It's a real pleasure to introduce our two guests who are going to talk about their wonderful new book, Undercover Jihadie Inside the Toronto 18, and Dr. Anne Speckard who writes frequently about terrorism is one of the most prolific authors imaginable, co-wrote this with Mubin Shaikh who is one of a very rare example of somebody who was a sort of jihadi who basically had a, I guess a conversion moment as I don't know if that's the correct way of looking at it and became a key to the breaking up the Toronto 18 plot which I think is relevant to today because if you think about what's happening in Paris today, that's what a successful Toronto 18 plot would have looked like I think with an attack on the Canadian Parliament with many armed gunmen, they were practicing shooting in the woods and so unfortunately this is a rather kind of opposite day to be having this discussion. So I'll turn it over to you. Thank you Anne very much. So Peter showed our book and this is it and thank you for coming. So today we're going to hear about the Toronto 18. They were a motley group of young men and women that were off their tracks, disillusioned, craving meaning and glory in their lives and they were angered by the war in Afghanistan. They were active around 2005 and Mubin's going to tell us about them. They were taken in at that time by the then al-Qaeda meme of Islam, Islamic people and their nations are under attack by the West and they were taken in by the teachings of Anwar al-Laki who none of them had met but yet each of them was inspired via his internet teachings to risk even their own lives for jihad and they had become convinced that it was their duty as Muslims to join a never ending battle and here you see some of the Toronto 18 and down at the bottom you see Mubin giving us the peace sign. Why does this matter today and the reason it matters is homegrown terrorism is alive and in fact growing. In the last decade al-Qaeda called for insider attacks on the West and even began to give instructions for operatives to no longer travel to training camps but to stay and act in place. Al-Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula provided instructions for crude and easily carried out attacks but lethal attacks and they did so in Inspire magazine and we saw groups following these instructions including the Sarnayevs who carried out the Boston bombing. Now through a process of social contagion and memetics ISIS is carrying on the torch and they have a vociferous online and social media presence along with their own online magazine. We have truly now what internet researcher Ruben Paz a long time ago dubbed the University of jihad over the internet and what AQAP referred to as open source jihad. Not only that with the conflicts in Syria and Iraq we've seen that an estimated 15,000 radicals from more than 80 countries have gone to fight for ISIS and other groups. According to Peter Newman who's the head of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King's College in London 20 to 25% are from Western countries. That means US, Canada, Western Europe and Australia and Peter just told me that he's coming out with a book about some of those who've gone from the US. 80% of these end up with ISIS nowadays and unlike Al Qaeda ISIS is not selective. They don't require that you get vetted ahead of time or show up in Pakistan and maybe get in maybe don't. All are welcome and according to Newman in the case of ISIS most of the suicide bombings and the beheadings the very brutal acts are carried out by the foreign fighters who tend to be more ideological and more brutal than locals. So it remains to be seen what will happen to these skilled and brutalized and interconnected cadres will they return home to continue in terrorism. Newman cites a study that one out of nine foreign fighters of other battles return and become involved in terrorism. Will it be the same for these? Newman has also characterized attorneys as dangerous, disturbed or disillusioned. So what should we do about them? Refuse or encourage their return. Imprison them or amnesty them. Run de-radicalization and disengagement programs that remains to be seen. But what is perhaps more concerning is that ISIS is a meme that is spreading bad ideas. Jessica Stern in the forward tar book talked about the spread of bad ideas and currently the ISIS meme which has gone out after Al Qaeda has gone viral over the internet. As you may know about memes according to Richard Dawkins they're an idea or a behavior that spreads from person to person within cultures like a fad, a fashion, a catchphrase, a melody and memes are self replicating units that may mutate. They respond to selective pressures just like genes. They compete. They can be inherited in families and they may themselves be living structures. Memes that replicate most effectively enjoy the most success and some may be wildly successful even if they are detrimental to the host which is definitely the case in the ISIS meme. So it's gone viral over the internet and the ISIS meme claims we've declared the caliphate and you can become part of it. You can become part of a new utopian society. Not only that, you have a never ending duty to Jihad. You have an endless battle to the end times and guess what? It's almost here and we're victorious. You can be part of the creation of a new Islamic state. You can achieve purity and by joining ISIS you can live on the higher moral ground and you have a duty to eliminate all of our enemies. So you should either take Hezra, come here and join us as the foreign fighters have done or more chillingly you should act in place and this act in place is what is probably the most dangerous phenomena coming in the west as we're seeing in Paris today. We don't know if that's ISIS but it's definitely well it's looking like an act in place attack. We'll see. So the stay and act in place encourages simple but lethal homegrown attacks. It appeals to those without the courage contacts or means of travel. It appeals to the disillusioned, the marginalized, the frustrated, the discriminated against, those who long for belonging, identity, meaning, adventure, recognition, who want to bolster their sense of manhood. And it promises to them instant belonging and if they act in behalf of ISIS and lose their lives they'll be glorified, receive attention, be recognized as a hero and receive all the rewards of martyrdom according to ISIS. This is heady stuff for someone who's mentally disturbed, emotionally needy, deeply upset about current foreign events and watching things on the internet from a slanted point of view. Mobian's going to tell us about the Toronto 18.  These would have been huge and lethal blasts. They also plan to storm the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa to behead the Prime Minister, to hold hostage and behead Canadian parliamentarians in demand for troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. And they had members who planned similar attacks inside the United States.  The same day we released our book, we were kind of freaked out about that. I called Mobian and said, what the hell? So Mobian is today's speaker. And he also got caught in extremist teachings as he's going to tell you as a young man, he will share with you his own story, but both about his journey into extremism and what pulled him back out of it and saved him from enacting terrorism. Mobian not only lived the life of an extremist, but he disengaged and de-radicalized and then had the courage to go back in. He volunteered to go undercover to stop young people who were similar to himself from attacking in Canada and the United States. I'm very proud to know Mobian and I consider him a hero. So I'd like to introduce Mobian and his story to you. First of all, I know I think some of your kids are at home, so if you've got to leave, it's okay. I have five kids. You'll see pictures of them. So I understand. I really want to thank the America for having me, Peter, and Ann, of course, for the introduction. Thank you very very much.  Paris attack, this attack, it's like every other day there's an attack and I find myself very, very busy now, unfortunately. I remember making the joke even when I was operational that I'm going to, you know, I want to put all of us out of work and they kind of looked at me all weird and but realizing that it, we're not going to be put out of work, unfortunately. The trajectory is heading that way. So what I'm going to do first is this is not an academic model, okay? As my professor will jump on me. This is just something very simple, easy to understand. How people get from point A to point B, my observations. Nature and nurture, right? Age old debates that people have had, personality and cognitive framing. You know what you grow up with, including ideology.  