Now for something completely different, categories of spaces that are not categories, so categories of spaces that are not categories of locales. My plan of attack is I'm just going to recall some properties of the category of locales, notably that there is a double exponential object in that category. Then I'm going to look at that double exponential object in any category and prove a stability result for that double exponential object. And that will actually give me a class of categories that has this double exponential ability to it. And then the sort of point of the talk is to show that that class, what an example of a category of that form with a double exponential ability cannot be a category of locales. And then if I've got time, I'll put a little bit of sort of meat around the bone and sort of justify saying actually a category that does have this double exponential ability is like a category of spaces. So you can do a lot of topological space or locale theory within that category that satisfies those axioms. So I'm going to be talking about lock category of locales. I'm going to write this for the Ciepinski local, Ciepinski local. And the main property that we have is that for all for all locales x, Ciepinski to the Ciepinski to the x exists. Now Ciepinski to the x doesn't always exist because not everything is locally compact. So what do I mean by that? Well, we do have a pre-chiffunctor, Ciepinski to the x going from lock up to set. So from the opposite of the category of locales to set. And that sends any y to lock y times x comma Ciepinski. So you can define that. And that is the exponential in the pre-chiff category. So when I say that this exists, what I mean is that your nadir of Ciepinski to the power Ciepinski to the x, in other words that pre-chiff, exists in the pre-chiff category lock up comma set and is representable. And when we have that, we write p of x for the double exponential. And it's a property of the category of locales that this double exponential exists. And the key universal characterization, the points of px unwinding the double exponential is that they correspond to natural transformations morphisms in the pre-chiff category from Ciepinski to the x, Ciepinski to the y. And once you have that, you have that p defines a strong monad. And it's also interesting to note that once you think about this pre-chiff category, you can do actually quite a bit of topology. So for example, you can prove that a locale map, f goes from x to y, is open if and only if there exists a left adjoint to Ciepinski to the f. So those are natural transformations in the pre-chiff category, such that the usual Frobenius reciprocity condition holds. And it's also well known that once we can say what an open map is relative to any category, I guess with finite limits or these finite products, we can say what the discrete objects are. So we say that x, in any context where you've got some objects of Ciepinski, x is discrete if and only if the finite diagonals are open. And all of this works relative to an arbitrary elementary topos. So you can have the discrete objects relative to loc, relative to any e, or that's just e again, and it embeds in the category of locales relative to e for any elementary topos. So the theorem that I want to prove, or at least outline the proof, about double exponential ability is essentially saying that double exponential ability is closed under the formation of G objects. So we've got a proposition. So C and it, C just has to have finite products. That's my only assumption on C. So hopefully if nobody's interested in any of the locale theory we'll talk about spaces, they'll see this as an interesting result about double exponential ability. So you have an object A such that A to the A to the X exists in C for all objects X. We're going to have G, which is a group, excuse me, which is a group in C. So it's got products so we can talk about the internal group. Then the result is that A to the Pi 2, A to the Pi 2 X, A exists for all G objects X, A. And just the clarity, so I'm talking relative now to this category. Just use a pre-sheaf notation for it. It has as objects, it has G objects as objects. So a typical example is X and G times X goes to X. And of course the Pi 2 is just A with the trivial action on it. So can you just read the indices again? Sure, this one here. So that's A to the Pi 2, so A with the trivial action on it, A to the Pi 2, A with the trivial action on it, X, X comma A. So for an arbitrary G object this double X exponential exists. So just to go through the proof of that, or at least in outline. So I need to construct this object here relative to G objects. So P of G X comma A is going to be, have as its objects the double X exponential with respect to X. And have as its G action something that's defined through the strength. So the strength of the monad, once you have double X differentiation you have a strong monad. So you have a strength morphism here. That goes from there and then it sort of shouldn't surprise you that it's P of A is how the action on P of X is defined. So to complete the proof we need to show that, let's get that right, we need to show that the collection of G homomorphisms, let me just state that, so to complete the proof we need to say that for all other G homomorphisms say Y comma B that the collection of all morphisms from Y to P of X that are actually G homomorphisms that these are isomorphic to the natural transformations from now A to the Pi 2 to the X comma A, A to the Pi 2, Y comma B because that's exactly the universal characterization of the double X differentiation that I gave you earlier. So in summary at least, this left hand side, well these correspond to natural transformations so they correspond to alpha that goes from Ciepinski to the X, Ciepinski to the Y and then unravelling the definition of G hom in the pre-shift category gives you a particular square, Ciepinski to the G times X, Ciepinski to the G times Y, it's almost sort of what it has to be, Ciepinski to the B, Ciepinski to the A, I'm sorry I realised that I've done a notational error so you'll have to bear with me but my Ciepinski is equal to the A so where have I made that error? I'll just replace it here for good form that's A to the X, so unravelling the left hand side in terms of the construction of that point in terms of natural transformation you have that, that G hom condition you sort of has to be that you need to unravel the definition of strength. On the right hand side here I'm going to apply the following co-equaliser in the pre-shift category so this actually embeds in an equaliser diagram here, right I'll just say what it is, so that's G times Y, the free the free G algebra on Y, that's G times G times Y again the free one and the reason why this is a equaliser in the pre-shift category is that effectively you can apply the exponential to the well-known expression of the algebra Y comma B as a quotient so there's a in the category of G objects we always have this quotient and it's a split we always have this quotient in the category of G objects and if you apply G to that quotient to that co-equaliser you get an equaliser over here because you have an equaliser over here these natural transformations embed into a natural transformation from A comma Pi 2 to the X comma A, A comma Pi 2 now it's G times Y comma M times the times the the identity of the free sorry the free action on Y so you just got M times Z so this embeds in that because of that co-equaliser and the final step in the proof is to observe that this is what I meant by free you've got this left a joint you've got to forget from there that's actually monadic because that's a category of monads over the monad induced by that but it also satisfies Frobenius reciprocity and because it satisfies Frobenius reciprocity this actually extends contravariantly to an injunction in the in the pre-shift categories um so that's comma blank over there so unwinding that injunction in the pre-shift categories we see that these natural transformations actually can be related back to natural transformations from A to the X comma A to the Y because this is the this is the free G times Y so free is on the left left a joint it's now contravariant so that's down on the right a joint and it's gone down and there's a little bit of checking to do that the condition here corresponds to equalising with those two arrows so there's some additional check that I'm not going to go into but that's how you show that if you have an object in an arbitrary an arbitrary category which just has finite products then double exponential ability is is G stable right so the now I want to sort of make good the sort of promise of the talk in terms of giving you an example of a category that has this property but is not necessarily a category of locales so I'm going to prove so I'm going to say G is a open localic group and I'm going to work through some of the consequences of an assumption that G of lock is equivalent to lock category of locales over some elementary topos E so E is some elementary topos category of locales over it what's going to happen if I do make the category of locales with a G accent G action the same thing as that category of locales the first thing to observe is that as I said in the opening remarks that we can embed E as the discrete objects relative to this category and I can do exactly the same thing over here because I have a sierpinski like object in here it's just sierpinski with the trivial action on it so I can define discrete and open and I can look at the discrete objects relative to this category it's a lemma but it's relatively easily to see by the technique that I've just described in terms of describing natural transformations relative to G's back in terms of natural transformations relative to lock by unwinding the theorem I just or proposition I just proved you can actually check that the discrete objects