Will the debate of critical race theory determine the next president of the United States? Maybe, but should it? Welcome everybody to the Hot Pop Boys. David and Andrew here. Critical race theory is a really hot debate right now. Governor DeSantis of Florida just banned it from being taught in schools because he said it was going to be divisive. It was going to make people feel really bad, make them feel guilty and just be destructive to the overall unity of the kids. David, why are we talking about it? We are talking about it because CRT has been a big debate for a few years, but also a lot of people think that Ron DeSantis is going to use anti-wokeness or inverse wokeness to become the president of the United States, whether that's in two, six or 10 years. And I would say Governor, I'm not like promoting him at all obviously, but I'm just saying like I think a lot of people like him because he seems like a conservative guy who has a lot of the same policies and beliefs as Trump, but minus all the dirtbag crazy attitude-ness. Right, yeah, he's sort of just trying to catch the upside while mitigating the downside. He has a clean record as of now from what I know. Right, seems not as scummy. Seems sort of just like a stoic baseball player, lawyer type, which all sort of fits. By the way, guys, I would never move to Florida. I like living in New York City, despite my complaints about it, just letting you know where I do or do not stand. Okay. Should these issues and I think critical race theory kind of falls in with the gender identity issues such as like the Leah Thomas thing, which Governor DeSantis spoke up about, which kind of made him like a star in the conservative world. That's how he's like winning right now by going against smoking. But so I guess like these are kind of the issues that it seems like people are most emotional about about. And do you think these issues will be the reason why people will win the next election? Yeah, I think there's always emotional issues, whether it's abortion, capital punishment, gun rights. You know, they rank two, three, four, five, number one, depending on who you are as a voter. But honestly, do I think that the election should be one on these type of issues? No, because I think that a lot of these issues are just kind of emotional markers for other things. But a lot of people don't want to talk about the other things. I will say this. I don't think they're emotional in the way. Like I don't want to write them off. Like they're not significant. These are still significant, but they're more symbolic of something else where the people take the issue that they can understand them the best or they think they understand, to be honest, because I think a lot of people don't fully understand critical race theory. I'm not even a hundred percent sure on it. But I'm saying like, I think a lot of people, they just think they understand something very simply, and then they just act, they just vote on that because, because the other issues are too complicated. I think that other policies and stuff like that, you know? There's been a lot of scientific studies to show that the more complex something is, the more likely people are willing to paint it white or black and very polarized, which is funny, because that's human nature, because you're putting your head in the sand to hide from the complexity and nuance and gray zones of the issue.  But the more complex the issue is, the more nuanced and complex you have to look at it as. So by you simplifying it, it's actually like taking the most away from that. Right, right. And you're stripping it down to like almost something where it's not even that. Yeah. And I think that if you look at CRT from what I've been told, I did a little bit of research guys. I try to be very balanced when I do my research. I read this perspective, that perspective, centrist, moderate, out of left field. And basically, you know, there's two schools of thought in it. One is like a little bit more hardcore. One is less hardcore. It's about how white people are the more dominant group in this country and how did that come to be, whether it was taking maybe stolen Indian land or Native American land, I'm sorry, depending on how you identify that word. But then the enslavement in African Americans and why the generational wealth accumulation numbers are like wildly, wildly different after all these hundreds of years. These are all like true things. Those things all happened in history. But how do we perceive them? Do white people need to feel bad every day about it? If they do feel bad about it, Andrew, on the more extreme, and do they need to be like work to equalize it every day and take their privilege and like go let out to all the people who are like lower than them on this pyramid or that pyramid. You know what I mean? There's a variety of pyramids in the game, you know? You guys let us know in the comments down below what you think and if you got opinions on this. I heard someone describe critical race theory as oh, we're not trying to teach critical race theory because that's something that you learn in grad school and law school because that's an old theory from the 80s. But we're trying to teach race critically to students. And I was like, that doesn't sound as extreme. That makes a lot of sense to me. I could see that be more implemented on maybe like a high school level. I don't know about like the third grade level. I think that's, you know, that seems a little early. But yeah, I mean, things like that. And what I mean to get at is that it's a lot about labeling and marketing because I remember when people were saying like defund the police and then people were like, what, you want to abolish the police? And then people were like, no, I just want to like reallocate the funds of the police and do that. Death tax is death panels. I mean, both sides do it to each other. I tend to think that the right tends to be a lot better at the branding game or misbranding game than the left. You know, obviously just on a political tactical scale, generally weaker than the right. I don't know if they're just spitting an L on the consultants or the executions out there. What I mean is like, it comes down to marketing things too, which is weird because it's a political issue. Why should you have to market a political issue differently? I'll just take us out of this video by saying my perspective on it, being Asian American, I definitely think that I have a little bit more of an outside perspective on CRT. Of course, when you know our family, Andrew came to America, both our parents and about like around 1970, all this like beef between different sides was already existed. It's been existed for hundreds of years. And there's obviously a side that economically much came up on the better end of that beef or that whatever happened that was terrible. You know, obviously it was white people, okay?  Now, how do we try to equalize it? I think for me, maybe if CRT is being used against the people who want to push it, they might need to go back to the drawing board and retool it and maybe think of universal basic services with more culturally targeted deployment. That's like something that I would be like, hey guys, this is just me being on the outside, not really having a dog in the fight. Yes and no, I do, but not really where I'm just like, yo, let's just try to come up with something. Yeah. So that's what I would say where I'm not, yo guys, the left, you might need to go back to the drawing board because the right, they jujitsu this one. I think it's a lot easier to just say no to something than to figure out how to implement it if it's said yes to. You know, and I think that it is on the left to figure that out and implement it in a correct way because you know, it's easy to just be like, no, I don't want it, leave it alone. And then the other people are like, oh shoot, but if we do get yes, like we got to figure out how to execute it. Also, being on the outside, you know, we took a DNA test, David, and I, we're 0% black or white. Right. We have 0% of any sort of like, I'm like 99.999% Asian. Right. I don't know. I do think that, let me, you know, I don't know if people might view this as too self-interested. Think about what the Asians are saying, man, because we got a pretty good like third eye, like outside of the game perspective. You know, hey, you guys, leave it in the comments down below. I think I'll say this, man. Sound off. I'll say this. Listen, guys, I think sometimes a lot of stuff with CRT and you're changing sort of like, the narration of the game. And you know, if we're going to talk about life, being this race up this mountain, but then there was coaching in base camp, and then you got shot in a cannonball jump, and then you hit the mountain at different points, and everybody had different qualities of bicycles and different coaching. CRT is going to change the narration of that because we're going to look at Lance Armstrong and winning 70, 100 years in a row or whatever for live team Livestrong. We're going to be like, oh man, they cheated. Oh man, they need to dole out some of the earnings back or something like that. But we have to structurally change like systemic base camp and what bike people get and what kind of coaching. And you know what I mean? I just think that CRT is like, it's just like avoiding the actual changes that would need to take place because a lot of people don't want to take their brain there. Yeah. And that's maybe where we're at as a society. People like to argue about this thing and that thing. It's so trivial, but it's like, it's not more complex feelings wrapped up in there, but they're not actually going to the court. It's not to say that it's not a significant issue, but it might not be the main issue you want to focus on concerning everything else that's going on in the world. I don't know guys, let us know. It's a little confusing too. Yeah, let us know in the comment section below what you think about this CRT issue. What do you think about the debate? What do you think? Do you know, do you think Ron DeSantis will probably become the president within the next 10 years? Probably using tactics based off this issues. And you know, it's just politic talk guys, but we got to talk about it because this is a life we're living in. Until next time, we're the Hop Hop Boys. We out. Peace.


Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! Can I hear you praise the Lord! Hallelujah! I have to say that I really feel at home here. Hallelujah! My name is Ricard, I'm an evangelist all the way from Sweden. Some of you may know me, some of you may not, but we are not here to talk about me today, we're here to talk about Jesus Christ. Hallelujah! And before I start I want to use this opportunity of course to give honor where honor is due. I want to thank my Father in the Lord for everything that he has done for me and all the way long he has been supporting me. So daddy thank you very much for everything you've done for me. Thank you sir. And also I want to thank of course the leadership and the pastors of the church here for inviting me and giving me the great privilege and honor to share with you what God Almighty has put on my heart here today, before even formally knowing me. Actually it's a great privilege and I thank you very much. Hallelujah! And also I want to encourage each and every one of you that are sitting down here today. Hallelujah! Because I believe that there's something that is going on around the world today. And where I come from Europe, Sweden we are seeing it happening. And I know that you people here as well you're seeing it happening. And there is something that is going on there's like a rumbling in the spirit that is happening and it's been happening for some time now but it's getting more and more obvious. And I think that what is actually happening is that there is a new generation of people that are rising up all over the world. And the people that are rising up are people that are not concerned with names or titles or whatever. But the only thing they have as a concern is for the name of Jesus Christ to be glorified. Hallelujah! And I strongly believe that this ministry, hungry generation, has a vital role to play for that generation and that coming revival has already started to spread across this nation and also around the world. Hallelujah! So tell your neighbor you are in the right place at the right time. Hallelujah! Praise God. Yes, I just want to take just one or two more minutes to talk about what I'm really talking about. I think that this coming revival is a faceless revival. And there are people that are, as I said, rising up. They are like there's an army that is rising up around the world right now. And these people that are rising up, they are not so much concerned with just the Word of God alone. Because we know that the Word of God alone is very fundamental to our Christian life, but it's not enough. After the Word of God, there's something that comes together with it when you practice the Word of God in truth and in life. And that is the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life. Hallelujah! And the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life brings about the power of God. And that, I believe, is the difference from this coming revival and revivals in the past. What we are seeing is that we are not just seeing the Word of God being ministered across the world, but we are seeing people that are rising up. They don't care about if people know their name or not.  Hallelujah! And I just want to encourage each and every one of you. You are in the right place.  Hallelujah! Praise God. So you are in the right place at the right time. And these people that are rising up around the world as well, they know that it's not just Word of God, as I have said, but this power of God that we are talking about. It comes by your own desire. You can't just begin to go out and, you know, claim the power of God. If you don't know what you're doing, you may get into some certain situations that you will not be able to handle. Hallelujah! But this generation is coming, they have hunger and thirst for the holiness. Hallelujah! Remember that the Spirit that brings about the power is called the Holy Spirit.  And that is one of the things that I'm really happy and that is one of the reasons why I really feel at home here, because I know that holiness is one of the things that the leadership and the pastors here have dearly at their heart. Hallelujah! So once again, I want to thank you for allowing me to come here and share with you what God Almighty has put on my heart. Hallelujah! Praise God! I'm not going to really talk about holiness today, I'm just using that as a bit, something that God has put on my heart that I see is coming more and more around the world. Praise God! What I'm going to talk about is something completely different, but it's something that is very dearly to me, because it's something that I have experienced throughout the years. And that is something that is called the authority of God. Hallelujah! Praise God! How many know that we as Christians have been given an authority to trample on snakes and scorpions?  Hallelujah! How many again?  How many here don't know that we have been given an authority to trample on snakes and scorpions? How many here are not going to raise up your hand today, no matter what I ask? Hallelujah! Praise God! Yes, we have been given an authority as people of God to trample on snakes and scorpions, and those of you that say that you know that we have been given that authority, how many of you know how we use this authority in our daily life?  Hallelujah! Praise God! And that is what we are going to talk about today. The believer's authority. Hallelujah! Praise God! If you can turn with me to the book of Luke chapter 10, Luke chapter 10 verse 19. Praise God! It says, Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Hallelujah! This is Jesus Christ is addressing his disciples. How many disciples of Jesus do we have here today? Hallelujah! If you are not yet a disciple, you're going to be a disciple in Jesus' name. Hallelujah! Praise God! So this is Jesus Christ is talking to his disciples saying that I have given you an authority to trample on snakes and scorpions, and many people they know, they take this word of God, they have read it and they understand that, yes, I have an authority to trample on snakes and scorpions, but how do we actually exercise this authority as Christians? Hallelujah! Praise God! And that is what we're going to talk about. In the book of Romans chapter 10, the Bible says that there's power in our mouth. The belief in our heart is released by faith out of our mouth. If you look at Jesus in the book of Matthew 4, Jesus was in the desert praying and fasting, and there the enemy came to him and started tempting him. And with all the temptations that the devil gave to Jesus presented before Jesus, the only response that Jesus gave to the temptation was the spoken word of God. He confessed the word of God against that temptation. You know what many people do today? When they face temptations or snakes and scorpions or difficult situations, what they do is that they begin to pray in their heart, and they pray, God, deliver me from this temptation. Help me to overcome this temptation. God, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do that. But at the end of the day, that's good. I'm not saying that prayer is bad. Prayer is the most important thing in a daily Christian life. Hallelujah! But it's not just all. Jesus Christ spoke to that temptation directly and said, man shall not live by bread alone. Hallelujah! And that was the only way that he could overcome the temptation. Hallelujah! So also we as Christians, we have been given the same authority. Jesus Christ was the firstborn Son of God. We all were sons and daughters of God. He was the firstborn, but we are the sons and daughters of God. That means that whatever authority that has been given to Jesus, the same authority has been given to us. Now the snakes and scorpions that we are talking about here, we heard, listened to wonderful testimonies of power, of evangelism, where you go out and you pray for people, and people receive the deliverance, the healing, the chains of weakness and bad habits of broken in their life, and they receive the most important thing, salvation of their soul. But the snakes and scorpions that we are talking about here is also the snakes and the scorpions in our daily life. Hallelujah! Now I'm not talking about physical snakes and scorpions, obviously, but we are talking about temptation. Well, some may have physical ones, I don't know, but the ones I'm talking about are temptations, trials, hardships, and so on. The common calamities of human life. And these situations come at various times in our lives. And the devil knows, listen to this, he knows the authority that you and I possess. He doesn't want you and I to know, because he knows the moment that we know what we have, he's out. Hallelujah! So he does everything he can to cover that authority so that you and I will not know who is at our back covering up for us. Hallelujah! So what he does, I want to use the example of Job in the book of Job 1. Let's quickly go there. I love Job so much, because any time when me, myself, I'm facing temptations, hardships, or various circumstances, I look to Job and I say, well, I have nothing to complain about just yet. Hallelujah! Praise God. So here we are. God was boasting about Job's faithfulness and how good a servant he was among his peers. And the devil was there and the devil said, well, it's not strange that Job is always faithful. You have blessed him far beyond anyone else of his peers. Let me touch him for a bit. Let me tempt him. Let me send snakes and scorpions into his life and we'll see if he will not deny you to your face. Hallelujah!  But on one condition, you cannot touch his soul. Hallelujah! That same condition stands today. We are the children of God. The devil knows that he cannot snatch us out of the hand of God. So what does he do? Look at the example of Job. You know, the Bible is our standard. Everything that is written in this Bible is for a purpose. There's nothing here that was written by accident or by coincidence. Everything has been divinely planned as a book of instruction for you and I until eternity. So what happened? The devil came to Job, tempted him, took everything from him. And then all the temptation that Job faced, it came down to one single moment in his life.  Why? Because the devil knew that as children of God, we have an authority. That authority can be used in two ways. He knows he can't take your soul. So what does he do? He uses our circumstances to tempt us to destroy ourselves. He can't. He can't take your soul.  That is why he uses our circumstances as people of God to tempt us, to speak lies to us. And the moment that we listen to the voice of our circumstances and begin to confess that voice of failure, destruction is upon us. Because he has not been given authority to destroy us. The authority we have is authority to say, devil, get behind me. I don't have your time. Hallelujah. But that same authority can be used to say, God, I deny you. Why God? Do you allow this to come upon me? God, don't you hear me any longer? I said I needed a promotion, not a sac letter. Why all this? And what have you done? You have fallen for the devil's trick to use your own authority that has been bestowed on you from on high to cause destruction upon yourself. Hallelujah. This is very, very important.  The only way that Satan, devil, the liar, whatever you want to call him, he's under our feet, by the way.  That's what he tried to do with Job. Job refused. Hallelujah. There was someone, someone came to church for healing. This particular woman was an elderly woman in her maybe late sixties or early seventies. She had a severe back pain. She couldn't walk well. And she came to the church and the minister of God prayed for her and she received her healing. She was using this walking frame and she received her healing. She threw away the walking frame and she started walking to the glory of God. She said, thank you Jesus, I've received my healing. Hallelujah. And she walked back to her place of habitation. After a couple of months at that point, I received a phone call from this woman and she said, evangelist, I was the one that received prayer a couple of months ago and I was healed. But this morning when I woke up, I started feeling some pain on the left side of my back. You know what, evangelist? I think the back pain is coming back again. Hallelujah. You know what I told her?   We know that he exists, but he doesn't deserve our attention. Hallelujah. That you wake up with back pain today. It may be because you slept in a strange position. Madame, it doesn't mean that back pain is coming back again. Hallelujah. And she agreed and she said, yeah, maybe it's because I slept in a strange position. Yeah. And I said, begin to confess it. Don't listen to your circumstances. Don't listen to the symptoms. Listen to the word of God. The word of God says, by his stripes, I am healed. Hallelujah. After about two weeks, she called back and she said, the pain has gone away. Hallelujah. Imagine if she would have continued confessing, I believe the pain has come back. Oh yes, now that's the next step. Last time it was like that as well. When I get out of bed, it's very difficult. And from there, step by step, she listens to the voice of the tempter and she walks straight back into the situation she was in before. Why? Because she has an authority in her mouth. Hallelujah. Praise God. I want to use this opportunity to actually share a very short testimony. It's about my own dear mother. Some months ago, my mom was diagnosed with kidney cancer, heart disease and Parkinson's disease at the same time. And she was the only symptom she had was that when she walks, she gets tired easily. She got tired easily. So she went to the hospital and they diagnosed one by one, by one after the other. And when it happened, of course, she was destroyed and she said, I'm only 59. Why? Why is this happening? But she quickly realized that she cannot allow this situation to cause her to doubt what the word of God says.  