Then a number of things kind of show up more often than others. Could be an obsession with geopolitics, deprivation and frustration, or even vicarious deprivation. I'm looking at somebody suffering over there. I suddenly take that as my suffering, therefore I need to act, because I'm being oppressed against. Conflicts over meaning and identity, adventure, money for some people. People, if you look at why are people joining Boko Haram, joining El Shabab, joining ISIS. They give money and for a lot of people, they give more money than they make. And most people will just spend their lives in some kind of activism and expression, usually some kind of social movement. And I put it individual and group, because as an individual, you can write letters by yourself, you might attend a demonstration by yourself, or you will join a group. And there's a whole psychological discourse on the psychology of groups and group dynamics. What happens when you join a group? Group think, group polarization, all these things. But then something else, there's something very specific to individuals who become violent extremists. So for example, justification or glorification of violence and martyrdom through loan or group action, including self-made propaganda is a good indicator that an individual is moving towards an attack. The intensity of exclusivity. You have small groups, they don't talk to people, they might even have covert intelligence gathering or even counterintelligence. These are people that are serious. Contact with known violent extremists. You are the company that you keep. Overseas and domestic travel to get training or even online searches to find out how to build a bomb in the kitchen of your mom and recruiting others. So what I'm going to do now, the stars are wildcard factors. I mean, somebody, you're growing up in a traumatic background.  There's no social movement or expression. Or in the case of somebody who's gone into some kind of social expression, it's not enough for them. They're not getting what they want and they move to violent action. So I'm going to use that frame and look at my own self. So here's my formative period of growing up. And here's a madrasa that I went to. Not this isn't the exact madrasa, but very, very similar. Indo-Pak maulana, wooden benches in a U formation. If there is a room with girls, it'll be outside of the view of the boys. Or if they're young girls, you might be able to see them in view.  All you're being taught is how to enunciate the words. And that's it. So this is the kind of madrasa system that I grew up in. I got beats by the maulana. This is where you first kind of, and I always lament this, is that you're basically teaching Muslims that Islam is violent. You're teaching them that religion is received through violence. Growing up in high school, in public school, there's me right in the front and center. And as I explained in the book, I'm going through two identities. During the day, look at how diverse the class is. I have intercultural experiences. But in the evening, I'm at the madrasa. No intercultural experiences. Very rigid, very fundamentalist. This is me in high school. I'm up there in the corner there next to that design. I don't know why I look unhappy. Maybe I'm a little buzzed. I don't know what it was. But Sister's Cherry was a friend that, you see, the guy across, my friend Rocco, he actually took the picture of the book. He was the leader of a band, a rock band. And it was a great life. I mean, they were winning battle of the bands. The cheerleaders were our girlfriends. I mean, I wasn't discriminated against, bullied, alienated, isolated. We were living the life. These are my kids. Two of them are in the army cadets now. As I was in the army cadets, social engineering, go big or go home. Five years I spent in the army cadets. And there's another value system that I'm exposed to, another peer group that I'm exposed to. And if I can add a glorification of violence, there's a joke about, I'll make it quick, about the kid who he was walking to school and he saw this violent group and they had signs up. And he would see the people when they would look at the members of this violent group, how they would be perceived as heroes. And he thought about it and he went home and he talked to his parents and his parents. And he wanted to join this group and his parents said, oh my God, you want to join the military? So now here's my social movement and expression. So now what starts to happen is I have my conflicts over meaning and identity. And I have a sense of adventure, I think, from the army cadets. And what happened is at the age of 19, because of guilt tripping from the community, I think, what kind of a Muslim are you? You'll read it in my book. I got caught throwing a house party. My uncles came, they busted the party. I got in a lot of trouble. They basically sat me down, all of them sitting around me and just like lambasting me over, how could you do this? People pray in this house. You have girls in here with beer and smoke and weed and doing this and that. So all those things together told me that I need to get religious, quote unquote. So for me to get religious, I need to go back into my cultural history to find indicators of how I could achieve that. And the Tablighi Jamaat, the Tablighi Jamaat was the group that was my frame of reference. The Tablighi Jamaat is an apolitical group. Some have called it fundamentalist and it is a little bit fundamentalist. It's emerged in the Indo-Pac subcontinent. And one of the things they offer is a four month trip, two months to India, two months to Pakistan. Well, when I went to Pakistan, I had a chance encounter with the Taliban. I wasn't politically aware. I didn't know who the Taliban were. I wasn't paying attention to Afghanistan. But as I walked around the area, I came, I chanced upon these guys, 10 guys. I mean, seven to 10 guys, I can't remember exactly, but they had guns, bullets, right? And here's a kid, identity crisis. Once you get religious, he's being taught, he's being told the stories about the Sahaba, the companions of the Prophet, peace be upon him, and how we should live like them and be like them. And there were these great warriors and good people. And I'm also coming from the army cadets. So for a kid in that situation, in that position, it clicks. And I become enamored by these individuals. And I say, I got bit by the jihadi bug. I come back, and now I'm really into the geopolitics, the idea of deprivation and frustration. This was vicarious. So I'm being told the oppressors are doing this to our people, my people over there. They are now my oppressors and my enemy.  I admit that. I can be self-aware to admit that as I was in the army cadets, I enjoyed my time. And so I see that those things now were resonating with me. And now this is what I started to dress and look like. That's the Taliban turban, it's the black turban. It's derived from the hadith of the Prophet, peace be upon him, Anjaber, radiallahu anhu, dakhala nabi, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, makkah, yawm al fatah, wa alaihi, imamut al Sauda. So the Prophet entered Makkah on the day of victory and upon him was a black turban. So that's the proof of using the black turban. And the final category, there's your justification, glorification of violence. I wasn't making any propaganda, but I was definitely glorifying it. I wasn't yet, at this point, a part of an exclusive group. And we weren't really doing intelligence gathering or counterintelligence, but there was a lot of glorification talk, recruiting others, contact with known violence extremists. There were individuals that could get me to Chechnya, that could get me to Pakistan, to Yemen. I had the ability to go. I hadn't gone yet for any overseas travel specifically to get training, but I was definitely recruiting others. So you can see that even in my own framework, I was hitting on a lot of points. So the 9-11 attacks happened. So from basically 95 to 2001, I'm in these circles, I'm talking about this stuff, and I'm working a customer service job, okay? And I'm looking like the way that I look. You don't know what I look like on the end of the telephone line. It's student loans, okay? The real terrorists, right? And as I was driving on the highway, the first report came in that a plane hit the building. And I thought, and I immediately, Allahu Akbar, I celebrated. But as I drove up the driveway to get into the office building, I could see the office building and I was seized with the idea that what if a plane flew into the building right now? It's not like they're gonna tell me, hey, we're coming, get out. I'm down with the cause. But I realized I would have crumbled with everyone else. So that was my first real shock to my system. Number two, I went home, I rushed home during lunchtime. I