's what i took as magenta cowboy. i'm going to give you a couple of them right now. that judgment must maintain dignity in every comic a photographic information self -- shared on social network. sort of nuts and bolts kind of stuff. so i thought if i can do it, so can i. what i did was i sort of create a continuum and again, it's the kind to say this is seminal work but certainly i credit where credit is due. personally on a continuum, obvious ethic codes and based on close reading of caperton, i think facebook friend will probably be okay. most people given the ubiquity, who knows, i'm a friend judge

sweeney right now after this. if i became speed is i have to get a facebook page first. [laughter] [applause] >> but i would be happy to be your friend. >> there you go. does that raise the bias before his court speak with are not. we appeared on a panel together that is not sufficient, i don't know. but facebook frien friend alisat most people given the sort of casual nature, probably does not raise it. commenting though on controversial issues. again becomes all of of the whole idea of long as. what if i, i'm a judge and i tweed how happy i am that my local high school football team has had a good season. and then the contract of the coach goes into litigation and sunday before his corporate does that give rise? well, i don't know. a good question. my sense is that it is less clear-cut than friending or some at the other impact that would be further on the inappropriate use.

campaign contributions or campaign communications. most judges have been interviewed on this topic have said they first come into facebook either because of the situation before the courts or because they are elected. it is a great way to extend your reach for pretty cheap. near participation, maybe that isn't good enough but how do you have to answer to the idea of stances on your facebook page or tweets that involve beyond just basic political stances other parties or campaigns. and answers we don't know. that hasn't anything litigated that i know of to date. case, terry, thursday for. i think this is much more easy because aba barcode already deals with that. and, frankly, in a nonmedia setting discussing the case with some outside on a regular courtroom setting for out of appropriate areas is inappropriate with you do it online or off-line. there's a continuum of

situations that ideally states to take a look at. i think of the remarks right. i think the days of wholesale adoption of aba codes is out the door. but that said, as was pointed out as of august aid is a new adaptation of recusal regulation, fundamental should -- should it ask disclosure will require us. that relied on caperton and it was united? so i welcome your comments. that's my finding. thank you. >> we have a few minutes if you want to ask any questions you could just start off with judge sweeney. i looked at it as a former judge and lawyer. it seemed to me that this is probably not only timely, but something overdue, to really get courts to look at how jurors are treated in their role as traffic almost requires the court to make it more info. what is your sense?

>> well, i think the courts are going to have to figure out what to do with what i call in the article the digital native, the version that is used to doing everything all off of their cell phone or the tablet, that is used to getting information from all over the place, who, when anything comes up, goes to the smart phone or the tablet and puts it in and sees what comes up. we can't let jurors do that. we have to be sensitive to the need for information. i have become a whole lot more sensitive in trials where things are mentioned in the trial but are not explained in the trial.

where technical terms are used, and nobody explains what the technical term is. what are you doing when you leave that there? you are almost begging somebody to pick up their smartphone or the tablet and find out what that term means. one of the things you realize when you look at these facebook, these are social media mistrials, whether they call the google mistrials now, one of the things you see about years is it's not the rogue juror that does this. by rogue i mean somebody trying to intentionally to do some misconduct to under mind a topic usually the most conscientious juror is the one who commits the error. the one who was trying to ask questions during the trial. the judge said i'm sorry, we don't allow questions during a

trial. the one who said what does this term mean? and the judge says, response, well, you know, you'll have to use, you'll have to use whatever information is provided here. that type of response is almost begging jurors to go off the reservation by being that opaque about it. and so at least i'm very conscientious now. i sort of see my role as a judge, you can't be an advocate for one side or the other. but i almost feel like being the moderator of a radio talk program, you know, like diane rain or something like that, where something comes up that is a technical term or something that needs explanation. you know, she comes in right away and says what does that mean? what is the acumen -- acronym

that you use, can you explain what that tactical thing is precisely the role of the judge as being much more activist in a very narrow sense of trying that to leave things hanging out there that could be explained. the criticism on the other side of that is, well, wait a minute, even explain things like in a criminal case, the priest -- the prosecution has the burden of proving the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. anytime anybody is clearing things up, you're taking away the argument on the other side, you're taking away some parts of argument about there being reasonable doubt. and so are you now putting your thumb on the scale by doing that? it's a difficult issue, but i think if we're going to continue to have trials, some people say just take everything away from the jurors.

take away all their, you know, their cell phones and they're ipads and tablets, and whatever. well, that doesn't take care of what happens at night, or when they go out to the car at lunchtime and they've got all that stuff out there. and besides that, i think it's kind of fun and practical solution in today's workers so many people conserve on juries today because they can keep in touch with their jobs, their family. they may have an elderly mother at home. they may have to keep track of the kids when they come home from school. and the way people do this is by using their electronic devices. and as soon as you start doing what i think are rather draconian things of saying take away all their devices, don't let them have them, whatever, they already, they are creating a much more unrepresentative jury pool by eliminating people out of the jury group.

so it's a very difficult issue. >> i.c. -- in the back. >> for a trial lawyer to -- [inaudible] the issue is not to disclose relationship or the disclosed -- you tell jurors don't read the newspaper, don't look at tv. the issue for the courts is, and it calls to mind mayor dixon getting caught by using her best buy card. to what extent are the courts going to use electronic surveillance to monitor whether jurors -- it's very easy. you can do it quite easily. to see what the jurors are, in fact, going on the internet at night or facebooking each other. how are the courts going to do with that? they have that capability now. are we going to --

>> is that a court found or is that something that the list should you? >> i think that is the most compelling issue right now, is what should courts do? what should lawyers to? there's recently within the last two weeks i believe, maybe it was in may, and opinion by the new york ethics body for lawyers, saying that it is permissible for lawyers to check out jurors social media postings. it's ethically okay to do. it also says, interestingly enough, if you find something that could lead to disqualification, you are obligated as a work to disclose that to the court.

i think it's a real difficult issue that think were going to see a whole lot on in the next year or so. because i think it's kind of offensive, to ask these people to come in for jury duty. we pay them next to nothing. some places now are virtually paying them nothing because of economic mandates. we are telling them please, you know, coming. we are going to treat you with respect. and we have everybody combing their social media sites. how the courts control that, whether the courts can exercise authority over the lawyers about that, certainly i don't think we can and besides authority over the media that try to do it. that's one reason why i don't -- if i have a high profile trial,

i won't disclose the names of the jurors during the trial. during the trial that i had, the sheila dixon trial, the lawyers had their laptops. very good lawyers and had about six associates in the courtroom, and there was wi-fi in the courtroom. and they were doing this. they were checking each juror as they came up. they would do a quick run through, check it. and they found that one of the jurors who we interviewed was actually tweeting from the courtroom. and saint -- i forget what she said. it's in the article. said something about how, she did want to be on the jury, whatever. i asked her about it, and she denied that she had done it. and then we kind of pressed her on it and she finally that she had been tweeting from the

courtroom. there's some really serious serious issues here. i don't pretend to know how they will get resolved. >> can i add to that? one quick thing. i found this to be fascinating given the disparity. are actually code for judicial employees that include staff attorneys it but there are none that are there for judges. there has been some attempted guide judicial employees with guidelines from code and liked it but there's been no such thing for judges. >> one last question. >> yesterday governor jerry brown in california signed a bill that made outside research by jurors illegal, using particularly a wireless or electronic communications. jurors can be punished for up to six months in jail. previously when the bill passed, governor schwarzenegger refused

to sign it. he said he thought judicial admonition to -- >> probably about his own upcoming trial. [laughter] >> probably. jerry brown signed it. do you think such a thing -- the reason this came about is apparently there was one notorious case in california were a jerk did some research. they were talking about a 15-inch sawtooth knife, and he went out and looked it up, found a picture of it, showed it to his other jurors and you know i'll be this was a problem. do you think that type of approach would be effective? >> what i say in the article is, i'm very much against, as at least an out of the box thing, punishing jurors. particularly ever talked about the conscientious juror who is a little too conscientious. but there comes a point at which you need to take action and take

firm action. i don't know if you saw this, but in england recently there was a juror -- the juror actually contacted the defendant. i think -- contacted to defend on to defend's facebook page during the trial. it was a drug trial and is multi-defendant drug trial. and i think in the british press this thing -- you can't trust in the region to bridge rest anymore -- but the british press were saying, it was like $5 million to do this trial. i think of something like that, some incredible number. and they had -- this juror was kicked off the jury. and after the trial was over, the judge sentenced that juror to eight months of

incarceration. for doing that. because it disrupted the entire trial. i've not seen anything -- i think i've seen, you know, you know, finds that have been imposed in these types of cases. general wringing out the jurors, embarrassing them and everything. i'm of the school, i was a judge, i've been a judge now for both active and retired for about 20 years. i've never ever sent the jury -- juror to jail. but i can see how being very serious with a juror about such things, and in particular where it is flagrant and, whether the jury was acting with ill will, whether would be inappropriate

sanction. one of the things that, and you have to be careful here, the facebook five jurors we're talking about before, and we never got into a full hearing on this because the case resolved with the mayor resigning and accepting the one count, and not going to jail. so that all got results. but when you talk to the facebook five jurors, they make a case, and i think a fairly convincing case that they really didn't violate my own. they became facebook friends, but in their frame of mind they never discussed the case. they discuss things other than the case. you know, like what are you wearing tomorrow? [laughter] will i see, you know things like that that they never discussed

the case. and from what i did see of the facebook postings, that was arguably true. >> we have gone over our time. i think these are great resources for you. you will be asked by judges and others to give guidance on what they can do when they're running for election. they will have requested guidance of what they can do when they run into these problems. we don't want to react to the extreme and that's what we have many times, extreme cases. it's going to be in the 90 some percent where you, the court can do something about it. i'm going to turn it back to tranforty will tell you about the next session. >> we have about 47 seconds to switch rooms. supposed to be a joke. [laughter] metro east, the hub, journalist. metrowest, lawyers. i see probably 15, 20 lawyers. we'll have a third of the number of folks signed up for cle. please go ahead and sign up for cle if your license in virginia

or if you want to get reciprocity. we are adjourned for now we will see you in a moment. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> i am at conscientious artist

all trying to do a john. i'm going to do it. i'm going to get it come hell or high water. >> listen to the c-span radio. >> and now the u.s. ambassador to the democratic republic of the congo on preparations for november elections in that country. is at the woodrow wilson that the woodrow wilson international center for scholars here in washington. other speakers at this one hour 20 minutes event include groups