The doctor can be used by whoever to manipulate my test results. I believe in God more than man. And she kept confessing, kept confessing, kept confessing. This was about four months ago. And glory be to Jesus Christ today. She is cancer-free. The heart condition is gone and we believe that very shortly the last healing is coming as well. Hallelujah. Me personally, I know that if at that time she would have allowed herself to begin to confess sickness, Jesus Christ would not have been able to heal her. Why? Because Jesus Christ needs our faith and we unconsciously confess what we believe. You may not consciously be aware of it, but what you say every day is what you believe in your heart. If you come to church and say, I am healed, I am healed. But at home you say, oh God, not this pain again. Oh, it's getting more. It's getting worse. That what you say at home is what actually counts. Hallelujah. Praise God. So it is incredibly important for you and I to realize that there is an authority. This authority has been given from on high to you and I to trample on snakes and scorpions in our daily situation. If we allow those situations to speak to us and we listen to them and begin to confess those things, we are never getting out of it. Hallelujah. I want to use another example. There was someone that came to church as well. This person had, I hope you don't mind if I share some examples as well. Hallelujah. Someone came to the church and this man he had worked at the same working place for over 15 years and he had trained many people and the people that he trained have been promoted before him. He's still stagnant in his working place and he wasn't able to get any promotion.  So he looked up at church and he came to our church and he was there. He was praying for God to set him free, set him free. Finally the man of God prayed for him and truly exactly the way that he expected it to happen, something came out of him and immediately afterwards he said, wow, I feel so free. And when he came back to his country, the first thing that happened when he came back to his working place, right? They said, okay, your boss has been looking for you. He said, wow, oh God, you are fast to answer prayer. Hallelujah. And he majestically walked into his boss's office and he said, I heard that you've been looking for me. He said, yes, I've been looking for you for quite a few days now. Finally, you are back. I want to see you sit down. How was your journey? He said, well, we thank God everything went fine. He said, okay. Unfortunately, I have some news for you and you know that our company has not been doing very good recently and we have to let some of our staff go and looking at the list of performance you are at the lower end. So unfortunately, I have to let you go. Here is your sac later. Please help me greet your wife. Hallelujah. So when he received the sac letter, he looked at him. He looked at the boss and then he looked at God and he said, is there some kind of communication problem? I said, I needed a promotion God. This is a sac letter. What's up? Hallelujah. Praise God. So I don't know what you call it in US. You understand sac letter? Hallelujah. I heard someone here. You know, I'm from Sweden and I've been across the world. My accent is just messed up. So I hope you can understand me, at least half of what I'm saying. I would be happy. Hallelujah. Praise God. A sac letter or whatever you call it. Hallelujah. Where I come from, we say bottle of water. But when I came, I realized it's a bottle of water. So I'm trying to, you know, work on it as much as I can. Hallelujah. Praise God.  And when he came home, you know, he had to explain to his wife. And the boring part of the story was that they had actually taken a loan for him to be able to go and receive deliverance at our church there. So to explain to his wife that, you know, he promised his wife that once I receive my deliverance, everything is going to work out. Just trust me, let us take this loan and everything is going to work out. But at the end of the day, he came home and he had to tell his wonderful wife that he didn't work out quite the way he planned. So the wife was of course not very happy. And at this particular time now, he was face to face with a dilemma. And this dilemma is, is he going to listen to the voice of his circumstances and begin to question God and say, God, why do you do like this? God, you know, I've been faithful for many years. You know that I give tithe in church. I always attend church service.  I'm telling you, if you don't fix this situation, you're losing one. Hallelujah. No, but instead he chose to say, God, you give and you take away. I trust you now as ever before.  Hallelujah. And it took some time. There were some months that it was very, very difficult for the brother in question. But finally, after about six months, a job opportunity came his way and he was able to start his own company and he started making much more money that he could have ever done in his former company, even if he was promoted. Hallelujah. What does this? Hallelujah. This simple example just shows that many times when we come to God, we pray for certain things, but we don't actually know what the will of God is. You pray for something, say, God, give me promotion. I need a promotion. You know, I'm not praying for selfish reasons. God, I have children to feed. I want to do charity. Promote me, God, and I will return it to your kingdom. And God is on the other side standing here and saying, my son, this is the way I want you to go. Hello. Can you hear me? Come this way. And we are here and we are saying, God, hear me. God, I need you pray. And he's at our back saying, my son, here, this is the way. But many of us, because we are so filled up with praying for what we actually want, not for what we actually need. We don't hear God when he answers us. Hallelujah. It was God that made him to get sacked because if he wouldn't have done that when the job opportunity came his way, he wouldn't have seen it. In fact, he might even have rebuked it as a temptation from Satan and say, God, I'm praying for a promotion and these job opportunities are coming my way.  I will be faithful. Hallelujah. So many times, God Almighty does such situations. He allows such things to happen to us so that he can put us back where we belong on track. During this period of time, your confession is of utmost importance. Don't listen to the voice of your circumstances and I'm not going to take so very much time more. I want to go to the book of Matthew, Matthew 14. This is one of my favorite scriptures in the whole Bible. Oh my God. Anytime I read it, I really, I feel something on the inside. It's so wonderful. Hallelujah. Matthew 14 verse 28 and Peter answered him talking about Jesus and said, Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. Hallelujah. So Jesus replied and said, come. And when Peter had come down out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. Hallelujah. Oh, I love this scripture. You know why? Because Peter did something that no man had ever done before. When he, he said, God, if it's you, tell me to come. And Jesus said, yes, come. He took a step and he began walking on the water. At this time, when he was walking on the water, water, water, hallelujah. You know, when you get excited, you forget the grammar rules that you have learned. So I'm getting excited. That's why. Hallelujah. So he was walking on the water and for every step that he took, he kept his focus on Jesus Christ. Waves were crashing down around him. The storm was very hectic. But he decided, I'm not going to look at this situation. I'm not going to listen to the voice of my situation. I'm going to only focus on Jesus Christ.  But he said, Isaiah 53, verse five, by his stripes, I am healed. The situation said, you are weak. He said, Psalm 28, verse one, the Lord is the strength of my life. The situation said, you are poor. He said, Philippians 419, the Lord shall supply all my needs according to his riches in glory and Christ Jesus. And he took another step. The situation said, you are not free. And he said, the Bible says, when the Son of God sets me free, I am free indeed. And for every situation that came his way, he kept confessing the Word of God. Now listen to this. He wasn't walking on the water. It's not that he was walking on water. He was walking on the Word of God. He was walking on the promise of God. The same is for us today, people of God. Whatever storm or situation you can be facing, whatever temptation, weakness or bad habit you are facing, when you walk on the Word of God, that situation cannot bring you down. There's nothing that situation can do to you. The less attention you give to the enemy, the less he will attack you. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. But the moment that Peter lost his focus from Jesus and he began to look around and say, wow, that wave is much huger than me, much more huge, much bigger, much greater. Hallelujah. So he was walking and he said, wow, that wave is really huge and it's going to come crashing down on me. And he lost his focus from Jesus. What happened? He started sinking because the only way that he could walk on top of his circumstances was by walking on the Word of God. It is your and mine responsibility to not listen to the voice of our situation. That voice will always be there. You know what it will say? Especially when you have prayer line here and they pray for you and you receive your freedom. Maybe you have that feeling too that there's something that some kind of darkness stays affecting me.  And we begin to think that, well, I didn't really feel that I was set free. Maybe they didn't touch me good enough. You know, after all, they prayed for that person for almost 15 seconds. That one for almost 15 seconds. Me, just five seconds. After all, I'm not feeling so good, actually. We fail to realize that faith is not a feeling. Our feelings are one of those waves that come crashing down once in a while. Those things are actually one of the things the enemy uses more than anything. Our emotions, hallelujah. I'm not saying the emotions are not from God. They are from God, but we need to know how to control them because if we let them control us, suddenly we are sinking. So because you don't fall down when they pray for you, doesn't mean that you are not set free. In fact, the greatest testimonies that I have heard throughout my life are from the ones that nothing happened to them when they were prayed for because God is spirit. He doesn't operate in the physical. You don't need to feel, it's good if you feel. I'm not saying that it's wrong, but if you don't feel anything, it doesn't mean that God is not working in your life. Can you imagine when you, if you're having, maybe you're having appendicitis, I think it's called appendicitis, right?   No.  I don't know how to, you know, express myself at all times. And it's been long that I preached in English actually. It's been like six months. So it's surprising how fast my English language have deteriorated for the past six months, actually, but it's coming back again in Jesus' name. Hallelujah. So you don't necessarily feel anything at that point. And in fact, if let's say that you didn't know that they are taking you for a surgery to remove your appendix, when you wake up from the surgery and you don't know that they have operated you, you will say, oh my God, this appendicitis is really bad. I'm feeling serious stomach pain right now because they've just done operation, right? Not knowing that that problem is gone and it's just the symptoms remaining. So don't listen to the voice of your situation. Hallelujah. Listen to the word of God. Confess the word of God. And when you do so, you begin to realize that just as Peter, nothing can bring you down or take you out. Hallelujah. Praise God. Hallelujah. Praise God. Hallelujah. So without taking too much time, I just want to say a short prayer if it's okay. Lord Jesus, we thank you for this time in your presence as we have heard the word of God from you Lord, me especially God, make me a doer of the word. You have sent forth your word to heal spirit, soul and body. You have sent forth your word to change. You have sent forth your word to break chains of bad habits and weaknesses in my life Lord and in others. We pray, let it be permanent in Jesus' name. Make me a doer of the word Lord in Jesus' name. Make a way where there seems to be no way Lord, in the mighty name of Jesus Christ we pray.