lived close by, thankfully. My wife is intensely watching the TV. She's like, honey, everyone's calling. And I have my Muslim people calling me saying, you know the good Muslims, saying, this is not what we believe in, this is not what we're about. And I have my non-Muslim people calling me saying, is this what you believe in? Is this what you're about? So I'm being inundated from all sides, being forced to reconsider my views. So I decide, I don't know enough about my religion. I mean, I ask myself, what do I really know about Islam? I don't know Arabic. I haven't done any tafsir, hadith, usul, sharia, any of that stuff. So I moved to Syria. I decide in early 2002, I'm going to Syria to study. And the side thought was also, the great war is coming. I might as well go to Syria because it's gonna kick off and while I'm there, hey, I'm there, right? I don't have to worry about travel and issues like that. You know, maybe I'm five years, 10 years too late, but I'd rather be here than there. And I have this concept that kind of came to me. I'm making the shift from dogmatic idealism to pragmatic realism. And if you want to get, you know, a little more scientific and it's really, it's just fancy for integrative complexity. How do you deal with, this is what your doctrine says, but this is the reality on the ground. How do I deal with that? How do I, I am, we're Muslims. Islam is the true religion. We are the inheritors of the earth, but we're not anymore, right? We're not the great superpower. We're not in a golden age. So how do I reconcile this difference? Syria is and was a police state, even when I was there. And I became very disillusioned. I was discriminated against as an Indian in an Arab country. People were saying, what the hell? You came here to study Arabic and Islamic studies. Who does that? So I became very disillusioned with my stay there. And when I came back to Canada, remember the madrasa I went to? Well, Momin Khawaja was one of my classmates in the madrasa and he had just been arrested on terrorism charges in connection with the London fertilizer bomb plot. I called the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. I said, this must be a mistake. I know the family, they're a good family. The security intelligence says no mistake, but we'd like to chat with you, if you don't mind, considering your calling about this guy. Now, people have asked this question, well, how do they know you weren't a double agent or a spy or did they vet you? When I went to Syria, I registered with the Canadian Embassy. I said, hey, I'm here because my family was also with me. In case anything went down, I want you to come pick me up and take me home. So there was a lot of vetting done. I mean, I'm okay. Basically, so from early 2004 to late 2005, I was operational and undercover in various groups and individuals. I was tasked to infiltrate password protected chat forums where you needed to know somebody who knew the guy that would give you the password to get on. So I was operational in all that period until one day in late 2005, just another case, shake. Find out what these guys are up to. They're gonna be at X spot. I went to X spot. I had been invited independently of being sent by the government, which the prosecution in the trial liked very much because the defense was always like, well, you wouldn't have gone if the government didn't tell you to go, right? But I had been invited. And basically, I was recruited by the group to be their instructor, to be their trainer, to train them in weapon use, VIP convoy hits. I wanna bring these guys up to a level of operational capability so we can conduct attacks A, B, and C. Once I confirmed to them that this was a criminal offense, that these guys wanted to do X, Y, and Z, it traversed to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It became a police investigation. In Canada, we separate security intelligence from terrorism offenses. One gathers information, the other gathers evidence for prosecution. And that's what I put in the bottom there. And I spent basically four years and five legal hearings at the superior court level giving fact testimony in that prosecution. 11 were convicted, seven had charges stayed because of my sympathetic testimony. I mean, these were fringe players. So even looking at the individuals in the case, right? Faheem Ahmad was pegged as one of the ring leaders. Look, he grows up in Afghanistan, 1984, what was happening then, right? Relatively practicing Muslim parents, right? Not really like die-hard religionists. Arise in Canada in 1994, what was happening in Afghanistan in 1994? I think he was living in refugee sites at some point in his life. And the family now settles in Mississauga, which is an area in Toronto. Zacharia Mora, non-practicing Muslim father, Christian mother, right? Father's got a job with the oil company, he's almost never there. Is this the absent father scenario? Arise in Canada, settles in the same place, Mississauga. Right? Going into high school now. So why I say this, gangsta culture and only a very, very few people have even spoken about this, the link from gangsta culture to jihadist tendencies. And it's because of that. It's because of that. It's the violent criminality, it's the bravado and the codes of honor linked to violence. So Meadowvale secondary school is where they're at. In the beginning, a lot of their stuff was 50 cent, 50 quoting gangsta rap, right? And Saad Khalid, you know, his mother died, he literally walked in on the paramedics trying to revive his mother. Now if there's ever a time that people find God, it's when somebody dies, right? So they start a group called the Brothers of Meadowvale. They become more overtly religious. They start to watch, they start to download books like this. They start to watch beheading videos. And I'm completely desensitized to beheading videos. I've watched hundreds of them in 2003 after the Iraq invasion. Zarqawi was very prolific with his beheading videos. And so my little formula at the bottom here is that regularly involved visits to jihadi sites and forums that have ideological justification plus frequently viewing the videos plus the perceived self-duty, Fard Ain, I say severe risk of violent extremism. So nodes of radicalization, this is about people in places, okay? The government does not target mosques.  If I'm following a biker group, you're gonna see me ending up in a bar or a strip joint. If you're following religiously motivated extremists, you're probably gonna be led to a religious place of worship. Not necessarily that the place of worship is endorsing what they're doing, but because the place of worship holds the weekly prayers.  So this is the people and the places. High schools, community centers, gyms, all these are nodes where these sorts of things happen. And of course, online, right? The globalization that's offered by the internet, something happens in some remote village somewhere, you know about it right away. And it's not just the case of these two individuals, but they were talking to Abid Khan from the UK. They were talking to these two, Ahsan Asadiki and Sayeed Harris Ahmed from Atlanta, Georgia. That's a still from a surveillance video that they took. You can even hear it on the video, and I have the video in a longer presentation. But he's like, hold on, let me focus on it. So he's doing the usual, oh, I'm just doing a tourist photo, but really I'm trying to get the image of the target in the back. And that and those surveillance videos were put together and sent off to somebody in Pakistan. And the idea was to show them that, hey, we got guys here who are doing stuff. Why don't you send someone over that's real high end and we can really step up our thing. The plan is simple. Get a U-Haul truck, one ton ammonium nitrate bombs, three of them. That's the Murrah building or what's left of it. And that's exactly what they wanted. And they talked about how the shards from the glass and the cars and the panic, this is the stuff that they reveled in. They wanted to see this. These are some stills from the, I'm sorry, I have the nefa, I had to take it from there. But these were staged events. You can see that he's carrying the flag. It's the Shahada flag. Remember in the Sydney siege, when he put that flag up, it's the Shahada flag. La ilaha illallah Muhammad Rasulullah. There's no God but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God. Some firearms training, some firearms training. This is Zakaria's toolbox. This is what was found on him when he was arrested. The detonators in that black box up there, you can see the yellow wires and the nine volt battery. That's the detonator up there. I mean, he had all the stuff. He had a working detonator. I have a video clip. It's also on YouTube. I've uploaded it Amara, Amara cell phone