Welcome everyone. I'm excited to have you all here at the cutting edge of film traffic capital pooled donor funds for impact investing and as founder and executive director for strategic development and impact assets I'm pleased to welcome you to the conversation here with three founders you see on the screen here Gina Klein of smart job fund Derrick Morgan of hometown fund I am nation and king and group and John Mulligan of carbon labs and I'm not going to do like a whole bio thing I'll spare everybody that might slip up two two bits is ignore descriptions of your work but just a little headline item you know Gina's been a high-powered lawyer champion the rights people with disabilities Derek in addition being a venture partner also NFL linebacker with the Tennessee Titans I think that's pretty noteworthy John the CTO of Wayfair so you all got like a checkered past filled with all sorts of fun stuff but what what we've got here today is a really diverse group of innovators bringing catalytic capital to cutting-edge impact investing fees and just flashes disclaimer here for a second to mention we're not someone securities in this conversation today and that impact assets of the organizers the types of programs discussed here for donor purposes or for program-related investments from foundations just those are the clip notes on that incredibly dense disclaimer slide there and to start off I want to kind of seen set on donor advice funds aka dafts people may have heard them refer to us they've approached 150 billion dollars as a segment in the philanthropic endowment space and they take in cash and other asset donations including all types of appreciating securities and they give tax deductions up front to donors for the purposes of making grants to end charities and other charitable projects over time and they give donors much of the functionality of a private foundation but do so with kind of a benefit of that significant scale of a common platform where everybody's getting together in a community they invest those assets before the end grant making the charities or the project work but our thesis here today which will be reflecting certainly that of impact assets is that they are largely untapped market segment for catalytic capital and impact investing and they really mostly are sitting in the mattresses of the markets and not doing a heck of a lot of proactive good in the world so we believe strongly it's time for what I would say is a kind of a widespread movement and up swell of support towards increase and creative impact investing and dafts and we give them the tax deduction we think that they should be be moved quickly and and affirmatively towards high-impact gap-filling strategies in the United States and throughout the world in fact kind of the bottom here impact assets is a minute on it it's a firm I founded about 11 years ago spun out of Calver Impact Capital and where I was for like a decade before that and it's a nonprofit firm with more than 1.6 billion dollars in donor bias funds from about 1700 families and institutions and it's built completely upon impact investing it's made 100 sorry it's made 700 private debt and equity investments into funds and companies and community development of microfinance institutions and actually did 200 of those just in 2020 so that's about four per week that we're doing out of impact assets donor bias funds pushing towards one per every business day of the year and we're going to be at about a hundred hundred more maybe before the end of the year and might even break a thousand by the end of the year if we've kind of built about the largest institutional portfolio in the US by number at least of impact investments under one roof so what are we talking about today we're going to be walking through this pool donor fund model and and one that's focused on impact investing and strategic projects where innovative leaders like the folks who join me on this call are able to leverage this off-the-shelf architecture to create really fast strategic constructs that have deep impact capabilities and this allows impact investing infrastructure to be kind of rapidly created to benefit almost anything you can imagine from climate solutions to equity and opportunity for any target group the examples on this call today will be outlining in some depth how they translate that to their work and if you look at this graphic flow basically you have contributions from individual DAF accounts and new contributions for multiple donors can all be pulled into one tax deductible donor fund multiple donors can contribute basically at any level $10 credit card of these credit card on donations or multi-million dollar grants can all be put into the same pool and that allows these these pooled assets to then be put into investments into a whole range of private debt and equity funds and companies loans to nonprofits and also program program expenditures in pursuit of a charitable thesis and by partnering with DAF sponsors like impact assets initiatives that are seeking to raise capital can provide existing and new supporters kind of this way to invest with tax deductible philanthropic dollars through a pooled fund and it's it's something that we started playing around with maybe six or seven years ago sort of anecdotally and last year we actually launched a few initiatives one around COVID-19 one around wildfire resilience and one about racial equity and economic opportunity sort of test out the architecture a bit but we've opened it up to work with what is already just this year turned into about a dozen initiatives in the last well maybe through what court two four of last year three of which are represented here and we're gonna hear a bit more than them in just a minute but the real power of this model I think is that there's there's really no set of costs like there's no time to market building structuring it's it's all just right right out of the box it's kind of elegant architecture for impact investing and we're excited to do our part to try to popularize this for the industry and work with amazing partners like those that we're gonna hear from in a minute and and I think we've got a lot of a lot of use cases here that we can kind of plumb and we're gonna hear from three of them and I think I just say as we're talking through these models really encourage you to put some questions into the chat box thing there and also just kind of like let it swirl around in your head and think about like you know what is what ideas does this give you for the things that you care about the initiatives or organizations you're involved with or as funders like what what excites you to fund in this kind of a model including the three groups that are that are joining us here on this panel so let me pass it over to you Gina I think we're gonna call you first and let you walk through a smart job and I have a couple slides graciously sent in so why don't you take it away thank you and you know we're so grateful to be included on this panel with such other tremendous panelists but also just be included in the conference so thank you I'm the founder and CEO of smart job which is a new platform that is dedicated to leveraging impact investment to close to close the disability wealth gap which is a relatively new vertical I know it's new to the impact assets platform and we're so happy to be working with him in this type of structure it's exactly the structure that the disability market needs in order to find signal in the market test the market let me back up and say I spent the first 15 years of my career as a plaintiff's attorney representing workers with disabilities and at the Department of Justice enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act so I went all over the United States representing workers and the problem the unique problem that we have here and that we collectively including our 13 board members who represent some of the most deeply track record leaders across disability and the disability groups that we work with every day what the problem we're trying to solve is one of a disability unemployment crisis there's nearly two-thirds of working age people who have disabilities in the world who are not working that's you know nearly roughly half of those that live in long-term poverty in the United States are people with disabilities we're talking about more than 40% of the same population unbanked underbanked so we're talking about really deeply embedded and historic inequality and particularly separation from the labor market the thing that is very interesting about the pandemic in the last 18 19 months is that we are experiencing tremendous and historic disruption to work it should ostensibly play to the favor of workers disabilities because after all they were the very first people in the world to demand flexible and remote work and yet they've had such a conspicuous absence from the labor market and from venture capital and from traditional avenues of risk capital and investment that they are not participating in the gains of the economic recovery and even recovery these are the first workers in the world to be fired during the pandemic and the last to be rehired so there's nearly a 60% group of people in the labor market who are designated as low and moderate income that have disabilities what we're doing at smart job is we are sourcing the the greatest ideas that we can find in the world Tim they fall into four impact categories and we're sourcing them to this pulled fund as various opportunities for upskilling and re-skilling work as applied to disability to support and allocate philanthropic grant capital to make recommendations to deploy grant capital to those accelerators incubator programs around the world that are led by disability and disability entrepreneurs to deploy catalytic capital to the next generation of work related technologies that will allow people with disabilities to join the future of work but it will also allow their designs which are catered to universal design to serve other workers without disabilities but to really drive tremendous changes in the way and the modes of working and then the final category of investment that we're really interested in sourcing deals for is seeding underrepresented founders with disabilities and these are founders that have tremendous ideas and that lack access to traditional capital the you know Tim is showing a diagram the essential structure of our fund the reason I said it was very beneficial to be working with impact assets and this particular pulled style fund is is helpful and useful is that we are often confronted in conversations with showing a use case for the tremendous signal in the disability market and this is allowing us the experimentation and both both us and our donors the experimentation in the market as between things that would be targets of investment for traditional capital but this have been overlooked versus things that are truly where traditional capital would not go it is the structure of this is allowing us to take those educated risks and to do it with within the rubric of measuring upward mobility for this workforce when we're talking upskilling and rescaling workers we're talking about the types of credentials that workers are not getting from public workforce systems around the world civil societies around the world have a multi-billion dollar spend country by country on workforce development for people with disabilities it's vastly over represented in spend on manual skills training what we're doing with one of our four categories is we're trying to find targeted investments in the type of upskilling that will materially change the entry level wage of workers with