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For you to appreciate economics, and this is a problem, I think, with a lot of the way the economics is taught today, where it's taught sort of linearly, like you just learn your model, and then you just repeat that model over and over and over again, with ever-increasing technical sophistication, which makes it seem like it's just everything, you know, is settled. You know, all you have to do is apply it. And by delving into the history of economics, I thought you realize a little bit that it is more open, always has been. My name is Gonzalo Fonseca. I am the writer and editor and creator of the History of Economics website from the ancient times until the modern day. And it's directed at students and the general public who want to learn about economics from a historical perspective. And what the website does is organize them in a way that's both useful and entertaining so you can get into it in various ways. It's organized as part of an alphabetical index where you can go through an economist's profile and sort of see the works, a little bit about him and the works that he's worked on. If the resources are available for those works, you'll link directly to them or the resources about them. There's another channel that you go in through the schools of thought where economists are sort of organized. It's not very strictly defined. Some of them are well known, like the Austrian school or the Chicago school. But others are a little more sort of conveniently constructed just for the website. But it's just sort of a way to sort of see how economists relate to each other. And then there's a series of essays and surveys on particular topics and you can go through them and you'll see sort of the history of a topic or the history of a field. And it makes it easy to move between profiles, topics, schools. And so you get a sort of rich sense of how economists have been related to each other over time. Why is the history of economics thought important? Almost like asking why is economics important? I mean, economics, if you think about what economics is, I mean, it's essentially a science, a field, a discipline, I don't care where do you use there, but it's essentially a set of ideas about factual phenomenon that people have been coming up with to sort of explain things. And so it's something economics, modern economics is something that comes out of human creativity. And human creativity has a history. So what we identify as economics, modern economics, is just the outcome of that history of human creativity. And it's sometimes economists think that okay, we don't need to know the past, but it's nice to know that at that element of it. Because when you think about it, economics is an edifice that's been constructed over time generation after generation by people, series of figures through mentors and proteges, through criticism and correction, through cooperation, through rivalry, through proofs and conjectures, through flashes of brilliance individual, but also just waves of fashion, there are periods of ideology and periods of rebellion. So what economics is today is an outcome of this really, really messy squabble that has happened over the last couple hundred years. So that's sort of what I believe economics is. And that's how I like to present it. And it's not so much that the history of economics thought in principle presents it that way. It shows it to you. You can actually look at it and see the squabble, see that it hasn't been just a simple linear progress, it's a great perfection, but just a really, really messy process. And it shows that it's also still open-ended, that the debate is not over, that the debates continue, that the struggles continue, the fights continue and sort of it. For you to appreciate economics, and this is a problem, I think, with a lot of the way the economics is taught today, where it's taught sort of linearly, like you just linear model and then you just repeat that model over and over and over again with ever increasing technical sophistication, which makes it seem like it's just everything, you know, is settled. You know, all you have to do is apply it. And by delving into the history of economics, I thought you realize a little bit that it is more open-ended, it always has been, that there are, that it's not a settled topic, that debates go on, that debates continue, and those debates, you know, resurrect the old questions back, keep coming back again and again and again. So this is sort of the value of learning history of economics thought as part of any economics education. So why the history of economics thought? Well, why economics? It's the same answer to be the question. History of economics thought used to be part of every graduate program in economics. It used to be standard training. And we see this with other fields like political science or these sort of fields. You always learn the history of your subject because it's thought to be an important topic, an important part of the formation of anybody. Since the 70s, history of economics thought programs, history of economics thought courses have sort of been dropped from the curriculum. So there's an entire generation now, several generations of economists and students who've never learned anything about the history of their subject. They have no idea about it and they go on to teach still without that idea, without any idea about it. So this is a huge blinder in a lot of education of many economists. The ideal for there would be for some curriculum reform of some kind to bring history of economics thoughts back into a graduate program. There's a little prospect of that. Graduate programs are not interested in teaching the history of economics thought anymore because they've got to fill those graduate programs with statistical courses, math courses, things that improve economist skills. So they had to drop history of economics thought on the side. That's their excuse. The history of economics thought website sort of fills that gap. And let's put it that way. If the graduate program's not going to teach it, well, we'll teach it. And that was sort of the motivation behind it. They don't want to teach it. We can teach it. And that's been sort of the most rewarding part of it is, I think, for me is like hearing not so much from people who already interested in the history of economics thought, but hearing from people who never were interested in the history of economics thought saying, oh, okay, this was interesting. Tell me more. Economists who had no inkling of it suddenly come across it, find it interesting and find intriguing and sources of new ideas. It's always been a public good. Like it's never been sort of a for profit for a celebration or for taking any angle or any perspective. It the only perspective it takes is that there is a lot of ideas. So it's a pluralistic perspective if you want. It doesn't try to denigrate or promote any particular view. I wrote for the history of economics thought about over maybe a thousand economists profiles 100 pages on schools of thought and close to the same number of essays and surveys on various topics. What I believe all education should be, not merely in which age it is apart, should present subjects as open debate, should present subjects as a subject matter, not techniques, and should prove that there is no trade off between breadth and depth, that learning more about new topics actually gives you better ideas in your existing topic. You can make a career out of an inch of depth, but with an extra mile of breadth, you can really go in deep into topics more deep into your own specialization and bring in new ideas from outside and bring new ways of thinking into economics. And economics kind of needs that sort of been stuck in a rut of just a repetitive rut of producing the same generation. So it needs that sort of breath of fresh air of opening up and keeping students who are creative, keeping students who are challenging, keeping students who are interested in the economy and not merely those who simply want to do the same models over and over again.