detonator. And he's got a 15 second video where he took from his phone, showing a working circuit. What they thought was ammonium nitrate. So what they, what had happened was they learned from published information regarding other terror plots that in, for example, in the fertilizer bomb plot, the authorities surreptitiously replaced the material. So they put candle wax on the doors. They took steps to make sure that nobody tampered with the materials, which is of course, one of the risks living in a free society where once you start to blab these details of how you caught these guys, they will adapt. That's them unloading the material. Saad Gaia and Saad Khalid. Coincidentally, Saad Khalid and Saad Gaia, I believe are the best candidates for de-radicalization. They have undergone counseling through individuals that I personally know. Saad Khalid hand wrote a letter to my father. He wants to be involved in a de-radicalization program. We're having some issues trying to get the government, to have us go in and talk to these guys and this and that, but I'm sorry to say, I'm gonna use them as a guinea pig when it comes to that. I just, I'm obsessed with this topic. And I like the fact that I'm able to see it go from this point to that point. So I'm actively trying to get them involved in some kind of program in that sense. Look, and that was it. June 2006, 18 individuals were arrested. It was a big case, very sensationalized. Those are just some details on the chronology of the prosecution itself. Most people don't follow the prosecution. They hear the story and they make up their mind and that's it. So I'm gonna jump into the Syria issue if I may. Just some of the screen grabs that I've been taking. And what I started to do was, I watched the whole foreign fighter phenomenon start. I was on the Syrian war right from the day it began. I watched all this stuff begin. And so basically a lot of this stuff comes from, you'll see even from 2013, I have screen grabs. Just to show you how long it's been going on. It's funny, because when I, in 2014, in late 2014, all of a sudden people are talking about foreign fighters, foreign fighters, foreign fighters using the internet, using social networking. It's like, have you not been monitoring social networking for the past two years? So example, in their own words, right? It's not the number of deaths. It's the number of people watching, right? The idea of terrorism as theater, right? Look, we use Twitter and YouTube as the same time we do battle. I don't have a date on that, dang it. That's 2nd of October, 2013. You know, the ask.fm, right? You could ask questions. What's the best kind of phone I should bring? They'll tell you, right? Don't bring the iPhone. If I join, I says, do I gotta wait? Or what if I have no money? How would I get it? Weapon will be given for free, as well as ammo. After training, you're put on rebalt, which is like century duty type, and then when there's a battle to get the opportunity. They're telling you straight, here. How does it feel like holding a gun? And the more important question, are there good looking women there, right? And think about this, if you look at how sexuality plays a huge role, you could extract that as a theme. You know, and this is a little bit of a side step out. I understand that, and some people call this a controversial statement. It's not. But think about it, you're dealing with young kids who have grown up, you can't talk to women. Don't do the naval gaze nowadays. That doesn't work. You can't talk to women. You can't, it's very unnatural gender interactions. So is it any wonder that these are kids who can talk about the only way that they can get any is to blow themselves up and have virgins in paradise, right? There's a huge sexual theme that plays a lot in this, right? Food, kind of moving away from everyone posts, you know, these usual themes, right? Here are these individuals just posting on food. Kebabs, yeah, we got that. Especially in the beginning when they were really trying to recruit individuals to, you know, the whole five-star G-Had thing. Hey, it's great here. It's great, right? Because in the land of Pepsi, Coke is still king, right? You have to have the requisite shahada finger, right? You can't even pose with the Coke can without doing that. Look, I miss you, old friend. This is a British jihadi. Not as good as Syrian pizza is not as good. Don't go there for the pizza. Abu Dujana, right? Look, I miss my family, of course, with the plight of innocence, right? There's your deprivation narrative. We're doing something good. Now, I made fun of him on this, right? Because he says, I know I upset you by leaving for Jihad. Yeah, ummi, my mother. But I'll make it up to you on Yom Kiyama. Habib, my beloved, I'll intercede for you. Now what he's saying is that, and the hadith says that a martyr can intercede for someone who is designated to go to hell.  So very shallow religious understanding, very shallow. More double standards, right? This idea of, look, only concerns for Assad's barrel bombs. Nobody's really talking about that. Nobody's talking about Hezbollah as foreign fighters or Shia fighters as foreign fighters, right? The hypocrite international community, right? So the whole double standards, right? Imagine that was your own mother, right? Again, moral grievances. How long are we gonna sit like cowards, right? The hero being a hero, being masculine, doing something for the women. Just some profile grabs, right? I mean, good-looking guy. You know, white guy, look at a hate kuffer, right? He follows me still to this day. He insults me sometimes back and forth. You know, we have a hate-hate relationship. You know, Mujahid for life. White guy, 19 years old from Finland. He's still online. We kind of reconnected. He's kind of chilled out a bit. But I've been kind of following him for a long time he was on there. It took me some time to Skype with him and he didn't really know what to make of me, but you know, she's got both the flags, right? The white writing on black background and versus the opposite requisite shahada finger. The other one clicking the mouse, right? The other shahada finger. Just some more screen grabs. So like telling you, al-Jaza'ir and Dar al-Kufr. So he's Algerian and he's living in the West somewhere, right? These kinds of things, right? Mila to Ibrahim, well-known jihadi text. More screen grabs, right? Just to kind of give you, you know, and you've seen this, especially if you look at it, right? Bakia, so he's obviously ISIS guy. Some of them completely blocked me. I don't know why. I'm very honest about who I am. I put it on my Twitter thing. Once upon a time I thought I'm gonna use this information for my PhD, which my professor, University of Liverpool, they're really tight on ethics, so whatever. But I just do this for fun now. Some examples of trying to counter the message. And I've talked about this on other forums and everyone talks about counter messaging and I've been doing counter messaging for years, okay? I hear everyone talking about it. I get very frustrated because I hear everyone talking about we need to counter their ideology. Oh, you're learning that now, are you? Like Al Qaeda's ideology wasn't enough for you to get you on to that thing, obviously not. But here's an example, Lion King Daulah edition. Making fun, like look, Halala's war booty, right? The lioness, right? The idea of taking women as slaves and captives, right? The legitimate Amir, right? Because we've been wronged, you see. We're the legitimate ones, right? So one example. Al Baghdad is cheerleading squad. So this was on Facebook and this was making fun of guys who were, you know, everything go Daulah, right? Go ISIS, ISIS this, ISIS that. Who can do it and who can't do it? Am I an incredible messenger or am I burned? Right? I asked the question out loud for myself and it is true. I have seen that I'm burned. In some instances, I can't be talking to these guys. I'm a kuf, I'm a traitor, murtad, munafiq. That's what he puts there. He is al-murtad, da-murtad, right? That was a picture I had put on when really this ISIS stuff was really kicking off and a lot of these guys wanted to show that they're badass. So I played along, right? And then he gives me all this. So every time I see anonymous views on LinkedIn, now I know. So here's my hate-hate relationship. So for example, this guy, look, leave this munafiq, right?  Right? And I could easily say the hukum of Allah is upon you as a muharib khawarij, a hostile khawarij who should have limbs amputated and be crucified. I would happily accept that. Let me, you know, back and forth, right?  You should use khawarij. When people put out articles, the West really shouldn't tell Muslims what to call these groups and, okay, you don't wanna tell us what to call them. They will tell you what Islam calls them and they are called khawarij.  