to monitor the elections. >> good morning, everyone. welcome on this hot august day. too bad you're not on vacation like a lot of people are supposed to be. ist mcdowell, the direct of the african programs and the project on leadership here at the woodrow wilson center. we are very, very happy to host this event this morning. working in partnership with the state department. and i'm glad to see you're out. i know it's something of great interest. the woodrow wilson center is the official memorial to former president woodrow wilson which was established in 1968. the whole reason for it is to bring the world of ideas, world policy together. so this is a very good example of that. we are bringing american, a significant american policy figure, the u.s. ambassador to

the democratic republic of the congo to interact with you. and others in the policy committee and a public event. public sphere. as the arab spring turns into a long hot summer, and libya slips further into chaos, and egypt remains on tenterhooks, iraq and afghanistan present sustained challenges. salsa dance is wrought with questions. now here of london facing rioting in may and. there's not much space in the media or in our consciousness for another crisis or conflict. yet one of the country that was long on the world's radar continues to garner attention of us all. and mostly focus on the horrific gender-based that is occurring there. anti-illegal expert tuition of minerals on western markets that allows militia and bandits and soldiers to trade for you. that country of course is the democratic republic of the congo. so the world's attention now

turns to the election scheduled for november in that country. because they are seen as critical to stabilizing the government and the country and allowed it to end its international partners to move forward in addressing the issues of violence and minerals exploitation and development of the country. but the question for us of course is will the elections provide an answer? will the results be acceptable to the population of congo? will this enable and empower a central government to begin to look at the cause of instability in the country, things such as security sector which we all know is in bad need of reform, the corruption with the unfair distribution of resources to provinces and populations. and border security and ongoing militia incursions and depredations, particularly and eastern part of the country. and the key question of all is how will the parties to the elections behave a day after the elections? will there be a winner take all mentality prevailing, our will

to be an outraged by the winners to all parties to include them in the process of congress recover and be part of the solution and not the problem. so that's what we're here today to look at. how the united states can use the coming elections and what actions we are taking as a nation to ensure that they are free and they're and transparent, and result in the disposition fair to all congolese. that is the ultimate test of democracy. not whether the international community close an election ballot that was enough to people feel their voices have been hurt. and a fair result has emerged. we are honored today to have you thing that discussion for us ambassador james entwistle, the u.s. envoy to the democratic republic of congo. he has recently appointed and it's a '70s ambassador of unit states to that country. he has a wealth of express on his bill. career foreign service, and most recently served as deputy ambassador to thailand. but has served throughout a

number of countries in east and in africa, including sri lanka, malaysia, cambodia. i'm going to ask the ambassador to give us some remarks at his pleasure. then will be followed by comments by almami cyllah of the international federation of the foundation of election systems. and by david pottie from the carter center. i will introduce them when the time comes. thank you very much. ambassador entwistle. >> thank you very much, steve. i'm delighted to be here this morning. morning. anyone familiar with my record from back in the '60s and '70s would laugh at the notion that i'm speaking at a place like the woodrow wilson center. i've had the privilege and, indeed, it is a privilege and our to be the u.s. ambassador to the democratic republic of the congo since october.

what i propose to do is make some various general comments, sort of from the 35,000-foot altitude on sort of how i see things on the broader themes and rather than subject you to -- i would much read into a to in a discussion with you because as a look around the room there are many of you have worked on this country much longer than i have. let me cite an important caveat, and that is that i'm just finishing up a month of lead here in the state. i've been a place like minnesota and south dakota where believe it or not, elections in other parts of the world are not at the forefront of public discourse. so anything that has happened in the congo in july and may not be up-to-date on it. slippages make a caveat clear. i'm especially pleased to share the podium, the platform to date with the carter center and the two parties with whom are working very closely on elections and with him i've had the privilege of working in other countries around the world. so i'm very glad to be here with them as well.

i think we have to view the upcoming election in the congo in a broader context of what is the united states, what are the united states goals and objectives with the relationship with the democratic republic of the congo? i get asked that question all the time. wants the u.s. up to? and my broad, overly generalized answer is, everything the united states is doing in the democratic republic of congo is designed to help ensure that what happened in into the country in the late 90s and early 2000 statistically the worst worth since world war ii to make sure that never happens again and to help them recover their that's it. that's what the united states is up to in the democratic republic of congo it and everything we work on, whether it is secure the sector reform, helping victims of rape, improving the investment climate, all of that is part of this effort to make sure that what happened in the '90s and a decade after that

doesn't happen again. and to help them recover from that. and i think we have to look at election as a piece of that puzzle. by helping them develop the ability to manage and run the own elections, that's part of the puzzle of bringing congo back to where it should be. with that let me just give a general overview of how i see things. as i said we can take it from there. like many of you who have visited in recent months, i know tony gambino was just out there, i visited a number of election registration sites around the country. summit in the states sticks, somewhere people get there by boat and by bicycle and i kind of thing. and by and large i've been impressed with what i've seen. the dedication of the election officials are running this registration sites, talking with people standing in the sun for hours to get in there and register. they understand why they are there. they understand the importance of it and what it means your i'm

-- specifically u.n. support to the process of registration. i think we have to keep in mind the losses that the congolese election commission and the u.n. suffered in a plane crash some months ago. that's a big hit for both of them. .. challenges and so on is a significant accomplishment in my opinion. regardless of what people see in

the process to me that is a hugely significant accomplishment. of course the way the world works is as soon as one thing is accomplished the things crop up. indeed just this week other key aspects of the election are under consideration. i believe right now this week the national assembly is looking at the ev law in terms of redistricting and all of those things we as americans know so well. gerrymandering and things like that. an issue of whether or not of the presidential elections and the national assembly will take place at the same time or will be decoupled my understanding of the discussion as well as the fact of whether or not the code of conduct that has been put forward will be signed by all significant players let me just say that i think it's hugely important all significant players cited the code of conduct and abide by it and i hope they will do that. now, in terms of u.s. assistance to the process, we are coming through our usaid mission,

channeling about $12 million we are focusing on two things. we decided not to put our money into the big what they call the basket farmed. instead we decided to focus on what we think are crucial elements of the process not just this election that future elections in congo. specific, education and what i think is crucially important is helping to train and equip and get out in the countryside congolese election observers, because i agree with what steve just said, the crucial analysis on november 29 or december 6th or whatever results are announced will be to the congolese people feel that the results, the airline's results represent what happened in the polling places. and in my view the most authentic indication of that is congolese of servers forming their opinion. so, we will work -- we are working very closely through our efforts with the carter center

on the ground and i think it's going very well. i'm delighted to be doing that. i should note, too, we are hoping -- it looks good we will be able to eclipse some special police force is being trained up to help with election security and that kind of thing. keep in mind as well that your tax dollars we cover about one-third of all expenses across the board which means we are also picking up about one-third of their collection of logistics support as well. let me address a couple of issues that come up all the time in my conversations with the media and so on. the first is there's a perception you hear all the time to read the international community is not supporting these elections at the same level five years ago there for the international community is abandoning the drc. it doesn't care. i disagree. it seems part of our objective is to gradually develop the congolese of devotee to manage affairs and run their own

elections, and that is what i see happening at this time. taking a leadership on this with a lot of support from the international community and frankly in my opinion of this effort required the same level of aggression will support it did five years ago the with the failure and we would not be accomplishing our task of helping the congo move forward and recover and it's appropriate level of international community support is less than it was five years ago. the goal is the congolese would be able to manage their own elections. in the same vein, you frequently hear it said, and i get this all the time is that well, the only way that the results will be acceptable to anybody is of the international community certifies the results. again, i disagree completely. as part of developing the congolese capacity i think it's essential that the election commission be designated officials take the responsibility for certifying the results of the elections.

i think that's a key element in this process of helping them build their own electoral capacity. yes, the u.s. government and other governments and other institutions and so on who will be following this closely will speak in public and offer our views and so on, but i think it is essential to the officials certification of the result should be of elections by the congolese should be certified by the relevant officials. at the line of argument that frankly don't have much patience with. generally i am optimistic about where we are as i said, but let me make one point very, very clear. in the context of what we're talking about the appropriate role of the international community, as i said, i've been generally impressed with progress so far and am pretty optimistic of what will happen between now and november but let me be very clear that the situation deteriorated for example there's an attempt to read elections or an

orchestrated campaign buy any party to disrupt the process, intimidate candidates or journalists, anything like that, i as the u.s. ambassador will be the first to speak out what is private or public depending with the situation warrants. so my general, general positive take on things so far doesn't mean that i'm so blind as to think that things can't deteriorated. we are following the defense very closely and when things need to be said, the u.s. government, i and others, will be the first to say them, so i want to assure people about that. a lot of the business is delivering tough messages whether public or private, and we will not shrink from that. now, and a lot of my public comments and in my meetings at kinshasa, everyone who will see me on the political front, the president and many others, and in public comments i have a sort of standard set of talking points. we talk about the need for credible elections. what does that mean? you get this question a lot.

mr. ambassador, what do you mean? let me run through some of the pines. those of you that have read my speeches have been unlucky enough to listen to me in person and have heard this before. what do we mean by the credible election in the congo? what other things as my team and of appeals involved be observing in the months ahead? first and foremost, transparency i mean, every journalist in count ayaan kinshasa we know there's a secret u.s. candidate. who is it? my answer is yes, we have one, his name is transparency. that's the key for us. it means an environment in which candidates campaign, voters vote, the votes are counted and tallied and announced in an open and transparent process. second, a climate in which candidates can campaign freely without being hassled or intimidated. third, all candidates have fair access to a neutral state media, and related to that, that the

media can do their job, a crucial job in any electoral process, again, without being hassled or intimidated. another key aspect, while women have equal access to the process as men? something that i've added in recent weeks before i left to go on and leave to my standard stump speech you just heard on what is a credible election, as i think steve talked about, the results and the reaction to the results are going to be crucial. that's an obvious point. and i must say that it's bothered me to see a few key players declared that well, the only -- the only measure of a free and fair election is if i win or my guy wins which i think is frankly an irresponsible thing to say in public. in a number of other countries of had the privilege of working with over the years i've noticed the key benchmark in the space development is on a candidate will come out after the results

are public and say you know, i lost. i am deeply disappointed i lost but i accept the results, and in the interest of thinking about my country and the nation i will do everything i can to support the winner, etc., etc.. and in congo, in the drc come if the results are deemed credible i hope that's what we see coming and i've been encouraging a lot of people to think along those lines. to have on successful candidates come out and say that kind of thing in my opinion is an incredibly powerful fan. i've seen it happen in other countries and of that kind of thing happens in my opinion will be crucial and welcomed indicator that democracy in deed is taking root in congo. phill losers will come out and say i support the process and i will try again in five years. i've gone on way too long. let me conclude with one observation. i've been on leave the last month and on what i've learned