Higaru, what a fantastic last position and what a fantastic game. Your thoughts? Yeah, it was a very interesting game. My opponent, Yan Khristos, he was trying to play the most challenging line with Queen E1. And we reached this position, somewhere around move 22, I think I had prepared it up to this point. And then he played this 92 and H5 followed by Queen A5, whereas I had looked at like 92, Rook G1, Queen A5, a couple of different setups. And I use a lot of time somewhere around here. And I think probably what I did was objectively correct playing Nf4. I think I simplified to where it should have been pretty balanced and even. I just couldn't come up with anything better, despite the huge advantage on the clock. So I did that. And then I pretty much was ready to make a draw. But then he played this Bishop b4 move. He got a little bit careless, allowing c5.  But I mean, when you go from being like completely even, maybe even small advantage, like suddenly having to defend, it's very unpleasant. And he didn't find the right continuation. I mean, you probably, he shouldn't have traded on d5 should have played like Bishop a5 or Bishop c3, something else at least, because it seemed like in the game. Once I took f3 and got Rb7, I mean, just a long diagonal really, it was too much. You couldn't counter all the threats combined with the fact that I had passed F pawns as well. So pretty good game, I think. Right. All reasons to be happy with it. Now, let's just talk about your opening choice.  We've seen you play the dragon. The line you went for today is something that we saw at Waikansi as well. The game, the famous game, Magnus against Guain. Where did you change and what happened today? Yeah, I played Rook b8. I think Guain played Rookie 8 in that game. So that's a big difference. I mean, I had already had this idea quite a while before the game in vikes. So I mean, I think I just did a better job of preparing than Guain did. But it still was quite interesting. I mean, I think it was, again, I think all the moves were the correct moves. I mean, what Jan Christos played, certainly they were the best computer moves up until he played h5.  But I mean, I think theoretically it's a very important game.  I mean, it's a pretty decent opening. So if you can get a win with it, that's always an added bonus. I was going to ask how do you decide or how do you choose? Give us some insight on how do you choose your opening for the day? Yeah, well, today I just flipped the coins. Literally? Yeah, I did actually. I mean, I knew that my I knew that Jan Christos played many different things against several different openings that I could have played. So basically, I just slipped a coin between between the dragon and one other one other opening. And you're not going to tell us which one came up correctly. So fate made the right decision. Right now, especially after the position after Queen C seven in the opening, there aren't too many games on the database. Do you think like this game is going to take this theory forward? Yeah, I think it will. I mean, I think everything was thematic and made sense like G4, H4, trying to play H5. I mean, that's all it seems like it's a correct plan. I mean, I think I suspect Knight F4 was not the best move by me on a few moves later. But I mean, I know that when I looked at similar setups, like 92 Queen A5, all this was pretty, pretty normal. So I mean, I think Jan Christos played quite well. It's just he got careless for one move. And unfortunately, I mean, he just couldn't recover from it. Right. And well, brilliant game Hikaru, but now let's come to another brilliant occasion, which is the Battle of the Sexes tonight. Are you going to participate? Oh, I didn't know that was tonight. I suspect I will. I mean, I'm like pastures. I've been pretty quiet this year. I don't think anyone's seen me that much. So I might compete it depends how I feel in a few hours from now, but it is Saturday. So it's it's reasonably likely that I'll show up a good way to spend Saturday night. I mean, I would say so. Yeah, certainly considering the options here. Yeah. Right. And what this, you know, this event Battle of the Sexes has been a traditional event for the trade by Gibraltar Chess Festival. How do you feel about it? I think it's it's very good. I mean, I think the whole term in general, the fact that there's so many female players, the fact that Brian and Stuart encourage women players to come and compete here is very important, certainly, because there are obviously a lot more male players and certainly many more strong male players, certainly than female players. So I think just everything to try and encourage women to play is very good. And I think I mean, it's certainly in this day and age, at least, it's very important to try and get women more involved in chess. So as one of the elite players of the world, one of the strongest players of the world, you support this ethos of having, of having to promote women chess in the way Brian does? Well, absolutely. I mean, I think you look at some players like who you find she's trying to stop playing in female events.  I mean, you have to play against the best players to improve. And I think having adequate prizes for the female players certainly makes a big difference. And they come here and they try to they try to win. And I think that that is certainly a good thing. I mean, again, you have so many more male players and female players that anything to try and, you know, make it more balanced is important, certainly. And well, let's not forget so far, what at least appears to be your toughest game was actually against a female player, Valentina Gunina. Yeah, I mean, I think I mean, if I played a little bit better in that game, I probably could have won like six hours earlier. But yeah, she defended very well. I mean, I think it was a very critical game. And I mean, unfortunately, she she couldn't hold it at the end. But I think, you know, who after we've been playing for seven hours. I mean, you know, really, it was more just making moves on inertia than anything else. And, you know, I won that game, but certainly credit her for playing and playing a great game. Right. Well, very enterprising and brilliant play by you so far. And we are really looking forward to see what you bring the second half of the tournament. Good luck. Thank you.


the RCL. Everybody here to see if you have a server so if you see something say something alright. You guys make it. One, two, switch it on.