They put out a 60 plus page attempted refutation that they are khawarij. They've put out zero against we're da'ish, we're ISIS, we're Isil. Do not use Islamic state because I cringe, every time I read an article, the West bombs the Islamic state. You don't want that. So I use this term khawarij. I've been using it. In fact, I started to use that term even before Abu Qatada and Al-Maktisi and all these individuals started to use the term khawarij for them. And I'll give you, and you'll see, the khawarij are a deviant sect and there's a whole thing to that. Here's another exchange with a guy who, just to show you who he doesn't even know, I said, look, the Prophet, alaihi salam, made taqfir declaring them as disbelievers, the khawarij. So he doesn't even know the hadith because, again, low level of Islamic knowledge. So I quote to him from Bukhari, which is the most authentic Sunni hadith collection. That hadith, the Prophet, alaihi salam, talks about the khawarij who would come from Iraq. So I say to them, where did your guys come from? Iraq, interesting. They will recite the Quran, but it will not go past their throats. They're very superficial in their religion. And they will leave Islam. And then based on that, and there's, again, Bukhari because they called me an apostate because I worked with the Western intelligence. So I say to them, no, in fact, you are the apostates. And you can see what Bukhari says about you. During the last days, they will appear some young, foolish people, right? Majority of these guys are young, foolish individuals. Whether they were in the last days or not, that's, you know, something to argue out. But look, wherever you find them, kill them. So what the Islamist groups who are anti-Assad and anti-Isis, their motto now to fight ISIS is that, wherever you find them, kill them. And it's taking it from that hadith. I also give these hadith, legit Islamic sources.  To show you that they are, they are deviance. They are completely out of the fold. They are the most evil of creation.  All right, so you have prophetic license to go and deal with ISIS. I love this one. I say to them, here you go. Now, if you'll see, I'm gonna go back, you know, recite to Quran, but it will not go past beyond their throats, right? Say the best words, but the faith will not go beyond their throats. In hadith usul, you have to look at the texts that use the same phrases. And so, of course, in this one, the same thing, they will recite to Quran, it will not pass their throats. So it's in reference to the khawadij, but look at that, until the Antichrist appears from their later remnants. And the belief is that the Antichrist will come from the khawadij. And this is one of the accusations I throw against them, is that you are Antichrist people, is who you are. Ibn Kathir, very old scholar, he says, look, if they became powerful, they would corrupt the lands from Iraq to Sham and not spare anyone, because in their view, everyone is corrupted and only execution can rectify them.  No, you're still corrupted.  Again, the scholars have not differed that they are an evil people who disobey, they may fast and pray and strive hard in worship. So the idea that we are implementing Sharia is not a proof of their truth. In fact, it just shows you that's exactly what we know of the khawadij, right? Because they explain the Quran to mean what they desire, okay? And everyone has warned people against them. Or this one, I know it's a little, but the khawadij are the worst, they are the dogs of hell. Those people were Muslims, but they became disbelievers.  No, verily, I heard the Messenger of Allah, say this. So when they say, we are Muslims, you're killing Muslims, I say to them, you are not Muslims, you are khawadij, here's the proof that they are not Muslim. That's called graded hasan, it's called a good hadid. So these are messaging, this is messaging that I use to counter the ideology of ISIS. I'm trying to encourage people to use that term, khawadij, that's the one you're gonna get the most response from them. Just a quick snippet, and this is gonna be the last part of my presentation. Anra ulaki, so just kind of profiling the individual if I can use that term, and it is used correctly in that sentence there. Some of the things that I had a back and forth with them on, so in this case it was, look, he says, why do you call yourself caliphate cop? Yet you work for its detriment. And I knew they were gonna declare a caliphate. Can I say that? Because if you look historically, caliphate cop, I brought out before the whole declaration. I knew they were going that direction, right? You gotta know how they think and you'll know how they act, right? So he says, look, I'm pro-Hilafah, I always have been, it's no secret. And I believe in the caliphate. I believe in the caliphate of Jesus Christ in particular. We believe in the second coming. We believe that Jesus will rule as an earthly ruler. Even in terms of Islamic Hilafah, I mean there is a way to do it. Even Al-Qaeda knows that you cannot unilaterally self-declare a caliphate. So, but aren't you the famous snitch, right? And that's the context in which they identify me or whatever.  You know, and I said, and I frame it as an ex-agent, clearing innocence, prosecuting criminals. And then I follow up with Islam is against terrorism and the prophet, the Islam was not a terrorist, he was a source of security for the people. He's not gonna argue with that, right? So then it goes into, you know, there's one verse in the Quran, actually two words from a larger verse that has like 25 words, which says, la tajasasu, it says, don't spy. So they take that and it says, oh look, it says don't spy, you're not allowed to spy. So actually if you read the whole verse, it talks about spying, peeping, for the purposes of rumor mongering, right? Public safety, security intelligence collection is not referred to in that verse, right? Fatabayyanu, to investigate as opposed to tajasasu, look. And even he recognizes it, those are two different words. Now he's in the extremist milieu. There are people who are following him, who are following me, this and that. And what happens is he starts to favorite the tweets. That's a big step for him to take to do that. And I don't know if I have it on my, I don't have it in the other one, but this is the last slide, but I didn't know how long I wanted to make it. But there is another slide where individuals come in from their networks to say, hey, don't talk to that guy, he's a spy. So that's telling me that others are watching this exchange and they're waiting to see how is it being responded to, how is it being viewed. And you know what? I'm not just an ex jihadist. I have other things that I've been doing and I am doing now and I'm trying to, I'm trying to go the academic route. I'm frustrated with the academics because they talk too much. I'm more like, I liked academics, right? Practitioner plus academic. So I'm on LinkedIn, Twitter, I'm still trying to do as much as I can. I've kind of backed off a little bit on the, you know, engaging them one-on-one because I have like a year, two years of like screen grabs and I've kind of, I've become a little frustrated, I'll be honest. I mean, we talk about counter messaging, we talk about all this stuff, nothing's materializing. There's no money, nobody's got money, right? But it's like we're saying that this is the greatest threat we're facing and it is. I consider them to be the anti-Christ army, all right? That's just my Muslim bias. But when the German guy comes back and says, listen, these guys are more dangerous than you realize, when he talks about individuals who are real fanatics in the true sense of the word, they're real fanatics in the true sense of the word.  You'll kill your own mother and some of them have done that, their own family members. I've seen their screen grabs that are coming out now, you know, what is the trajectory going forward? It, you know, remains to be seen if the attack in Paris that we're dealing with today is the work of ISIS. I'm not convinced of that personally, it's too professional for such an attack, but you can see that there have been numerous attempts and numerous attacks already. In Canada, we had the parliament attack, we had one individual drive over soldiers because Adnani said, the spokesperson for ISIS, hit that run over them with your cars if you can. So what they're doing is they're making, they're creating vigilantes.  Right?  Right? They're not mutually exclusive just because, you know, he's unhinged, doesn't mean that the attack that he commits is not terrorism, it's still terrorism. But the mitigating factor is that while he's mentally ill or if he's like right, not so, that's a different story. Okay, this person is insane.  