my first months in congo and so on one thing that occurred to me is every election related conversation i have what it is with a politician in kinshasa for people stand in line of the registration center of in ecuador or something like that to get in discussions about the elections of people and it's just a common assumption this is going to happen again in five years. people say 2006 will stuff we're doing it again now in a rented again in five years if my body isn't successful now hopefully things will be better in five years and just the fact that there is going to be another set of elections in five years that's a common assumption i think is an incredibly positive sign. it will make its increasingly difficult for any leader or a politician or party to subvert that process. in other words, what i've been very encouraged to seek thinking about that recently increasingly congolese are talking about when

the next elections occur rather than if they occur. that gives me cause for hope and optimism and that brought a process that i described at the outset of my remarks in terms of helping our congolese friends slowly but steadily recovered from circumstances the rest of us can only begin to imagine. that's why the u.s. stance with the democratic republic of congo and why i'm humbled and honored to represent the united states of america in the drc. thank you so much. [applause] >> 64 come ambassador. i think i will make those introductions for the speakers at the same time and then have them proceed in order. first speaker will be almami cyllah, she is the international foundation for electoral systems director for the africa region and has over 25 years of experience. i've run across him and i've

been severely yonah and god knows where he's been all over the continent with experience. david is here, he has a long experience as well. he is the -- running of the projects for the carter center and has been there since 2002. he has been conducting the search for his doctoral dissertation in south africa. and he received his ph.d. from new york university of toronto. i know that he also covered the elections in 2006 and the congo. we've asked them here for the obvious reason. they are going to be implementing part of the u.s. funded program for monitoring and evaluating and observing the election is out there so i will let them speak and respond as they will. almami, please.

>> yes, you may choose, podium or -- >> thank you very much, steve. thank you to the willson center. thank you, ambassador for the opportunity to say something here about the elections in congo. on behalf i wish to thank all of you for coming. by way of introduction, i've been an effort for some time particularly in the war-torn countries and not so war-torn countries. recently we had worked in the nigeria and the nigerian elections so now looking at the drc we have been in the drc on and off since 1997, and i am

very pleased to say most of the programs that we've run in the drc have been funded by the u.s. government. lately we have funding from the germans and canada. right now we're funded by the u.s. government working on civil education in the congo, and we have seen exactly what we thought would happen and that is it is quite interested in taking responsibility and reacting to the recent elections. drc elections for 2011. what we have at stake? the ambassador did mention a few of those but what i think we have to look at what we have at stake is the stability of congo itself. the implication for that is that

for that stabilization in the political process will obviously destabilize the country. more so, it will destabilize the great lakes region. the potential for the spillover if there is any violence in the congo towards the great lakes region is extremely high coming and we have seen that in other parts of africa where the number of refugees that are spilled over to both ghana and liberia. we hope this is not bring to happen in congo. the stability of the country or the region would be destabilizing the country would be very grateful for the region. and losing the democratic momentum would be difficult to accept. therefore, looking at 2006, i think there are some minimum standards that were set in 206

that we have to be sure that those minimum standards are met at this point in time which gives a lot more urgency for all of us who are observing that the elections process in congo. and what are some of those minimum standards that we have? that were observed? the elections are ready to be stable. there was very little violence during the election to a great deal of support from the international community. the results deemed free, the results to have represented the places and the wishes of the voters, and therefore this would be a minimum standard i think also for the 2011 elections. generally widespread participation of the citizens in 2006 we saw over 80 per cent of the registered voters did go out to vote. can we replicate that? i think those are some of the things we should be looking for.

of course there are quite a number of challenges the investor also mentioned a few of those challenges that we have for congo and those obviously include logistics and the time frame for these elections. elections have been difficult due to the problems in the drc. and a very huge country in africa. and 206 for example it took approximately six months for the support from the international community to be able to distribute the sensitive materials to the various areas of the country. given the constitutional framework now that is going to reduce to 25 days. that is a serious challenge that we need to look at. inclusiveness, which the ambassador did mention, how inclusive are we going to reduce the process. the recent of course

constitutional amendment given just a long term -- some i should say could give a little challenge to a country as difficult because there could be the risk of running before voting on the grounds, tribal or regional grounds rather than looking at the national. that is a challenge that the citizens of congo and the friends need to begin to look at in addressing the issues that come from that. transparency and credibility which the ambassador mentioned extremely important. how trend's parent is the electoral commission, how credible will let elections be beginning from the inclusiveness of the political parties in the

process, civil society in the process to religious organizations in the process, and of course very important the women's inclusion would be extremely helpful and that could be a challenge for congo. of course financial support. the ambassador came to a very proper realization or statement that in fact we should be giving the opportunity and indeed to the various african is to conduct their own elections. however, the appearance of stepping back and not giving the kind of explanations particularly from the u.n. to the congolese in terms of what needs to be drawn and what is expected could pose or not easily gives them we don't care or the international community is stepping back and not worrying about what could happen the day after the elections.

i think these are the kind of things we need to be looking at and making sure that of the message goes out to the citizens of congo at the international community is not pushing back but in fact giving the congolese the opportunity to take that responsibility the true commitment to the stakeholders. what is the relationship between the electoral commission and the u.s. political parties? what is the relationship with in the elections commission with a civil society, the religious organizations and all of the other stakeholders involved in the country that have interest? because outside the elections it's those people who have to the consequences of what ever results are announced. legality of the process which they need to observe the legal aspects as to what of those will be and of course the results to be announced and does it meet the minimum standards of the

elections administrations. looking forward for the elections we have about five key recommendations we will give. the electoral commission plan demonstrates that it is serious and ready to address the citizens and the stakeholders making sure that they are part of the process and because any time you leave any of those out, the chances of question in the elections are greater so i think an inclusive with the electoral commission needs to take the step in including everybody of course again the international community needs to meet the financial obligations that the of given. the u.s. government have done well in trying to give that kind of support.

but i think the whole international community edge of the commitment to the electoral process and congo is extremely important if the congolese are going to get the kind of elections that we all are looking for and that is the elections that are free, fair, transparent and that meet minimum standards because i think the citizens of congo do deserve that. there needs to be electoral gains of 206 that more elections scheduled immediately after would have to look at that process as well, how we engage darbee immediately after in terms of what are the next elections and what needs to be done. somebody once said, and i think that it's true i am tempted to say that preparing for the next elections begin the day after

announcing the last elections and i think this is extremely helpful the new elections for congo are going to be quick i think what needs to be done in terms of lessons learned looking at do we need to look at the legal reform of the country but also needs to be taken into consideration in the electoral commission needs to look forward. there needs to be an enforced long term electoral observation to ensure that the civil society under the citizens of congo will be involved in the electoral process and we will accept the results of those to the division from the international community is good, but those of servers sometimes go at a moment of the elections but looking at the process and of the event is

extremely, extremely important in this case where you begin even during the registration process to campaign period. again, no good during the campaign period is all of the things that need to be looked at in that mode to be able to assure that and of course calling up on political parties that get involved in any political violence or messages that are not proper so we have to be sure that all of those are addressed properly and that the political parties involved and it is a process, not a short-term engagement. therefore, we should give that kind of support to not only the elections process before but also after the elections. thank you. [applause]

thank you to read david? >> good morning everybody. likewise. pleasure to be here. i am as my introduction said it is as a director of the democracy program at the carter center based in atlanta. the carter center is as you may know a nonprofit non-governmental organization, non-partisan. and it's not on many things. among several of our other programs, the carter center she is known for international election observation to this point we have observed some 83 elections in 34 countries including the 2006 e. elections and the democratic republic of congo. we have thankfully received kind

financial support from the united states government to conduct as the ambassador was saying activities before the elections in two main areas but international election observation and technical support to domestic observers and i will say a few things about both of those. perhaps just a quick word about the way in which the carter center observed elections there is a lot of both popular awareness and in some cases misinformation as to what constitutes the act of observing and the election. i think perhaps one of the most misleading that is currently popular is the use of the word certification in which it is sometimes implied that international election observers are somehow or another certified

for the election process or certify the results. we don't particularly see ourselves as doing that. certification tends to carry a certain -- it can have a both pejorative connotations but also carries a certain amount of offical that is not necessarily and we don't see part of our mandate. the carter center has a non-governmental organization and definitely places an emphasis on being invited observe and participate in the political process such as an election. we have been invited by visa as we were invited into the 2006 election. beyond that, we also feel that it is important to meet with the primary political actors in any electoral process and to ensure that there is a broad sense of

political welcome and we have done that through a variety that gets us to the drc to meet with not just members of the political party in power, not just members of the government but also members of other political parties come civil society organizations and indeed the international community. for these elections, the center as i said will be deploying and we are providing orientation to an initial group of ten long-term observers today, tomorrow and friday. today's tuesday? wednesday, thursday, friday, as they have been arriving over the course of the last two days and we have a team in place in kinshasa will be joined by an additional ten long-term observers who will arrive in a second group in september and

much as almami was saying we recognize a premium on chongging to be present for as much of the electoral process as possible in an ideal world this could translate into almost continuous election observation if one wanted to be in place in person for all elements of key project planning, demarcation, boundary limitations to the drafting and discussion and debate a run of the electoral law we, the electoral elections as well as those elements that tend to have been closer to the election day whether it is voter registration and of course the political campaigns. in our case, there are things we have not been present for the voter registration, but there certainly are ways in which one can investigate and try to test

the credibility, the completeness and the accuracy of the voters' list, and we certainly will be doing so. the long term of servers are mobile and deployed throughout the country and they visit many locations over the course of what will be between three to four months of deployment they will be joined it closer to the elections by some 40 usually call short-term observers for reasons that travel cross-country as difficult so we call them medium-term observers then they will be deployed for some 20 days or so and the inevitable troubles and difficulties will arise. the second part of our work is as the ambassador entwistle mengin to provide technical support to the domestic

observers. in the case of our program, we are looking to provide training and technical support in areas of reporting statement drafting media relations and the communication of messages to some 6,000 domestic observers. these are part of a much larger anticipated body of domestic observers and discussions among civil society early this year have produced a number of potential targets. the most perhaps plausible, hard to say, not all supporters have been quite line up, but a plausible objective has been to try to have at least one domestic observer in every polling station, some 62,000 polling stations. arguably in an ideal world of the civil society would join