disabilities and we've seen quite a lot of opportunities just in the little while that we've been doing business in that area of upskilling we're also looking at really tremendous innovators around the world we've talked to and worked with hand-in-hand with accelerators around the world at this point who have really perfected this idea of disability as innovation not as deficit or as a medical model there is something that is inherently unique to the design thinking capabilities of people who solve problems every day to get through the front door to access the building to to to undergo activities of daily life with support there's a design thinking feature that creates universally designed products and services it's really something i want to put a big asterisk around when we look at the consumer spend of people with disabilities worldwide we're talking about between eight and ten trillion dollars which has been assessed by an economic evaluation just came out of canada there was discussing this as roughly the size of china and the european union in terms of the disposable spending power of this group and yet technologies have not been ideated or designed with this group in mind historically that we're looking to leverage we're not only testing the market with catalytic potential of a pool fund which achieves scale but we're also testing the designs that would be purchased by that really robust market that's looking for new consumer technologies at work and we know everybody's looking for the infrastructure around work right now to make it more flexible this diagram in particular is showing that we have an evergreen feature to the fund which is essentially allowing us to deploy the capital to make recommendations to impact assets i should say for for the deployment of capital but when there is upside on for instance a venture deal or an equity investment it rolls back into the fund in order to multiply the initial charitable contribution and spread the effect of that contribution to more and more and more entrepreneurs so it has this unique built-in feature of an evergreen fund out of a daf it also has the unique attribute as donors are involved for them to experiment that you know the the unique timing of the contribution is separated from the idea of smart job advising providing donor counseling to build a portfolio and a plan a giving plan providing the information sourcing the greatest ideas in the world that will materially impact employment labor market participation but allowing the donor the time and our curated insights into the field to decide which of these four impact categories that we're talking about most interest them in the beginning and middle and end of their giving plan and so this is our strategy for using Tim's very ingenious you know flexible structure here which is allowing us to prove as a use case that there is signal in this market it's in a number of different categories and there are some substantial targets for investment that will create traditional risk adjusted returns there are other targets of investment intentionally in this portfolio where traditional capital has not gone there are some things in the portfolio that would look very traditionally like philanthropic allocations of capital to non-profits but everything that we are procuring in the menu from around the world is geared and catered towards those impact those reportable measurable impact criteria that really are about building participation in this changing knowledge-based economy in the kinds of jobs that are going to advance workers into upward mobility and I have to say you know coming from my previous life when you evaluate under a microscope a public spend on workforce training we spend a high value of multi-billions of dollars on on workforce development without regard to the measurable outcome of those services particularly as it relates to the disability market and many many many folks around the world are cheering us on because we're adding a disciplined integrity to wanting to measure the outcome in the inter-relationship between charity and driving economic participation that's great and it's sort of almost like I'm going to be digging an acumen fund in a bottle it's like you've got all these diverse donors coming in deploying it um Derek let me switch over to you and walk us through a bit of about what hometown fund and iam nation is up to after you unmute or we could switch to john next can you guys hear me yeah there you are Derek got you on me okay can you uh start that over to him so I couldn't hear you for the last I was just I was just inviting you to sort of walk walk through the iam nation hometown fund model and and sort of the work of the the pool fund initiative and network that you're building and kind of how it applies to this conversation Tim I'm not picking you up maybe go to John and then I'll try to get the text forked out on my side but I'm not hearing okay we'll switch to John I didn't want to talk about carbon wearing labs um John you you sound great Derek so I can hear you John okay well you sound great so why don't you go ahead I I promise I think everyone else can hear you maybe you just can't hear Tim yeah um I'm assuming we're talking I didn't get the the queue up but um basically we've been um I've been talking with impact assets and Tim for maybe just under a year now I've personally had some experience with donor revised funds um just throughout my my time in the league and looking at different ways to be more intentional um with how I allocate my money how I strategically invested um and over the last nine months or so been really putting down the groundwork for our community that that we've launched called I am nation and essentially what I am nation represents is a community of business minded entrepreneurial minded professional athletes that really have ambitions beyond the game um believe it or not when you're in a locker room you're sitting right next to your teammates um but you're hyper focused on on a result and a goal week to week you know Sunday Monday whatever you play who's your opponent what is their scheme how can you attack and what are their weaknesses and you're collaborating on that um but a lot of the times you don't get to talk about other things outside of that realm so I may not know that my teammate is investing in you know multifamily real estate or this guy is looking at venture deals and we just don't have that environment that is conducive to to sharing ideas and collaborating and you know I just I feel it is such a missed opportunity because when do you get that much social influence and financial um you know influence and wealth in a room where you're not doing anything but going out and playing with a pig skin like for me that's that's a missed opportunity and I think a lot of the guys we find ourselves in silos a lot of the times um and we're just kind of off in our silo doing our own thing but a lot of us have similar interests and I think that there's a really a powerful element of a collective um moving together with intentionality and so what I am nation where has you know basically laid the the the foundation for is a means to organize professional athletes and to become a resource platform of sorts um where guys are trying to get you know education on different things whether it's investments or how to be you know more intentional with their philanthropic efforts and how could we collectively um you know collaborate amongst ourselves and so when we started talking with with impact assets around you know how can we get creative with deploying capital with leveraging resources um we started to go down this lane of okay let's let's create a a mechanism for our members to aid not only contribute money towards but to essentially come alongside of you know players causes so if there's a you know you know we call it the hometown fund a lot of us come from areas that are underserved overlooked um that don't get a lot of attention but that need investment that need intentionality um and need a lot of work and so for example i'm from a place called coachfield pennsylvania it's an old still town outside of philadelphia um still the the economy came and went with the steel industry um but there's a lot of work that needs to be done there and a lot of the times it may not be a market rate deal that's going to work in an area like this so you have to become creative with how you put together if we're talking about real estate how how we put together capital stacks right because there's got to be some soft money that's involved in these projects to make them all come together financially and so having uh you know an asset like uh you know a donor advice fund more specifically a hometown fund where we could say to our members hey look you want to go back into your hometown and eliminate food deserts okay great we have a we have an asset for you we have a tool for you to come alongside you and help you achieve your goals and accomplish what you're striving to accomplish and it's a really creative source of capital that can be deployed on like you said Tim at the beginning it's very flexible right and so a lot of our members have this this desire to go back and and and i i always talk about it like we do football camps right we do back to school drives and those things are great but how do we take it to the next level how do we uh create a new playbook for players to go back to their hometowns the places they live the places they come from and to really deploy creative capital for for causes that they that they feel strongly about and so i'm really excited about the partnership that that we've established and we're early on but i think that there's a lot of runway for us and really to create a model of sorts so that we can exemplify and point you to say look here's a way that you can really make change and do some meaningful things and i think it's really exciting too that you're you're sort of working on the amplification model of of of all the fans and the folks who care about the players too so there's like it's it's got a whole sort of network play that's really distributed and i think powerful and pretty unique so we're really excited by as we've learned more and more about what you're up to uh john why don't you pop in and completely different you know you're coming from a completely different place with with uh decarbonizing what you're interested in decarbonizing why don't you tell us about that and how you've been thinking about the fun absolutely um thanks for having me everyone so i one of the problems that the world's focused on right now is decarbonizing the global economy or really actually ensuring that you know by 2050 we're no longer adding any more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere which is an enormous task and it's actually scarier than many tasks because every week you delay and every you know gram of carbon dioxide you put in the atmosphere today is one less that you can put in a tomorrow and your path there it's not just that you you know i have to get there by 2050 but nature already passed a balanced budget amendment on the carbon budget and so one of the interesting things that's happened though is that a very small portion was a recent study that came out a very small portion of the world's philanthropic money is spent on on climate in the large part that's because i it's very difficult to know exactly what to do and though there's a great number of sustainability initiatives and ESG investing has taken huge steps forward how to actually deploy the world's philanthropic effort against what is not only critical for you know creating a livable planet but also from a justice perspective because