I mean, that guy was diagnosed as being schizophrenic. He was caught up in some of the investigations in Australia, he was charged. I think that was the mitigating factor in his case, and he got out. He got out. He got out and he went to Syria. From the Toronto 18 case, Ali Deere was one individual who was arrested, was in jail, the parole board said, there's a really good chance this guy's gonna re-offend. He gets out, gets a fake passport, goes to Syria and dies, right? So now the question isn't as Anne kind of mentioned as well in her presentation. What are we gonna do when they come back? Because they're coming back. And when they come back, what are they gonna find? They're gonna find people hating on Islam. They're gonna get right back into that single narrative. It's a war on Islam. I got the training, Allah gave me the Tawfiq to go to Syria and train with the Mujahideen, and they envelop themselves in this fantasy world that they live in. So, as Anne also mentioned, what are we gonna do? Disengagement, de-radicalization programs?  I know there are spies who are over there gathering information. When Anne put al-Qaeda was very, very good with their vetting. ISIS opened the doors to everyone, right? And I mean, hey, how do you think they're able to target ISIS folks really well? That's because there are sources there, right? So that's also one way of disrupting those groups on the more pointy end of the stick. But just to finalize and coming back to the soft side of things, I just really encourage that we move forward on these sorts of things. Tackling the ideology and tackling the psychosocial environment in which they thrive. Thank you very much. So, yeah. So, Peter had to leave because of the Paris attacks. He's appearing on CNN, right as we speak, and he asked me to moderate the question and answer. So, are there questions or comments? And thank you, Moby, and that was fantastic. He's a very good speaker, isn't he? And his story is really amazing. I felt so privileged to be able to write it. Yes, please? They've got a microphone here, so. Thank you. John Iskander from the Foreign Service Institute. And one of the things that I am always thinking about, in your case, I think illustrates this, is the sort of the life cycle of radicalization. And I wonder how you reflect on that.   I don't know if that's the right differentiation, but just something that's sort of part of the natural cycle of that.  And just sort of your thoughts on that, because it seems to me at some level, that's part of the key to figuring out the whole radicalization. You probably can't do radicalize a 19-year-old, but maybe the 29-year-old who's married and has a kid, that's different, just your thoughts on that. But thanks again. Thanks, this is a very good question. You know, we are conscious beings, right? Like, we go through our lives, like we choose certain things, we do certain things. It's always a conscious process. At the time that I was doing it, I wasn't self-aware of it as I am now. I'm a lot more, much more self-aware now. And I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I did get married and I had, I didn't, it wasn't just like one kid, and you know, a postpartum depression wife, because in the case of Faheem, this was his problem. His wife was on his case all the time, a kid having a kid, right? Both of them. And there were problems between them, and that's one of the reasons why he always wanted to be away. So maybe in some cases, it's not a protective factor. We have, you know, cases in the UK where the guy's holding his daughter in the video, in his martyrdom video. So in some cases it is a protective factor, other cases it's not, and we'd have to look at their individual circumstances, see why, why didn't it resonate with them. I also look at, you know, the family system that I grew up in. You know, I got my slaps when I was a younger kid, sure I did, but it wasn't an abusive home. Well, I didn't grow up in an abusive home. My father's very smart, very good example that I've taken from now as I have my own family. So there's stability in that sense. So it's easier for somebody like me to become stable because there are a lot more factors supporting stability than instability. And I think religious training, that really, that's what really got me out of it. I was still this way and that way, but it's, for me anyway, it was, and again looking back into my life, it's because I grew up with that. A foundation of that was there.  Are you kidding me? I knew everything at 19, please. And then when I was 21, oh, then I really figured it out. But it's really at the end of it, when I realized I don't know anything, that's when I figured it out, so. It's a good question, John, because basically you're asking, do these youngsters age out of it? And what we're finding, we found in the Chechen case, that older married people got into it and the ideology there encouraged you to be married and have children already. Like that was your Islamic duty.  And we're seeing more and more mid-20s joining with ISIS, as well as the young people. And I think if we look at Mubin's case, it's not aging out, it's not marriage, it's not children.   This isn't even Islam. And took him verse by verse in a very loving and caring way and not only got him out of the group, but changed his thinking. So I don't think that was about aging out, I think that was about relationship. And, you know, certainly people do age out, but I think we're seeing less and less of that and we're seeing older people going in. So that's a concern. Go ahead. Hi, I'm Mike Alvin, I'm an independent researcher. Thank you very much for your presentations, this is a global phenomenon, obviously, which needs a global reaction from drone strikes and that sort of military action down to paying attention to the minutiae of theological argumentation. Who is, is there any sense of coordination between the drones up there and the social media and is a, is a presentation to the Islamic community, such as we saw with the famous Shakespeare letters, are they all part of a coordinated thrust against ISIS? Or is it just the West randomly or the Western governments randomly trying this, trying that, or in your own case, individually trying this and trying that? That's a good question. So I've been interacting with governments, institutions slash organizations, and individuals who are all doing this. There is no central office for coordination. What's happened is that there is a sense of collective responsibility. I think what's happened is it's generated in the public, in the public mind. So, and that's generated by Muslims themselves realizing we need to do something about this is making us look really bad. Okay, we gotta do something, get some PR, try to show people that we're, and I'm just thinking from that perspective. And they're doing what they can. So the letters by the sheikhs, it can be an individual Imam in a mosque deciding to give a khutbah, a sermon saying, listen, this is not Islam at all. So that's being done. This pressure on the Muslim community, people saying, how come the Muslims aren't speaking out enough? And of course, Muslims are being killed more than anyone else. The very recently, Bosnian Imam was stabbed again for the third time, I think it was, because he was telling people don't go. So it's very difficult. So there's pressure from the public, I guess self-generated. Yeah, the public telling Muslims, hey, do something, Muslims saying, yeah, we gotta do something. They do something, might organize a rally, so on and so forth. At the institutional organizational level, that could be like global level NGOs or just national level NGOs. And so they'll do it from their perspective, which could be like community building or community cohesion, building institutions even. You have some Muslim communities that just don't have the institutional capability to deploy these narratives or to be involved at that level. So they're helping in that sense. And even at the government level, what they have realized is, we can't be the ones to do the actual messaging part of the ideology, the religion, the politics of the Muslim world, but we can empower these institutions, NGOs and organizations and individuals. So it's like a, I don't wanna call it a self-created, but like a self-activating sense of responsibility. It's because, and that is the primary thrust, the reason for that is because of ISIS, because of what we're seeing and that everyone is so worried about and everyone feels the need to do something. So a sense of collective responsibility. And go ahead. Hi, I'm Andy Bejarano with the Arab American Institute. I had a question in regards to the CVE programs here in the United States. In 2004, just this past year, we saw the Department of Justice saying they're gonna roll out