hands and everybody would be part of an effort in the world that almost never happens, and there will be definitely multiple non-partisan domestic civil society organizations, networks, many overlapping networks who will be deploying of servers and i think i absolutely agree that the findings of domestic observers can often and should be the most important assessment from a non-partisan point of view and certainly should be taken into consideration along with the observations of the political party representatives or candidate witnesses who also have a right to be present and in the polling stations. one important way in which i think that international and domestic observers can collaborate and certainly plan to do so is through the fact that at least in our case at the carter center we try to place a

premium on the long term election observation this is and always necessarily the focus of for the priority for domestic observers in some cases they will either lack the resources or have chosen not to focus on the longer term pre-and post-election assessment so as almami was saying now, we share the view that the e elections are part of a broad election cycle of many discreet albeit linked up constituent parts. in terms of how we arrive at an assessment we do invoke the language of the election standards from a particular perspective of international space elections standards which are premised on the country's own commitments, democratic republic of congo is a signatory to many international treaties, agreements and declarations

which aubrey the different levels of international law but deutsch was published for certain obligations, and fundamental, political and space principles. in turn, the congo's national law institutions in the procedural framework scholar provide a second registered against which one can assess of the election process and certainly it can be the case and often is there may be a mismatch or some lack of synchronous city on the finer points. between the international framework that the country has obliged itself to a and the way in which the domestic framework has been articulate a bond is. perhaps to gesture backwards in terms of some issues that were

of most serious concern in 2006 and which certainly inform our assessment as we move forward in the election cycle towards november 1st i think was centered are around the elements of the logistics planning and then in particular management on the part of the election management body in 2006. in particular as a related to the voters' list the management of the voters' list is a crucial element because it is on par with the training and recruitment and training of election workers in devotee position of the election equipment materials, valid papers, inventory and stock control and so forth. the voter list can provide let's

say a right opportunity for electoral fraud. it was the case is there were abuses associated with several categories in the management system for the voters' list in 2006. the carter center looked at this very carefully and compared to the results and we found that especially in the second round runoff there have been significant abuse in some of the special categories that this abuse amounted to about 400,000 votes. not a small amount, but compared to the overall number of registered voters, 25 million a second round but had about 65% voter turnout and when one looked at the distribution of where the likely abuses occurred especially in places that had

90, 95 for 100% voter turnout these are pretty obvious red flags. based on our analysis, we felt that both parties had manipulated results or abused the members list but in relatively equal measure. in some senses this has an echo in the 2008 elections where the head of the commission also noted in the free of the runoff come to me with proof and then we can talk and was a game of chicken in the end neither candidate came with any proof and a close election and close runoff came off well at the end of the day.

a second area that i think has a potential for conflict in particular should political parties and candidates choose to publicize the technical operation of the preparations for the election is this the whole realm of the positioning location meaning of polling stations as well as the recruitment and training of workers and it's all well and good to have domestic observers in the polling stations but it is also i think a fundamental lesson from 2006 that will trade polling station officials can prove to be absolutely crucial in particular through the tabulation which was a weak

point in 2006 and were introduced for the runoff elections and we should hope that many of the lessons have been retained and will be in evidence on election de. perhaps one final point in terms of what the international and domestic observers and people who are interested in the drc can contribute is to remind ourselves of the importance of having the ability to observe and verify the process and to come around to the ambassador's fema transparency is often treated as a buzzword which it can be the principle can also be evident in what may have seemed to the training of workers on how important and that the word the control of the voters' list

or the siting of the polling stations. any of those individual agreements seem to be policy. put together the slash message of constituent parts as assessed against the national legal framework as assessed against the international obligations does provide us with a verifiable means to which we can assess and it holds as accountable as observers and i think ultimately will build important mechanisms for the drc itself. for the government and the election management body to be a held accountable and the people of the drc and the broad community. thank you. [applause] >> thank you all for your presentation. i think you set the stage for a good discussion here.

lots of information. lots of insight, even the expansion of the vocabulary and i'm now locked in to fight the elections. this is remarkable. most of you know the rules here. we have microphones on either side. we are being broadcast live and we need to have you on the microphone to be heard. second, we welcome the question and very short statements. i know you all come with a lot of information and experience yourselves and so exchanges you want to do let's keep it short. what we will do is if you have questions you can direct that the ambassador or among or just a panel. shall we begin? show of hands. right here.

>> thank you. independent consultant. thanks to the panelists for a rich and excellent presentation. i was lucky enough to spend june and july in the congo and back less than a week ago. but to specific questions and the panelists can choose to answer them in whatever order you pick. first i want to stress the importance of the concept of transparency. i don't think it is a buzz term at all and i'm glad to hear all of you use it. and i agree with the ambassador entwistle that the congolese is an accomplishment. but how many members are dead and we know that this is a concern when the customer is the head was in washington a few months ago he spoke about a process with publishing. i do not know where the process

stands today but i'm certain that we do not have published rules for the provinces. and i believe we are well behind schedule to make a particularly what david was saying in the context of international standards and meeting the minimum requirements on. second question, the big elephant in the room in terms of the congolese e elections is timing and i am struck and continue to be struck that there's a huge disconnect in the congo among the congolese actors with the government and the leading opposition parties. this discussion has become highly politicized. however, there is another way to approach the discussion which is purely technical as a number of you refer to a variety of tasks that need to occur for a transparent elections in.

and this was in 2011. a week ago every close observer i talked to across the spectrum does not believe technically that is possible to have the kind of elections that you'll endorse in late november but this will create a political crisis that is certain so any comments on how to handle what is an extraordinarily difficult but extraordinary challenge. thank you. >> before we get some responses from -- >> i'm doing the same way [inaudible] congolese. >> i was surprised to hear from the ambassador to the president

of the commission he is doing very well because she is the only person who knows exactly how to reach that number and is hiding the access. the issue to the code of conduct. that code was not signed by the opposition to get the opposition signature meeting sometimes back that opposition quits the meeting. it did concern me that the constitutional quotes which are supposed to certify the election is not just appointed. apparently from western ambassador the commission is

going to certify. >> thank you very much. responses, reactions? is this on? i'm glad to go first. a good point, if i misspoke and said it certifies in the constitutional court, you're right, do got me. the larger point i was making is it is a congolese responsibility to certify whichever government entity does it. on the point about transparency, and you both touched on this, they can point on where the electoral rules will be published. to be frank i'm not sure but i will follow-up on that and you talked about software and things like that. these both come back to the importance of transparency and on all of us in our various capacities calling them would be encouraging them to keep doing these difficult but essential tasks when it comes to

transparency. i've heard the same thing that politics aside it's going to be very difficult for technical reasons. if a determination is made that the elections have to be postponed, obviously that is the congolese decision but it seems to me the key factor would be how is it done? if it seems like the elections are being postponed because someone is pulling a fast one to their own and vantage, that is one thing. but if the ambassador and others to a circuit right of all the parties and explain why they can't get this done, who could argue with that if it is done in that fashion? i yield to anyone who knows more about nigeria than i do the in their election stevan on election day itself the equivalent said you though we need another week and they were able to do that. so if the lake, and this is a hypothetical i have no inside knowledge that there's going to be a delay, but if it is -- if

there is one and it's for the technical reasons after consulting all of the parties, we need whatever the length of time is. i think that is perfectly reasonable and i don't see any ground for our objection to that. but again, that's hypothetical. but as you saw when the ambassador was here, she has a very in time schedule and is optimistic about it. let's see. >> thank you very much. i think one of the things we need to look at also is again what we continue to see looking at elections, not the event but the process. i think there are so many things that we've overcome now and that should be lessons learned. for example, the commission was set up by i think in february of this year. whenever 2006 that would have been a moment where it would have been done to begin to look at the lessons learned and how

do we move forward on all of those looking at those but everything is dhaka on the last moment looking at letters and then we come back with the same goals. and in nigeria, for example, i and what happens again when we talk about transparency is the decision idea, the chairman of the electoral commission needs to be open to the society. and to the jury as stakeholders every step of the we starting at announcing a the election leading up to the election. some of us worry that they will not be able to do it in april, but with the support and did in the support from the society they were able to do it if it is exactly a the transparency and they're being fair that when they decided to postpone the elections and other wheat to. we have countries where the

commissions are pretty much a very -- the electoral commission is pretty much very independent. but that has not come overnight. i mean, we started working with the electoral commission in 1993 through 1998. and that independence and the way that the commission was operating and the fact that you cannot fire a commissioner particularly the chairman until -- he has to be there until retired. these are less to commit treason. these are all of things we need to look at in terms of the electoral commission leading. these should be lessons learned to help the congolese after this particular scenario to look at what went well and what did not go well >> maybe a couple additional points i agree completely in terms of the importance of being able to assess a complete and public list of registered voters

and know it's not available publicly at this point. the figures as of 27th of july range in terms of the treatment and for the centralization and tabulation of the terrified of registered voters from the provinces range from a low of 78.5% verified from kinshasa to the high of 100% from the congo. it's the only province that is complete. there are problems with the corrupt cds coming on delivery of cds, block desks. so all of the vagaries of the electronic of voter registration manifest themselves pretty strongly in the drc. shy whether or not the list, the final list will get to the announced figure of 32,042,643 means to be seen.

but absolutely, the -- the timely release is important as well. when i was referring to some of the minutiae of looking at trying to assess the role of the voters' list played in the 2006 elections we were only able to make that determination in late november, early december of 2006 because the data that was pertinent to the first round the election if not made available by the commission to rethink the also highlights the importance of long-term assessment waiting until the process is complete before arriving at a final judgment if we had known some of the of data or some of the issues around in july and might have made a slightly different preposed election statement in the immediate aftermath of the first round but certainly been there for longer term and through the second round enabled us to modify the assessment as

we got more information. second point in terms of a code of conduct, you know, it's i agree a code of conduct is important. it's also important to note there are 394 registered political parties in the drc, 278 of them were present at the end of july at the parliamentary eve and getting agreement from 278 people as a little more difficult than getting an agreement to five people as we know five people. two people was difficult. certainly some parties are bigger than others. certainly some parties are more important than others at least in terms of being irrelevant to the national scene or been able to pose a relevant presidential candidates and i agree wholeheartedly getting agreement among the primary actors is going to be very important and it shouldn't be underestimated. i would point out that we did have the codes of conduct in

2006 and confidence-building measures and all sorts of integrated forms of management, and yet we still had the two leading candidates after the first round of fighting in the streets and exchanging artillery fire for the 72 hours after the announcement of the first round of the results. i think that the congolese live with that kind of violence every day, and that should be foremost in our minds that confidence-building measures yes are important but their needs to be a whole other men you of options and activities that bind these actors to what will be a collective outcome through the election. >> a question right here. >> from the previous speakers we care about the etd scope

elections in the congo because it's good for peace in the great lakes region which is important for the international investors in the congo but i'm very worried about that assumption that conflict to originate from the national elections or the source of conflict. it's not really the lack of the democratically elected government that pass the conflicts are put them into turmoil. if you go deep the lack of accountable leads to frustration among segments of the population and lead them to align among ethnic lines to take ethnic lines which eventually is of the national levels after the

elections or any other time. so if we really do care about the average citizens, be they of the democratic congo or wherever, then we must try to look at what are the prime sources of this and my view now is that we do carry out these and we should look at ways of assuring effective devolution of power in this country and society. it is a crucial issue the international community needs to support this response to assure that is the evolution of power and also before that assure that the elections also referred to the local and municipal levels and if we are transparent we reserve the marginalization. >> gregg there.