Did you know that you have a guaranteed answer for your du'a every single day of Ramadan? Every single day of Ramadan you can have at least one du'a if not many more answered. So we need to really talk about how to not miss this opportunity because that is 30 days with 30 du'as at least. So today we're going to talk about 10 etiquettes of du'a that prime your du'a to becoming even more likely to be accepted. Because there are three people that the Prophet ﷺ told us about that their du'a is never turned away. The upright imam, the fasting person at the time that we break our fast, or the du'a of the oppressed person. And all of us here are definitely in the setting and category and there may be some amongst us that are in the first and third as well. The Prophet ﷺ also said that when a Muslim makes a du'a that does not contain disobedience or cutting off a family ties, a love will grant them one of three things. Either he will hasten the du'a and make it happen for you exactly as you asked, or he will save it for you in the hereafter when you really need it. And that's when it shows up. Or he will take away something bad that was actually coming your way. And this du'a prevents that bad thing from happening. So it's a win situation all the way around. So what are these etiquettes? Let's talk about 10. There are many, but let's talk about 10 first. Number one, having sincerity in our du'a, this is the most important condition. When you're sincere in asking Allah ﷻ for that du'a, it means that you have a firm belief that you are calling upon Allah ﷻ, most glorified and exalted is he, that he alone is the one who's able to meet your need. And it also means that you avoid any kind of showing off with your du'a, whether because there's people around or the way you say the du'a, right? It's just very real and very raw and coming from your heart directly to Allah ﷻ. Sincerely. Number two, repentance, repentance and repentance. These are the middle days of Ramadan that are considered to be the days of melafira or forgiveness from all sins big and small. These are the days of repentance. Sisters and brothers, these are the days of repentance. And number two on our list is to repent to Allah ﷻ, because it may be that some of the sins that we've had are the reason why our du'a are not actually being answered. So we should hasten to repent and seek forgiveness before we make our du'a. Number three, to be beseeching and humbling ourselves and hoping for Allah ﷻ's reward and fearing His punishment. To be really humble and realize that we need Allah ﷻ opens up your whole demeanor changes and how you talk to Allah ﷻ and how you ask for what you ask for completely changes. And it says in Surah al-Arab, Allah ﷻ says, Invoke your Lord with humility and in secret. He does not like the aggressiveness. Number four, to urgently beseech and repeat the du'a without getting exacerbated or bored. Many times people say, well, I make du'a, I don't know what happens. How many times have you made the du'a? Just once, right? Or they'll say, I made du'a many times. The sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ is to say the du'a once and repeat it two or three times. And to try to restrict it three times because that is the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ because after that, you know Allah ﷻ hurt you.  Either he'll give it to you exactly as you asked or save it for you for the year after or he's going to prevent something bad coming your way. So it's a beautiful thing when you ask Allah ﷻ and when you make that du'a to be very careful, part of that humility and part of that repeating the du'a is not getting bored with it. It didn't come anyway, therefore I'm going to stop. That's not what we do, masha'Allah. There has to be a real dependence and understanding that Allah ﷻ has hurt you and will answer, insha'Allah. The way in his wisdom, divine wisdom knowledge knows is best, which may not match what you think is best. Number five, to make du'a at times of ease and to say du'a at times of plenty. I love this so much because often people when they start to pray like the Qur'an describes, it's when something bad has happened. Oh Allah, oh Allah, oh Allah, help us, help us, right? But when things are going good and people are happy and things are fine and times of ease, we forget. So when you're happy, a very beautiful psychological technique that some of our predecessors taught us is to actually give shukr, give thanks, give gratitude. When you're happy, you had a happy moment. Carpe diem, seize the day, seize the moment and turn it into Alhamdulillah, right? Oh Allah, we thank you for this. Oh Allah, increase us and more. Give us more happiness and more good. Because when you remember Allah ﷻ at times of ease, He will remember you in times of hardship. And those were the words of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. Number six, to seek to draw closer to Allah ﷻ by calling upon his most beautiful names. And he has, of course, 99 names but even more. Use these names in your du'a. Call upon them in your du'a. So if you're asking for mercy, call them by the Rahman. And if you're asking for forgiveness, call them by Al-Ghafoor. And if you're asking for anything at all, there's more likely than not a beautiful name of the 99 names that connects to what you're asking for. And in Surat al-A'raf, Allah ﷻ says, and the most beautiful names belong to Allah, so call on Him by them. So let's do that, insha'Allah. Number seven, to choose the clearest and most concise words in our du'a. This was the way of the Prophet ﷺ. We know about him in the shama'at in his description is that he was known as Jawan al-kalim. He had the ability to say the most meaning in the most concise and shortest amount of words. And so let us strive to do that as well. You can, of course, write a whole book in your du'a and say to Allah ﷻ that everything you wish. But you know yourself and what you need more than anyone else. So try to make it the most clear and concise for you. Number eight, eight, nine, and 10 are things that are not considered to be obligatory or wajjah, but they really do up the du'a more. Like, for example, number eight, to face the qibna.  