those who will be you know hurt the worst by by you know worse than climate are those who are underrepresented and so it's you know it's a it's a terrific problem what we did was to set out to figure out where we could help unlock the barriers to decarbonization so we think of it as there being three components one of which is technological that's where we started i was the the CTO at Wayfarer in a you know a serial tech entrepreneur and involved with a number of other companies like Bombas and a few others that i have been very successful i at creating change but this is you know a really different question so there's you know technical question how do you do carbon dioxide removal how do you create substitutes for high carbon products that we all consume every day how do you create compliments for a you know for a low carbon future what is a you know future low carbon world look like from a technical perspective that's one you know barrier there's another barrier which is really governmental as i think anyone who's watching dc this week is as well aware and there's another that underscores that which is political which is how do we actually create the will the political will to you know support truly the changes that need to be made in order to have a low carbon future and i like to describe that as you know the creation of the single issue of decarbonization voter which is there are very few of i as of as of today and i think for understandable reasons because it's so challenging to explain all these complex issues so where we started was really as i you know with that first pillar with a technical statement to say we're going to be a vc when i started this two years ago there was a gap climate technology ventures were underfunding and i have times of change in the past two years there is more money flowing into climate tech than i've ever seen go into a space which is based on a presumed future move by governments to make carbon scarce or expensive right these companies won't actually you know a lot of them will not make a terrible amount of money and won't certainly want to achieve venture returns and let's govern ads and so we've we've moved and i'm sure we'll talk about that a little more but we've moved from being what was really going to be a philanthropic vc into being a catalyst for action on both the governmental and and political so now a lot of the work we're doing is to work with NGOs and think tanks on projects to envision what a low carbon future will look like from an agency perspective in dc and and globally and we're putting together plans for legislation and actual prototypes really of what agencies will look like they will enable a low carbon economy and a low carbon future and what intergovernmental cooperation will look like so that's really a policy act and then i what's much more nascent is the political and i don't mean from a 501c4 but i mean actually from a you know from a tax director or an issue advocacy orientation the question of how do you actually create affiliation groups that are focused on the creation of votive blocks that will i that will support these low carbon futures within government so really those are the there's the three legs you know to this point i actually i started with a number of other tech founders who've you know the family offices and others i you know who i know who have been able to help me raise the the initial capital but really more and more what i'm doing is actually when i say catalyst i truly mean it i'm helping create shovel ready projects not physical shovel ready but actual policy shovel ready projects and helping money move directly from foundations from family foundations and foundations proper to these NGOs and policy shops to do the advocacy work and so while i often put up a bit of my own money actually very i very often don't have to spend it because what i've done is i've catalyzed a connection between these NGOs and traditional funding organizations and so i'm doing trying to do my bit to help i begin to move the needle on what i started with that question why so little philanthropic money was going into truly climate-related spending so i anyway we've we've changed quite a bit but i we've maintained our focus on really the goal line i which is that you know 2050 balance budget and i'm getting all the way there and the three the three pillars we started with and we've shifted over time in terms of um actually what we're doing and it's been a short time so i'm a tech entrepreneur i'm used to shifting pretty fast and the structure is actually pretty remarkable because it's enabled me to do that um and i focus much more on impact than i would have i started a traditional organization traditional philanthropic organization and that's been a huge asset to our ability to to move quickly and achieve things yeah i was really uh i mean i thought that was really noteworthy just in our work watching you evolve in the early you know in the early months here is is to see how you you weren't locked in to you know the way it was supposed to be and had set up all these systems and infrastructure that that only worked one way and so i think that as you i just alluded to you know one of the advantages of this sort of asset light if you will kind of platform architecture is that you don't have to be right necessarily all you know from the get-go not that we're any of us are in that right the get-go but you know but the cost of the switching costs the and then also the inertia and you know that that sort of that that feeling like you have to keep going down a train track because you put the train on that track uh i think you've been really um you know really uh exemplary and just and just rolling with the punches of what you're you're learning as you go um and i think that's a testament to you know not just the initiative but also to the the good fit on the architecture um just just a question but just in terms of um where do you see this going i mean you sort of alluded to it in the in some of the pivoting you've been doing but like when you look out three to five years what and relative to this initiative and sort of the resources you want to bring and how you want to kind of internationally focus them more and more surgically to higher impact like what's where do you at what's success for carbon wear labs so i mean success in terms of outcomes would actually be you know government legislation which enshrines these nationally defined contributions um in uh in law um that's a huge lift right and so that maybe that's not a two or three you know your goal maybe that's a five year goal or a 10 year goal um but uh what i see is the creation of all of the pieces that would enable that to be right so the people can actually um say it would go from that's a you know that's a huge abstraction to actually i understand what the you know what the government agencies look like and they um exist on paper and now people have you know fine-tuned how they work and so i to the extent that you know i i that we can i i create that through creating ongoing activities really like you know active programs within a number of these think tanks that have done analogous work in tax policy or urban renewal and actually you know have them have large decarbonization programs we can catalyze that um done all succeeded so in a sense there's a there's a future that would be very very happy with but we have a staff we actually you know establish i you know ourselves as a proper philanthropy and are helping uh shepherd funds are out there's a path in which we no longer exist which i'd be very happy with in which the organizations that are best suited to do this work um have taken the reins and are interactively pursuing it and i'm really happy with either outcome i care much more about the the goal line with the you know the labs in our i in our in our name is incredibly intentionally chosen because we're experimenting and um i it may very well be that you know i we have the opportunity to to create large-scale ongoing programs that organizations that have had tremendous impact in a number of other domains i and that we we're no longer needed and i can go on to the next project and that would be great and i if it you know if it if it happens that there's an active uh shepherding process or a ongoing catalytic innovation process that needs to happen then that would be terrific too but i'm you know i'm i'm deferring judgment until you know until until i see what's needed um Gina you said something when uh when you were walking through your model about and which i'd love to hear just a little bit more depth about like walk us through that customized sort of programming process for a minute of like like institutional donor shows up they want to take a position in smart job fund they they they look at your you know your portfolio so to speak like how do you get from that point to them i don't know the first cycle if you could do that kind of quickly yeah absolutely i think i think that um what we're offering is very unique not only to the united states but to the world in essence you're allowing us to go through the flexibility and i really liked by john was noting this ability to adjust the way with it we we're um sort of improving the baseline of what a normal charitable contribution process is is that we're testing a market in the process we together with our donors in partnership are finding signal in this untapped market and we're doing it because we firmly believe there's tremendous potential in this market but also because we have to as a conditioned precedent to moving forward to commercializing this market further um and and mainstreaming uh these investment opportunities the donors coming to us and like many other folks this might be their first entree to the disability market or it might not but we the uniqueness of the appalled fund is allowing them to the the latitude for experimentation along with us where we are procuring the opportunity for immediate tax deductible charitable contribution and then a long-term planning strategy as to where they uh among our four impact categories are allocating you know the recommendation for allocation of capital doesn't need doesn't need to be made all at once on day one and can actually um sort of cross instruments and levels of risk over time which is a very unique and interesting strategy so in terms of instruments you know it we're allocating we're making recommendations to allocate great capital to accelerators and incubators but we might also be making a recommendation our donors might be interested in making available revenue-based financing they might be interested in making available um venture deals with with early-stage companies that are really working in work the next generation of really transformative workplace technologies and so that flexibility comes with a long-term planning strategy that's much like a portfolio as opposed to attack the box charitable contribution I think quite quite a number of people in in adept space have spent a lot of time sort of seeing it as transactional you know we are uh sort of guiding our funds towards you know this particular charity and we are seeing it less transactional and more relationship building with our donors that we're in this together um to build this market and to explore new and interesting terrain within that market and that means that there's a learning process it's iterative but we're providing ready to go I love John's use of the word shovel ready you know we've got shovel ready uh opportunities but we've got curated insight into the disability market we we're building a relationship with donors where we're explaining the impact and we're explaining