>> katanga steve, will davis with the united nations office in washington, d.c.. a quick question for the ambassador and the other panelists will want to comment does the u.n. peacekeeping mission monusco in the drc have the resources necessary to carry out the rule it's been asked to do in support of the elections since the indian contingent has announced they're taking on their helicopters are they going to need to divert resources from their already very mandate occupy an activity of the protection of civilians in order to help and election? >> thank you. right in the front there. >> woodrow wilson center. i wonder whether one can punctuate the members of the panel to talk about politics. in other words why have we moved

from two rounds 281 round system why are the elections lists unavailable? is indeed a little -- isn't it unrealistic for the meaning of the congolese to assume, which it seems to me is the assumption behind some of the statements made that this is all inefficiency, coming late to the table and is there no system behind all this? i think if you were to pay more attention to the politics, the picture that might emerge would perhaps be less pleasant but what of leased complement the

congolese actors with knowing what they were doing for their own purposes. >> thank you very much. let's deal first with the point about the primary source of conflict in the devolution of power to the local. >> i agree with your analysis in many countries what is driving the conflict and so on is the dissatisfaction of local levels with the lack of resources and politicians and about kind of thing. i wouldn't suggest the national space elections solve such things but they are a crucial part. remember in my comments i talked about what we are trying to do with our congolese friends and the elections are a key part of it. but you raise something i should have mentioned in my comments. coming down the pike we have local elections coming municipal elections, provincial, what ever you want to call them. in many ways i think those rounds will be more important than the coming around in terms of affecting the lives of individual congolese all round

the country and times are hard budget wise but i'm hopeful the u.s. government will play an active role in those elections which probably will not get the same level of international attention. but as i said, i would argue probably would be more important in the lives of the congolese. speed i can go back to the others. >> it is very encouraging from the ambassador looking at the local elections and hoping the u.s. government is going to support that because for the technicians in the elections some of the difficulties we have had over the years is that after the national election everything just goes back and nobody cares about local elections. ..

it's exactly to prevent the activists of the type code and said that will be worchester recharge to either acne groups to get votes. it's also expensive to a bound system. so given the fact that support comes in firm the international community may not be there in terms of the resources. sometimes it's a matter of

convenience and sometimes of course it's a matter of politics, where it's easier. but then the disadvantage is that, as i mentioned, with duplicate a minority government that may not be accepted by all and that is a challenge that could pose difficulty down the road. >> david. >> yeah, i guess i feel i can speak pretty frame they. yes, i think absolutely there is to write political culpability for the circumstances under which the drc is going into these elections. the kabila government dragged its feet on the establishment of sydney. it was extremely late in close proximity to the election date. the government of the drc also stopped and had the right to seek to control more of election

operations planning and budget and that has been achieved. the drc government will fund approximately 60% of the election cost of the international donor committee providing the other 40%. the drc government has only released 5% of its commitment as far. the late appointment resulted in the extremely late and terribly tightly compress conduct a voter registration, which has occurred within a terribly tight and compressed electoral calendar, which plays almost no room for margin for error. the electoral calendar itself was announced very late in the process. all of these look like technical operations at one level, but of course there are political reasons behind why they have been. so on top of that, one introduces constitutional amendment that changes daily

oral system for the election of the president from 50% plus one majoritarian ran off to a single plurality pass the pose. that's a political calculation as well. so the selection of vanilla oral system also topaz origin and enduring political effects. so whether this constitutes abuse of the power of office, power of incumbents be for one to decide and argue about, i think that it would be combat of that package. does that package deal the fate of these elections be a political lock up and technical knockout the jury for president kabila? perhaps that's been a discussion within the carter center and a senior management as to whether the carter center should even observe these elections.

in my standard answer to my boss is an external audience is, well, we reserve the right to pull out should the conditions appear to be such that there is not even a chance that some kind of credible contest. it may also be the case that even a contest that is greatly lacking in credibility may still be worth observing the transit to witness, documenting what has happened in being present to support other issues. in another hat we've been working for many years with u.s. government support and that of other governments to support human rights defenders. we've established human rights based has more than 150 human rights organization members. prefer to take up cases of

intimidation, arbitrary arrest, detention and death of human rights activists, journalists, media owners feared they are not unaware what is often a life and death political reality in the drc. >> thank you. we are running close to be on time. i hope we have another time for a round of questions. you respond on herbs politics questions. >> good question on the new scope. i find many times when he talked to condoleezza about the new scope is the very reaction to send name it is a violation to her sovereignty. but i think you're right to highlight the role of the new scope. it is in the middle i call you an organization striven by contributions to toner countries. roger and me since an old friend of mine, my first boss in the foreign service 30 years ago when he spends a lot of his time

and budget figures and trying to figure these things out. as you noted on the military side of the monusco cooperation, helicopters are being taken back by contributing countries and so on. so monusco is in a massive budget crunch without having to provide election support and so on. so i think i'll be very stretched. i'm impressed, but they will be very stretched to do their jobs, especially in the face of the money wrench and the vast giving logistical challenge of point a to point you in the congo. in terms of how they deploy their resources, there's been a lot of discussion about that. people said there could be postelection violence and they should move a bunch of their troops out of kivu's to chaos. i i personally talked to agree with that. all of their troops are in kivu for a very good reason. the fact remains they look how

they deploy some of their troops to areas around the country working with election security. but those will be very tough decisions because they have no new troops coming in in terms of expanded numbers obviously true quotations. as with many aspects of budget issues, we are dealing with very we in the u.n. and others are dealing with very fixed budget that may not expand this match is not. i'm a fan of monusco. they do a great job with courage and have a massive set of challenges. today skype into effect in my comments but in the coming months as we watch things closely, if i see malfeasance, cheating, whatever you want to collect, albeit first to speak out. i was talking about things they clear political manipulation and things like that. you mention an assumption, but

msa talking about assumptions about what's happening in the congo and so on, i talked to my remarks to all the international community. i find there's another spoken convention behind many interactions that somehow the congolese are capable of managing their affairs. i disagree with that completely. the u.s. ambassador met some of the most incredible people i've met in 30 years working around the world. that's why i feel is helping these brave congolese get training and resources and all the things to do their jobs themselves. >> okay, thank you. we'll bring it to a close now because i don't inc. we have time for more questions. we have to cut off because the broadcast katsav, but we do have a couple minutes if anyone but

to make closing remarks, david or the ambassador. >> for ifes particularly what i would recommend is the fact that given what we see on the ground now is a real big challenge for congo and we should be able and hopefully be able to talk to the congolese after their set at difficult moments in the history of that country and let us hope that things go well, and not that it will be able to get back there and be able to talk to them beginning to reform and looking up lessons learned to move forward in a democratic process. and also hoping that the political landscape will be open enough for all participants in not only political parties, that should be able to express themselves and be able to complain and raise the issues that are extremely important

that. that in itself we always say one or two elections does not a democracy make. but a process of talking to everybody come a process of allowing the landscape to be open for people to express themselves makes democracy and they hope will be committed to and encourage not only the government, but various local parties to continue that direction. thank you. >> yeah, i echoed those remarks and maybe just to atco discerns that part of what i think these elections are so important is that if you remember the threshold of what would constitute success in 2006 was largely predicated on what was the alternative. the alternative is the ambassador has said, is the world's worst conflict since world war ii, in some ways the

most silent of those hidden conflict by its very magnitude in size and the fact that relatively few paid attention. it makes it very difficult to get your head around the concept of what are the sources of that conflict? was sustained and feel that conflict, much of which continues today and what will constitute success in an electoral or peaceful democratic context as measured against the obvious and daily horrors of that conflict. in some ways the congo has achieved a great deal to a national voter registration exercise, which was one of the few national binding events in congolese postindependence history conducted a constitutional referendum and families constitute a successful election in 2006. the bar is and should be higher.

i think that accountability and hopefully you've heard something from all of us that points to some ways in which we are all trying to hold ourselves accountable, whether as a government or as a nongovernmental act varies to try to support that process. i don't have any illusions that they're going to be massive problems whether or not the sum of those problems will be enough to totally undermined the credibility of these elections remains to be seen. we certainly hope that is not the case. but we will try to refer to evidence through observation in order to make that case. >> thank you. this has been really enlightening and i think it sets the stage for others people to watch in a much more informed fashion for the next few months to unfold, months that will be

filed with danger and tension as we move towards these elections. i think one of the key points coming in my mind about what's happening in the congo in trying to get to the point of addressing the real causes of conflict is to look beyond these elections. not just 215 years since, but the local provincial elections which are critical and did not come off in the last election cycle and has contributed to the violence we've seen over the last five or six years and we hope that is something we'll push very forward and encourage what the ambassador says about the united states government looking at supporting us. with that said, join me in thanking our panelists. [applause] and ourselves. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> now a discussion on the tax code. stephen moore on "the wall street journal" argues now is the time to consider tax reform similar to what ronald reagan did in 1986. he was a guest on this morning's "washington journal" for 40 minutes. >> "wall street journal"host editorial board member stephen moore is our guest. here is the front page of the "washington times," the super committee sixpacks, nine of the members have been chosen, we demand democratic leader pelosi to pay d core three.waiting when you look at the six that have been shows the now ready -- when you look at the ninth of been chosen, what are your

thoughts?id n >> guest: i don't have real medicare, medicaid, social security -- i think it is important we repeal the obama bill. i have been in this town for 25 years. we will see if this produces results. i do think the events of the past week or two with respect to the market's having a dreadful period suggest to make that investors around the world want to seek bigger cuts in the deficit. they want to see more spending cuts. it signals everybody in washington should get back and do more cuts. host: your paper's editorial this morning said about the

super committee that liberals are unhappy and conservatives are unhappy, but "the wall take is isrnal's" satisfactory. guest: i have never seen such an ideological grand canyon. democrats want to raise taxes and do not want to cut spending. republicans want big cuts in spending. there's a big golulf. i happen to be in the camp that says we need much less government. we have to get these spending programs down and government off the back of business to get this economy running again. host: is it possible to of massive tax reform? guest: i wrote an editorial last

week. a miracle happened in this town. we carry of all of the special interest loopholes -- not all of them. we cleaned out the tax system and cut the tax rates low. if you're a liberal or conservative, everybody can agree on one thing. bring tax rates down and getting rid of loopholes is an economic thing to do. maybe we finally reached the point where the stars might be in line where we can do that again. i would go all the way to a flat tax. care rid of all the deductions -- housing, municipal. you can get the tax rates down to about 70% or 18%. if you want to see the comet or % or 18%.ife -- 7017

there is a wonderful book about this. i talked to the author. it is rare to see the special interest groups and the k street corporate lobbyists get rolled. all the lobbyists are there to carve out loopholes in the tax system. the economy did really well. i think it is time to do it again and i think it would be incredibly economically productive. host: calls are divided by political affiliation. 202-624-1115 for republicans. 202-624-1111 for democrats. twitter.com/cspanwj. journal@c-span.org is our e- mail. stephen moore is our guest.