You don't have to, but it is better and it actually increases the likelihood it'll be accepted. And number 10 is a favorite, masha'Allah, to start your du'a and to end your du'a with what? With sending salat and salam and blessings upon the Prophet ﷺ. We call this the sandwich method. Because if you begin your du'a praising and giving salat and salam on the most beloved of Allah, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, and you end it with giving salat and salam with the most beloved of the Prophet of people, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, then what's in between is likely to be answered. In sha'Allah, right? Beautiful, beautiful 10-step etiquettes here of the du'a because we hope, in sha'Allah, that this is most likely going to bring us the best of responses from Allah. And there's also special times and special places. Briefly, we'll say that the Prophet ﷺ really preferred making du'a before Fajr came in. And all of us, if we're getting up to the Sunnah of Suhoor or Sahri, this is the perfect time to say the du'a in that last third of the night. Also, laylat al-Juma'ah, the night of Juma'ah, and Juma'ah is a beautiful time as well when the rain is falling between Adhan and Ikhama. Right? There's so many wonderful places that are known to be good times to say du'a that they would be accepted and good places. I realize our mosques are closed at the moment, but in sha'Allah, when they reopen, mosques are a place that is more likelihood of du'a being accepted, especially if they were the haram, right? In Mecca and Medina, masha'Allah. And then of course, we wanna also say, as we mentioned at the beginning, that there are three people in which their du'a won't be revoked and there's actually more. But if you're traveling, or if you make du'a for your fellow sister and brother behind their back in their absence, what they don't know instead of backbiting, right? Backbiting and talking behind their back, we actually do what? Du'a behind their back. And that's more likely to be accepted. Imagine if people did that for you. So return the favor and do it for them, insha'Allah. And when someone is in desperate need or oppressed, Allah is more likely to listen to their du'a and answer it immediately. May Allah's protect us from such a thing and may our du'a speak the kind of du'a that is accepted. And one more category, the person who shows filial piety or goodness to their parents. May we be from all of those categories, any combination of those categories as Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la deems fit and sees us fit for and then answers and accepts our du'a. Allahumma ameen, may Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la accept your du'a and mine this month. And please keep all of us, myself and my family included, in your du'a. Faruk Allahu feekum. This is your sister, Dr. Rani Awad, signing off. Masalaamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi.


Hi Bo Peep. World is happening right now and what have I stepped into?  We wanna say welcome and you have shown up for a very special weekend here at Saddleback Church. We are in the middle of a series this summer, a four part series called At the Movies. And this weekend we're gonna be looking a little bit deeper at the story of Toy Story. Deliverance Angels just came in here. Angels are prosperity. I'm talking about the full measure of who. When I see angels striking the pool and they say strike. But I wasn't prepared to see people in costumes. Well, I'm pretty sure people in that church weren't either. You don't go to church expecting to see people in costumes, especially the pastor and the co-pastor. And we're talking about co-pastors. That is a phenomenon that is new. It's not a very old phenomenon. It's not something that's been happening. You know, if we go back 120 years ago, we just didn't see that. We didn't see that, but we see it now. Why is that? Why do you think that? As a matter of fact, before we do that though, can you all just name, just put in the chats some well-known churches that have either co-pastors, the wife is a co-pastor, or she may not officially be the co-pastor, but she's functioning as a co-pastor. Does anyone, I can think of some. Ivy and Bridget Hillier down in the Houston area. Steven and Holly Ferdick. Joel and Victoria Osteen, let's see who else. Crefwillow and Tammy, no, not Tammy, Taffy Dollar. Yeah, Lakewood. What else? And there are some places where the wife is not known as the co-pastor, but she functions that way. Yeah, John Gray, is John Gray still a pastor? Yeah, John Gray's church, him and his wife. I'm trying to think of some other ones, but it's a trend that's going more and more and more. How about we saw the great apostle Jonathan Ferguson and his wife, okay, greater states, St. Stephen's Fool, Gospel Baptist Church, first of all, that's a long name for a church. And I'm pretty sure it's a black church. You know why I know that? Because black churches, we tend to have long names as though the name is gonna bring people in. Greater New Birth, Fallen out of Heaven, New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church of God in Christ of the Redeemed, Holy Ghost Annoying it. Not a nominational church, it's just like. Anyway, it's Heedie Jakes, his wife is not, but what he's doing is, he's using his, and I don't know what's gonna happen with his daughter, because Ture Roberts and his wife are supposed to be the co-pastors at his particular church. Yeah, I think his wife does function in that role, I don't know if she's necessarily called that, but she certainly is that. Who else? Yeah, Michael and Dee Dee Freeman, I just discovered this guy the other day, but apparently his wife is also functioning in that role. Dee Dee Snakes. So, I don't know what I do, I have an idea as to why that is. I have an idea as to why that's happening. Because these seem to fit in certain types of churches.  Now, when I say bad doctrine, let's also be clear, there are passages where people go to lean on this. You said Travis Greene and his wife. Why is that people who are, I don't know what it is about people who sing, especially gospel music, they feel like they need to be pastors. Isn't, what's the guy's name? The one whose wife was twerking on them in public. Oh, what's his name? Matter of fact, he sent me a response, but he, I can't think of that. Dietrich Haddon. Why is that the pastors, the people that were former gospel singers, they want to be pastors and then they bring their wives in? So, yeah, I don't, bad doctrine obviously is at the epicenter. Bad doctrine is the reason why we see this. I'm just sitting there looking at some of these, some of these chats to see if you all put another name. Cause I can't think of a lot of them off top of my head, although I see them and we see them, we just keep on going, such as Saddleback Church. Now, what's interesting is that the former pastor of Saddleback Church, he didn't have his wife as a co-pastor, but now the new pastors installed in, they have the co-pastor. I don't understand this for now. I understand the phenomenon. Center of Hope, Church of Oakland. Okay, they have their pastor and co-pastor. Okay. Is it biblical? Erica Campbell and her husband, they have a church. I didn't know that. I did not know that. Well, is