the value proposition of these technologies of these you know programmatic opportunities and entrepreneurship building and so um what we're seeing is an experience for the donors it's an experience to learn about the market with us and also drive impact the unique thing is that you can dip your toe into higher and higher levels of risk over time and I think the more that our donors are socialized to how really revolutionary some of these early stage companies are that are higher risk uh capital bets um the more they they would like to realign their portfolio strategy from mostly allocating grant capital to uh really trying to diversify and look at that evergreen evergreen early stage investing in some of these technology companies that's great um I just if people have a couple questions they want to throw in the chat happy to pick them off and feed them in we've got five minutes left so we're gonna you know kind of burn towards the finish line here but uh Derek what uh do you see an interconnectivity from these hometown you know from from the different cities have kind of focused or do they are they each really kind of like their own little microcosm I mean it's like you see with sort of the national iam nation network that there'd be opportunity to kind of go sort of macro big with the story but maybe you'll lose this the intensity of the focus I have you all been wrestling with that or do you have a kind of a prognosis on where that ends up yeah it's so it's on both sides of the spectrum of there are a lot of intricacies and nuances in your local you know ecosystems right so in my hometown there's a big big push for quality education we're at the bottom 15 in the state and so a lot of the efforts going toward education uh in Nashville there's a big deficiency of affordable housing units so a lot of the push locally is around quality affordable housing and so I think that there are certain you know common denominators that you see in all of these markets but depending on where you're at geographically and what the major pain points are it depends and it dictates what the priorities are you know from a political from a grassroots you know so I think a lot of it is really just finding what aligns with your passion and like where do you feel yourself gravitating towards right so for me it's like it's the economics of like you know affordable housing getting access to capital to minority entrepreneurs and all the things that kind of fall within within that and so there are some overarching themes that could you know encompass a lot of the issues that we see but we essentially try to align the efforts with the passions of our members and and if somebody's going to be a lead on an initiative or partner with an initiative we want that to be very authentic and genuine to them yeah that makes sense um oh so Harold asks it's a cool find how do you input the specific desires donor advice aspect of the original donor or do you ensure that the donors just buy into the overall thesis that you put forward like I mean Regina Gina you you already answered this like it's both and like you can do deep customization donor by donor but you can also let them buy into to the pool I'm John not sure how it applies exactly if you have a comment on that sure I mean briefly I I I really ask for discretion um that folks who you know buy into the pool fund are trust me and they understand the exact dynamic that we've used to allocate they understand the KPIs we're shooting for and they understand the mechanics and themes and so but I like I said more often than not I'm actually now directing directly connecting investment vehicles or really you know I I uh philanthropies with donors who weren't aware that they could spend their money and to me to me that makes me very happy because that sets them on the path to actually having an ongoing program fund that can be very successful I you know in an ideal world I can continue to innovate and I can help lay the track for a really successful ongoing programs that I don't need to be in the middle of it's great well I would I know that we have run towards the top of the hour I we have tasted all the contact information websites of all four of us and I think the call to action is come ask us your questions give us your ideas connect us to your networks I'm happy to you know to give free consults out on on how this model might apply to you on I do think you know in sort of wrapping up here that the the punchline here is that there's this is just sort of a new way of thinking about organizing a value chain that doesn't have all the normal barriers to to participation to inclusion to going out on the deep end of the pool maybe faster with less surety so this is kind of like an innovation edge I think that it's uniquely suited to donor advice funds I wish there was a lot more of it going on this is not an impact assets only thing at all we're just kind of you know at that edge innovating a bit here but I think that Tides Foundation and others have have played around with some of these models too I want to acknowledge that you know we're just sort of reorganizing the palette from which you paint pictures but I think that there's as you can see here there's such a a plurality of ways to to make use of this kind of thinking and hopefully it inspired some of you on the on the line there to to think a little differently about what's possible and really thank you Gina and John and Derek for your impressive work and for lending us your time and thoughts today so thank you and thanks to Socap


This is the most important exercise in the whole protection training game. Now you see there I have a ball which she's nuts about his worst thing in life so I'm starting at the top if I can control him with a ball I know I can control him with a decoy or anything else right so the reason that I'm pulling the ball to me and trying to get it straight at him as possible is you he needs to learn that shooting off will not get him the reward patience and staying here will bring him what he wants everything stems from this exercise all the beautiful and high-level elite things come from this exercise everything starts with this exercise to be an elite protection dog all positions whether stationary or moving the dog once they know this leg technique everything becomes easy to shape and create all these exercises right because it all stems from that leg exercise I'm doing here with axle so this exercise with axle is the most important step of his whole protection training career very very powerful exercise holding the heel leg in protection training the most important critical again for reliability safety and that is a trained protection dog when they can control their impulses and their emotions knowing they want a bite but they cannot go and make their own choices and fly off unpredictably unreliably without permission very important to having the perfect protection dog


traffic as we cross the shipping lanes so here's the AIS automatic identification system or something like that and as you can see that's me that's the sailing vessel from earlier September song I called them up no reply fast asleep and now we're starting to see some traffic and I hear you say but Dave there's just two ships there mate you don't have to worry about that no worry what's the difficulty well that's two I'm on the 12 mile range if I increase the range that's really what we're facing oscatango tea kettle over the base wind today has been rather pleasant it's nice sailing conditions to be honest the waves are down the winds about 15 knots and it's all jolly nice except that like for the last three days I guess I'm under this overcast sky with low cumulus sometimes rain bearing like these bastards here and they tend to just drop air which confuses everything so you know you're too long everything's happy all of a sudden the wind shifts by 30 degrees drops or accelerates the boat starts flipping it's a pain in the butt missed me you bastard because I am close haul welcome to the galley where in the left corner weighing in at 400 grams we have beef stew and dumplings and in the right corner weighing in at 400 grams we have beef curry together we're going to make a stewed beef and dumpling curry hooray we've done some fancy thinking we've come up with a scheme in the thick of the traffic but my band has some popped out for a while it's gone back in of course now and we're listening to I guess this is um New York strip club music Lisbon signs capes and Vincent we are right here the moment we're heading in like this then we're going to come out like this then we're going to go down like this it'll be lovely I just noticed this is an old chart that I have that's six years ago we did this where did we finish right there in Horta and that was with Mickey boy Mickey boy all right boy on his uh Lauren Giles virtue a little 24 foot 25 foot uh wooden yacht which leaked like a sieve and that really was a wet trip we and we had oopsie days we had terrible weather the whole time there most of the time there but where am I pointing the camera what is it what is it Aves says ABE focus you fuck so yes so so I'm I'm vaguely familiar with this stretch of water here and now I'm familiar with this stretch of water down there and we're going to come across here we're going to come across here we're going to go through here and then we're heading that way I've got more charts for that I've got I've got proper charts for the local areas here but this is just a big plotting chart um you don't need every detail on this size chart you just need to have a vague idea where you're going he's been calling him for the last 15 minutes does he not realize you're out of fucking range mate some fancy footwork I was in conflict with this duty on this stack so a little bit of running down wind in the in the gap in the middle I'll wait until they're clear then I'll tack back in again the AIS system is getting old he's screaming at me actually I don't think he likes Tom Petty and to be honest I've gone off Tom Petty as well