guest: people listening to this show are probably more of the liberal persuasion. the interesting thing -- if you look at the people who get all these loopholes, the people who buy the two million-dollar homes, they tend to be rich people. what i'm saying is if you get rid of those tax loopholes and lower the rates, you are potentially making the tax system more progressive because rich people do not have a way to shelter their income from the irs. host: we have two tweets. one on the national sales tax.

guest: i wasn't talking about a national sales tax. this is the idea of the fair tax. the fair tax would be even more radical than what i'm talking about where you just eliminate the personal and corporate income tax entirely and move towards a national sales tax. just like at the sales tax you pay tax every time you go to the 71-eleven. this is an interesting idea. we need to start taxing people on consumption, what they take out of the economy, and stop taxing work and savings and investment. the building blocks are saving and investment and job creation.

host: we have 8 a tweet. guest: i am not sure exactly what that means. the rates are lower than the work at the end of the 9 1990's, but not significant. capital gains and dividends came down. more money,e got especially on capital gains because people will sell stocks and you'll get more turnover and more revenues. the most important lesson over the past 40 years is that tax rates do matter. you get more economic productivity. reagan prove that in the 1980's. reagan prove that in the 1980's. riggins broad it down to 20% --

reagan boarded down to -- reagan brought it down to 28%. we need to get back to that. what is different in the world today is that there is a more competitive world today. we're competing with china, india, europe. we cannot continue to lead the world with a tax system that is so dysfunctional. we did not mention the corporate tax system. that clearly needs to be changed. it but american companies at a disadvantage and it does lead to the outsourcing of jobs, which is something no one wants to see. host: callers say the tax system promotes and pays companies to outsource jobs. guest: in some ways it does. host: number two --

guest: if you have -- it is like a tariff on our own goods and services. it puts every american company the produces goods and services the produces goods and services at about eight 10% or 50% disadvantage on a tax basis. that makes no sense -- about a 10% or 15%. if we went to a flat tax, we would go from being one of the hypertext rate companies -- countries to one of the lowest. host: people say corporations do not pay any taxes. warren buffett pays a lower tax rate dennis secretary. guest: those are good points.

the real dysfunction of our corporate tax system is in is very high tax rate. it is incredibly expensive for u.s. businesses to comply with. of companieso's all the time. they say is a mess. it hardly raises any money. it cost a huge amount of money and has high tax rates and doesn't have any money. that's my point. let's have a 18% rate. general electric did not pay any corporate taxes last year. other companies had to pay the high tax rate. that is not fair. warren buffett -- it is true that warmth of a as a low tax

rate. he is the principal owner of his company, berkshire hathaway. if you count taxes of the company that he owns pays, he is paying a fairly high tax rate. if we want to get this debt down and get the tax revenues up, we to create a lot more rich people. i'm tired of the idea in washington about the idea that it is ignoble to be rich. we need more warren buffetts. he is a great american hero. host: the number of people seeking unemployment benefits fell last week below400,000, assigned the job market is improving slowly after a recent slump. guest: that is good news.

when unemployment insurance claims for, that is an indicator rates will come down. perhaps we'll see the unemployment rate falls below 9%. that is still a disaster. we're supposed to be in an economic recovery right now. we have had 9% unemployment now or ball for 24 of the past 26 months. a tweet. have 8 guest: i don't understand that. it does exactly the opposite. if you are an american company, a car company, afford. ford produces a car in the united states there is no tax applied to the production of that court in the united states. if it is sent overseas, there's

no tax on tha. it. toyota built a car in japan and salesave to pay the 7017% tax when it is sold in the united states. one of the things you talked about on this show is the manufacturing prices in this country. if we want more manufacturing jobs, the sales tax would be a fantastic way to achieve that. host: dave honor democrat's line from washington. caller: yeah. i disagree diametrically with just about everything you say. you are nothing but a puppet for the wall street robber barons. you go back to the lie you tell

about ronald reagan. that story has gotten blown clear out of proportion. the comet was overheated -- the economy was overheated when he took over. he cut taxes. the rust belt developed. it is astounding how little people know about the tax code, about the taxing system. manufacturing jobs, that cost is written off against their taxable income. when you lower taxes, because the incentive to binvest back into the business. you guys are so full of it. the editorial board of "the wall street journal" is nothing but a bunch of dumb-dumbs.

host: what did you do for a living? caller: i am a financial engineer. i saw this a long time ago. you financial wizards to not seem to understand -- nobody saw this coming. i saw the crash six years before it happened guest:. we would love to have them back as a subscriber. i think rupert murdoch has improved the paper. i think it is as good as ever. it is not just a financial newspaper. it covers society, culture, sports. our readership is up. one point on the reagan story. i lived to the 1970's. those were the worst periods --

people think things are bad now. you cannot get a job as a burger flipper. we had 15% inflation. talk about the rust belt that was created in the 1970's. when reagan took the presidency, we created 16 million jobs. many of those were manufacturing jobs. there was an incredible recovery in manufacturing. reagan achieve that by cutting tax rates and he got the inflation rate down from 15% to 3%. that made america and much more attractive place to invest. the big story is that the fed is saying it will have 0% interest

rates for the next two years. i would not be surprised if the gold price and goes to $2,000. host: so what is $2,000? guest: it matters because the gold price is a lead indicator of where inflation is going. why do people buy gold? they buy gold when they lose faith in paper currencies. people are buying gold, silver, cotton, real-estate. they are worried about what these countries are going to do. there is a debt crisis all over the world. people will accelerate inflation and paying back the debtors with and paying back the debtors with paper money that is not worth anything.

that is why the gold price matters. host: an article in your paper this morning. higher food prices on the way because of the higher prices of commodities. commodities. fairfax, virginia. caller: what specific deduction or credit incentivizes companies to ship jobs overseas? i thought it was our higher rates. rates. why didn't the republicans pass out of the house 8241 ratio of debt increase to current spending cuts -- a two-for-one ratio? guest: we are and about 840% tax rate in the united states. the rest of the world -- we are at about a 40% rate.

we have 815 percentage point disadvantage. let's have a system that is patriotic -- we have a 15-point disadvantage. i forgot his second point. that is his answer to the corporate tax issue. host: the u.s. dollar is still the top choice for investors. this is from "the new york times" this morning. guest: what has happened in the last couple of weeks during this global panic or people are afraid about investing in anything, people are investing in treasury bills. we set a downgrade for treasury bills. i think it was kind of absurd when we lost our aaa bond

rating. i think they swung and missed on this one. host: only the s&p. guest: we do not know what moody's is going to do. it is absurd to say that the treasury securities are not aaa rated. i refuse to believe there is any risk to default on u.s. treasury securities. it is not going to happen. there is not going to be a default. the full faith and credit of the united states government stands behind those bonds and they will be paid. host: next calls barber from all oil on our independent line. -- our next call is barbara.

caller: i disagree about how the democrats do not want to cut spending and the republicans do. it depends on where we are cutting. that is the difference. it is nothing but greed. i care about me and the hell with you. it has to stop and people like you have to quit getting on the phone. the do not know about average everyday americans and how they are struggling. guest: you say democrats want to cut spending. tell me what you want to come ut. caller: we would like to cut these foolish wars. for 10 years, bush was looking for bin laden. host: democrats want to cut --

guest: what about the defense spending? caller: congress should live by the same rules they give to the people. guest: amen. i do think we can save money and there's a lot of waste at the pentagon. i did not think we should conclude that the reason we have this enormous spending problem is because of the defense. spending of gdp is about 5%. the big growth in the budget over the past 30 years is medicare, social security, and medicaid. if we want to get serious about the entitlements, we must, must come must repeal obamacare. we cannot afford to put 30

million more americans on medicare. if you have the titanic that is sinking, you don't put more people on the deck, and that is what obamacare does. host: a tweet from emma. guest: i'm so angry about the mortgage crisis. the march crisis is not over yet. we still have a surplus in housing in this country. one thing that is inferior to me is if you look at the current situation, 90% of the new loans that are being made over the past year or two years of virtually100% government guaranteed.

why are we providing government guarantees on mortgages? it is what is encouraging people buying houses they cannot afford. it creates a moral hazard problem. the mortgage originators make these loans because they know if they go sour, the taxpayers will have to pay for them. fannie mae and freddie mac -- the two biggest losses for the taxpayers and we still have not gone of those institutions. host: this is from mark honest enjoyed phone -- on his andr oid phone. guest: i like the idea of taxing consumption and not saving.

when you tax somebody's net worth, you are taxing people on what they say. you do not want to tax people on what they say. saving and investing are the seed of a growing economy. i do like the idea of taking the taxes of wages and profits and putting them on consumption. putting them on consumption. that was the point i was making earlier. it is true rich people would benefit from a lower tax rate, but they are the ones that benefit from the tax break. let's close the loopholes for rich people and get rid of write offs. t i think the evidence of the 1980's when we cut the tax rate from 70% tax payments went

through the roof. we collected a higher percentage of taxes from the bridge after week cut tax rates than before. this is something john f. kennedy said. he said if you want more revenues come a cut the tax rates, do not raise them. host: you mentioned moody's. we are still waiting on moody's recommendation. when is that expected? is expected to go the s&p route 4 stay with aaa? -- or stay with triple a? guest: i do not know the answer to that. nobody knows the answer to that. if you ask me that question a couple of weeks ago, i said i think it will downgrade. i think s&p took a black eye when it downgraded. there was such a negative reaction. when the interest rates on those are at record low, everyone is

saying how could you downgrade them? if people were worried the u.s. to limit was going to default on the treasury obligations, people would be demanding a higher interest rates. in fact, what has happened over the past few weeks is the interest rate has fallen. that's it just investors are not worried about the fault, nor should they be. -- not worried about default, nor should they be. caller: thank you for c-span. i would echo the former callers to have said we need to cut expenditures where we are waging war, and also, i think on the home front, the medical system should be changed so that position -- doctors are paid for curing people, helping people.