it biblical? Well, obviously it's not biblical, but are there passages that they lean on to state that we can have this co-pastor, even if she is functioning under he's the head and she's functioning underneath? Are there any biblical pastors that they tend to cite? Well, Derek says, is co-pastor and associate pastor the same thing? No. Now, truth be told, the Bible does not set up all the parameters that we have in place for pastor. For example, senior pastor, teaching pastor, lead pastor, youth pastor, worship pastor, the Bible doesn't have it set up that way. The Bible doesn't tell us have this pastor, that pastor. However, I will say this though, is it possible where you can have two men as co-pastors? Think about that for a second, guys. What do you all think? What say you, is it possible that you can have two men or multiple men serving as co-pastors? Interesting to think about, because when we think about co-pastors, what do we think about? We think about a man and a woman. I don't think I've ever seen a man and a woman team where they're not married, but stick around a little longer. I'm pretty sure we are due to see a man and a woman serving as co-pastors and neither of them married, if it hadn't happened yet. If it hadn't happened yet. But in the Bible, it is actually okay for two men or three or what have you to serve as pastors, serve as shepherd. That can happen. That absolutely can't happen. There's nothing against that. And by the way, it doesn't violate any passages. Matter of fact, we will see that. As a matter of fact, think about this. The first church that we had, the very first church that we had, we had multiple shepherds, didn't we? And we had a conglomerate of elders. Now, as Saul or Paul began to attack the church, then you see this scattering, then you see them going off to different places and then they began planting churches. And Paul only had this one thing. He said, commit these to faithful men. As a matter of fact, do I have that passage up? I should have that passage up and I don't. Dog on it, I don't. I believe it is, no, it's not. Wait a second. Yeah, here it is. I'm sorry, second Timothy two, two. I know I did. Second Timothy two, the things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Separate hardship with me as a good soldier of Christ. So now he's just saying, commit to faithful men. Now the interesting thing about this passage, the interesting thing about this passage is that the word man is not here. The word amphipoise is used. The plural of amphipoise. So does that include women? Well, it would include women if that were the only verse, if there were no other verses. So yeah, the term man is can be used generically to include male and female, but can also be used to include or to speak of just simply males because the understanding is that you already know what the qualifications are. And so let's just do it again to make sure that we understand the qualifications. Where is it? I thought I had, I didn't have the qualifications up. I don't have the qualifications up. You know why? Because we go over it so often. But let me just go ahead and go through it anyway. Let's go ahead and put them up just so that somebody might walk in and we should not take for granted that everyone has heard this. So it'd be only right, only proper. So it is a trustworthy saying. It is a trustworthy saying if a man aspires to the office of overseer. Of course, this word man here in your English is not man or male in the English. I mean, in the Greek, which is fine, which is fine. Then have to, this is the Greek word for tease, which is if a certain person or anyone, if a certain one wants to aspire for the office. It is a fine work he desires to do. An overseer then must be above reproach. And here it is, the Andra, the male of one Ganaikas, one woman. So he must be a male. Are you with me? It cannot be, there's no way around it. It's the same thing for deacons as well. As a matter of fact, as a matter of fact, when deacons, the very first time that deacons were selected in Acts chapter six, let's go there. Now, at this time, while the disciples were increasing in number, a complainer rose on part of the Hellenistic Jews against the native Hebrews. You know what, we're not getting the same thing that everyone else is getting. We don't like how we're being treated. We think that things are being done unfair and probably because of our race. So let's go and look what they did. So the 12 verse two, some of the congregation of the disciples and said, it is not desirable for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables. So they're gonna be helping out. Therefore, brethren, now the word brethren is not, it's a Delphoi. It can be used to be men, brothers like male brothers or brethren. In this case, it's brethren. It's kind of all inclusive. But look what he says, select from among you seven men and look at the word for men. Andres X, which is male seven. So seven males, males, people with the X, Y, Crohn's own makeup. So therefore, even in that, just even those that would help to serve, there are supposed to be males in that office. Someone asked a question about women being deacons. A deaconess, technically can a person be a deaconess? Yes, but not the office of a deaconess. Not that a woman cannot fulfill that office. A woman, just like a male, can be a servant. And that's how the word is used. Anybody can be a servant. As a matter of fact, every Christian should be a servant.   But can anyone be in the office, the serving office? That's different. Serving versus the office, that's two totally different things. And so according to the scriptures, as a matter of fact, if we just jump down a little bit, a little bit further where we at. Ah, there it is. If we were to drop down a little bit further, it talks about a deacon. A deacon must likewise be men of integrity. Now, this word is in the masculine. And so this would have to mean necessarily, probably you would take this possibly as being a male. But someone can argue and say, which is not a problem. You don't have to win that argument to determine that the deacon has to be a male because if we drop down a little further, these men, also the term for these men, it's not fair, it's these. Hutuy, which is these, plural. So even in that passage, it's not still referring to men, but it will, must first be tested. Let them serve as deacons if they are beyond reproach. Women, now there's the comparison or contrast. Women, Ganaikas. So guess what they must be. They must be, if you're gonna say the women likewise, well then that means what you just talked about, we're not women. And if we go to, let's go to Titus. Let's go to Titus real quick because, Titus, the same qualifications for an elder. And let's drop down for, matter of fact, let's just read Titus also. For this reason I left you in Crete that you should set order what remains and point elders in every city as I directed you. Namely if any man sees a certain person above reproach, again, the husband, Anir, that word, same as Andras, Anir is a male of one woman. So the same thing is the same that we find in 1st Timothy. Let's see, is there anything that will also, by the way, it does go ahead