relative to here are the same thing as BG so just the usual thing a set with a G action on it so the objects are just discrete locales so with that information in play we know that these two things there's an equivalence here and because they're equivalent that's that well we know that's a topos anyway but that's a topos it's the same as that topos and therefore they're going to have the same categories of locales but we also know from the well-known Joellen Gini result that for any G there's actually a geometric morphism here which is an open suggestion that's why I assumed that G was open in the beginning that's an open suggestion and it's therefore of effective descent and it's well known that the statement that is being effective descent means that the locales over BG are given by G objects relative to the group that you get by pulling back these two localic geometric morphisms against each other so that pulls back in in the category of autopos is to B of G hat where G hat is the elemerdike as the etal completion of G so this actually is isomorphic to the sorry equivalent rather to the G objects relative to the sorry G objects on the etal completion of G now although I'm missing a little bit of detail you can also show that these these adjunctions are effectively over lock there's a technical aspect of that so using that adjunction in the case lock you actually these equivalences commute with lock and then you can go okay well if these are equivalent over lock they induce a so monad on lock and therefore G is actually isomorphic to G hat so it has to be etal complete so since there are examples of groups localic groups that are not etal complete there are examples of categories here's one if G is not locale complete that has this double exponential feature to it and that was the main result I wanted to get across and I don't know do I have a two or three minutes yeah so to make it a bit more real because given time constraints haven't really been able to make the connection as precise as like as I'd like but okay that's very interesting but that doesn't you know what's allowing you to call that thing a category of spaces there are axiomatic approaches to locales so you say I've got I've got an order enriched category it's got finite products finite co-products co-products are pullback stable I've got a Sipinski object which is an internal distributive lattice it classifies open and close I've got double exponentiation and I've got some other technical conditions around how this behaves interacting with equalizers and reflecting isomorphisms and things like that with those axioms in play you have a category which you can prove that proper maps are pullback stable open subjections are of effective descent the weekly closed subgroup theorem holds the Hoffman-Misloff theorem holds you can do topological lattice theory so there's an awful lot that you can do which I would call locale theory but we've now shown that you can do that locale theory without it actually being a a category of locale so that's why I've headlined it category of spaces that are not categories of locales any questions or comments not a real question but I'm reminded of combinations combinations in computer science okay what's that why you'd have to give me a bit more for the context there I mean it wasn't proper question anyway so the question would have been are there any relations or combinations ensemble I think I'd have to look up I mean just out of interest because it may be related the the double power the thing that I've expressed it really comes from the lower power locale lower power and upper power constructions and those were originally developed in domain theory in in theoretical computer science so it actually it actually come well the sort of the constructions here actually come from theoretical computer science but I'm not familiar with continuations per se can I make one more comment unless there's a another question the the other thing that's sort of even more interesting about it is that you can for each topos I've said that you can you've got your your locales e that works for each topos but you can also for each geometric morphism you can have an adjunction between locales and that adjunction commutes with the double power construction wherever it wherever I've written it down and that actually characterizes geometric morphisms so you can actually embed the category of topos is in this category of spaces and it's it's fully faithful and I guess what this is saying is that it's you know there's more of them than there are of geometric morphisms and I've done some preliminary work and some of the properties of geometric morphisms seem to work in this in this larger category yeah I don't think yeah there's a good question and and you know you could take the view oh well you got it wrong you know you haven't captured locales I I'm actually taking the opposite view I think it's a it's a more exciting and interesting thing and another thing is that one of the key results of topos theory is that when you've got a localic groupoid the points of the localic groupoid correspond to the principal bundles relative to the etal completion but in this case once you've embedded it in this larger large category you get the principal bundles without having to go to the etal completion so my intuition is that it's actually in some sense better yeah I guess my question is what characterizes locales among yeah there's as far as I'm aware there's not a um there's not an elementary characterization and um if you speak to Thomas Stracker I think he presents that as a fact you can't do an elementary characterization I've got some slightly awkward non-elementary characterizations but I've never been able to tie it down and I have been for a number of years so I guess this this sort of coming along last year or early early part this year has made me think okay well actually I'm quite happy to step outside locales and see what it looks like okay thank you


Michael Cruickshank. He's a freelancing journalist and analyst coming from Australia and his talk is Mapping Doomsday using open source intelligence to monitor and predict environmental conflicts. He will talk about investigations and crisis checks purely based on publicly available data and open source intelligence. Please welcome him with a huge round of applause. Hi everyone, glad you all came in here despite the hate. I suppose it will add a bit more. So it's poignancy to this particular presentation. As was mentioned, I'm going to be talking about how we can use open source intelligence to monitor and predict environmental and climate conflicts. To start with on the screen here, you can see three images. All of these images here have two things in common. The first is that they're all examples of data points taken through open sources. And so they form open source intelligence. The one on the left is an satellite image of Lake Chad taken in 2004. And the two images on the right are from Nigeria and Yemen both taken in more recent years. And the ones on the right are both from social media, I think in this case Twitter. The other thing all of these images have in common is that they're all related to environmental and climate conflicts. So when we talk about climate conflicts and climate change, it's very important for us to remember that climate change is not a future problem. When the media talks about climate change, more often than not, it talks about okay in 10 or 15 or 20 years, it's going to be this bad. But we need to remember when we're using this kind of investigation that climate change is already here, the climate crisis is already impacting many different parts around the world. Indeed, scientists say that the world's global temperature on average has risen by about one degree since pre-industrial times. Moreover, even in the best-case scenario where somehow the nations of the world get together and manage to cut emissions in time to make their targets for the Paris Climate Agreement, this will still not be fast enough to avoid significant catastrophic effects from climate change. And among the most catastrophic are these effects of these effects sorry, are the conflicts which are caused by it. Now when we talk about climate change and conflict, it's important to understand that climate change can either be an initiator or a multiplier of conflict. By initiator, I mean that a singular, I suppose, climate disaster or a anomalous climate event caused by climate change can be something that sets in motion at I suppose cascade of escalation that starts a conflict. However, more often than not, climate change serves as a multiplier of pre-existing tensions or conflicts that are already running in regions. So in the case studies that you're going to see further on in this presentation, we'll be looking at two forms where climate change is playing the role of a multiplier. But why are we doing this? The reason is that when we're reporting on climate change, I myself am a journalist and I've reported on both conflicts and wars as well as environmental issues in the past and often it's mentioned as a side note in articles, okay, there's this conflict that's going on and there has been some perhaps talk about how it is linked to climate change. But what I'm proposing today is that there are better ways that we can go about this through doing a more thorough investigation using open source intelligence, we can make this link more clear or disprove it as it may be and therefore, we can make stronger political and media narratives. So here are some visualizations of the kind of link between climate vulnerability and conflict. Up on the screen, you can see a map of Africa. The areas which are shaded darker represent areas of higher climate vulnerability and within the numbers within these red circles represent catalogued conflict events. As can be seen in this image, there is at least a weak correlation