not for repetitively doing procedures that bring them money. the medical system should be paid for how far has the bird flown? not how many times has the bird flapped its wings if that makes any sense to you. guest: it is an interesting metaphor, and i agree with you on your second point. i think the way we pay for health care in this country is so inefficient. physiciansewarding and hospitals for results, we're just rewarding them for more and more procedures, and that defilade drives up the cost of health care. i love of pay for performance type of system. that might mean allowing people to use alternative medicine, anything that works and allows people to get healthier i am in favor of. the most important function of

our united states government is our military to keep us safe from foreigners who would do as harm. this is the part of the constitution that says the u.s. government provides for the national defence. certainly we should not forget that 10 years after 9/11. the second point i wanted to make is that when it comes to the economy and military spending, if we were to have more terrorist attacks against our country, and thank god we have not, it would be almost impossible for our economy to function. look at what 9/11 did to our economy. we have to keep our country state as a nation, but also our economy needs to be protected from terrorists. when the terrorists attacked us, they were attacking our way of life and our system of capitalism. host: how many serve on the

editorial board? guest: i think there are seven of us. the staff is 20 or 30 people. we right in the editorial, two or three per week. or three per week. host : when was your last one? guest: i have one on friday about the economic report. it is one of the few newspapers, may be the only one, that many of the resources -- many of the people, they turn to the editorial page first. host: have you ever met with your across town rivals? guest: we will compete editorially. they pretty much have a completely diametrically opposed

you of the world. i think it is the wrong view of the world. i try not to read their editorials, because i do not think there is much wisdom in them, but i know my boss does because he has to keep track of what the competition is doing. host: the next call comes from michigan. marcus on the independent line. caller: good morning, gentlemen. i want to say kudos to the first couple of callers. i think they and -- echoed the sentiment of the average american. i guess your guest started by asking which would you rather have lead the market for government? based on his answer, he believes free market should lead. everything else he has to say is geared towards the free market leading. i believe capitalism and free

market is a great thing and cannot live without it, but i sure do not want to turn my life over to letting it lead. of the nation, -- as a nation, and that is what we are, i think he believes we should measure our ability to be successful by the number of millionaires we create. as a society, i think we a much greater goals than that. we should measure our success by the people -- [unintelligible] guest: i agree with that. the real measure of the economic successes, -- is not commonly millionaires we produce, but what is happening to the average family. are they feeling economically secure or losing their jobs and feeling like the economy is coming down on the shoulder? right now i think it is the

leader. i would make the case that everything we've done in washington for the past three years has been the wrong thing to do. we have had a massive blow up of government spending on a scale we have never seen in this country, and has not worked. it has produced 9.1% unemployment. with the stock market crashing and people losing confidence in the currency. everything is lying in the wrong direction in the united states, and i think it is primarily the responsibility of government out of control and get out of control. host: philip emails in -- guest: n it is an interesting point. interesting point. we do not want a single payer health care plan, because as not

worked anywhere in the world. health care in the- world is unquestionably here in the united states. the way we pay for health care is unquestionably inefficient. i would like to move to a system where people pay more up front for their health-care costs. i think it should be more result oriented. the idea of having the government take over the health- care system. you just have the head of the postal service here, and i admirer what he is trying to do, but we do not want the help chrysostom to be run like the postal system. host: their role treatments been -- darrell tweets in -- guest: when the gold price goes up when there is economic turmoil, when people flees a

cold and are worried about the economy of the major industrialized countries, i think that is what happens. if you look at successful presidents like reagan and presidents like reagan and clinton, the gold price was very stable. what that meant was the dollar was as good as gold. the dollar today was worth and cold with the dollar will be worth five years from now. what is all under george bush, the gold price went from $300 to $900 per ounce. that met people were losing confidence in the u.s. dollar. -- that meant people were losing confidence in the u.s. dollar. so and 2.5 years the gold price has doubled. that means people are losing confidence in america and our currency. host: republican from texas on the line. caller: yes.

you wrote an editorial attacking my tea parties brothers and sisters, telling them lies, and i have got news for you. meeting after meeting cover rally after rally, we will our members to cancel their subscriptions to "the wall street journal." host: what did they say? caller: they called us names. they said we were too stupid. what is wrong with these rhinos? we're the ones that put the republicans back in. here they are writing lies about us and calling as names. host: that is probably the first time we have been called rhinos. guest: i think the members of the tea party are great american

patriots. i think what you've done has changed this company for the better. i have talked to groups all over the country from california to maine, and these are concerned citizens were looking out for what is happening in this country, seeing the enormous debt, the increase in government spending and the bailout and all the things that washington is doing that is ruining this country, and i think it is a wonderful thing with the two- party people have done. the idea is a very inspiring thing to see. i call it the second american revolution. we did take a shot at the tea party during the debt negotiations, it basically saying that we have to get real, we do have to raise the debt ceiling. and for people to say we do not have to raise the debt ceiling, that simply was not rational and my opinion. i want to assure you, i love the

two-party movement. keep doing what you're doing here did you are the salvation. you are the people. you are the people. this is great to see citizens get involved. the idea that people are becoming involved in politics is a great thing to see. host: have you retracted the word? guest: no, we have not. host: david tweets in -- not say ituld better. in host: east point, michigan. you're on the line was even more. caller: the tea party should be called the kool-aid party. cut corporate welfare. we know the middle class is

being choked out right now. they are the job creators. where are the jobs? i lost 85% of my clients due to the economy. host: what do you do? caller: i and my hair designer at the salon. we are a luxury. we're the first thing that people part. once again games are being played again. "too big to fail" very good movie. i recommend that. host: corporate welfare. when you hear that term, what do you think up? guest: i think of all the money that washington spends to bail

out companies. for example, when we bail that gm and chrysler. that was corporate welfare. when i think about the billions and billions of dollars we are facing on the green energy prices that are funded by taxpayers. when a big about the money being spent through the tax code or through a government grant programs like the department of commerce and energy. i have been writing for 20 years that we have to eliminate corporate welfare. there should be no federal grants provided to american companies. american companies should get their money from the private sector and private buyers, not from the government. this is one of the results of having a four trillion dollar government. businesses now view the government as a consumer. host: democrats line. what do you think he meant by

corporate welfare when he used that term? guest: people are really angry about what happened with the bailout is. there is a sense of their that -- out there that i have a lot of sympathy for, we build that wall street and big bankers but did not a lot main street. the real tragedy of obama and the fact of the policies have not worked and have higher unemployment now is a gentleman like this who runs a business, on the front line of the economy. he is a great barometer for how things are going, and his business is hurting. it is a tragedy to see more and more businesses go bankrupt because obama's policies have not worked. host: final article.

matt tweets in -- that is not true. we have had the biggest in a blowout in american history over the past 2.5 years. we have not stop the spending. the budget is going through the roof again this year. that is due to a lousy stock market. our debt -- i did not see that story. we are at 72% of gdp. that is manageable. when we came out of world war ii, it was well over 100 percent

said. the real question is it going in the right direction over the long term? even after this that deal, we will still borrow another eight trillion dollars. there is a saying in washington that one trillion is a new billion. when we first came to the town

1863. >> this was fodder for lincoln's democratic opponents who said look you are going to go to war. we can't afford a $300. you were going to go to the battlefront and i and an emancipated blacks leg is going to come and take your job for less money and your family is going to starve while the rich stay. >> the new york historical society holds a panel discussion examine how the possible conscription of working-class men left a three days of rioting

and the lasting effects they have on the city. the civil war, every weekend on american history tv on c-span3. i am a conscientious -- trying to do a job and i'm going to do it and if i get peace i am sure going to get it come hell or high water. >> our live coverage underway shortly here on u.s. military

operations in afghanistan. the u.s. plans to withdraw 10,000 of its troops from afghanistan this year and 23,000 more by september of 2012. up next, we will hear from the top commander of nato's training mission in afghanistan. also the president of national defense university discussing operations there and insuring cohesive civil and military cooperation. we have heard that this is going to be about five minutes late in getting started. is hosted by the u.s. institute of peace. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] as we wait for this event at the u.s. institute of peace to begin on u.s. military operations i afghanistan, on this morning's "washington journal" we heard from michael hirsche of the "national journal" on federal jobs programs. >> host: all week on the "washington journal" has been looking at jobs in america. on monday we began our weeklong series looking at workforcein training programs. tuesday we looked at technical education in the workforce. on wednesday we looked at some of the private-public partnerships out there thatwill create jobs in america. on friday we are going to be, tomorrow we are going to beus i looking at women in theut workforce but today our focus is on federal jobs programs, and our guest is chief correspondent of the "national journal," michael hirsche. o mr. hersh, how many differental geagrams are out there on the federal level for people who a want to get a job, train to get

a different job, etc. etc. the government accountability office did a study recently identifying 47 different programs across many different agencies, most are overseeing -- under seen over the work force investment act, which was implemented in 1998. it is now currently a topic of debate. one of the big problems here is many of these programs remain llowed.ad -- site loa llowed.ad -- site loa each state has a number of these now that attempt to let jobless people come in, it to find out what skills they have,

and buys them and coordinate with industry. it does not quite work that way. perhaps one of the most alarming things in the middle of this very troubled recovery, if you will come is that very little money is being spent on this overall. -- if you will, is that very little money is being spent on this overall. i have heard as low as 15 billion. we're talking about one-tenth of 1% of gdp. that is far less than other countries in terms of a government job-creating program. host: for all of these different programs, and we will show them in just a second, is there a bang for the buck? guest: that is another big problem. the effectiveness of the programs really has not been assessed. since 2004 only five of the 47

programs has really been assessed for effectiveness. over half of the programs have never been assessed. there is a moving congress to require that by 2015. it is really a huge problem, because what we hear and what we reported is that many of their programs are not affected. to the extent that industry began -- is looking for people doing this a lot on their own, using state money, siemens is even borrowing from the older apprenticeship program in germany. you're looking at a time of chaos when the time of the problem of companies looking for people but not finding they need with the right skills and people looking for jobs but not having

the right skills, were the problem has become really acute in the middle of this really high unemployment situation hoon. host: they have apprenticeships from a dislocated workers come indian and native americans, job corps migrant and seasonal farm workers, people with disabilities, seniors, trade act programs, veterans, youth programs. these are the type of programs you say are not communicated. guest: my colleague at national journal wrote a very interesting wase about andrew 1levin michigan's labor commissioner, and he was so frustrated by the fact that there was so much money -- all of the money was in

nokes and crannies. he hired a person in michigan to do nothing but a search for the money. he alternately develop a pretty effective program. he had to really go out of his way to search for that money. when you go to the labor department or go to the department of education, you really do not get the specificity. you do not get a sense that there is a real programmatic effort. effort. we have patty murray of washington state, an effort to reauthorize and really go over the work force in this act, because it needs serious work. host: you talk about the work force and thus act. here is the target population. we will put our numbers of on the screen. we have set aside our fourth line this morning for those of you who have been in a federal

job program. we want to hear from you and hear your experience with the program. if it got your employed, etc.. what the application process was like and training. like and training. the work force investment act of, you say this is the department of labor is the target population. all adults 18 years or older are eligible. employed adults can receive services to obtain or retain employment that allows for self- sufficiency are some of the criteria. if you are an auto worker in michigan, where do you go?