and talk about the differences. So Titus does actually give a little bit of understanding as how they ought to operate, not just even the offices, but just how the body, the community is supposed to respond, supposed to behave, how males are supposed to behave, young males, older males, young females, older females. And so we have this instruction that has been left to us by Paul to either Timothy or to Titus. So now that being the case, why do you think this is happening? Why do you think this phenomenon is happening more and more and more? Well, I would submit to you that it has to do a lot with power. Now, granted, there's a lot of bad doctrine. We'll get to the bad doctrine in a second, but power because the man has some power or some notoriety, some prestige. And what ends up happening, because if you notice a lot of the faster growing churches, and think about this for a second, think about some of the faster growing churches in America that are more well-known. There's a woman there in many, not always, but in many cases, a woman there who is also leading. Because how often have you seen a well-known church, a well-known ministry? The pastor is well-known, but you don't hear from or hear about the wife or the children. There are some, don't get me wrong, there are a lot, but some of these, especially those that are more, kind of cost more charismatic in nature, where the woman is not actually hands-on in the ministry, where the children are not being propped up. You really, now it does happen, mustn't it happen, but it doesn't happen a lot. More and more we are seeing it becoming a family thing. It's becoming a family thing, and so you see men and women, men pushing their wives. You see fathers doing the same thing. I mentioned Ivy Hill, you're pushing not only his wife, but also his daughter. And then obviously there's one well-known case of a father pushing his daughter, but his daughter happens to also be married to a pastor. And so she also kind of functions as a co-pastor at our church. That being, Turei Roberts and his wife, Sarah Jakes Roberts. What does the Bible say about the woman, honey? In Genesis 3 and 15 after Eve has been eaten from. Now this is him, he's on this some interview and he's pushing his wife. What does the Bible say about the woman? What does the Bible say about the woman? Well, what the Bible says about the woman is not what she's getting ready to say. The Bible says about the woman. From the forbidden fruit. Yeah. The God tells the serpent that the seed of the woman is gonna crush his head, but he also says that the seed of the serpent is gonna bruise her heel. And so I have been really, really helping so many women understand that just because your heel has been bruised by a divorce, by a teen pregnancy, doesn't mean that you can't crush the serpent's head. Yeah, that's not what I'm talking about. It's not that women are gonna go with it, no. But that's what happens when you got bad doctrine and you put someone in the position who, one, is not physically qualified, but then also not mentally or emotionally qualified, clearly not spiritually qualified. And these are the kind of things you have happened.  Then you listen to him, you hear the same thing. If no one is qualified, an unqualified person brings up another person, that person that they're gonna bring up is probably also going to be unqualified as well. And that's what we have with her. Because again, we wanna keep this in the family because even now Papa Jake's wants to bring her on and say that she's the future. I don't know how that's gonna work. I really don't know how that's gonna work. Who knows? They installed a few other people as well, but there are churches in LA and her going back and forth, I don't know. That just seems to be, that's gonna cause some problems in a relationship I would imagine. But then again, it's not my relationship, so I won't get into that. But I know the issue about the church. That is not biblical. It's not biblical at all. Now the question is, does any of this stuff have any grounding, any place from the scriptures? Are there any scriptures that lead people to think that? You know what? It's possible. I can see it. If you do this, then it can happen. It's possible. Well, let's go to a couple of passages that are brought up to talk about or that people might use to point out that that women can be, not necessarily, even pastors, but co-pastors. Because there are some people that say, well no, she can't be the pastor, but she can be a co-pastor. Why? Because she's under me. Well, a couple things. One, we look in 1 Corinthians 11, starting in verse two. Where am I? Am I in church? Yeah. Now I praise you because you, in remembrance of me, I'm sorry, I praise you, because you remember me and everything and hold firm into the traditions, just as I deliver them to you. But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man and the man is the head of every woman or of a woman. God is the head of Christ. Every man who has something on his head while praying or prophesying this grace is he won't deal with that right now.  For she is one and the same as the woman whose head is shaved.  Now, at this time, if you would do this, you're saying I don't have any authority. And oftentimes, like the woman whose head is unshaved, I'm out here in the streets. I am looking for a good time for payment. I'm trying to be discreet here. We've got children. So that's what he's giving the same equivalent to for that same sort of woman. This woman who is acting this way uncovered. It literally means, now the covering is twofold. The covering is something overhead that's kind of signified either like a scarf or something. But also it signifies that she has a headship over her because what was happening, women wanting to take over. But then again, the Bible speaks about this in Genesis three interestingly enough that we had Sarah Jake's reading that because verse 16 of Genesis three talks about that the woman is going to strive or want or have a desire after the man. So, notice what he says though, for if a woman does not cover her head, let her also have her hair cut off.  