between the areas that have higher climate vulnerability and higher amounts of conflict. Moreover, the same trend also appears in South Asia. This time in the red circles you have fatalities from conflict and again in places like Pakistan, Myanmar, you have vastly higher numbers of fatalities which correspond to the higher climate vulnerability. Now here you have a quote from Rosemary DeCarlo who is the UN political affairs chief and she noted that major armies and businesses have long recognized the need to prepare for climate related risks, rightfully assessing climate change as a threat multiplier. But how can we analyze climate change as a conflict multiplier as we discussed earlier? One way is open source intelligence. What is open source intelligence? Also known colloquially as OSINT or OSINT depending on how you pronounce it. What it is is information and investigations based on information that's taken from publicly available sources also known as open sources. Now what kind of things are we talking about here? Well in the last 15 years or maybe a decade or so, there has been an absolute explosion in the amount of data that can be accessed openly through social media. It's probably the most obvious implementation of this, but then you also have a large and growing number of open databases. In the last three or four years you've been able to access vastly more and better quality satellite imagery than in the past. The kind of things that two decades ago only nation states would have access to. Now a single person sitting in their bedroom can have access to what militaries had 20 or 10 years ago. Moreover, you've got things like position monitoring systems. Many large ships and aircraft can all be tracked actively on certain platforms. Now once you have all of this information, this can be boiled down into investigations and used for certain things. Among the more common, I suppose, strategies that you find open source intelligence being used or applied with are geolocation, which you can see an example of on the screen. This is from an investigation that I did into a bombing in Yemen. And this is an example of how you can take a single image, identify visual elements within this image, compare that to a satellite image, and work out exactly where it was taken. This is very useful for proving that something did or did not happen. And even when you're going from a source, which isn't particularly good in this case, Mint Press News, which is a particularly conspiratorial website, in my opinion. However, the information contained in the image is not, it doesn't matter whether the source is propaganda, the information contained can be proved. So this is why techniques like geolocation are useful. Similarly, you have chronolocation, where you use other elements within images to determine the time that it was taken of. The most obvious way of doing this is via shadows in the position of the sun in the sky. And then finally comparative monitoring, where you monitor a region or a particular city or a town or even a very small area over a long period of time and observe changes. Here are some common tools which are used within open source intelligence Obviously, Twitter is a really good source. So tweet deck is a great way of accessing huge numbers of tweets at once. Facebook groups often have a whole lot of hidden information that is, I suppose, semi-open that one can access if you join the group. And this is also a very good source of information. Then you've got telegram channels, similar deal, location-based Snapchat searches, which is also sometimes interesting because people often feel that Snapchat is a more personal thing and they're not sharing it with as many people. But sometimes you can, again, search based on location. Then with satellite imagery, the most obvious tool is Google Earth, which is very powerful, especially given that you can access historic imagery. You've got WikiMappier, which is kind of like Google Earth, I suppose, or Google Maps. However, any person can annotate what they're seeing on the map. And also you can access different kinds of satellite images often, especially in places in the Middle East. Bing Maps, for some reason, has more up-to-date satellite imagery. So using WikiMappier, I should say, you can switch through the different imagery providers until you find one that has up-to-date data. Then you have more commercial systems like Planet and Digital Globe. Both of these are paid services. However, often content can be accessed through them without having to pay huge amounts of money. Then one final one, which I'm going to go into quite a bit of depth on how to use today, is called EO Browser, which is very useful, especially in the context of climate conflicts, because you can use environmental monitoring satellites and the data from these satellites in order to track huge areas of the globe and some of the climatic changes that are happening both on a macro and a micro scale. On databases, you've got things like ACLID, the Conflict Live Events Database, which I'll also use later in this presentation or show you how to use. It has information and data points on almost every conflict zone around the world, and it's incredibly detailed, and I would highly recommend anyone doing sort of investigations into any kind of armed conflict, really look into these data sets. If you're looking at anything kind of related to U.S. military equipment, NSN now is a platform where you can look up the serial numbers of particular items and to try to find out where they're from, who makes them, etc. You've got business registries, which is also interesting if you're doing a more business-focused OS investigations, and then one final one is leaked ID databases. There are a large amount of databases of people's IDs, which can be accessed online. Whether this counts as an open source, I suppose, is up to your opinion. However, it can be used to make your investigation more powerful if it can help you find a missing link in an investigation. Then finally, two other really important tools. Reverse image searching, which I'm sure most of you are familiar with. It's basically just searching an image and finding images that are really similar, and that way you can find how genuine an image is when it first was published, etc., and often find similar images that look like it that can help you find where it was taken. Then finally, you have a tool called SunCalc, which you can see up on the screen, and it enables you to see the exact position of the sun in the sky at any given point in time. You've got visualized there the position of the sun in the sky now over this town. I forget what it's called in German. So, now let's go on to some case studies of how we can actually apply these tools. The first we're going to look at is the water crisis in Basra in Iraq in 2018. So, the story that was reported, and it did get a fair amount of attention, was that there were a series of violent protests which turned into riots and then crackdowns that killed at least 15 people in the Iraqi city of Basra, which is in the south of the country. It's a predominantly Shia city. Now, during this unrest, government buildings were torched as well as the HQs of pro-Iran Shia militia and the Iranian consulate in Basra. Now, we'll get onto why particularly Iranian areas were targeted. And then finally, a bit later in the presentation, I should say, and then finally, the catalyst for these riots or protests was allegedly poor sanitation due to a lack of clean water and government corruption and mismanagement. However, what actually caused this poor sanitation in the city that drove this protest? Well, during the summer of 2018, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which flow into a waterway known as the Shatt al-Arrab, which Basra sits on, the water coming from these two rivers decreased in flow. And then this set of a chain of events where because of the low amount of water coming down the river, saltwater from the Persian Gulf intruded its way up the Shatt al-Arrab, and the area around the water around Basra became too saline for water treatment plants to handle. Indeed, the water wasn't drinkable, it wasn't even usable. And this is one of the key catalysts that got people out onto the streets. Now, during this period, the Iraqi government blamed a series of dams in Turkey and Iran for these low water levels. The first is the Elisu Dam, which is up here in Turkey, and then the other is the Daryandam, which is approximately here in Iran. The Arian Green here used the watershed for the Tigris River. And these here you can see the images of the two dams. Both were completed very recently. The Elisu Dam in Turkey is substantially larger than the one in Iran. So if we wanted to know, did these countries really start filling up these dams and cut off the water supply to Iraq, how would we do this? The most obvious way from an open source intelligence perspective is using satellite imagery.  