Felly mae yn groes i gael. Ym unknowns yng Nghymru? The Scottish Government, what recent representation has made to the UK Government regarding the removal of the right of householders in Scotland to objective fracking taking place beneath their homes? Cabinet Secretary Don Swinney. The Scottish Government formally responded to the right of kingdom government's consultation on underground drilling access rights on 14 August 2014. The Scottish Government Iechwch i'ch angen i gwylo'r cynhyrchu Llandon o'r rheswm cofnog, o'r gwaith o gwerthau'n gweithio'n gwylo'n gwaith o'r rhwng ac oedd i'w gwylo'n gwylo'n gwaith o'r rhwng. Gweithredu'n? Mae'n cael ei gwyno'r gwaith o'r rhwng o'r ddaeth, gwoith o'r gyffredinfa i Westerbydd, a byddwn yn yn edrych yn ymddangos y maen nhw oedda Ie'n ddull ar gyfer cyfroedd r Beauty and the Run for Scotland, by removing rough shots over public opinion and removing householders rights without adequate debate is not good Government. With 99 per cent of respondents to UK consultation objecting to the plans, can the cabinet secretary give me an assurance that the Scottish Government will continue to look at the issue of unconventional gas extraction in a cautious, considered and evidence based fashion as opposed to the gungho attitude of the UK Government? productions. I can give Mr Macdonald the assurance that the Scottish Government will continue what we have been doing throughout our handling of this issue, which is to look at the issues raised by unconventional gas opportunities in an evidence-based, evidence-led process. That has been demonstrated by our appointment of the independent expert scientific panel, who reported in July of this year, and also evidenced in the decisions that we took in relation to the strengthening of planning policy with the five new measures in relation to hydraulic fracturing, including bringing in a requirement that development should only proceed if communities and the environment can be protected, and that will be the approach that we continue to take. I thank the cabinet secretary for his further reply. Given the UK Government has not only ignored the representations made by the Scottish Government, but also the representations made by 99 per cent of the respondents to their consultation, does he agree with me that all of the powers in relation to unconventional oil and gas should be devolved, as suggested by Andrew Tyre MP, chair of the Treasury Select Committee, only last week? Mr Macdonald will not be surprised to hear that I am a supporter of all of the relevant powers being devolved to the Scottish Parliament. The issues that are raised by the UK Government's response to the consultation highlight the necessity for decision making by politicians to be taken in accordance and in proximity to the aspirations and outlook and perspective of the people that they affect. It is a matter of regret that such an overwhelming evidence base that has been submitted to the UK Government's consultation has not been followed by the decisions that have been taken by the UK Government. The Scottish Government, as the cabinet secretary knows, has overall power over planning, which has already enabled the Scottish Government to prevent the development of the nuclear industry. Can I ask the cabinet secretary in relation to devolved planning issues how the Scottish Government is going to be taking forward the details of guidance to ensure that this is robust and recognise the environmental concerns of my constituents in South Scotland and across Scotland in relation to unconventional gas extraction? I recognise the issues that Claudia Beamish raised. An indication of the Government's approach was given in the national planning framework and the Scottish planning policy. The Scottish planning policy extracts at sections 245 and 246, giving some further detail on the way in which the Government will proceed in developing some of the guidance on issues of this nature. Individual planning applications are considered on a case-by-case basis. There is one that is with reporters at this present moment, and the issues that are relevant to the Scottish planning policy will be implicit in that determination. Alex Johnson. I thank the minister for the answers that he has given previously and say that I am reassured by those, but can I have an understanding with the minister here that when we take this forward we will do so on an evidence-based decision making process and that we will not give in to the misinformation and the conspiracy theories that seem to be abound among those who oppose fracking for no other reason than that they believe that it is a dangerous or bad idea? This is a huge opportunity for Scotland. Will he give me the assurance that that will be done by the use of common sense? What I can do for Mr Johnson is simply reiterate the answer that I gave to Mr MacDonald and it is the same answer that the Government will continue in a considered and evidence-based way. That is how we have structured our approach to this particular issue. It is why I think that it is regrettable that the UK Government has taken the decision to overrule the legitimate rights of individuals to raise their concerns in the matter that applies throughout the planning process. The work that the expert panel did for the Scottish Government was highly informative of some of the steps that need to be taken to handle the issue. I recognise the enthusiasm that Mr Johnson expresses for the issue. We also have to be mindful that there are many, many people in our country who have concerns about unconventional opportunities and who wish to be assured that proper and due process will be applied in all circumstances. I can confirm to Parliament that that will be the case. Patrick Harvie is pretty extraordinary to hear concerns about adding to the stocks of fossil fuels as a conspiracy theory. Given that 99 per cent of the consultation respondees have more sense than that, and that opinion polling shows a stronger opposition to those measures in Scotland than in any other part of the UK, surely it matters not just whether that decision is made in Westminster or in Hollywood but whether it is made at all. Can the cabinet secretary confirm that if the power to make that decision is brought to Hollywood, his Government will oppose the action that the UK Government has already indicated that it supports for the UK as a whole? I can say to Mr Harvie that the Scottish Government does not support the removal of the rights of householders to object to oil and gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing beneath their homes. We have been very clear about that point, and if we had the opportunity to do something different, we would take the opposite step. In relation to the wider issue, we have set out that there are a whole variety of complex issues that have to be wrestled with here. That is why we take an evidence-based and considered approach to the resolution of all those issues. That is what people would expect of Government, and that is what I think is regrettable about the decision of the UK Government to ignore the evidence in response to this consultation and to proceed to remove the rights of objection for householders, which I think will only fuel unease about those issues rather than address the unease that has been expressed on that point. To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on Police Scotland's decision not to make the details of the cost of policing the Commonwealth Games public. Police Scotland has not made any decision to withhold the cost of Commonwealth Games policing. The process of finalising the figures for the use of the Commonwealth's safety and security budget is currently on-going, and as a result it would be inappropriate to release the figures at this stage. Police Scotland is absolutely clear about the need for transparency and accountability for spending public money, and has assured the Scottish Government that once the figures have been finalised, the details of the safety and security budget will be published without prejudice. The Scottish Police Authority's finance and investment committee is meeting as we speak, and in closed session it is receiving an update on the cost of Commonwealth Games. It does not matter how often the SPA meets in public, it is by looking at what it chooses to hide and what it opts to receive in private, so that we can test whether it is meeting its obligations. Knowing how the money is spent is key to maintaining the confidence, when will the public be told the final cost of the security of the games? It is just worth reminding the member that Police Scotland's line of accountability for the safety and security budget is to the Scottish Government with regard to that matter. Of course, the SPA considers papers in private when figures are not yet finalised. The figures are not yet finalised, and they will be finalised as soon as possible, but it surely would not be right to put figures into the public domain that are not yet finalised. I can assure Alison McInnes that, as soon as they are, they will be put into the public domain, and the SPA will, of course, be able to revisit the matter, should they wish. Alison McInnes, can the cabinet secretary give us an early indication of whether the games come within the £90 million budget or whether, over time, Time Off in Lou and the movement of officers around the country cost overran? We are confident that the total spend will be within the £90 million allocated for safety and security. I should also put on record again our appreciation for the officers involved and their great efforts during the Commonwealth games. They were an absolute credit to Police Scotland and to the country. I should also add that all over time payments will be met from the safety and security budget. As I said at the start of my answer, Police Scotland does not expect the total spend to exceed the £90 million budget allocated for safety and security. Sandra White I thank the cabinet secretary for her reply. I am sure that Alison McInnes will get some of those answers at the sub-committee on police, but she sits on them. I was more uninterested in picking up the point at the cabinet secretary regarding the police and the work that they carried out. I thought that the police carried out a fantastic job during the Commonwealth games. I am being reminded of comments. I just wondered, cabinet secretary, if those thoughts had been relayed to all of staff as well in Police Scotland for the fine work that they did carry out during the Commonwealth games. Gareth Howe Yes, absolutely. It is important that we recognise that, as well as those on the front line, there were a lot of people, officers and civilians involved behind the scenes. I sent out a personal thank you to all of the agencies involved and asked that that be relayed across the board to those who helped to deliver the most successful Commonwealth games ever, as described by the Commonwealth Games Federation. Without the dedication not just of our police officers but of course the fire service as well, the health service, the ambulance service, all those really important services were first-class and helped us to deliver not just a fantastic Commonwealth games but a safe and secure one as well. I think that that is appreciated by everybody. Margaret Mitchell Good morning, minister. Although Police Scotland did do an excellent job, is the minister aware that many MSPs have been contacted by serving police officers regarding what they consider to be unreasonable demands placed on them in order to ensure that the Commonwealth Games were policed? That potentially raises some ethical issues. Can the minister therefore confirm if Police Scotland has put in place a process for whistleblowers that ensures that any such potential ethical or indeed criminal wrongdoing is highlighted and appropriate action is taken? Margaret Mitchell I think that for the vast majority of police officers this will be seen as a once-in-a-career opportunity to be involved in such a fantastic event as the Commonwealth Games. I should also say that the plans around things like toil and rest days have been put in place with the support of the Police Federation to allow officers extended time to take any outstanding rest days that they may have accrued. Some of the practicalities have certainly been dealt with. In terms of if an individual officer felt that there were undue pressures being put upon them, that is obviously a matter for Police Scotland to take forward. I would hope that those cases would very much be in a minority. The feedback that I have had from the vast majority of officers involved was an absolute pleasure and delight to be involved. Yes, it was hard work and we do appreciate the efforts that were made to make sure that we delivered a safe and secure games. I think that for the vast majority of officers it was one that will be something to remember for quite some time. Bob Doris Before I give my question, I draw your attention to my register of interests. Last summer I spent some time out in Kurdistan, as I guess the patriotic union of Kurdistan, which may have a relevance in the question that I am about to ask. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on how it will support humanitarian efforts in Iraq in light of the UK Parliament's approval of airstrikes in the country. Minister Hamza Yousaf The brutality of the so-called Islamic State or ISIL is beyond question. The Scottish Government supports international efforts to support the people of Iraq, Syria and the wider Middle East region. That will only be possible through a long-term strategic approach led by regional partners, which includes tackling radicalisation at home and abroad, and efforts to cut off ISIL sources of finance and weaponry in response to the international humanitarian crisis that continues. We define our response to those on a case-by-case basis, usually with the launch of a DEC appeal. For example, the £200,000 that the Government gave to the DEC's Syria appeal will continue to monitor the situation carefully and will offer the appropriate support that we have already written to the UK Government to this effect. Bob Dorn I believe that there is a role for air support from the international community in order to relieve a devastating humanitarian crisis and to help communities in the Kurdish region of Iraq and beyond, including Syria, to defend themselves. Furthermore, had the Iraqi Government not blocked early efforts of the KRG to put the properly armed Peshmerga then the situation may never have got so dire. Unfortunately, the UK Government on Friday gave an open-ended commitment in Iraq for years without any real consideration of future peace instability. Will the minister make representations to the UK Government making the case for proportionate and targeted use of air support specifically for the purposes that I have outlined, as well as making a strong case to any future peace, must include support for the Kurdish regions in both countries, including supporting stable democratic self-government and ensuring that they have a capacity to defend themselves in the future, therefore averting future humanitarian crisis? I have just said to Mr Doris that you were well wid of your first question, which my understanding is about humanitarian efforts in Iraq. My colleague, Angus Robertson MP, made this point during Friday's debate in the House of Commons. He said that the UK must not equivocate in its support for the Kurdish regional government. It must be supported in the Scottish Government, but it must support that as well. On military action against ISIL, that must be carried out with a long-term strategic plan, which must include a plan for peace. What we were presented with from the UK Government was lacking in those elements. An open-ended bombing campaign alone will be counterproductive. On Syria and the Kurds in Syria, the global community must redouble its efforts to find a long-term solution to that civil war in that country. Any political solution that must be alongside any military solution must be based on a human rights approach that protects the rights of all communities, including Kurds in Syria. As a Government, we will support action that comes with those long-term strategic plans. A plan for peace is legal within the international framework and our strong preference for that is led by regional partners. The First Minister will write to the Prime Minister this week to highlight the Scottish Government's concern regarding the UK Government's vote for military action against ISIL without that specific timescale, without a plan for ensuring peace and without a long-term strategic vision. Lewis MacDonald, can I ask you to keep it to humanitarian efforts in Iraq? For the avoidance of doubt, can the minister confirm what his position is in relation to United Kingdom Government assistance of all types to the Kurdish population of Northern Iraq? As I said to Lewis MacDonald, we support strengthening, giving support, training and so on and so forth to the Kurdish regional government. We have been very supportive and we understand their needs, but any military action has to have a long-term strategic plan for peace, including an exit strategy. That was what was missing on the vote on Friday. The vote on Friday did not separate actions to support the Kurdish away from the general situation in Iraq, so we had to look at the action as a whole. Therefore, we could not support that action because we think that it would be counterproductive, as opposed to helping the people on the ground, be they Kurds and Kurdistan, of course, the wider Iraqi population. Patricia Ferguson, humanitarian aid in Iraq. I wonder if I could ask the minister what humanitarian support the Scottish Government is providing to Iraq and whether it has offered to support the efforts of the United Kingdom Government in that respect. Humanitarian aid to Iraq. Yes, Presiding Officer. I wrote to Hugo Swire, minister who is in charge of the Under-Secretary in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, on that very point, that the Scottish Government is willing to provide any assistance that it can. Currently, Iraq does not come in terms of an international development budget, but I am more than happy to discuss with members about how we might offer that support. That offer was made to the UK Government back in August. It continues to be the case. I am sure that, when the First Minister writes to the Prime Minister, he will also reiterate that the Scottish Government is willing to help in that humanitarian effort wherever we can. Thank you. We now move on to the next item of business, which is at beta motion number 1123.


Namaskar. Welcome back to my Monday Motivation. Are you an early riser? Do you get up from bed early? That alone may not be sufficient for your success. Let me share with you this learning from Ramayana. What you should do in order to become successful though you are an early riser. Valmiki described the differences between Rama and Ravana and what they did with reference to the time. Rama was an early riser. One day while they were spending time in the forest, they woke up from the bed before the sunrise. Rama, Lakshmana and Sita, all three of them were walking towards the river Godavari for their morning bath and oblations. It was winter season. The weather was very chill and icy. The water in the river was very cold. On their way to the river, Lakshmana felt bad that his beloved brother Rama had to go through such harsh conditions. And also remembered that their brother Bharata was also going through similar kind of difficulties following the trend of Rama. So Lakshmana expressed his anguish and talked badly about their mother Kaikeyi as the root cause of all these problems. Immediately Rama stopped Lakshmana and told him not to talk ill of their mother Kaikeyi but advised him to continue telling good things about their brother Bharata. Rama that way did not allow Lakshmana entertaining any kind of negative thoughts at that time. On the other hand, Rama was also an early riser. He also used to get up early before the sunrise every day. One day he got up early from the bed and remembered Sita Devi who was already abducted by him and kept in the Asoka Vannam. His mind was filled with the thoughts of approaching Sita Devi and persuading her to accept him. So he proceeded to the Asoka Vannam with the thoughts of obtaining consent of Sita Devi. Look at the difference between Rama and Ravana. Both were early risers. While Rama used his earlier was the Brahma Mughurath for cleansing himself with the positive thoughts and did not allow Lakshmana to speak ill of others. Ravana spent his earlier was cultivating negative thoughts and indulging himself in immoral conduct. It's good to get up early. In fact most successful people are early risers. But the important thing is unless that time is used for good cause it is meaningless. Now due to this Covid-19 we all have the gift of extra time with us. So it's important for us to understand what we are doing with that time. It is what we do and how we do with our time at the workplace that signifies our success at work. So at the present time it is important for you to be conscious and to give a thought about what you are doing with the time that you have and how you are doing with it for your success. Thank you for watching this video. Please if you have not subscribed to my YouTube channel yet do subscribe to my channel and press on the bell icon there. See you again next Monday with another Monday Motivation. Till the time take good care of yourself and remember you are awesome.


All right, big story, breaking story that just happened, the WNBA star, Brittany Greiner, I think I'm pronouncing it right, was released from Russia, from Russian jail. Today she was accused and sentenced I think for seven years in jail for carrying, of having drugs, marijuana, something like that on her way out of Russia. She claimed she had none of that, that she was being framed. And what we have is a swap, a swap one for one with Viktor Boat, who is described as the merchant of death, a arms dealer, who was captured by the United States and prosecuted and sent to jail for a long, long time for illegally selling weapons internationally. So she's been exchanged for him. I'm not a fan of these kind of exchanges. I think this is a really bad idea with one caveat. I mean, it's horrible what happened to her. It's horrific. The United States should have done everything in its power to get her out. As long as we have diplomatic relations with Russia, we should utilize that. But the idea of a prisoner exchange I think is horrific. The challenge here is that every time the United States arrests somebody that the Russians want, they will then frame somebody in Russia, some American in Russia, and sentence them to some horrible sentence in jail with the now expectation that the United States will trade for them because the United States cares so much about its citizens. So given this prisoner exchange has happened, and I'm happy for Brittany, I'm happy for her family, and for the WNBA, and I'm happy for her being back and all of that, but the United States should make a simple straightforward declaration. And that is that the United States citizens who travel to the Russia on their own, that the United States is not responsible for their safety in Russia, that they cannot vouch for that safety. I think at the same time, the U.S. should bring back its ambassador and cut off whatever diplomatic ties we have with Russia. I think the United States should basically say Russia is a rogue nation. It is a suspect of framing U.S. citizens and putting them in jail for the purpose of having a negotiating chip. And therefore, the United States will not be in a position to protect its citizens as they travel to Russia. And then, fine, then you do the exchange, and it's over, and from now on, nothing. And from now on, Russia is a pariah state that it deserves to be. And from now on, the U.S. has nothing to do with it. And until further notice, that is the situation in which we're in. I think that's the appropriate thing to do, encourage American citizens who live in Russia to leave and encourage U.S. citizens not to go there again. That is the only scenario under which I think such a prisoner exchange makes sense. Because otherwise, again, every time Russia wants something for the U.S., it just has to arrest a U.S. citizen. It happens to be passing through and Trump up charges, send them to jail, and then negotiate a so-called prisoner exchange. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Brook show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to IranBookShow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals, and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those, any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content. And of course, subscribe, press that little bell button right down there on YouTube, so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.