For a man ought not to have his head covered since he is the image and the glory of God. But the woman is the glory of man now. Why they would go to this passage is to say that, well, as long as she's got a covering, as long as she's got a man over her, then she can get up and speak. I don't have a big problem with that part that she can get up and speak, but it depends on what do you mean by her getting up to speak. Can a woman in church pray out loud? Sure, can a woman in prayer? Let's say she's giving now, she's giving her testimony, whatever. Now, can she teach the people? No, she's not allowed to do that. I wouldn't care how gifted she is, how much of the scripture she knows, the Bible goes against that. But a woman gets up and says, she gives a welcome. There's nothing unbilligable about that. But you gotta be careful. You gotta be careful, because what's happening now is churches are saying, well, she is under his covering, and so yes, she can go ahead and preach. She can go ahead and teach. She can serve in this role, or in that role, or in this function. That's not what the Bible is given license to, because there's some male headship over her that now she can do the other things that the other males who are also under this senior leader. That is, it's not a loophole for people to go through. Another passage or a set of passages people turn to, and looking at this would be Priscilla and Aquila, or Aquila and Priscilla. And we're gonna find out something interesting about them, and to see what might've been one of the bigger reasons, or at least not necessarily the bigger reason, but kinda helped along Priscilla in whatever she did in her prominence. There's a big reason for that. In Acts 18, one, after these things, he left Athens and went to Corinth, that's Paul, and he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontius, having recently come to Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome, so they get persecuted and they leave. Are you with me? So we hear all throughout Scripture, I think it's about five or six, maybe seven times, that we hear the name of Priscilla and Aquila, or Aquila and Priscilla, and the part that bothers some folks is that there are passages where her name is mentioned first. Why is that the case? Don't know, but it's not a reason for you to make an issue out of it to where, hey, yeah, see, she has prominence. She doesn't have any prominence over her husband because it's her husband. She literally, biblically cannot have that, whether it's under the law or even under this new dispensation. She cannot usurp authority over her husband. Talk about authority or if able to teach a man just a second, but there's a reason why you're gonna see her being more prominently known amongst the people in just a second. But when people go to this passage to point her out as an example, well, it's because they simply don't know the word. But again, but again, doctrine is not an issue. As a matter of fact, you'll see a lot of these women being put up because I don't want to offend the masses of women at my church. In most churches, in most churches, black, white, Hispanic, whatever the larger the domination is, I'm sorry, the largest ethnic makeup is, it still tends to be more women than men. It still tends to be more women than men. And so because of that, you don't want to offend them. As a matter of fact, when you're preaching, thank you, Chaoyun, God, I appreciate that, as you're preaching is easier to say words that might trigger or move a woman that would move a man. Let's just be honest, guys, men and women are different. This isn't the Wolt Christian channel. So therefore we don't have to adhere to DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion here. Men and women are different. I don't think there should be a difference of opinion here that maybe someone disagrees. But men and women are different. Males are built differently than females. But also that means that, and let's just be honest, also men and women think differently. We just think differently. Case in point, I'm helping everyone get ready for school this morning. My wife is going to school to teach. My grandchildren, sometimes they'll spend a lot over here. Why?  She teaches Montessori. And so rather than going to either doing homeschool or private school somewhere else, they go to her school and they get this little Montessori learning and so forth and so it's just down the street. So they might spend a night. Well, this morning I get up and I'm helping to get everybody ready. Helping to get everybody ready. That was just something about when women get an act, when ladies, females get an attitude versus boys. Boys' attitudes are different than girls' attitudes. And so I got a lot of female attitude this morning. It was just different. And your response as a male is different. I get that. Male and females are different. So when you're preaching, you're gonna preach a certain way that might elicit a greater response from the women. Men might otherwise, you know what?  Okay, I get you pastor. It was the woman, she's screaming, she's crying, what have you. Because pastors know I want to elicit some emotion. If I can get emotional response, I got you. If I can get one emotional response from you ladies, I got you. Same thing with the males. But it's just easier to get one from the women. This is what it is.  But also we want things to be nice and friendly. Like you find out at Smiling Joe's church. Smiling Joe is he's the friendliest pastor that there ever was. And so quite naturally, so is his wife. They are not going to upset the apple cart. Everything's gonna be great. You can make everything great. Everything should be great because the power of your mouth can do so. Again, bad doctor. There's healing in your mouth today. There's abundance in your mouth today. There is a miracle in your mouth today. I wish that were so. I wish it were so that there was healing and abundance and a miracle in your mouth today. Well, then we would all be healed. We would all have abundance. We would all have a miracle, but that is not the case. But again, the first thing that goes by the wayside with these co-passers, these churches that have co-passers is doctrine, because doctrine doesn't matter. Now, when we speak about Priscilla McQuillan, there was something in their story that we see in the Bible that helps Priscilla to be known. To help that helps her to kind of get an appreciation. Nothing wrong with what she was doing, by the way. Nothing wrong with what she was doing. But do you ever wonder why she has some prominence? Well, maybe this is why. Let's go to Romans 16. Not one, we'll go to Romans 16 and one in a second, but go to Romans 16 and three. Greek Prisa, which is short for Priscilla, and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who, for my life, risked their own necks to whom not only do I give thanks, but also the churches of the Gentiles, also greet the church, look at it here, the church that is in their house. And you also, I think it's in 1st or 2nd Corinthians also, the church was meeting, or one of the churches, or the church that Paul was writing to here, was meeting in Aquila and Priscilla's house. So it's Priscilla's house. So you come in church, this is her house. Does that help anything? Does that make a difference? Because the lady of the house is the lady of the house, still her house. And so she gets a little prominence and so forth. Now, granted, I'm not saying that she's not in her word and studying like other ladies and other men, but the fact of the matter is, having it in their house does help, does kind of push it out a little bit, amen. But we cannot say that Priscilla was a co-pastor. Why can't we say that Priscilla was a co-pastor? There's a good reason to know why Priscilla wasn't a co-pastor. How do we know she wasn't a co-pastor? Because Aquila was not a pastor. Neither of them were pastors. Priscilla was not a co-pastor, Aquila was not a pastor. What were they doing? Helping with the word, like a lot of people were. It wasn't just them. And so like I'll ask all the time, are you with me? Cameron says, amen, I'm with you, Corey.   