So using this approach, sorry, yep. And then other questions that we also might want to ask are how can we establish a chain of events that lead from these dams if they were cut to protests in Basra, and then finally what role did climate change play? So now, onto these satellite images that I spoke of a few seconds ago. Here you have images taken from the planet constellation. They're three images of Elisu Dam. It may be difficult to see what's going on here, but the main structure in the middle is the dam wall, and the low side of the dam is on the bottom of these pictures. They're all North South orientated. June 30, which was at the beginning of this crisis in this unrest in Basra, you can see that there is very little water on either side of the dam. And then by September 2, the image in the top right-hand corner of the screen, the water level has not changed very much at all on either side. Then finally, by December 15, you can see the dam has begun to fill, and there is more water on the north side of the dam than there was in the past. You can actually access vastly larger numbers of these images that more or less confirm the same progression, and you will see the same thing happening over a longer period of time. But from these images, what we can say is that during the height of this crisis between June and September, this dam was not filling. This is despite the fact that the Iraqi government was continuously saying that they were. Moreover, this actually congrues with what Turkey was saying about this particular dam, in that they'd originally planned to start filling it in June, however, decided to delay the filling of the dam because of requests from the Iraqi government as well as trying to, as a gesture of goodwill towards Iraq. So what of the Iranian dam? There's another set of four images from the same source, the planet constellation. And this dam is interesting because it's got a very obvious spillway, which you can sort of see here, and then a lower outlet pipe. And these are the two ways that water can go from the holding pond down to the river below. And the river that this sits on is the Suwan River, which is a tributary of the Tigris River that eventually flows to Basra. Now, in April of 2018, you can clearly see water flowing down both the spillway as well as the lower outlet. Then by June 13, little water is coming down the spillway, and a smaller amount of water is also coming down out of the lower outlet pipe. Then this is when it starts to get interesting. By July 22, the water level in the dam has noticeably dropped. There isn't any more water coming down the spillway, and indeed down here where the lower outlet pipe would be, you can see that the water level is also much lower and much of the river is dried up. So most likely there is little or no water coming out of this pipe. This trend holds true through to September, where again you have a lower level of water and nothing coming down the spillway. So based on this, could we say that this entire crisis, this riots and all these people dying in Basra, was this caused by this dam being shut off? Was this man made? Well, yes, it is man made. However, it's bigger than just these dams. Here is another kind of sort of open source intelligence that you can use. These are images all taken from social media, and they all show different sections of the Tigris River in early June. Important facts about all of these images. They're all taken in areas that are north of the confluence of the Suwan and Tigris River. So if the water was lower from the dam in Iran, it should not affect the water level in these pictures. However, the water level in them is all very low. So from this we can say that the water level coming down the river or the amount of water coming down the river was already low, and that even if this dam was shut off, the dam wasn't the primary cause of this particular crisis. But what was? The obvious answer here is the drought in the region. You've got a series of different quotes here from sources talking about the extent of this drought. Firstly, in the winter of 2017-18, they had one-third less rainfall than average. The Iraqi Minister of Water Resources blames this on climatic conditions and lack of rainfall. Then you have another source, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs talking about a six-year-long ongoing drought characterized by erratic rainfall. And then finally, a scientific source from the Journal of Earth Sciences talking about how climate changes due to global warming have influenced the weather there and have caused a general decline in precipitation, not just in the last few years, but indeed the last few decades. So this is a long-term trend which reached an acute point in over the winter of 2018 that reduced the water levels and then caused this crisis. So what conclusions can we make from this particular case study? Firstly, through open source intelligence and investigation based on this, we can say that the drought in Iraq and upstream countries played a significant role in the unrest. The drought itself is linked to climate change. Moreover, the blocking of flow from Dharian Dam in Iran likely exacerbated this, and indeed the closure of this dam was perhaps also linked to this overall drought. Iran is in the same drought conditions, or at least it was at that time, as Iraq. Finally, it's important to note that this event did not happen within a vacuum. Iraq is a war-torn country with very weak institutions. It's divided across religious and ethnic lines, and even a small thing can act as a multiplier that suddenly catapults it into further violence. So within this context, it's more likely to be able to say that climate change played the role as a multiplier rather than an initiator. Let's look at one further case study. This time, I'm moving to Nigeria. We're going to talk about attacks by Fulani herdsmen.  The Fulani herdsmen have been grazing their cattle further and further south, bringing them into conflict with farmers. In Nigeria alone, the death toll from this violence is over 3,500 people. The violence itself is often blamed on climate change due to low rainfall in the Sahel region. And because the rainfall is lower, it's commonly thought that the Fulani herdsmen are moving their cattle further south into more lush areas. So we want to do an investigation into this. What are questions we need to answer? Again, we're looking at are the attacks related to climatic patterns? Does violence speak, does violence spike in periods of low rainfall? Was the intensification of violence in 2018 caused by an anomalous climatic event? One further thing that I forgot to mention is that this year there have been significantly less attacks than in 2018 where there was a massive spike of violence and then in 2017, again, it was lower. So was that particular spike caused by an anomalous climate event? That's another question we want to answer. So how do we do this? I mentioned earlier a tool called EO Browser. Now, this is a platform that enables you to access imagery from a huge number, well, not from a huge number, I suppose, from a limited number of remote sensing environmental monitoring satellites. And the data from these satellites can be visualized in a number of different wavelengths or different things where you can see things like pollution or water or in the case of what we're going to do here, something called Normalize Difference Vegetation Index. And what this does is it enables us to see effectively how green an area is. And we can use this relative greenness as a proxy for how much vegetation there is and also in a place which is fairly arid and not irrigated, like the Sahel, we can also use it as a proxy for how much rainfall there is. And through EO Browser, we can access this via the Sentinel-2 satellite. So what areas of the country do we need to focus on and to look at how much vegetation there is, how green it is, when it's looked at from satellites? So up on the top of the screen, you've got a map of the area, the general area where Filani herdsmen live. Then as you can see in Nigeria, it's sort of the top third or quarter of the country. Then what I've done using EO Browser is I've drawn a rough sort of polygon over the area where the Filani approximately live. And then I use the tools that this program has in order to look at hundreds or probably even, yeah, probably hundreds of individual satellite images. And then graph over time how much greenery there was, how much vegetation there was, and also by proxy how much rainfall there was. And the graph you can see on the bottom right hand corner of the screen. This is over, I think, three or four years. And quite clearly, there are seasons that you can see. There are peaks every wet season. And this can be seen in a sort of cyclical pattern. Part of the reason why there are data points missing during this sort of period where it's going up into the wet season is because I've used a tool that enables me to remove all of the images that have high cloud cover. And as you'd expect in the wet season, you're going to have lots of images where you can't see anything because it's covered in clouds. And I've removed all of those data points. This slider bar that you can also see in this image can be increased and decreased. And you can see to sort of see more or less data points. However, once you start including all of the images, you get a lot of outliers. So we've got the data on over the last few years, this point of time that we want to look at, what the relative levels of greenery and rainfall in this region were. Then we need to compare this with the number of attacks and conflict or the amount of conflict in the region. So we turn to another source I mentioned earlier, which is the armed conflict location and event data project. And what I did then or what anyone can do is just go to their website and then you can generate huge databases of all of the recorded attacks by one group, by two groups, or by region, or another field of your choice. And then you get all of this data. It's displayed kind of like what you can see here. They've got information on fatalities. You've got information on things like where exactly the attack took place and what the sources were, et cetera. And then through all this data, you can get an idea of the intensity and the deadliness of a conflict over time, which is what you see here. This is for 2017, 2018. And it's the number of philani attacks and casualties over this two-year period. And as you can see, this spike of violence in 2018 is very prevalent here. It's very obvious. And then finally, in the bottom right, it's kind of difficult to see, but this is also a map of the agricultural calendar of a typical year in Nigeria, pointing out some of these sort of important seasons. And it's worth noting here that the livestock migration, which