Welcome to Affector from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This is the audio edition of EFF's email newsletter geared towards keeping you on the bleeding edge of your digital rights. Check the show notes for links to all of our stories. This is Affector Volume 34, Issue 2, titled, Corporate Media Wants Copyright Law to Rewrite the Internet. This issue was published on Wednesday, March 30th, 2022 and I'm your host, member outreach assistant, Christian Romero. Let's start with our top feature. The New Filter Mandate Bill is an unmitigated disaster. Industry groups are pushing for a new bill, the Smart Copyright Act, that would give the copyright office the power to set the rules for internet technology and services to address copyright infringement, with precious little opportunity for appeal. Remaking the internet to serve the entertainment industry was a bad idea 10 years ago, and it's still a bad idea today. Now let's go through some EFF updates. First up, you should not trust Russia's new Trusted Route CA. Russia's Ministry of Digital Development and Communications is instructing Russian citizens to download a government-approved web browser, or change their basic browser settings. But this would install a certificate authority that paves the way for a decade of digital surveillance with the power to bypass the cryptographic privacy measures every internet user relies on. Next up, Telegram Harm Reduction for Users in Russia and Ukraine. Russians and Ukrainians are both prolific users of Telegram, relying on the app for channels that act as newsfeeds, group chats, both public and private, and one-to-one communication. But what do you need to know about just how safe Telegram is and how to use it more securely? Next, anti-war hacktivism is leading to digital xenophobia and a more hostile internet. The Russian military invasion of Ukraine has led to a backlash against Russia. But that has evolved into bans on anything ethnically or historically Russian, a terrible idea with potentially harmful consequences. Next up, Podcast Episode, Watching the Watchers. Laura Poitras joins EFF Cindy Cohn and Daniel Bryan to talk about her continuing work to uncover spying on journalists and what we can do to fight back against mass surveillance. Next up, we've got another podcast episode, Saving Podcasts from a Patent Troll. On this episode of How to Fix the Internet, Mark Maron and his producer, Brendan McDonald, joined EFF Cindy Cohn and Daniel Bryan to talk about how they decided not to give into legal threats of a patent troll and how podcasters came together to support EFF's work to defeat the patent. Next, Ban Online Behavioral Advertising. EFF companies earn staggering profits by targeting ads to us based on our online behavior, creating a mad dash to collect information on users without regard to privacy. Next up, we've got one more podcast episode, Hack to the Future. We talked to Zak Lada, founder of Hack Club, about the importance of high school student access to an open internet, why learning code can increase equity, and how schools online security and the law often stand in the way. And here's our final update. A printer company is putting DRM in paper now. Printer companies have long profited from being the exclusive sellers of ink or toner in our machines. Now, Labelmaker Dimo is installing hardware in their printers to ensure that customers can only print on paper they sell. Next up, we've got some announcements. First, EFF 6th Annual Tech Trivia Night. Join us in person on May 5th for our sixth annual exploration of the fascinating, obscure, and trivial monotony of digital security, online rights, and internet culture. If you live in the Bay Area, register today. And now we have a few jobs to share. First up, Accounting Director. EFF is looking for a senior-level accounting director to manage all day-to-day accounting and reporting operations of a budget of 15 million to eventually supervise a team of two staff members. Next up, Staff Attorney, Intellectual Property. EFF is looking for a litigator who is excited about fostering digital creativity, justice, and innovation to join our legal team. And finally, we've got some mini-links. First up, Newly Declassified Documents reveal previously secret CIA bulk collection and problems with CIA handling of Americans' information. The CIA has been engaging in mass surveillance of Americans' communications, violating everyone's privacy without any oversight from courts or Congress. Next up, After protests around George Floyd's murder ended, a police system for watching protesters kept going. After MIT and Tech Review published scathing revelations of police spying in Minnesota's Twin Cities, they took into account responses by both defenders and detractors and have published even more. Next up, A U.S. surveillance program tracks nearly 200,000 immigrants. What happens to their data? The Biden administration is proposing to expand a controversial surveillance program that tracks the whereabouts of more than 180,000 immigrants waiting their day in court. And for our last mini-link, The Foyleys 2022, recognizing the year's worst in government transparency. Every year, EFF and Muckrock team up with the alt-weeklies around the country to highlight how challenging FOIA and transparency can be. All right, and that's it. Thanks for listening. If you like what you're hearing, be sure to sign up for the email version of Effector, which includes links to in-depth coverage of these stories and more. See past issues and subscribe at EFF.org slash Effector. Before we end this issue of the newsletter, I just want to let you know that EFF is a member-supported nonprofit organization and you can help us defend digital privacy, security, and free expression for everyone. Donate to EFF today and even grab a bit of gear by heading over to EFF.org slash Effect. That's EFF.org slash EFF ECT. You can become a member for as little as $25 or even sign up as a monthly or annual donor. Thanks for your support, and I hope you'll join us for the next issue of Effector.


Welcome back to The Breakfast here on Plus TV Africa, beautiful Monday morning. Let's tell you what happened today in the year 2018. He is one of the most popular black comedians of all time and if you remember growing up in the 90s you must have enjoyed programs like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and The Bill Cosby Show. It was on this day in 2018 that Bill Cosby was found guilty of sexual assault. He's an American comedian and of course he had been a subject of publicized sexual assault allegations and was on this day convicted of aggravated incident of assault in 2018.  Cosby over you know in the last couple of years has maintained his innocence and repeatedly denied the allegations made against him. He has also been on trial for drugging and assaulting an ex-basketball player Andrea Costand in 2004. If you remember also at the start of the trial in Pennsylvania it was revealed that Cosby had paid Ms. Costand almost $3.4 million in civil settlement in 2006. Some of his accusers were present in court during the trial and of course they all cried as the guilty verdict was returned. This was also one of the you know the big ones that started a Me Too movement back then. That year was really really huge on revelations concerning sexual assault and all of that that happened many years ago. Kevin Spacey was also one of the people that was convicted. What's his name? Now the movie producer who's you know still going in and out of jail also learned a little bit from Nigerian politicians when they have been accused fainting in court and going to court with us which is the stretcher I can remember his name now was also one of the people you know who was you know convicted as a result of the Me Too movement and revelations from the Me Too movement in 2018 2017 2018 you know it was huge. Bill Cosby for a lot of people there were conspiracy theories that it was just you know plots to bring the black man down. He reached a peak of his career and there were forces that were trying to bring him down and that's why these allegations came up but you know there was so many of all these revelations and at some point everyone just had to you know realize and agree that now this isn't anybody trying to bring anybody down. He had committed crimes in the past and it was time for him to pay for those crimes and it also is at that time it also showed a lot of what we call unlearning that needed to be done with what we saw as normal in the 80s. So some of the things not even as bad as you know assaulting and drugging some of these women and they you know sexually you know assaulting them some of the things that we even used to say that were normal back then you know some of the things that we used to do not me now but you know the world used to do and say as normal back then in the 80s and in the 90s in you know 2018 where of course obviously now you know seem to be you know assault maybe it was normal back then but it's no we're no longer in that era we're no longer in that space and so the mutual movement made a lot of people more aware of what assault is and the the unsafe environment that they had put a lot of you know women back then in the 80s and in the 90s and of course you know over time so it was a great period unfortunately or unfortunately you know some of these people like Bill Cosby like Kevin Spacey had to you know go to jail for them. And it just reminds me of the story I'm sharing for today in history you know we're talking about you know how the long arm of the law actually caught up with people who you know dared to commit crimes you know this guy we're talking about somebody in the US who was a police officer you know he basically had committed rape he had basically assaulted people and for many years he went you know went scot-free the law didn't catch him nobody could catch him because nobody could identify that he was responsible for those crimes but when eventually you know he was caught he was sentenced in arrested in 2018 and of course sentenced to jail in the year 2020. So this particular story here is of a James Joseph James D'Angelo Jr. you know he was called the Gordon Stake Killer he had committed 13 murders committed 50 rapes and 120 burglaries within 13 years. I mean this guy basically had done a lot of damage a lot of evil and how did he get caught basically these crimes are committed many years ago about 40 years ago but the police had been trying to investigate but they never knew that all these different crimes I told you about 15 murders 13 rapes they didn't know that it was the same crime I mean take a look at the picture there that was him younger committing all those crimes and many years later you know nobody was able to pinpoint that all these crimes that were happening in the US was by the same person you know whenever each crime was committed they would call it by you know give the the attacker a certain name based on the experiences that the you know victim had shared but the the police you know in the US set up a fake DNA profile they sent it to a DNA matching uh company you know saying they want to be matched looking for what they used was um they took um DNA evidence from one of the people who had been raped and you know used it to set up a profile saying they want to look for their relative their long-lost relative and many years later you know maybe he has family trying to you know do up a DNA match and testing and all of that and that's how the police was alerted you know that this is a relative and that's how they swapped in and found this is the same person who was committed 13 rapes and 15 murders over the past years so it just shows how you know committed really how consistent really you know the police in some parts of the world in some countries and how much they would take their time get invested in a case just so they can persecute someone and basically bring justice to your matter but here you know we've talked about this many times on the show you go until you've been raped and the police would tell you that you know happy that someone found you attractive yeah so it's you know pretty much the same thing with the with the Bill Cosby case um our attitude towards some of the oldest crimes are entirely different here Bill Cosby's crimes are from you know 80s you know early 90s and in 2018 there was still enough you know to you know convict him rape is one of the hardest things to prove sexual assault is also one of the hardest things to prove you know if there's no click or evidence and or video cameras and some of all of that but they have a system there that is able to assist the victims to be able to share their stories and to also be able to assist the victims um um assist the case basically to come to light and of course people to be found guilty we have a lot of work that we need to do here in Nigeria um our forensic investigation almost doesn't exist here in Nigeria um either I don't think any crime that was committed in 1980 would have DNA evidence in you know in today's world here in Nigeria and so there's so much that we that we lack um but you know seeking you know that level of investigation in Nigeria is which would be looking for a unicorn or flying elephant um we need to at least we there's so much work that needs to be done to improve our criminal justice system and our policing system and all of that before we get to that level um and I hope that at some point you know we're also going to move away from saying that people were young and naive when they committed these crimes because I'm sure because we was in Nigeria and it was you know a minister he probably would have been forgiven and said that he was naive and you know he was young when he did that let's let it go um but that's what we're sharing with you today the uh I think it was called the Gordon State Killer yes um and of course Bill Cosby in 2018 he was found guilty of sexual assault today in history 26th of April stay with us our first major conversation comes up next after this short break