She's a missionary. She's a this. No, she's not. No, she's not. She's not even in the office of a deacon. Here it is. Let's go to Romans 16-1. I commend to you our sister, Phoebe, who is a servant of the church, which is in Centria. But you see this word and you will think that servant, diaconum, well, that must mean she was in the office of a deacon. Well, she couldn't have been. Paul is not gonna contradict himself. He is not going to contradict himself and say what a deacon must be. But then we have her as a deacon. Again, the first deacons were men in Acts six.  She's not the only person in the Bible that has this title of deacon or someone that's serving. There are other people with this adjective. This is more of an adjective than it is a title. She's serving or with me. And so because of that, because of that, I think people take this out of context to mean that she is also in this office. Well, that can't be. Why can't that be? Well, because the Bible says, Paul says himself, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. Let's look at this. Let's break this down. I do not permit. It's not allowable. A woman is a female to teach or to exercise authority over a man. And so both of these are the same. She cannot, by the way, how do we know they're both the same? Because this word for exercise and authority, authentic, which we'll get the word authority, authentic, it's in the infinitive, but also to teach. The Dice game is also in the infinitive. So these both words are part of the same things that Paul forbids a woman to do. She cannot teach over a man and she cannot have authority over a man. It's not to say that she can't teach. That's by itself, but she also can't have authority over a man. So someone may say, well, listen, she can teach as long as she didn't have authority over a man, she can teach a man. No, she can't do that either. She cannot do that either. Why is that a problem? The reason why it's a problem because now we've got even churches that don't have co-pastors, but the wife or women are functioning as such. One of the churches here in the DFW area, it's a large church, it's a growing church, multiple campuses. This pastor and his wife were at the church with me when I was a member of Oakley Bible Fellowship. Conway Edwards had started Plants of Church called One Community Church. And his wife, Jada, Conway used to be over the singles ministry at Oakley Bible Fellowship. And so he plants a church and obviously his wife goes. And so you see her more and more now. She's not called a co-pastor, but she's teaching and preaching over men. Here's an example. In ages past, you have been faithful. I mean, like we knew the prayer because he was praying the same thing all the time. So you grow up with different experiences of prayer.  Let me explain to you that you have a power that's not about a prescription. It's not about a personality. It's not about a presentation. It's sometimes in the unseen places. And I need you to know that the enemy knows the power that you have. And even if what she's saying is, you know, that, okay, fine. And she's not being charismatic in her approach or what have you. I'm not saying she's or she isn't. But there's, if you notice in the front row, there are some men, there are some men in the front. You can tell by their heads, a couple of them are bald. And because they're bald, they should know better. Or because they don't. So no, that is out of order. And I know it's a growing church and maybe there's some excitement to it, but still that cannot be there. Listen, there is no shortage of qualified men. Oh, by the way, the church should be training men to be qualified. That's a problem. That's a problem. Someone says that, well, a couple of questions. So what about someone like Melissa Doherty? Melissa Doherty's fine. Her intent is not to teach men. So if a woman has, let's say a YouTube channel or what have you, and men go there and listen, well, that's not on her. That's on men. And she's not, it's not that she's teaching. She's going on the scripture because her ministry is clearly geared towards women. And she talks about things. And someone goes to listen. That doesn't mean that she has to just, you know what, let me push stop on this record button. Let me just close up. Let me go find a man to come and say it because I see there's two or three men in the chat. So no, that's not how that works. She can say that. She has a voice. Now, if she's setting up shop to do so and if she's going to teach men, well, that's a problem. If that's her intent. She can't, well, I would say this. Can a woman lead a woman's Sunday school class? Well, sure, there's nothing against that. But matter of fact, you can find a biblical authority for that, a biblical citation because older women teaching the younger men that's having to deal with kind of all of it, her life and so forth, but also with the word as well. That's not a problem with that. She just can't be teaching men. So can a woman share the gospel with a man outside of a church? Or yet, well, we do see Priscilla Nequilla sharing the gospel. A woman can, according to the scriptures, share the gospel. They're not teaching or having authority over a man in the church because this person is sharing the gospel with any part of the church, is he? So let's just, let's give it for instance. Here's a man who has distraught and a woman, they just, they strike up a conversation and she shares her love for Jesus. And she sees that he needs to hear the gospel and she gives them the gospel. Amen. If some guys are sitting there having a conversation and they're both just way off. They both are just way off. And then let's say, lovely or Layla, show up. Hey, wait a second, wait a second. You guys ought to be watching the Smart Christians channel, but since you don't, let me share the true word of God. They can do that. They can do that. Now, can they have this office set up? Can they, can that be their practice? I'm going, you can give the word of God. You can let somebody know what's happening. Another example, the woman at the well. Jesus speaks to her, what does she do? She goes and tells these men in the village the people and they come back. Did she, did she usurp authority over him? No, she did not. No, let me tell you about a man that I met. Wow, what an awesome testimony.  Let's go see who this man is. That's all that happened. That's all that happened guys. So it's not, we don't want to go too far and say a woman has to be seen without her.  No, that is not what the Bible teaches. Again, if that were the case, then Jesus should have rebuked the woman at the well. Priscilla and Quilla, Priscilla should have been put out the church for having, I mean, a Quilla should have been put out the church for having this disobedient woman who's usurping Paul authority. No, a woman can share the gospel. Now after that, in terms of this man growing in the world, that is for the office of a male to do so.  