particularly pertains to the philani, is between February and August. So let's compare it all. We've got the index of vegetation, which is a proxy for the rainfall. And then we've got over the same period of time, fit to the same scale, all of the attacks. And from this, we can see some interesting things start to happen. Firstly, there does appear every wet season to be a decline in the number of attacks. And given that this conflict is driven by herders, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, moving their cattle further south in times when it's dry and there's not much vegetation in the north of the country, it would make sense that during the wet season, when there's more vegetation for their cattle to graze on, they will not be as frequently in conflict with pastoralists further south. And then in the dry season, you can see that the relative levels of violence are higher. However, this 2018 spike in violence, was it precipitated by an anomalous event in terms of rainfall or the lack of vegetation? Looking at this data, it doesn't look to be the case. There is not any significant reduction in the amount of greenery in the time preceding this spike of violence. So, what does this tell us? It tells us that more likely than not, this particular spike in violence is not related to a climatic cause. Rather, the actual, the spike itself or this acute amount of violence was instead instigated by a political development in the region. And indeed, this is backed up by, I think, a study done by Crisis Group, I believe it was, that looked at this particular conflict and came to the same conclusions through a very different kind of methodology, more by talking to people on the ground. However, the overall conflict is driven by the area drying out. And this is something which has been catalogued over a long period of time. So, some things need to be considered here. Firstly, that based on this remote sensing data, the attacks are driven by low vegetation and low rainfall. And indeed, the continuing desertification of the Sahel region will intensify this problem. However, up in large spikes or outlying years, can't always be linked to particular climatic events. Because clearly there are political factors at play. And then given all of this, it's more, I suppose, more correct for us to say that climate change only appears to be playing a role as a background driver of this conflict, which is interesting given that often the media narrative overall is that the single cause of this conflict is climate change, which is certainly a large part of it. However, there are other factors at play. So, how do we use these techniques and apply them into the future if we consider that climate change and climate conflicts will get worse? The first thing we need to know is where to look. According to the World Economic Forum, there are three primary factors that make countries vulnerable to climate change and climate conflicts. The first is a history of conflict over the past five years. The second is that over 40 percent of the country is involved in agriculture. And then the third is that over 20 percent of the population is excluded formally from political power through discriminatory institutions. Now, you can see two maps on the screen. They show the confluence of climate exposure and fragility risks. And in the second map, you can see the sort of hotspots marked out. Most of them are in places like Central Africa, West Africa, as well as the Middle East and South Asia. It doesn't appear on this map here, however, I would say that likely the Philippines also is another spot that it would do well to keep an eye on because, firstly, it's got significant amounts of internal conflict that's already been going on for many years. And secondly, it's incredibly vulnerable to climatic disasters like typhoons. Then, when we have these places that we want to look at, then what can we do? We can choose one of them, for instance, and apply a number of approaches. Some of these approaches are things that we've already used in this case, studies. Firstly, you can use remote sensing to develop a relationship between weather and conflict and extrapolate predictions. In the last few days, it's been talked a lot in the media about these fires in the Amazon and whether they're caused by policies of the Bolsonaro government or if they're caused by a drought or something like that in the region. Such approaches that were used for the case study on Nigeria could similarly be applied there to look at whether it really is anomalous in terms of weather or whether political factors are driving this instead. Another approach we can use around the world is using satellite imagery again to monitor day-by-day changes in large assets like dams, reservoirs. Also, you can use things like you can look at crop fields and see how much growth there has been in food and then use that to monitor on a very, very large scale whether that's going to cause disruption to food prices in a region. On the issue of food, you can also use social media to monitor key terms and keep an eye on things like food prices in a country. You can monitor over time particular accounts to verify that they are indeed in the region and using approaches like geolocation to make sure that you can actually prove that they are indeed in the place they claim they are. Similar things can be applied to water quality. I didn't include it in the presentation but there was a very good image that was shared on Twitter of someone who was actively monitoring the water in Basra during the height of this crisis and pointing out how polluted and saline it was. These kind of images could also be applied to a number of other places. Finally, you can use, as I mentioned, things like Akled have also location for all of these events. Over time, especially when you access these kind of huge data sets, you can map the location of all of these attacks and then you can see if they are changing over time and use that to see if that corresponds to perhaps changes in climate or political changes or other things. This is also a different thing that can be applied. Based on all of this, I hope I've given you a good first introduction to OSINT, open source intelligence and how this can be applied in terms of climate conflicts. Is there any questions that anyone has on these topics? Thank you very much, Michael. If you would like to ask a question, do we have two microphone angels in the room? Please come to the ASL parts and ask your question, line up there if needed. We have the first question, please. Yes. Hello. Thank you for the presentation. Very interesting. Have you considered doing some starting some kind of project or collaborating with somebody already who could map this stuff over time and essentially point out that an internet using coffee drinking first world place is about to be overrun by a certain event because every time, every year, something moves closer and closer to where people with internet are, so to speak. It's certainly an interesting concept. I suppose the problem with this is that if, like, given that these changes are happening over an accelerating time frame but still a very long time frame, it's really difficult to make sort of accurate predictions beyond a year or two. We can say that, you know, okay, in a certain amount of time, there's going to be a greater likelihood of conflict in a region. However, at such long time frame, it's very difficult to say, okay, in this year, you will be, there will be this many climate refugees. However, we can project it and say that there's probably going to be like an overall increase in conflict and then each conflict then might generate X number of refugees and use this to make predictions. But again, it's quite difficult to actually do this in such long time frames. Thank you for the answer. The next question over there. Please go ahead. Hello. Have you predicted any upcoming events yourself already in the future? Like any catastrophes or something? I mean, okay, this, when you're doing this kind of thing, it's not like you're some Nostradamus who's saying, okay, this will definitely happen. All you can do is measure overall levels of increasing risk and say there's a higher likelihood that this will happen. I mean, when we're talking at things at time frames greater than a year. However, there is an opportunity that in cases where you can see, when you've already established a relationship between the climate and conflict or between climate and political disruption, once you've established that relationship and then you notice that there is a significant anomalous event like a drought or flooding, which has caused significant disruption, you can generally make a fairly good prediction that this will indeed at maybe a few weeks from then or a few months from then lead to actual violence or political disruption. So on those kind of time frames, it's possible to make better predictions, but longer than that, all you can really do is probabilities. Thank you. To my friend over there, your next question. Hello. Thanks very much for your talk. It seems like this is a lot of manual effort to to do the calculations and to check if where and how much conflicts are affected by climate change. Is there a way to do an automated monitoring of some sort? Do you have any ideas on that? It's a good question. It's possible that you could. I'm coming from a background of journalism, so I suppose from like my sort of go-to approach would be doing it from like doing it human-based, doing it myself, do you know what I mean? Hands on. However, there probably is a way of automating at least some things, especially a lot of this data crunching, data sets and things like that, and then making a way to display all of these events on a map. I mean, these, if we go all the way back here somewhere, if you remember where these maps were, where we could see Africa or South Asia, these were