programs in major US cities. As someone like yourself, you've been in such a unique perspective to that subject. If the DOJ was to ask you what you think is fundamental to any successful CVE program here, what kind of advice would you give? So I was at a conference recently with David Kirsten, the CVE coordinator, fantastic individual. Wow, you got a lawyer, a civil rights guy, immigration lawyer to do CVE, that's excellent. And I know Boston, Minneapolis, and LA I believe is the third city. I'm also gonna be going to an LAPD conference in April. They have a counterterrorism thing. So very good start. The successful component to a CVE program is community empowerment, community empowerment. Not that we expect the Muslim community to solve the problem of radicalization. You are not going to solve the problem of radicalization. It is a natural process of human society. But what you can do, and I always say, because a lot of people are like, the Muslim community's gotta do more and they gotta do more. It's like, okay, hold on. If law enforcement agencies cannot stop that terrorist guy or that extremist guy, you think some random Imam or some random mosque is gonna be able to stop? They're not going to. They don't come on with signs saying, hi, I'm a terrorist, come report me. Doesn't happen. And even if you do report somebody, what do you do? There's a whole backend investigation that needs to be done. People forget that at the community level, they just say, inform the authorities. And that's all that the communities can say. They can't come out and say, yeah, become spies. Yeah, do this and that. They might say, yeah, become police officers, become lawyers, become this and that. So they can only say so much. There's a backend investigation that needs to be done. You need spies. You need people to covertly gather information on covert activities, right? So what I mean by a community empowerment is that the communities take it on themselves to say, listen, our mosques, we wanna protect our mosques from these individuals, from people who are doing this. So I see the CVE program going forward. I've already kind of set the stage for this, is that what I say is that treat your mosques as embassies. See who's who in the zoo? Who's around there? If somebody's out there handing out pamphlets, having unauthorized meetings and associations, you need to not crack down, you need to take responsibility for your places of worship. So my answer to that question is empowering the mosques, the mosques and communities themselves to take it from the Islamic perspective. I'm very pro-Islamic perspective against terrorism. I wanna add to that, there's so many things that can be done. I mean, we can fight on the internet. We can fight in schools. I think in the US, every eighth grader takes a civics class and we should be presenting these ideologies and showing where they jump off on emotions that they don't follow logic and that they're not mainstream Islamic so that we inoculate young people ahead of time. They've already heard the ideology, they know where the holes are and then if they want to decide to accept it, okay. But they've heard it before and it's not hearing it at a time when you're also being shown a video of something terrible that's happening somewhere in the world. So you're very emotionally upset and you don't notice that it's not following a line of logic. But if you teach it in schools and say, look, here's the complete lack of logic and complete lack of support in Islam for this ideology and you could teach it along with other ideologies that have had or not had success. And we have Todd Levinthal here from the State Department. State is starting to fight this on the internet and through prevention programs but we do need foundations to get behind this. We need the government to coordinate and we need resources. Otherwise, it's very difficult to fight. Other other questions? Comments. They're bringing you to the mic. So I'm Kiran Privez, also from the Foreign Service Institute and great presentation both of you. Thank you so much and I sort of have a jumbled set of questions. You mentioned the psychosocial environment and you talked about relationships and I mean, when we talk about devadicalization, we also, we tend to focus on people already at that stage, right? Who are terrorists? But then there's also the larger swath of vulnerable populations and we've seen a couple of decades of and I'm basing this on my experience growing up in Pakistan where you've seen like in the 1980s the sort of the emergence of a kind of very conservative ideology which leads to very dysfunctional relationships within families, et cetera. And you mentioned how your dad was, you know, just the kind of role model that he was but there's so many other fathers and mothers who don't promote that kind of approach. So I guess I just want to maybe have you reflect on to what extent does quote unquote countering violent extremism also deal with that set of population? Yeah, that's a very good question. Plug in for the University of Liverpool who they have a tool called the Identifying Vulnerable Persons Guide, IVP by John Cole, C-O-L-E. And this was crafted in the context of public health which is an important concept because it's not terrorism, it's not security, it's not politics, it's not international relations, it's public health and as an approach and as an avenue to take. So it comes down to identifying vulnerable individuals those vulnerable to recruitment by extremists not necessarily those who are extremists that's a whole other concept. So that would be my reflection that there is a tool out there that does that, it's from the public health perspective, it's got five years of field testing, it's got legal ethical review, it is a document, it is a tool that works. Jeff Wires, thank you, he's a fellow PhD, we're both under the same professor, John Cole, he's an active police officer. He took the IVP and he looked at the risk factors and he applied it to social networking to Facebook in particular and suddenly he was finding terrorists and he actually encountered a dilemma because one of the ethical issues with universities that you can't cause anyone harm but these are terrorists, we need to report them. So it turned into this whole thing where he was able to generate actionable intelligence from applying the IVP to social networking. So, vulnerable. I don't know when he let the authorities know in different countries, Australia, Belgium, I don't remember the name. You name it, UK, everywhere. He let the authorities know, I've been following these people on Facebook and looking at their profiles in the context of vulnerable persons and these people rate really highly on the scale, we thought we should let you know I'm a police officer that I'm speaking for Jeff Wires, I'm a police officer at, we decided at the university our ethic is to tell you so the police went and investigated and found guns and explosives and all kinds of things and did a rest. So even following Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, you can start to identify these people and you can act to have time and save them from themselves and there's so much also that we can do, I mean think about parenting classes, I mean you're talking about families, immigrants, a lot of times immigrants that come from other cultures, they're still in the mindset of slapping their kids around because that's the old ways and you can reach families when they're birthing in the hospital and start to close the gateways to violence, teaching that violence isn't an appropriate way to deal with things. You can teach like I said earlier in schools, it doesn't matter what your cause is, you're never ever legitimate to attack innocence and if you get that message into kids' heads solidly, it's very hard for them then to flip into terrorism. If they're like, wait a second, it's never ever right to attack civilians. If you just quickly on the public health perspective, one thing you should also be wary of is the response by the public and the UK has experiences with this. They're trying to have medical professionals maybe look for signs of radicalization or extremism or whatever and the physicians are like, hey, we're not agents of the state, we're not undercovers, we're not intelligence people. So there's a huge gap in that sense of responsibility. You know, what are you responsible for? You're a doctor, you're there to get, okay, that's great, but the guy's got like acid burns on his hands and it's like you should probably report that, right? So there's a whole problem. But all the issues too of should you report it or I worked with the UK Home Office for a long time, I lived in Belgium and I'd always be going across to them and consulting with them and I told them open a hotline. When Muhammad Sadiqi Khan was preparing for 7-7, his family noticed that he had fundamentally changed after a trip to Pakistan and they didn't know who to call.  