Greetings, friends! Welcome to CTUCC Conference Cast for December 24, 2013, the regular podcast of the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ. Whoever you are and wherever you may be on life's journey at this very moment, you are welcome here. We begin this week's conference cast with this meditation from the Reverend Barbara J. Libby, Interim Associate Conference Minister for Clergy Concerns. On this Christmas Eve, our scripture text is that familiar story in the second chapter of Luke, in which Jesus is born in a Bethlehem stable far from home, in which angels sing to shepherds on a hillside, and in which Mary holds all these things in her heart. This week's Luke text is so familiar we could probably all recite it from memory. So rather than trying to interpret the text, I'm choosing to share some poetry. With permission, I'm sharing a poem entitled Cat by Reverend Timothy Hout. In this season of Unexpected Visitors, a gray and white cat has come lurking in the barn, peering through the bushes, and at last waiting at the back door. It may be a neighbor's pet out for a stroll, but I have heard that stray cats will go quietly from house to house for weeks or months before they choose that single best place to say, here I am, this is home, let me in. We are all wanderers searching through our years to find a place where we belong. This is our advent yearning, the call of candle, hearth, and table, of arms outstretched and laughter, of kindness, warmth, and rest, of love that welcomes most of all the lost son, the wounded daughter, the weary traveler at the end of the road, the cat with no place else to go.  But like Mary, Joseph, we are always summoned to leave familiar dwellings, to take some strange road to an unknown destination where there is a manger waiting, filled with holy light streaming through a crack in the wall of the world. In that brightness, we may see for a moment with cow and dove, donkey and cat, our one true home. There's a song in the air, there's a star in the sky, there's a mother's deep prayer, and a baby's low cry, and the star rains its fire while the beautiful sing, for the manger in Bethlehem cradles a king. Let us join our hearts in prayer. Oh, holy God, we give thanks for the Christmas story, the miracle of birth, a child born in a stable among cows and sheep. We give thanks for the most fragile of all life resting in the arms of loving parents. We give thanks that we can be filled again with wonder and with joy, wondering again what sort of God you are that came to us at Christmas and lived among us as a human person. We celebrate with joy that Christmas is finally upon us once again, that Jesus was and is born, and that he lived among us and lives among us still. We ask a special blessing upon all who read or hear this word. Help us to come close to you, oh God. Help us to open our hearts to your presence in all we do and say. Bless and keep those who are sick, hungry, homeless, or struggling this week.  Be with us all this holy week. We pray in the name of a child born at Bethlehem. Emmanuel, God with us. Amen. We ask special prayers this week for Georgette Huey, a faith formation practitioner in this conference on the death of her mother Isabelle Huey in a traffic accident on December 19th. She was 84. In the news this week, we're highlighting some of the stories from the December issue of Contact Today. From the Niantic Community Church, UCC, we have a reflection from a self-described recovering atheist named Bill Frisky. When he started to feel a call to faith, he followed Google and the goofy grin of Pastor the Reverend John Nelson on the church website to a new relationship with God and this faith community. Here's some of what he wrote in his essay for the Church's Giving Campaign this year. As time went on, I found God wouldn't stop speaking to me in this church. One day about a year ago during last year's pledging season pastor John preached about the peace of Christ. I sat in the pews knowing what he said to be true but still aching with anxiety and agitation, and I said to myself that I would have to get some token to carry with me to remind me of this peace of Christ. Less than a minute later on the collection plate came a gift for us to take, a piece of fabric with a dove painted on it. I nearly cried. I have since passed it along to a young lady who needed it more than I, but at the time I knew I was hearing God. He spoke to me loud and clear. In Norwich, pastor of the Reverend Sarah Offner Seals closed up the church with a sense of disappointment one evening after a very small group came to see a documentary on hunger in America. But a few days later, one of those attending told her that she wanted to revive the church's tag sale and more than that she wanted all of its proceeds, all of them, to benefit the local soup kitchen. Along the way, right off to Seals, a few church members would occasionally pull me aside and ask why we weren't keeping the proceeds for the church more out of confusion than anger. This just isn't something people normally do, the director of the soup kitchen explained to me. But when it was done, the church had raised $3,400 for the program. They'd involved larger numbers of people than they'd expected, and they had seen God multiply their efforts in ways they had not imagined. We have two stories which involve recording and microphones. Since the Second Congregational Church UCC of New London left its building last summer and moved in with Crossroads Presbyterian Church in Waterford, Interim pastor the Reverend Matthew McCaffrey has been preserving members' memories with a portable recording studio they've taken to calling the Story Cube. One question McCaffrey always asks is how people found this particular church? There have been different pathways to Second Church Historic, he says, but everyone talks about a warm welcome that was followed up with inclusion and acts of kindness. Meanwhile, in West Suffield pastor the Reverend Eric Fistler, working on his own Sunday sermon, helps other preachers as well. Along with his United Methodist colleague, the Reverend Rob McCoy, he produces the Weekly Pulpit Fiction Podcast, in which the two review the scholarship around the upcoming week's revised common-electionary texts and offer some of their own thinking. We love the conversation, says Fistler, bringing clergy together. You'll find more on these stories, plus the many others in the recent contact, and all the current headlines by visiting our website at ctucc.org slash news. This is the season of the Friends of the Conference Annual Appeal. The conference is an extension of your local church ministry, enabling us to reach out in love to each other and to those in need. That is why we ask you to give generously, even sacrificially, to our Friends of the Conference campaign, so we can be in ministry together, transforming lives in the name of Christ. To be part of the new things we imagine God doing through us, visit us at ctucc.org slash donate. In the new year, Stepping Stones returns on January 14th, with past them the football, the care and support of volunteers in Southington. Basics of Christian Education, a new program that will enable participants to launch an effective faith formation ministry in their local church, runs three Saturdays, beginning January 18th. Hartford Seminary and Asylum Hill Congregational Church offer the Bible and the Quran on January 29th in Hartford. Comfort food for the journey to a day retreat for clergy women will be February 4th also in Hartford. Now set aside the first of March, when we'll hold Super Saturday, a day of workshops, fellowship and celebration for church members and leaders, and featuring a keynote address from author Diana Butler-Bass. We're holding this in concert with the Massachusetts Conference, so we'll be gathering in Ludlow, Massachusetts. Registration is open for the New England Women's Celebration to be held March 28th through 30th in Portland, Maine. There is a discount available for those who register before January 15th, so get that done now. Learn more at uccwomencelebration.org. You can always learn more about what's coming up in the Connecticut Conference by visiting us at ctucc.org slash events. We're going to turn to a conference cast tradition this year, closing this Christmas podcast with an additional reflection from your podcast host. The stories of Jesus' birth offer us a study in contrasts. Joseph, according to the genealogies offered by Matthew and Luke, comes from Israel's royal house, but Mary's child, hailed as a king, is not his natural son. Jesus is born in royal David City, as the hymn puts it, but he is born to visitors who come from afar. An unmarried couple whose shelter is a barn. Angels proclaim the divinity of the newborn child, but, strangely enough, they declare it to shepherds on a hillside. Wise men, astrologers, travel to see him and present him gifts, but because they had stopped to ask directions of King Herod, the family must flee, the gifts sold and the money spent to bring them to find refuge among Israel's traditional enemies in Egypt. It is not a tale of sweetness and light, it is a tale of strained relationships and distrust, of hard journeys taken urgently, of poverty and powerlessness and of deadly danger and violence. How else I wonder could the story of the Jesus who went to the cross truly begin? Because as our conference minister Kent Salotti said in his Christmas greetings last week, Jesus grew up. He grew up to turn the world upside down, to raise up the poor and cast down the proud. He came because people suffer. He came because people sin. He came because people hunger. He came because people grieve.  So let these blessings come to you this Christmas to find sustenance for your body, mind and spirit, to be strengthened for giving and for serving, to renew your hope in this created universe, and to know the comfort of a loving, living God. May Christ's grace and love be with you this season and always. Thanks to boys in hats, David Jarvis and the New England Ringers for their musical contributions. And that brings this conference cast to a close. Thanks to Barbara Libby for her reflection and to GarageBand for our music. Primary funding for conference cast comes from your congregation's gifts to our church's wider mission, basic support, changing lives through the United Church of Christ. This is Eric Anderson, the Minister of Communications and Technology for the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ, praying that your days this week may be filled with the presence, the guidance and the grace of God. This is Eric Anderson again with a program note. Thanks once more for listening to this special Christmas Eve release of conference cast. Our next program will be Thursday, January 2nd as we resume our regular schedule in the New Year. Have a very blessed Christmas and may your next trip around the sun bring you joys and wonders beyond your imagining. May God be with you always.