all generated through sort of algorithms, which were just plotting every single event, and these are live maps. My computer is very laggy, so unfortunately maybe these will come from the screen a bit later, but these are live maps where you can zoom in and they get more and more detailed as you zoom in. The screenshots that I showed you were just sort of an overview of what's going on, so it is possible to automate this. However, the analysis itself, which is kind of the important part, generally has to be done at this stage by a human. This was the map that I was talking about. This is on the source down here. You can access this online, zoom in and sort of see all of the events that are mapped. Okay, thanks very much. My friend over there, your question. Thank you so much for your presentation, Amir. I wanted to ask you, since you have to monitor a lot of social media platforms, how do you deal with the discourse of privacy and surveillance? How do you protect also the privacy of the people while you're doing this act of investigation? That's a good question. I mean, the sources, the people who are sharing all of this information are doing it publicly. I'm not, generally, when you're doing open source intelligence, you are not collecting information that's on people's private pages or something like that. Moreover, you're generally not trying to identify the people who are actually taking the footage unless it's absolutely critical to the story, because the story, unlike traditional journalism, where it's all about your sources and the seniority or the trustworthiness of your sources, whereas in open source intelligence, it's all about the content itself and whether that can be used to prove something. It's less important that you need to link the information to an actual person. Generally, when you're doing an investigation, it can be avoided. There are, of course, cases where it's not, but in general, it is avoided. Thank you for your answer. On my left hand side, please, your question. Hi.  Do you feel like the tools are lacking and could be improved or combined data sets together? Certainly. I mean, if you could automatically combine something like the two data sets that I combined, the EO browser and the armed conflict location event database, if those two things could be combined, then it would be a very powerful tool that would speed up these investigations immensely. The problem is they're owned by two different people, so actually combining the two would probably require either a lot of money or a lot of negotiation. Okay. Thank you for taking your time and answering all the questions. Oh, one more? Different. One more question. Okay. Thank you for a nice presentation. I loved it. Besides the verbal part, also, your slides are amazing, the way you did the layout, but also the content of the slides. So I'd ask, will you be making the slides available like for us maybe? I can do that. However, some of them have images that aren't for use, so I'm not sure how that works from a rights perspective. If that's something that's possible, then I can share them. Okay. Thank you so much. Finally. Thank you for answering all your questions, all the questions here. And will you still be available at the conference if people have questions further on? By all means, contact me. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much, Michael.


Baiklah, mari kita officially start the class. Hai, Kiran. Semua orang kata, hai, Kiran. Kata-kata, hai, Kiran. Selamat datang. Selamat pagi, Ariella. Terima kasih. Semoga anda melakukannya dengan baik. Ada beberapa malam yang baik. Ya, tidak. Selamat tidur. Selamat tidur dan bangun awal. Selamat tidur dan bangun awal. Apa? Baiklah, jadi kami telah belajar sedikit tentang perjalanan dan perjalanan. Apa yang telah kami berdiri sejauh ini? Ia boleh menjadi lebih kuat. Dan anda duduk di depan dan saya boleh dengar anda. Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Ya, saya sedang mencari kamu. Teruskan tangan dengan terima kasih. Jadi, bagaimana perbezaan yang berlaku antara Yadah dan Toda? Terima kasih dengan kejutan. Sebelum kamu menerima sesuatu yang kamu berikan terima kasih. Jadi, itu adalah Toda. Ia datang dari ruang yang sama. Dan kemudian, kemudian, Krishas berkata, halal untuk bergerak. Ia adalah halal. Apa lagi? Untuk bergerak, untuk bergerak. Okey? Bergerak, untuk bergerak. Semua itu betul, bukan? Itu semua di dalam ruangan kamu, bukan? Saya cuma yakin. Saya tidak yakin. Okey. Halal, terima kasih, Krishas. Apa lagi? Apa? Apa? Apa lagi? Apa lagi? Apa lagi? Kamu tahu kenapa saya minta itu lagi dan lagi, bukan? Saya perlu dengar lemahnya. Hehehehe. Hehehehe. Ya, ia bermaksud pembentangan, bukan? Pembentangan segera. Pembentangan segera. Pembentangan segera. Apa lagi? Pembentangan segera. Apa lagi? Tehila. Tehila adalah sebuah pembentangan yang baru, sebuah pembentangan yang spontan. Baik? Dan kemudian Barak. Apa itu? Pembentangan segera, kamu bawa ke bawah dan kamu bawa ke bawah. Jadi, perbezaan antara, apa yang Ibu bantangkan untuk pembentangan? Shacha. Ya, shacha. It's nice, isn't it? Hehehehe. So, that is falling face down. Completely with your face to the ground. But the difference between shacha and Barak is Barak is, like I mentioned, is more of a military kind of a posture.  So, you are looking at the king. Your eyes are always on the king, but your body is completely low. So, that's Barak. And the final, the seventh Hebrew word for praise. Everybody say Zamar. Zamar. Okay, now what is that? That's the music of praise. Thanks, Krisha. Posture of praise, music of praise. Yup, yup. Right? So, did any of you get time to go back and go through some of the scriptures that's mentioned there and some of those reflection questions? No, sir. We were too busy. We had too many assignments. Of course, we didn't make time for all of that. Of course, okay. Yeah, I would encourage you to do that when you can.  So, it's not there as an assignment. There's no grading and whatnot, but then if you just want to personally grow just to go a little bit deeper on the topic of praise, just to study, read the word of God, it's going to help you, okay? So, let's go to the next chapter, the foundation of praise. And we're just going to go a little bit deeper and deeper into the topic. And I hope that's okay. Alright. Foundation of praise. Once again, it starts off by saying praise in the dictionary means to commend, to applaud, to express approval or admiration of to commend or to applaud. Okay. So, we've covered all that. We have a basic understanding. And then it goes on to say that we praise God one, directly and two, indirectly, okay? So, directly is by extolling Him or expressing our admiration to Him. That is direct, okay? So, in praise and worship or in when you're all alone at home and whatnot. So, you are telling Him to Him is like, God, you are awesome. You are magnificent. I praise you for so and so, right? You are directly telling Him, that's praise. I mean, indirectly is when you testify about who He is and what He is in the congregation or to one another, right? It's like, hey, you know what God did to me this. All me this week He came through, right? He provided when I needed a financial breakthrough He did.  Are you guys with me? Yes? Yes, if you're with me, say yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Right, awesome. So, let's just dive a little bit more deeper and just see the foundations of praise what it really has to say. Okay, let's turn in our Bibles to Genesis chapter 35. Let's go to Genesis chapter 35. Oh, wait, no, sorry. Genesis 29. Apologies. Genesis chapter 29. Okay. So, the scripture in your notes, it gives only 2935 versus 35 but I want to read from verse 30. Is that okay? Genesis 29 versus 30 onwards. Alright, here we go. Genesis chapter 29 versus 30 onwards. Then Jacob also went into Rachel and he also loved Rachel more than Leia and he served with Leibman still another 7 years. So, he interesting choice of words if you want to underline you can is he also loved Rachel more than Leia. Okay. It's building up guys. It's building up. When a guy likes another girl more than another girl, you know something is brewing. So, verse 31, here we go. When the Lord saw okay. When the Lord saw when the Lord saw that Leia was unloved he opened her womb but Rachel was baron. So, Leia conceived and bore a son and she called his name what Rubin for she said the Lord has looked on my affliction. Okay, now therefore my husband will love me. Verse 33 then she conceived again and bore a son and said because the Lord has heard that I am unloved he has therefore given me the son also and she called his name Simeon. Okay, so verse 33 she then she conceived again and bore a son. Here it says because the Lord has heard. So, the first one is seen second one is heard my cry. Okay, therefore giving me this son also she calls him Simeon verse 34 she conceived again and bore a son and now this time my husband will become attached to me because I have born him three sons therefore his name was called Levi. Okay, so let's pause before we go to the next verse before we go to the next verse so what is happening here we all know the story of Jacob it's not just a Sunday school story it's a beautiful story in its own way we all know what happened to it how Leban Leban whatever tricked him he originally wanted to marry Rachel but then didn't work out that way so he gets married to Lea he didn't like Lea he didn't want to get married to Lea but then happened like stuff happened and so it's very clear about what the Bible has to say so eventually he gets married to Rachel but tell me this any woman want to have a love of her husband yes or no sure no maybe I know guys most of you are single but we all understand what love is we understand relationships it's a basic thing it's a foundation of any relationship is to feel valued is to feel important etc so it's very obvious it's very evident