My talk today is on persistent storage with Kubernetes in production. Which solution and why? So my name is Cheryl. I'm an ex-Google software engineer, now product manager at Storage OS. I'm also a CNCF ambassador. I run the Cloud Native London Meetup Group and these slides are at my blog, oresherol.com if you want to follow along on your laptop. I also tweet at Oresherol. So tell me a little bit about you guys. So who here is new-ish to Kubernetes? Like half, probably, of the audience. How many people are running Kubernetes in some dev or test environment but not in production yet? Okay, so two thirds probably. How many people are running just the stateless parts of their application in production with Kubernetes? Okay, so maybe a quarter. And how many people are running everything, including all the staple parts in production? Okay, it's about a quarter as well. Cool. So the objective of this talk is to answer the following three questions. So why is state so tricky in the first place? How do I go about comparing my storage options? And then what storage option should I look at with Kubernetes and what are things to look out for? Plus one anti-objective. So should I use a database or message queue or key value store or something else for my application? So we're just going to talk about the storage layer here. So first off, why is state so tricky anyway? Why do I even need storage? Because probably everyone's heard that your container should be stateless, your infrastructure should be stateless and immutable, and you get some really nice properties from that. The problem is there is no such thing as a stateless architecture. So assuming that you want to do something useful with your application, you need to store data somewhere, which means you need to pick a storage solution. So if you either need to think about it yourself, or you've outsourced that problem to one of the cloud providers or to your internal ops team. So first challenge of storage, no pet storage. This is the pet versus cattle analogy for servers. So you shouldn't treat your servers like pets, that you name and you lovingly look after them, and when they fall ill, you nurse them back to health again. Instead, you should treat them like cattle, so you number them, and when they fall over, you take it out back, you shoot it, and you plug in a new one. So with storage, you want to avoid having special servers that are your storage servers, and you've created pet servers that now you need to look after. Second challenge is data needs to follow. So your containers are small and lightweight and fast to move around the cluster, hopefully, and your data needs to follow that around wherever it goes. What you want to do is you want to avoid saying these containers or these pods need to live on these exact nodes because then you've tied that to that particular node, and now you've lost the portability and the mobility. The third challenge is humans are fallible. So if you are relying on a human operator to fix something by running through a manual playbook by typing in keyboard commands, then they're going to make mistakes eventually. 22% of data center outages are caused by human error.  Okay, now, how do I go about evaluating storage? Because obviously there's a lot of options out there. So if you've seen the CNCF landscape and if you zoom in from that giant thing just down to the cloud-native storage options, there's about 30 options here already, and there's all of the options from the various cloud providers like Azure and Google Cloud and AWS and all the others. So I want to lay out a framework for you to think about storage rather than giving you a one perfect storage solution for everything because that evidently doesn't exist. And I call this framework the eight principles of cloud-native storage. What do I mean by cloud-native? So cloud-native means horizontally scalable. So you add resources by adding more nodes to a cluster rather than adding more resources to a single node. There should be no single point of failure. And if there is a failure, then the system needs to be resilient and it needs to self-heal, which means that everything needs to be driven through APIs, so there should be minimal operator overhead. And then it needs to be decoupled from the underlying platform so that you can run things in different environments in exactly the same way. And this is the one which is difficult for storage because storage is inherently tied to that physical piece of hardware. So let's go through the eight principles of cloud-native storage. First one is that classically storage has been presented to an operating system, so to a single node, which means that you're tied to a specific instance of that. So now we want to tie storage to the need of the pod, not to the node that it's running on. That means that now you can move that storage and use that storage layer on any sort of platform, whether it's on-prem or cloud or hybrid or multi-cloud or anything. Third principle is if you're going to be able to move this from environment to environment, those resources need to be declared and composed as part of your orchestration or your instantiation. And in order to do that, everything needs to be API-driven, so you need to be able to provision your storage through an API, manage it through an API, and move it through an API, and your developers need to be able to consume that storage via an API as well. If your developers are consuming storage through an API, you need to think about security. So security needs to be part of the storage and how you access it through RBAC or anything else is not a separate product that you bolt on top of it. Sixth principle is the whole goal behind this cloud native thing is for agility. We want to move our pods around. We want to have Kubernetes orchestrate those and move those around. And the data should move just as easily. And if we're talking about distributed environment, then this has performance implications. So for certain use cases, you need to think about how you're going to manage that. And similarly, you need to think about availability, reliability, consistency, and so on. So those are the eight principles of cloud native storage. And hopefully you can start thinking about what storage features and characteristics are offered by different platforms. So let's get specific with Kubernetes. And let's go over the Kubernetes storage model. So with Kubernetes, an administrator has to create persistent volumes in a pool. So a persistent volume is a base abstraction for a piece of storage. So it has a size and it's backed by something like NFS or iSCSI or Google Cloud or whatever. A developer now who needs some storage will submit a persistent volume claim, which is a request for a certain amount of storage. And then they will reference that claim in their pod. And now Kubernetes can match up the exact volume with whatever the pod needs. So this is so far so good. The problem with this is that this requires the admin to provision these volumes in advance, which is not how we think of other resources, like CPU or memory. So what if you want to just create those volumes on demand? So the alternative is called dynamic provisioning, and that's done with storage classes. So instead of creating the admin creating those volumes directly, the administrator will create a couple of different profiles of storage that they want to provide. So let's say fast storage is always provisioned on SSD, slow storage is provisioned on hard drives. Now a developer does exactly the same thing. They submit a persistent volume claim, but that volume is only created at the moment that that claim is submitted and then attached to the pod. So for Kubernetes, this is the base model of how you do storage. So let's work through an example. So Meet Jane, she's a DevOps engineer at a media company, and she's migrating some client WordPress websites. She wants to follow those principles and she needs that to be highly available. So she goes to the Kubernetes documentation for storage classes and goes, wow, okay, that's already quite a few options. Then we've got to worry about flex volumes and CSI that contain a storage interface that's coming later. How do I go about picking what I need? So there's key information that she needs to think about for her problem. Number one, what is my use case? Number two, what does that mean for my performance requirements? Number three, how my developer is going to access it? And then number four, where is that going to be deployed and managed? So what am I use case? There's obviously a ton of use cases out there, but common ones include storage for your application binaries, storage for your data, configuration files, and then backups. What does that mean in terms of performance? So binaries are ephemeral, so you don't need persistent storage really for that. Application data is databases, message queues, and so on, and that's where you need to worry about high availability and latency and the performance characteristics. Configuration data is generally small, but it does need to be shared across multiple instances of a pod. And then finally backups, you need it to be highly available, but you don't expect a high volume of transactions. So you're now balancing cost versus performance, and you might need to think about backing up to a cloud as well. How are my developers accessing storage? So this is a bit of revision of storage 101. Block, file, and object store. So block storage means I need to access a fixed amount of memory at a certain location, which is best for databases, but don't use those directly.  It's organized in a hierarchy. It's probably posits compliance, so it has read, write, and executable permissions on it, and so on. And then object storage is I want to access these things by some kind of ID. And finally, where is the storage deployed and managed? So this is on-prem and cloud or managed as well, but if you're thinking about Kubernetes, there's multiple ways that your storage system can talk to your applications. So one is directly. Another is to go through one of the control plane interfaces like CSI or the Docker volume driver interface, flex volumes, or native volumes, or so on. There's quite a few different frameworks and tools out there. An example would be Wrexway, which allows multiple orchestrators to work with it. And so you need to think about how your storage system is going to interact with each of those. So let's get back to Jane and her example. So Jane needs to store some database locations and credentials and stuff. She also needs a Postgres database. The WordPress site allows her users to upload media files. And then she needs to take regular backups for the database and for the website and to be able to restore those. So let's take a look at database location and credentials first. What kind of data is this? This is configuration data. So it's small. It's shared across multiple instances. And Kubernetes provides some primitives for this already, secrets and config map. So this is already tightly integrated with Kubernetes. The second one is user uploaded media. So these are large blobs of data, but they're not frequently written to. These also need to be shared across multiple instances of pods. So this is actually a very good use case for a shared file system. There's cloud options such as Managed NFS. And I would be slightly wary about AWS's EFS here. I don't know if anyone has any experience with EFS. Does anyone use EFS here? A few, like 10, 15 people. So there can be some performance issues with it. I see some nodding there. It's like traumatised face. This is also good for object store if your application can be written to object stores. What about on-prem? So in an on-prem world, there are some distributed file system options. CepFS is a good one. GlusterFS is another good one. They're both open source products from Red Hat. I put please not NFS. So who here is using NFS?  