Who will govern Delhi? The national capital. This burning question has been making rounds from parliament to the supreme court for quite a few years now and it only intensified recently for all the controversial reason thanks to the BJP government at the centre. On March 24th amid heated arguments, condemnations and even a walk out from the section of the opposition, the bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha. The bill caused an uproar in the upper house of the parliament because this amendment is feared to have catastrophic changes the way Delhi will be governed from now on. For starters, the bill seeks to curb the rights of the elected Delhi government. Hence, not surprisingly, the ruling gama admi party in the capital has been protesting against this bill ever since its introduction in the Lok Sabha earlier this month. So what does this bill actually say? It starts off with the meaning of the term government itself. The bill mentions the expression government referred to in any law to be made by the Delhi Legislative Assembly shall means the left in-in governor. This according to AAP simply means that the left in-in governor will be the supreme power in Delhi no matter which party is elected to power by Delhi voters. The implication of the amendment are also far reaching in day to day functioning of the Delhi government. To begin with as per the amendment act LG's opinion will be needed in all the executive orders that the Delhi government takes. This means that any law or order that gets clearance from the Delhi Legislative Assembly will be reviewed by the LG and only after an approval from the LG the scheme or order will be implemented. For example, if the elected Delhi government wants to build new schools and even if the cabinet passes the order to build it the matter will still go to LG for a review. And that also means that if the LG wants he can put an end to it and that's the worry of the Ahmad B. Party which came to power for the second time in Delhi only last year there are still four years left before the elections yet it doesn't matter because the actual power lies with the LG which is appointed by the centre. Mr. Anil Bajal currently holds the post who was appointed by the NDA government back in 2016. Now it's an ironic situation here because in the past all three major parties including the Delhi BJP unit were asking for a complete statehood for Delhi. It was mentioned in their manifesto as well. In fact BJP's last chief minister in Delhi Madan Lal Khurana was a strong advocate for the full statehood of Delhi. The Congress government too asked for a full statehood of the capital time to time. The tussle of who will govern Delhi between up and the centre has been going on for a long time. The core of this tussle is the article 239A of the constitution which puts Delhi in a unique position to have an elected assembly and the left-in-in governor as the administrative head. Centre through LG's intervention oversees land, police and public order as per the existing law. In 2019 a five-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court referred the question of jurisdiction of the services to a higher bench. We spoke to Yamini Ayur president and chief executive of the centre for policy research who explained it even better on how things got to this point. In 2018 a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court took a view on the dynamics of this relationship and the unanimous judgment very clearly and unambiguously clarified that it was the council of ministers with the chief minister at its helm that is the executive head of the government of Delhi. Importantly the judgment very clearly stated that requiring prior currents with the LG would negate the ideals of representative governance and democracy thus undermining the spirit of the 69th constitution amendment. The recently passed bill in the Lok Sabha in New Delhi fundamentally undermines this key spirit of the 2018 judgment. It does so by first defining the term government in the context of laws made by the legislative assembly to be the LG not the electric government. Second it expands the powers of the LG by requiring the electric government to seek the LG's opinion on specific matters but it leaves it to the LG to define these specific matters through a general or specific order. Third it weakens the powers of the assembly by prohibiting it from making rules for its committees on day-to-day administration. In essence it leaves the legislative assembly of the Delhi NCT completely powerless undermining the spirit of the 69th constitution amendment in fact making it completely infectious. Now let's leave the technicalities for a movement and shift the focus to the underlying political message behind the centre's recent move. Remember the last time the BJP government's decision was criticised for undercutting an elected state's government's power and thereby exposing the fragilities of our country's federal structure. That's right it was August 5th and the year was 2019. The state government at the receiving end then it was Jammu and Kashmir. This is a familiar playbook. It is precisely through this mechanism that parliament nullified Article 370 re-interpreting the definition of government as the governor and not the elected state legislature thus ushering in central control. So in more ways than one what the government what the what the amendment passed by parliament is doing today in many ways reflects exactly the same set of tactics that were used to render Article 370 nullified in a different context yet with similar outcomes. Overall the challenge as far as the specific concern of Delhi is the challenge of political immaturity failing to be able to effectively negotiate the harmonious sharing of relations between the government and the seat of the national capital and the government that represents the interests of the residents in the national capital. And that is where it all comes down to the formalization of this abuse of power by the BJP government with where a center appointed authority is replacing people selected governments. The latest example of this was witnessed down in the south in Pondicherry where the V. Narayan Sammy government which is the only congress government in the south lost power as such going by what experts point out Delhi is becoming another telling sign of India marching towards an electoral autocracy.


We are providing all of the logistical support for Task Force Tomahawk for their premobilization training here at Fort Riley. We are providing everything from troop transport missions to maintenance support for their vehicles and equipment. We're doing recovery missions, ammo management missions for them.  We're delivering meals and fuel and other commodities to the Task Force. We provide maintenance support for the deploying unit. Anything they may need vehicle-wise, weapon-wise. It all comes through this shop here. And if we're able to fix it for them, we fix it. If not, we find replacements for them to keep them in the find. It is incredibly important for us to do what we do. We sustain them, why they get to do what they love to do, and we get to do what we love to do. So by providing support, they're able to take their focus off these other tasks and maintain their mission status while we make sure that they have what they need to complete their mission. The infantry gets to do a lot of the cool stuff. I'm also an infantry officer as well, so I'm certainly familiar with that. But if we can't get the ammunition to the range, like for the AT-4, the Coral Gustov, or the various machine gun platforms, then the infantry is not able to go out and fire and execute those ranges that they need to do. And we provide the transportation to and from those ranges for those soldiers. We provide them with the fuel for their vehicles, the meals to sustain them, the water, and other commodities. So it's a critical part of the mission, the sustainment piece of that. I'm really proud of all the hard work that all of our soldiers have put in to supporting Task Force Tomahawk. Our motto and attitude is to take care of the customers. It's customer service and Task Force is our customer. So if we can find a way to get to yes, even when we get last minute requests, we're doing everything possible to try to support the mission.


In this topic we shall discuss the various chemical types of hormones and their functions. Based on their chemical structure and pathway of synthesis, hormones are classified into four chemical types. Number one, the peptide and protein hormones. Number two, amine hormones. Number three, steroid hormones. And number four, prostaglandins. First we shall discuss the peptide and protein hormones. They are composed of amino acids. They include very small peptides as well as large protein molecules. For example, the thyrotropine-reasing hormone, TRH, released from hypothalamus, has only three amino acids in it. It is a very small peptide. The amine hormones are small molecules which are synthesized from a single amino acid tyrosine. The hormones which are derived from tyrosine include epinephrine, norepinephrine, thyroxine and triiodothyronine. Simply we can say that thyroid gland and adenyl gland, adenyl medulla, are amine hormones. Now we shall discuss the steroid hormones. steroid hormones are synthesized from cholesterol. These cholesterol are called steroids and all the hormones derived from them are called steroids. These hormones have four fused carbon rings. Look at the structure. There are four carbon rings which are connected to each other. There are three cyclohexyl rings and one cyclo pentyl ring. Cyclohexyl means that there are six carbon rings and there are five carbon rings. These four rings are combined into a single structure to form the cholesterol and its derivative hormones. The examples of steroid hormones include hormones of adenyl cortex, cortisol and aldosterone.  Dear students, the prostaglandins are cyclic unsaturated hydroxy fatty acids. They are synthesized in cellular membranes from a 20 carbon fatty acid chain. Dear students, now we shall discuss the general functions of hormones. Hormones coordinate long term functions of animal tissues and organs. For example, they modulate growth and maintenance, sexual activity of the animal, reproductive cycles and modification of behaviors. They also perform many regulatory functions. For example, osmoregulation, regulation of blood sugar level and control of metabolic rate. The three rhythmic activities of the animals are also due to hormones. For example, insects may be molding, that is regulated by hormones, sleep, wake up cycles are affected by hormones. Similarly, hunger and hunger cycles are also regulated and seasonal reproductive activities in many animals are because of hormonal regulation of these rhythms. Migration in birds seasonal basis and that is also because of the hormones. Moreover, hormones also maintain homeostasis. They also coordinate bodies' responses to stress. They also mediate responses to many environmental stimuli. A very important thing that hormones do is, the nervous system which produces rapid acting short living responses, complements its activities with its long term and slow chemical activity. This complementarity of both systems results in the overall integration of the physiological and metabolic functions in the body.