Jacob loves Rachel and it's here the word says Lea knew but she was unloved almost borderline being hated or ignored when has anybody here felt unloved ok maybe not alright but the thing is it's not a pleasant it's not a nice feeling ok especially if you're in the house there's no escape ok I know I'm being hated I know everybody is ignoring me and to make it to make the matters worse my own husband is ignoring me he doesn't care because he likes another woman ya are you all with me it's quite intense it's very easy for us to just read and just love Rachel more and not care anything about what's happening to the actual text the people in the character and most often what I like to do is I like to put myself in their shoes and that's how you do a character study a character study is very important so you put yourself in Lea's shoes you all also ok and you being ignored you being unloved and what not it's not a very a nice place to be and she says ok what can I do to make to get the attention of my husband you see the tragedy in that story a wife has to do something to get the attention of her own husband it's just more tragic than you think it is but then she names the text starts off by saying the Lord saw ok the Lord saw so she names the first son Ruben which simply means seen ok now it means 2 things 1. the Lord has seen me in my misery and also saying hey Jacob see look I have born you a son will you not love me now look Jacob because Rachel didn't give it says Rachel was baron right ok ok so that's the first thing second thing goes on to say is nothing happened she bore him a son affection of Jacob didn't seem to change anything so she bore him another son and he names him simian simply means heard but it goes on to say the Lord has heard my cry and then she's also saying is like Jacob will you not hear my cry of love for you will you not love me now I have born you 2 sons will you not hear me out will you not hear how much I love you are you with me and I want to take just a little bit of time in this text because I want us to understand the magnitude of what is happening is not just a name on the board or a piece of paper it was actual people real human beings they're not mythical beings that just existed some years ago and what not so Jacob still no attention nothing simian ok nothing's happening she bore him another son the third son Levi means attached she's going before him once again and saying I have born you 3 sons will you now get attached to me will you love me now still no sign of Jacob's love for Lea a man is pretty strong and very focused on who he wants and who he wants to love and so can you imagine Lea's plight right how many times in life we don't have things go our way we don't always get things that we want right it's like there's something that you want you're so focused on that and you forget everything else that's happening around you yeah and that's what life is isn't it you don't always get what you want that's the reality of life maybe you'll get everything what you want but it doesn't happen so but that's the plight of Lea she's desperate to win her husband's love she's desperate she's not giving up she's born 3 sons ok it's not easy ok but then then something happens so we read verse 34 she conceived again and said now this time my husband will become attached to me because i have born him 3 sons therefore his name was called Levi verse 35 and she conceived again and bore son and said now i will praise the lord therefore she has called his name Judah then she stopped bearing so we've arrived ok after she stride everything in her hands everything in her ability everything what she can do and she stride to win her husband's love nothing has happened so something or someone has taken her focus for far too long and she's right she has a very genuine reason to feel the way she felt oh what is this bad feeling like i said she's his wife she had all the right to feel the way to win her husband's love but then when she realized ok you know what for far too long my focus has been misplaced my focus has been elsewhere i don't care anymore i'm going to pause now i'm going to praise him so what is the significance of all of this i mean to make again a long story short jacob and brings his family back and you know he is about to get attacked by isaw and what not but along the way in genesis chapter 35 verse 19 genesis 35 verse 19 if you read it says so Rachel died and was buried on the way to ifrata that is Bethlehem genesis 35 verse 19 it says Rachel died so they were going from one place to another and so she died on the way and she was buried somewhere in Bethlehem ok now let's go to genesis chapter 49 verse 31 genesis 49 verse 31 now this text doesn't tell when lea died but it says there they buried ibrahim and Sarah his wife there they buried Isaac and Rebecca his wife and there i buried lea so somewhere along the way after lea named her son fourth son Judah when she focus shifted we don't really get to know much about the story after right so the story just moves on it's just progressing and maybe somewhere along the way the feelings towards lea jacob's feelings towards lea must have changed right he must have become more affectionate along the way the reason i'm saying that it says here in genesis 29 that Rachel was buried somewhere like home ok but lea like for someone to be buried along with their ancestral you know in the cave or in the tomb it's a great deal in their culture you have to be there i mean Jews took their family tree very seriously right so the thing is the whole point is why am i talking about death then buried and stuff like that is when lea's focus changed from just this natural thing to just fixing her eyes on god god chooses to honor her in a way no man can right even when she is dead and buried and gone the story tells something without saying communicating verbally right and so that's what this is the origin of praise guys this is such a beautiful story of you know how praise actually just gets started in this story so a side note here is i think a life lesson for us is like i said we will not always get things that we want in life but praise is not a feeling right praise is not a feeling okay it's not not for you to say okay this morning i feel like praising god and so i'm gonna praise him but it's a choice that you make when all hell is breaking loose everything is coming crumbling down on you right and say okay now is when i'm going to choose to praise him right praise and worship is a choice that you make are you guys with me so far yeah right so when you read Psalm 114 it's a lovely piece of scripture Psalm 114 verse 2 let's say how are you guys doing online all good okay Psalm 114 verse 2 says Judah became his sanctuary and Israel his dominion right Judah became his sanctuary and Israel his dominion sanctuary is what that it comes from this Latin word called Sanctus means a holy place right Sanctus so sanctuary means a holy place right the house of god which was used interchangeably a dwelling place so this verse says Judah became his sanctuary means the praise became his dwelling place right so and that's what the bible losses is right he was chapter 22 verse 3 let's go to Psalm 22 verse 3 okay alright Psalm 22 verse 3 but you are holy enthroned in the praises of Israel can somebody else read another version of it or whichever Psalm 22 verse 3 anyone just feel free thank you somebody else please verse 3 so i particularly love this scripture this verse different version says yet you are enthroned on the praises of Israel you are in the midst of the praises of Israel right and then the previous Psalm that we just read Psalm 114 verse 2 it says you have made Judah or you have made raise your sanctuary okay if you want to find God his address is praise okay because where is he dwelling he has made Judah his sanctuary that means he is resting there and Psalm 22 verse 3 he is enthroned on the praises of his people another version says he inhabits the praises of his people and there is another translation that says he consumes the praises of his people right consume it is so powerful so he is not just he is enthroned on the praises of his people when he inhabits the praise he is not just inhabiting the praise that you are saying he comes and consumes all of us right he inhabits the praiser as well not just the praise but the praiser too you with me let's go on there are a bunch of scriptures as mentioned there in your notes you will see in page 13 in your pdf or the notes i hope it's page 13 it says it is good to praise the lord and make music to your name almost high everybody say it is good to praise the lord and make music to your name once again say it is a good thing right it's a if it's a good thing that means it's not a it's not a it's not a bad thing right so it's a good thing to praise him so praise him someone 47 verse 1 tells us that praise is beautiful and agreeable praise for his mighty acts some 150 verse 2 efficiency 1 & 2 we should be to the praise of god's glorious grace first Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 16 & 18 this is the will of god okay yeah everybody who is praying for god's will to happen in life what's your will what's your will kind of this is the will of god that we might everybody say praise him that we might it is a purpose in everything give thanks right Philippines chapter 4 verse 4 says Philippines chapter 4 verse 4 and the lord always and again I say rejoice rejoice rejoice no that's alright and again I say rejoice right some 118 verse 24 I'm not sure it says this is the day that the lord has made I will rejoice and be glad in it I think every day when we realize that praise is a good thing you will wake up and say okay instead of saying but you have two choices you can say oh man this is such a boring day this is or or you can choose to say this is the day that the lord has made regardless of how your situation looks like