let's say your plant is "washington journal" airs every morning on c-span. life now to the u.s. institute of peace to hear about u.s. military operations in afghanistan. >> now for those of you joining us from home or on line who are wondering what moda is i'm going to read you the official moda description. it stands for ministry of defense advisers program and it is really about building effective and accountable defense institutions overseas, in which our government partners with american defense, civilian experts from washington and around the country going to afghanistan to work with foreign counterparts to build sustainable peace.

socom it is a great privilege to be here today with some of the people who have actually participated in the moda program. now i'm told i should tell you a little bit about the united states institute of peace. i have a sense everyone in this room knows it quite well, but for those again hearing about us for this for the first time, we are an international conflict training center that is absolutely devoted and committed to the prevention, management and resolution of the international conflict. we believe deeply and passionately and building local capacity overseas to stop violent conflicts before they start, to mitigate against violence if they start, and to deal with the painful and often expensive tragic outcomes of international conflict.

once they are resolved. and socom it is really in that spirit of working toward solutions around the world that we gather here today. we also believe in the power of innovation. to innovate is really to take ideas and turn them into action. that is what we have done in partnering with the moda program. let me give you just a little history on the program before you actually get to meet the live human beings that participate in it. to and a half years ago, a conference organized by the center for complex operations and moderated by a united states institute of peace expert who brought her talents and innovations to the notion of partnerships. and so, the institute of peace

which has an academy of international conflict management and peacebuilding generated, with help from others, a foundation of thought and a plan of action that would contribute to the now successful moda training program. as a result of that conference, where people come together and share ideas, we were able to produce an ideal curriculum. and then, working closely of course with the moda teams and with frank giovanni from the department of defense ursa bell and readiness office, this group was able to operationalize a curriculum into an intense preparation program, preparing senior nationals to deploy to afghanistan to build and work on

creating organizations to sustain the peace. the program has grown since the first class in may of 2010, with 17 advisers. and then, 58 advisers now trained and a new class set to begin in september 2011. these are individuals who commit themselves to civilian capacity building and to a security transition in afghanistan. i want to thank nadia, wherever she is, for all the effort and work that continues to go into this. i want to thank pamela, the provost of our academy. i would like to thank jim scheer who is here from the pentagon and all of the staff that comes with moda. and of course, i want to thank the individuals who give of

themselves to be part of this program. today, moda has the potential to be a defense institution building tool elsewhere beyond afghanistan. and so, i would now ask that you join me in acknowledging and applauding firstly, the moda advisers and their families, wherever they are. if they would stand and be recognized. [applause] jim scheer the osd leadership and trainer, if you would stand and be recognized. [applause] the usip staff who have worked

so hard, pamela and anyone else from the institute working on moda and its related activities. if you would please stand and be acknowledge. [applause] the nato training mission in afghanistan, ccl and a member of our board who is here, the president of the national defense university, also the senior vice president, ambassador nancy mckelvy on it. if you would also stand along with the nato command folks and those working in the field and at indy you. we want to thank you as well. [applause] so, where we go from here. i want to welcome the advisers back home who have been deployed for one year. thank those who have renewed

their tour for another year and recognized them for their service. now, prior to all of us gathering today, the advisers and some via teleconference, video teleconference from kabul afghanistan had a meeting, very productive meeting with the key moda stakeholders as well as a group of u.s. government agencies who deploy their own advisers in afghanistan. there are other agencies of the u.s. government that also go and partner with agencies in afghanistan and we certainly acknowledge all of the agencies who participate in such training. so, what is the hope of today's conference? i will boil it down to four key objectives. one, we are here today to honor the achievements of the moda

program inaugural class. we are here secondly to learn from their experiences. third, to build a community of interest, focused on strategic advising and lastly, to attract potential moda program advisers. so that this will grow and expand and make an enormous difference. so what i would like to do now is play a short video for you about the moda program, which i think will give folks watching a sense of really what it does and what it achieves. please play the video. ♪ >> welcome back. is called moda short for ministry of defense advisers program. the department of defense is looking for a few good men and women to volunteer for a one-year deployment to afghanistan and the commanding

general there, david petraeus, think the program is already making a difference. marine sergeant ashley bryant takes a look into this new program of the civilian expeditionary workforce. >> the final two weeks of the seven week mode a training cycle mirrors the pre-deployment training military units get. >> the facilities that are here are really world class, and in many ways stimulate truly the empire meant that the advisers are going to experience on the ground. >> ultimately most of the civilians will spend most of their time not in the field, but in offices, helping the afghans modernize and professionalize their defense institution's. >> we have got about 700,000 civilian personnel full-time in the department, about 150,000 of them are senior, above the gs 13 level. and, it is a terrific talent pool to draw from.

>> we felt that it was important that if you were going to advise the civilian sector of their defense ministry that you should have civilians who perform a similar function in the u.s. to do that advising. >> you can have an army but it actually takes some sort of government entity or ministry to made sure that it is being provided for over the long-haul. make sure you have a budget, make sure you have things planned out, make sure there is a structure to support a large standing army. >> and then. >> the first five weeks of the training are held just outside washington d.c.. intensive language workshops like this one in dari plus academic presentations and lectures by military, diplomatic and political figures. the volunteers come here to saturate themselves in afghanistan. students like miley parker are our ready experience professionals in their own field's. >> we are the bureaucracy of the

united states government here and so what we can do is provide technical experience that is current in practical and provide any sort of mentorship and advising services to the afghan government. >> i will be a senior adviser to the ministry of interior so i will be working with them on their contracting programs and program management program's. >> i will take on a position the position of information management adviser within the ministry of defense. >> the volunteers have a variety of motivations. >> fortunately i had no prior military experience. i didn't have that opportunity to deploy in the past and so is a leader, it made sense for me to say well, this really might turn. i can't really justify asking young men and women to go into the deployment situation when i myself have not engaged in that. >> miley parker comes from a military family and his worked overseas frequently as a civilian. >> a dod civilian has an opportunity to serve alongside

our military brothers and sisters in the war zone, and we are willing and able to perform that service. >> eric came into government service shortly before the 9/11 attacks. >> i see this as a generational challenge, and this is one small thing that i can do to be a part of a generational struggle. in support of my country. >> the volunteers are committed to a one-year deployment after training and can extend for a second year if they choose. up to 100 more may be needed. reporting from the pentagon, i am sergeant ashley bryant. >> you can get more information about the moda program on line. just go.defense.gov and type the moda into the search window. >> welcome back. >> welcome back. it is not often that i gets to introduce and acknowledge two presidents in one day, but i would like to acknowledge the

president here today of -- the president of the united states institute of peace, richard solomon in the back. [applause] thank you. and now bear with me while i do an introduction of another president, the president of national defense university. i have longed to give this introduction and today is my day, because i get to introduce someone who is not just president of ndu and not just the vice admiral and not just the director of the ward of directors, not just a doctor, ph.d.. you can call her doctor admiral. not just a pilot of a private aircraft. if you are not leaning forward in your seat now, wait until i get to the next paragraph. someone who has been involved in

anti-submarine warfare, air operations, operations intelligence, airtime transportation and sea lift, strategy and policy, training and education, business enterprise and installation. ann rondeau is a major force to be reckoned with. on all specs of military and professional training, leader and defense policy and an academic thought leader on war and peace. an expert in the sociology of conflict, the political science, the history of it, a practitioner and a wonderful human being. would you join me in welcoming admiral rondeau. [applause] >> my goodness gracious, with that kind of introduction. let me tell you first of all how

much it is a privilege and a pleasure to be in front of citizens of america, who have decided to serve in the way that you have. so i stand here as the president of national defense university. i stand here as someone wearing the cloth of the nation saying thank you, thank you to the civilian partners and counterparts and teammates, who actually are foraging a new way ahead and how the united states looks at conflict around the world. the fact that we had national defense university and the center for complex operations can be in support of united states institute of peace is one of the great honors that we have. it is also one of the great starts in one of the great symbols of the great initiatives to what will mark america for the rest of our time i think is a country. we used to talk about all manner

of things that the department of defense should and should not do. today, we are talking about a department of defense and what we can do and must do. and so we have, actually as a nation to something very different of ourselves and that is to think of ourselves truly is a whole nation, to think of ourselves as department of defense team in support of conflict resolution and peace. after world war ii, we had of course famously the marshall plan that was intended to rebuild europe. the world today is different. with a structure of formal organizations are important, but the impetus of human beings as individuals is key. we do this through the information age and we do it now through what we have as individual volunteers saying count me. i matter.

i am, and i might serve. the united states institute of peace practices that in the notion that every individual matters to the conflict, to the resolution of conflict and to the making of piece. free in the department of defense think about it as a resolution from the conflict, and then toward peace. but human beings do not go to war, who are good human beings, because they are in essence evil. yes, evil does exist. evil people go to war, but so often conflict is because they are trying to figure out how to make things better and somebody is denying that. so, what happens here is that if you have people who cannot invest their money, if you have banks that don't work and financial systems that do not support, if you have medical

systems within non-ag existence and you have agricultural systems that don't work, if you have crossed that no roads and roads but no crops, if yet if you have people but no education, if you have youth who do not have an aspiration towards something better than where they are, then we will have war and conflict. and we in the department of defense understand that. and so we have an opportunity and a privilege in partnership with usip to think about this differently. we have the opportunity to think about the fact that we here matter and that it is to be resolved that we can make a difference. and so you will hear stories and we know stories about the individuals who say you know, yesterday was good and tomorrow will be better. and those individual stories about what the afghans teach us,