But if there was a hotline and you could say, could you send somebody over like Mubin to come and talk to him and say, you know, basically to do the relationship thing like the Sheikh did for Mubin. Brother, you got it all wrong.  I need to just build on that, so which leads us to the additional problem of law enforcement and intelligence resources. A guy's got a sudden change, he's talking like this, he's hanging out with the wrong guys, okay. What does that justify? Can you now start monitoring this guy 24-7? You don't have the money and the resources to do that.  Like what I told him office is, send a psychologist and send a Sheikh and between the two of us, we'll talk him out of it and I said, how are you gonna find these people? I'm like, I'll find them, I don't have any problems with that. Because if you start going around in the communities, you find these people, but who's doing something? Meaningful, meeting them where they're at and talking to them at the level that they're on. Okay, you're right, a lot of terrible things are happening in the world.  It's wrong, but what you're doing isn't the right answer either. And you can talk people out of things. I mean, I've seen people change from terrible mindsets and Mubin's an example, into good mindsets. So there is this thing of disengaging that there is also the reality of deradicalization, but it has to happen in relationship, has to happen out of caring, has to happen out of example. And there's people ready and willing to do it, but we do need a central command and we do need resources for comments. We've been a great audience and thank you for coming out in the snow and ice. Safe travels back home. Thank you.


Yeah, I felt like I knew something was going to come down. But I'll try to appeal and hopefully be able to play for playoffs and serve most of my team next year. Did you understand why they would maybe do something? Yeah, I'm fine with it. The suspension wouldn't be until next year. Yeah. No, I think it's set to playoffs. No, no, no, next year. Do you hope you just get it knocked down or do you get the whole thing wiped out? Yeah, hopefully it gets knocked down. I mean, we had a whole one year to try to appeal and see what happens. I don't know how that process goes. But we just have to wait and see. Do you have any second thoughts about admitting to it? No. Why is that? Why is that? Why don't I have any second thoughts? It is what it is. I mean, like I said before, everybody saw what happened. It wasn't it, you know? Kitchwood's got three that has a value that he got less than he did.   Behind us is over. We'll just move on. Maybe you got more because you admitted it. Does that seem unfair because you were being honest? Because I admitted what? Because I admitted he didn't? You saying that's why?  Like I said, I mean, like everybody saw what happened. So.  So do what? You do need to throw two innings? Nah, man, season over. Season over for me. I'm ready for ready for the lights to come on.  What is it like being on a team that 266 home runs? No, we was just talking about that. It's incredible. I mean, and judge, you know, is out for most of the year. I mean, a lot of the year. So I think we kind of would have shattered that record if you would have been around. But it's been amazing to watch the team was young and, you know, powerful. And it's just a lot of fun to see the display every day, pretty much every night. Do you get excited about what you've seen from the offense lately, knowing that the postseason is right around the corner? It seems like they're starting to click a little bit more. Yeah, for sure.   I think it's clicking at the right time. A little distressing to see what happened to Giancarlo. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's rough. You know, you got hit with it. It's just, you know, one of those things.


The United Nations AI for Good Global Summit is really, from my point of view, one of the most critical and smart events I've seen in a long time together. When something new comes along that has the kind of potential for amazing good and evil, as we've all been hearing over the last couple of days, as artificial intelligence does, there's an opportunity that often gets missed in that those people who are keen on developing that particular instance like AI, they just start developing it. And then nobody gets together and talks about the problems that might occur until after the fact. And we've seen that in other technologies that I won't go into them because we could be here for other much longer than we have today. By bringing together people from civil society, people from technology, people from academia, experts, global experts that pop minds in all the world from all these areas, governments, from education, from the fields of social sciences, created from science. The opportunity, and you mentioned that really thing, to have that dialogue, it gives us the opportunity this time to maybe get it right before we get too far down the road. And really, the United Nations Global Summit on AI for Good will, I believe, be seen in history as one of the most important aspects of getting it right for artificial intelligence. Wikiaumni and Word for App are focused on creating the largest and most complete knowledge repository in the world that will be accessible to any individual regardless of their language or literacy level. And if you've listened to our founder, John Shen, talk any time recently, you've heard him come up with his statement, knowledge is power. So if you look, we've been guided by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals since day one. And we believe that in their solution lies the opportunity for the kind of world that we all want to live in. So how can Wikiaumni and Word for App contribute to that? When you look at all 17 sustainable development goals, you'd be hard-pressed to find any one of them that isn't at some point grounded in knowledge. Unfortunately, in our current world, knowledge is not equitably shared and it is often in an unbalance. If through Wikiaumni and Word for App, we can redress that balance and make the same knowledge as someone who's privileged enough to go to Stanford, make that same knowledge available to someone who's living in a village in a developing country, then we believe that it can make that knowledge-based contribution contribute to understanding and hopefully accelerate the resolution of the sustainable development goals. Isn't it interesting as all through the summit so far and I think everywhere you look, we're talking about this exponential growth of data. Data that's coming and personal data is a big chunk of that and the part that we're really concerned about. So in an ideal world, we have to protect the individual's data. That's just a given. However, for artificial intelligence to actually maximize its impact, the learners have to be able to access the data that it needs to learn. So it's the classic Catch-22. It's been a topic that's been discussed during the summit and continues to be discussed. How do we do that? And really, number one, we have to protect people's data. What does that entail? Well, first of all, we could do something like security by design, but that would be great for maybe systems that are coming, but there's a lot of systems already existing and that horse is already out of the barn. There's no sense closing the door.  So the only way to do that is by putting the proper social government policy and legislation in place so that that can be handled. There are now these movements like privacy by design, security by design that we can follow, and that's helpful. But at some point, the data is just going to go continue exponentially. It's just going to happen. We're seeing it right now. My ideal world, I would see a world where the identifying component of an individual's data is separated from whatever the actual data content is, and the access to that data and the use of that data could only be granted, and I guess we'd use an encryption model or something, but by this individual giving some kind of permission for that joint to take place, so that even if somebody hacked into the data, they could have all this they want. They could even have some of this, but they never know that these two go together. And you look at something like areas like medical research, that would be I think a critical way of going forward. Is that the solution? I don't know if that's the final solution, but I think we have to find some creative way to protect the individual but to enable artificial intelligence to provide the incredible benefit it can and which it can only do to access to a huge amount of data.