and I will choose to rejoice and be glad in him right naeha chapter 8 verse 10 I think it says the lord is my strength so praise when you praise him you don't feel like praising you don't praise him in your own strength you realize that it is his joy that fills you and you choose to praise him and then he begins to strengthen you to praise him more okay let's go he is full of glory we praise him because he is full of glory he is great we praise him naeha chapter 2 verse 20 he is wise and wonderful and powerful sorry saam 89 verse 1 he is merciful and faithful any time you will see the words that ending with full when we say he is merciful it simply means he is full of mercy when we say he is faithful he is full of faith when we say he is wonderful bible says he is the wonder of wonders such a beautiful thing he is the wonder of wonders our eyes cannot get enough of him he is the one who saves us saam 18 verse 46 keeps his promises to the kings pardons sin gives us our daily food and the list can go on i've just mentioned a few things there's another scripture let's go to aizayah chapter 60 verse 18 aizayah chapter 60 60 verse 18 anybody 18 you should call your walls salvation and your gates praise so again we need to understand just a little bit about the ancient times is the gates was like a stronghold like the panchayat system you have all these elders sit under a tree and all these mustaches this should happen today that should not happen today all of those things used to happen at the gates of a city so gates were a big deal if you can break through the gates that means you're conquering the city so it's saying here you shall call your gates and i'm immediately reminded of shout for joy Psalm 100 verse 4 i will enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise Psalm 118 verse 19 let's look at that quickly Psalm 118 verse 19 open for me the gates of righteousness i will enter and give thanks to the lord so we read all of these i mean like i said the list can go on i've just mentioned a few verses in the notes like i said in the earlier classes that we praise him for various reasons we praise him because he's a provider a protector, a guide shepherd etc he's powerful, he's merciful he's full of faith, he's faithful he's wonderful, he's beautiful he's awesome, he's mighty we praise him for his mighty acts, his deeds we praise him because he's been good in our lives and then now we shift our eyes towards the heavens and we see that i've mentioned before heaven has only one reason and that he is worthy amen i want us to go to the book of revelations now book of revelation chapter 4 just a beautiful beautiful chapter revelation chapter 4 i'm going to read it for us probably the whole chapter so it starts off by saying john's vision of god's throne it says after these things i looked and behold a door standing open in heaven and the first voice which i heard was like a trumpet speaking with me saying come up here and i will show you things which must take place after this immediately i was in the spirit and behold a throne set in heaven and one sat on the throne and he who sat there was like a jasper and a sardis stone in appearance pause what color is jasper? it's almost like a regal blue and sardis stone in appearance there was a rainbow around the throne in appearance like an emerald take time just absorb these words there was a rainbow guys like how cool is that okay in appearance like an emerald around the throne were 24 thrones and on the throne i saw 24 elders sitting clothed in white robes and they had crowns of gold on their heads and from the throne proceeding slow down roshan okay verse 5 and from the throne proceeded lightnings thunderings and voices seven lamps of fire were burning before the throne which are the seven spirits of god before the throne there was a sea of glass like crystal and in the midst of the throne and around the throne were four living creatures full of eyes in front and back let that sink in okay it's not this cute little angel with arrows you know the first living creature was like a lion the second living creature like a calf the third living creature face like a man and fourth living creature was like a flying eagle the four living creatures each having six wings were full of eyes around and within and they do not rest day or night saying holy holy holy lord god almighty who was and is and is to come whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne who lives forever and ever the 24 elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever and cast their crowns before the throne saying you are worthy o lord to receive glory and honor power for you created and by your will they exist and were created amen so one of the most beautiful gifts god has given us is the gift of imagination everybody say imagination okay the word imagination comes from the word imagine and the word imagine comes from the word image it's from the same word we get the word magic also the same word we get word magi three magi came from the east you with me a lot of things in one word guys magi magic image imagine imagination okay i love to imagine things i love that song i can only imagine have you heard of it i can only imagine what i would feel what it would look like to stand before him but only imagine isn't it why am i saying it so powerful okay how many of you have seen horror movies i'm not going to judge you yeah so what happens is and sometimes at least some of the people that i know or that night that they've seen i don't want to go in the room alone in the dark once more why because you're imagining something because you have the image of what you've seen in your head yes like a white nun or something i don't know that's the thing apparently now so right in this image of ghost or a monster with an upside down cross so you have that image in your head and you are hesitant to go into a dark room because you're imagining so that's imagination is so powerful for us and the images we haven't seen heavens open we have not seen all of that maybe you have but there's this library of images god has left for us you know what that is and he's painting this image as you read okay there's this throne that was set in in my feeble mind i can only imagine so much but i take that it's better than having no imagination and this is throne and he looked like jasper and sardius and i think what imagine a throne and this is a throne made in heaven have you seen some of the anybody here seen a palace or been into a palace i was very very young when i went to mysore palace but i've forgotten most of it but you've seen some of the earthly thrones i mean it looks pretty neat like did a good job like yeah you know imagine a throne in heaven and this painting a picture here john in the revelations and around the throne was a rainbow in appearance like an emerald i don't know how it would look like but it has to be the most coolest thing ever you with me i mean we say that he is wonderful the bible says he is wonder of wonders i don't doubt that you can just begin to see isn't it sometimes we just read these verses too fast and we just move okay you know but it's in god's throne room and all of this is happening and the 24 elders and this come down to those angels crazy angels okay the one with the face of a lion face of a man, face of an ox and with the face of an eagle without rest eternity holy holy holy is the lord god almighty pause we sing songs holy holy holy different songs yes or no yes okay let's imagine one more time imagine a lion a heavenly lion roaring holy katie jope singing holy holy imagine a lion roaring holy ya okay let's let's go to isaiya 6 let's get another picture of the throne room are you guys with me or sleepy if you are sleepy and if you are here it's okay i still understand i hope you guys on lion are doing well if you have any thoughts or questions please put it in the chat section okay we are four minutes to the break i'll just quickly finish this section because i feel like it's okay isaiya 6 in the year that king uzaya died i saw the lord sitting on the throne high and lifted up and the train of his robe filled the temple about it stood seraphim seraphim is a plural and serafa is singular and they mean burning ones that means angels are on fire okay each one had six wings with two he covered his face with two he covered his feet with two he flew another and said holy holy holy is the lord of hosts the whole earth is full of his glory and the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who carried out and the house was filled with smoke okay you see the choice of words here verse one itself in the year the king uzaya died i saw the lord seated high and lifted up and the train of his robe filled the temple there's another translation that says the train of his robe was filling was present continuous that means filling it's not filled so the way izaya is choosing these words is izaya back in the day was known as the prophet of prophets most of the prophets were known kave,waring,camelskin and eating wild honey they did not have great reputation the prophets but izaya was not like that he was related to the king uzaya that means so he also had he also had access to the throne room of the king okay so he was like one of the ministers right so so he could see all these ministers the royal thing and what not and he's saying the train of his robe the train of his robe every king wore a robe now the length of the robe was determined by how successful the king was how big his empire was,his kingdom was okay now we pause and we say izaya is saying the train of his robe was filling that means there was no end for the reign of his kingdom are you with me and so all of this is the throne and that's what's happening here and and that as a suspense we'll pause we'll go for the break and we'll resume the next session cool,have a good one i guess i'll see you all in 10 minutes have a good break