So the reason I don't like NFS is... NFS is your classic file server that you export over the network to a number of clients. But of course your file server then becomes that special pet server that you need to look after, and you need to make sure that that is always special on that server. So if we're in a Kubernetes pod cloud native world, then NFS is actually not a very good option for that. Database and website backup. So this is back-upping and archiving the database and the website. Again, you care more about durability and cost than you do about high throughput or high number of transactions. This is a good option for object store. So manage object store. Who uses S3? Probably half the room in here. So, yeah, this is actually quite a good option for S3. There are specific options for this use case, like AWS's glacier for long-term cold storage. As long as you don't need to access it very frequently because it gets expensive if you're actually accessing it frequently. On-prem options. There's also actually object stores which are S3 compatible, but you can run them on-prem. So Minio is quite a good one. Or you could just use a NAS as well. Finally, we come to the Postgres database. This is probably the one that is the most difficult because you care about availability and latency and having a deterministic performance. The developers are accessing it via database connector. Remember what we mentioned earlier about databases running best on block storage? If you were looking for a Postgres option, then you'd want to look for something that runs on block storage. What options does Jane have here? One is cloud volumes, like AWS's EBS. Who's using EBS here? Yeah, about a third of people as well. One thing you have to watch out for here is attach and detach times. This is the case whenever you have a physical block device that needs to be attached and reattached to a node. So on EBS, that detaching and attaching can take between 45 seconds and an hour, which if you're expecting your pods to be able to move around onto different nodes easily, is a total killer. If you have regulatory needs, so you're storing biometric data, for instance, then you also have to worry about compliance issues. You have to have whatever compliance tools the providers provide for you. Or there's managed databases. So who's using RDS or something along those lines? OK, about a quarter. So I put limited offerings here because actually managed databases are really convenient. They have all these high-vailability features built in for you. As long as you don't need any kind of custom configuration or you don't need a specific version of a database that's not offered or you have a specific database that's not offered, I mean Postgres is quite widely used, but MyIDB, if your favorite cloud provider doesn't offer it, then you may not have this option. OK, so what about on-prem options? So the best option for on-prem is software-defined storage. And software-defined storage means it's a pure software layer that abstracts away the underlying storage. So I have a demo. And of course I'm usually storage OS for this demo. So software-defined storage, in this particular example, I'm just running a one-load cluster, but storage itself, storage OS itself, runs as a single container on each node, so much like a demon set. In this particular example, I believe I just have. Yes, I have a master and a one-worker node. So if I create that demon set, then I'm expecting to see just one pod. So that's going to create itself in a little bit. By the way, if you haven't used CataCoder before, it's quite neat. It's the sort of in-browser tutorials and the Kubernetes docs use it, so it's quite fun. And it means that you can go and try this yourself as well later if you want to run through it again. So let's take a look at what that's doing. So once you've been stored that one container and it's figured out what storage is available on each node, then it will create a virtual storage pool that goes across the entire cluster. So it will discover any block storage and present that through the storage pool. You can create virtual volumes from that storage pool and mount them to containers. The nice thing about that is now that the containers or the pods can move around the cluster onto different nodes and they don't need to be aware of whether they're accessing local storage or storage on another node in the cluster because it's all managed through the storage pool that spans the entire cluster. So let's go through the... creating a storage class and persistent volumes as if I was using this as a provider. So I'm just going to encode the secret for... this is the IP address of the worker. So let's have a look at what a storage class looks like. So I've defined a storage class and behind it is the StorageOS Provisioner. So I will create that. That storage class is called Fast. So that's my admin hat. So I take off my admin hat and I put on my developer hat now and I'm going to ask for a specific volume. So let's create that. Let's look at how that was defined as well. So this is a persistent volume claim. The name was Fast001 and it's using the Fast Provisioner, the Fast Storage class even. And it's a 5GB volume. So let's look at what that persistent volume claim looks like. So that's currently pending. This is the point where my demo is going to break down because demos always do this. Okay. I'm going to come back to this in a little bit. But it's basically this model that we talked about before. So create a storage class, create a persistent volume, create a pod that references that persistent volume claim and it will return you a persistent volume. So reasonably straightforward. So let's just go over quickly what we talked about. And then we've got a little bit more time so either I can do a different demo or we can have some questions. But let's revise what we talked about so far. So think about your storage needs and use those eight principles of cloud-native storage to understand whether storage is a good fit in this model. Ask yourself what is your use case, what does that mean for my performance requirements, how my developer is going to access it, and then where is that going to be deployed and managed. So what's coming next? So CSI I mentioned before is Container Storage Interface. It was launched as an alpha in Kubernetes 1.9 and the goal is to have an interface that vendors can write compatible plugins against and now users will be able to move between different vendors more easily. So that's going to be coming soon.  We have a quick start Kubernetes guide and also we're hiring. So if you are looking for a role in CEC++, go DevOps engineers, pre-sell solutions architects, so on, then please let me know. So that's the end of my slides. So I'm going to see if there are any questions now and then maybe do a demo if I've got any more time. So go ahead. Is there a microphone? I'll repeat, yeah. So we're quite different from Wrexway. Let me come out to this diagram. So Wrexway fits in this frameworks and tools section. It's a connector between say the Kubernetes APIs and other ones. StorageOS is more on the storage systems side of this diagram. As to how we compare with Portworks, consider it not a good form to necessarily talk about competitors in that way. So I might just avoid answering that question. I hope that's okay. Hey. If you have a quick answer, besides the attach and detach times to EBS, could you maybe expand on why you'd avoid that for certain use cases? Yeah, because it's a virtual volume. So there's no actual attaching and detaching. It's all done in software, so it's instantaneous. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? I think. Yeah, so I had a quick one with the demo that maybe didn't go so great. You were attaching to the physical storage of that node. Is that correct? Yes. Okay, and if I were to add more nodes and that's deployed as a daemon set, that automatically appears as available? Yeah, so because... Let me come back to this diagram. So because StorageOS is just this abstraction layer, it can scale horizontally. So you just add more storage by adding more nodes, and they all contribute into that storage pool. So let's say that node has expandable storage on it. If I expand the storage on that node, it would become visible to the cluster as well. Cool, thank you. Hey. So the question was, can StorageOS pick which kind of devices that are attached to it to use? Is that right? Yeah, so we're going to have some more tools and functionality around that, yeah. Since we've got a minute, and actually I think this is quite interesting, so I'm going to add one more extra slide which is past this about how StorageOS works. So the model that we have is not... It's a hybrid master replicas model. So the entire volume is replicated onto different nodes as opposed to a distributed file system which shards the data across nodes. Instead, the whole volume is replicated. And that means that, for example, in this one, this is a five node cluster with one master volume on node one, and then two replicas that are spread onto different nodes. That means that if node one goes down, then we can just instantly switch from one of the replicas to become the master. So there's no failover time compared to a distributed solution where because you've sharded that data across different nodes, you now need to read and write to reconstruct it. And then the other nice thing is that in a distributed system, you get that fan out of write. So one write that comes in generates a lot of write on the back end. This is synchronous replication. So one write that comes in will just write in parallel to any replicas when they act back. Then that's marked as a success. So there's no reconstruction or failover interruption. I think this guy was standing here first. So this is more of a comment than question. You had a comment about not using NFS for on-prem, and you said that your reasoning was because it's more of a piss than cattle, and my counterargument is that first of all, NFS is just a protocol, and the NFS server itself can be distributed, software defined, and you mentioned that Ceph is better because of this whole pet notion, and I'm going to give us a counterargument that even in a Ceph PV, you're specifying the endpoint, which is not going to be any different than an NFS endpoint. And also you can put your NFS endpoint beyond DNS, so it's not tied to a specific server. I'm not sure I believe the last one, but let me... You can put your NFS server beyond DNS. You can put it beyond DNS, but I have something back in my head about why. Anyway, the whole point about this is not that there is one right solution or one wrong solution, so there are better things for different use cases. NFS, I'm saying, is one where you can distribute NFS, for instance, if you add on other products on top of it. So base NFS is just going to be one file server, and that's a pet server. Not necessarily, there are implementations of NFS servers that are distributed and scalable. I don't want to mention vendor names, but Icelon, that app, various... They just have offerings that... There are offerings you can add on top. Yeah, I agree with that. Okay, yeah. So the question was, in this diagram, if you took out one, three, and five simultaneously, then that would be disastrous. So does SoliderS provide administrator tools to manage that? Yes, is the answer. Sorry. Yeah, it does. Yeah. I should have mentioned that. So if the master node goes down, so the question was, does it do the regeneration of data if one of them goes down? Yeah, again. So if the master or one of the replicas is lost, then it will just resync a new replica in the background on a different node. And you can choose between zero and five nodes, which gives you up to four nodes that could go down and then still remain serviceable. Yeah. Well, it's the entire volume that's replicated. So every write that comes in gets replicated to each replica. No, yeah. So real quick, you talk about how it understands the storage on each node. Does that include EBS volumes if you're in the cloud? Yeah. So then you've got a reliable storage meaning that you're replicating between nodes? EBS is reliable, right? It's a persistent store. It's not ephemeral like the nodes. So you replicate multiple EBS volumes to each node like that? So you run on top of the EBS volumes. Yeah. So what's replicated is the virtual volume rather than the EBS volume. Right, but for whatever data you consume, it's stored on EBS three times, on three different EBS volumes. Yeah. So the downside, as I mentioned with EBS, is those attach and detach times, which is not a good fit for spinning up and down pods quickly. What if it's a back end? Let's store it as a matter? Yeah. So storage rest runs on top of EBS or it runs on top of... That negates the mountain types? Yeah, exactly. And it means that you can move around from different cloud providers pretty easily. Or from on-prem to cloud or whatever. Any other questions? So the question was are there open source alternatives to storage OS? Not with this... Not with the model that I described, that I know of, with the master replicas. So open source options right now that are distributed would probably be Cep or Gluster. But those are distributed by sharding across nodes. So then you have the fan outs. So I don't think there's anything that I know of that's directly similar. Cool. My time has just run out. So thank you very much for coming to my talk everybody and safe trip back if you're heading back.