You're welcome back. It's still plus politics. And my name is Nyam Gul Aghaji. Now the concern is the Department of State Services, D.S.S., has said that some key political players are plotting to foist an interim government in Nigeria. According to the D.S.S. spokesman Peter Afunaya in a statement stated that some people have weighed various options which include, among others, to sponsor endless violent mass protests in major cities to warrant a declaration of state of emergency. The service said that another plot to foist interim government is to obtain frivolous injunctions to forestall the inauguration of new executive administrations and legislative houses in the federal and state levels. Information just reaching us from our correspondence in Nigeria State is that in Kagara, Rafi, United States, gunmen have attacked gunmen, government science secondary school at around 2 a.m. shot dead one student and abducted 42 people, including 27 students, even though that is not directly related to what we're talking about from D.S.S. We're being joined now to discuss the security situation in Nigeria by Dixon Omodiale Osage, a criminologist and global security analyst. Good evening and welcome to the program, Dixon. Thank you for having me, Gaj. Okay, we'd like to know how security works. Sometimes we are told that for security purposes some information cannot come to public glare. And now here we are, D.S.S. telling us that there are people fomenting trouble to make sure Nigeria stays perpetually in unrest so that there could be an interim government. Should that information come to the public or should the people be arrested and interrogated privately? Why are we hearing this? Oh, what a fantastic question. Thank you very much, Gaj, for having me. I think sometimes we fail to understand how security operates in our client. We just take with an common ear at any given time to just talk about what is happening, giving us information that is promised to be supposed to be out there. The D.S.S. is a respectable security agent. They do so well to their own capacity. But for me, I don't think it's essential for them to always come to the media space and tell the public that, hey, X, Y is that information we're having and that we have an information that some people are trying to disrupt. No, no, no, security don't work that way. When you have an information about people you think are going to be a threat to the national security, when you have information about people you think that they are going to foster the progress of a democracy, what you need to do is to go into action, carry out a by-boss operation. If they be, it is what has to do with narcotics or whatever the case may be. But it has to do with the criminal element of gangsterism. What the D.S.S. needs to do is to carry out a single operation and pick out those guys from the space. Because you're telling them or trying to tell them you understand their plan, whatever the case may be, I don't think it's acceptable. However, there's also psychological deterrence. Psychological deterrence is for you to apply psychology, the application of psychology to detail would be criminals or crime in progress. I think that is the part the D.S.S. are trying to tread. But it's not a professional path when it comes to national security. In the sense that if you don't go into a single operation to, you know, foster such plan or arrest those you think need to be arrested and bring them to justice, and you just think you can do this statement out there to tell people that you understand their plan and they should stop that. In this 21st century, we've seen people in gun points, not people surrendering to the enemy. We've seen people surrounded by the enemy. We've seen people surrender. We'll talk about you coming out with your ways or verbally to, you know, foster such kind of happen. It's not going to work that way.  Okay, so apart from carrying out a single operation that you're calling, what else could they have done instead of coming to public media, to the public space to tell us that this is what is about to happen, especially as we do not even know if they have concrete evidence that they can show us if we want, if we demand of them. What should they have done? All right, this is what it should have done. We are all in ignorance and we all believe in the survival of this great nation and what you guys in media are doing out there. To the very honest, it's a fantastic job you guys are doing and nobody has the rights to, you know, it's within media because your loyalty is to the people. Now what the D.S.S. should be doing is that they need to carry out or check the open source information. We have various information. Apart from human intelligence, we have the open source information. That is the media, the Facebook, the Instagram. Now, for example, if you go into the Instagram, you can definitely identify, I personally, I'm saying this is all authority. I've been reading the comments of what's this name, senior advocate of Nigeria, Pesos Piyamo. I've been reading the deadly, dangerous statement from the semi-panic high day. I've been reading some other statement from the other political parties as well. No party is immune. So what is happening? The Baba Judo is very, very, it's unacceptable. The D.S.S. should invite these guys to the office and say, Hey guys, enough of this complex distribution and not of this crisis distribution because all I could see or what I can see about these guys, they are all crisis and conflict entrepreneurs because I very expect people of such level to be talking and also instigated, you know, a fear to the society calling for war, calling for a national arrest or whatever the case be. So the D.S.S. know these people and I'm telling you the truth, they know these people. The last time we have FFK talking about military, trying to think about power, the D.S.S. invited them to come and prove his fact. So such kind of invitation should also be carried out across all parties. Because what I have seen so far, Gadji, is that these are political allies, they disappointed us, disappointed us verbal wise because they pay to understand that any given war starts from the maps. And that is why the Bible says life and death is in the tongue. So they need to start sending their tongue if they believe in Nigeria. If they don't think they're tongue and anything goes wrong with Nigeria, each and every one of them will be drawn to the battle field, let them come and fight the battle they all started with their mouths. Before the elections, all the parties, at least most of the parties signed what they called a PISA code. It doesn't seem to be working. What else could have been done? Do we have alternatives because they go and sign a paper and then come out and everything that they went against in the paper is being done. So what other things can be put to be fair to the to the organizations that organize these for them to come and sign this PISA code? They've done a good job. But what else can be added so that we know that the elections, next election, all the elections coming up, subsequent elections will be peaceful. But especially after the elections, the polity will still be as peaceful as we want it to be. Because the PISA code doesn't seem to work after the elections.  I must say the truth. That is a fantastic position. And we must all as every truth as a nation, you know, that is why I always admire, you know, coming to philosophy because it's the television of truth. The truth here is this accord is signing. I don't think they are keeping to such a signature just like a treaty. You know, when you go into an agreement with a constitutional wise or within the body of authority and you signed an agreement that you are going to ensure that this election is going to be peaceful without tribal brutality, without religious brutality, without atmospheric brutality. I think you're supposed to keep for that. But the issue here is that none of them keep to that is just good. And they carry out a, you know, signing ceremony. I think it's a signing ceremony. What I think should be done for me going forward to post such kind of reappearance is for us to have a detailed mechanism.  It will start having consequence management or an effective punishment of people who signed such a call and go against such a call. For example, I go to sign that, hey, my party is going to maintain everything signed in this document. We're not going to instigate violence. We're not going to say something that's going to cause the state of arrest. And I go against our signature. I think there should be a sanction. Maybe I should be suspended from participating in any political office, or maybe be withdrawn. Just like what is happening in the United States, as it is now, where the people are trying to hold Donald Trump accountable for the incident that transpired in Washington DC. So we should have government and institution in place that will hold this gas accountable so that they will understand that, hey, they're not bigger than Nigeria.  Some people are lying to us in this country. And I know the people that are lying to us, they are the politicians. Until now, we never knew that the Igbo, if your mother is not an Igbo woman or a Euroban man, or whatever it may be, or maybe a tribe or tribe or difference, you cannot hold a position. That is tribe or brutality. That is ethnocentric brutality. It is very, very wrong. I would need to pass that off from our political space. So we need to identify those who are lying to us, which I personally have identified the liars of this, the liars in this scenario, the politicians are lying to us. The Igbo's are good people. The Eurovests are good people. The Hauses are good people. I'm from the Asia kingdom. The Asia kingdom. The Isians are good people. The Binyas are good people. Where you came from, or Gaji, your people are good people. So nobody should come and tell us a lie. That lie must be attacked with faith and momentum. If we don't attack that lie, then I tell you for free, we are treading on the path of another Igbo war. If here is not taken, beg for peace. All right, thank you. We should identify the people who are lying to us and make sure we name and shame them as it were. Let them face the consequences as it is. I would like to thank you, Dixon or Sajji, for coming on the show. You've been very helpful to us. Thank you, Gaji. Yeah. So we've been talking with Dixon, Omad Yale, or Sajji, a criminologist and global security analyst, and he's been telling us what is happening here and what should have been done by the DSS instead of the broadcast that they give to us and some of the suggestions that can make our polity a little more secure. We'd like to thank you also for being a part of this program this evening. Until tomorrow, when we will do another edition, my name is Nyam Gul at Gaji Baikonam.