It's not also that any old man can get up and do it as well, okay? But that's just what the scriptures teach us, amen? So this whole point of a woman having her head covered does not give her the right or the authority to go and start preaching or teaching over a man. Paul didn't say, I forbid a woman to do so unless, unless her father is there, or unless her husband is there, unless some other man, that is not what the Bible says to do. She can't do so just because there's some male covering. Now, these women at these churches, there's pressure on them. There is pressure, for example. People are gonna wanna know about the pastor's wife, the First Lady. Is the First Lady biblical? Yeah, it's not biblical or unbiblical. The Bible doesn't say. If you wanna call her First Lady, that's fine. Now, is she to be esteemed over every other woman? No, however, however, there is something about that woman that needs to be there. There's a qualification of her that needs to be there, that's not necessarily there for a regular man in the audience. Meaning, his wife has to be a certain way. This man is managing the house. Well, if she is chaotic and she's whatever, that necessarily affects him, doesn't it? That means he can't be qualified. If she can disqualify his ministry, she can. But in the audience, Bob is sitting there and Bob and his wife, Mary, are going through something. Is Bob disqualified from sitting in the audience? No, as a matter of fact, Bob is where he should be. So to his Mary. Thank you. Alan Edify, that's a nice name, Alan Edify. Thank you for the super stick. I appreciate that. Now, there is a role for men and women. There is, we need both, but God set this up again. Now what you gotta always use is, you've got a 18-wheeler coming up the on-ramp. You got a little small Volkswagen in the right-hand lane. 18-wheeler coming up the on-ramp, the small Volkswagen in the right-hand side. Somebody's got a yield. Well, the 18-wheeler could just simply just keep going, keep trucking and just crush the Volkswagen. It's not an issue of power. Even an issue of ability. The issue is right-of-way. Who, biblically, is supposed to yield. That Volkswagen has the right-of-way, and so the bigger vehicle that has the ability to crush the Volkswagen is to yield. That's how the Bible sets it up. Does it have something to do with Eve? I imagine it does, because that's when this order is set out. When Paul says it was the woman who was deceived and not the man, or was he referring to? He's referring to Adam and Eve, and she was deceived and not the man sinned. And so he sets things up. Now how is it gonna be going forward if they had not fallen? Don't know, but this is just what it is right now. And so as long as she has, at any time she has an opportunity to where she can give the word of God, but she's not usurping a man's authority or teaching over a man, that's not her goal, or her ministry, but let's say she's sharing the word of the Lord, then amen to somebody who needs to hear it. The man has been stabbed, he's got a wound. We're waiting for the ambulance to get up, to get there. And this man might believe that, but he's conscious, and she's sharing the gospel. Sorry, ma'am, sorry, sweetheart, you need to leave. Let's go find a man. There's no male Christians here? Sorry, fella, gotta go to hell. That's not how that works. That's not how that works. Here's another question. Can she pray? Can a woman pray for a man? Sure she can. Sure she can. That's not teaching or having authority now. Some of these prayers get to be like they're like mini sermons. That's a whole another conversation. But she's a part of the body, and the part of the body is to help the other parts of the body. You guys have asked me about this lady multiple times. I'm gonna go check her out. Tiffany Montgomery, I'm gonna go check her out. I'm gonna go check her out. So what about a women's service where men attend? Well, the service, fine. If there's a woman service, it's set up for the women. And some fellas show up, that's fine. They're showing them. Maybe they're just there to check things out and make sure everything's in up and up and what have you. That's perfectly fine. There's nothing ungodly about that where the woman has to stop speaking now. Okay? Thank you, Lord, I appreciate that. But now guys, hey man, I like how you said that. I like how she just said that we have confused a woman's worth with the order of God. God has placed a man over the home and church. Hey man, because here's what I believe. Here's what I believe, sister. Men have messed, let's just, hold on, hold on, hold on. Hold on, guys, hold on before I step into it. Let me step into it. But before I do, let me drink my coffee. Men have so thoroughly messed things up. Let's call it what it is. Men have so, how bad have you messed it up to where now the women like, let's go pick up and fight? Could you imagine, could you imagine if we got women on the front lines fighting wars, which I don't think we should, that's just me. I don't think that women should be on the front lines. That's just me. Call me old fashioned. Matter of fact, hold on, wait a second. And I might get myself in trouble. I might get myself in trouble, but I gotta ask Carol. Carol, what do you think? Carol, do you think it's okay? Do you think women should be on the front line? I know there's someone that would want to be on the front. Now, let's say if they're the fighter jet, I may be, but you know what, that equipment is heavy. Told you all about my brief stint in the military. That army bag that you gotta carry, that duffel bag, that bag, that's a heavy bag. Not to mention the rest of your gear. That, that's just me. I'm already in trouble. I might be in trouble. I've been in trouble for a while, but I personally wouldn't I want to see that? Especially if something happens and not likely, but it's happened before where the woman gets taken captive. Not a pretty picture to think of. It's not something you want to think of. My female soldier being taken captive by male enemy. Male getting taken captive, that's a different story. You knew what you signed up for, buddy. Tough it out. Tough it out. Go down fighting, but the woman, yeah. We got a problem. We got a problem. That's just me. That's just me. Okay. So what do you want, but you didn't tell me. What do you think? What do you think? I'm a battalion commander, but okay, okay. All right. Well, you know what? But Carol's a tough lady.  But that's just me. Now I'm not saying she should have been in the first place. She should have been in the mess hall cooking. I'm not, oh, she's been in secretary. That's not what I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying, but just me. It's just me. There's some things I just don't want women doing. Some things I don't want men doing. In my house, I don't know why it is, but I take out the trash. Sometimes trash is heavy, so I can pick it up and take it out. Although I gave my family my blessings, that everyone in the house who has the letter A, we have my permission to empty the bathroom trash cans into the big trash can. That's not necessarily a man's role. That is gender fluid. That role is open to everybody. That's a unisex role. Everybody can empty the small trash can into the big trash can.   I open the door. I walk into the house first, one day my, I think of my daughter. She said, well, why do you get to go in first? I said, because if it's a killer man. I said, go ahead, go in there first. That way the killer can get you and then mean your mama can get away. No, that's just me. That's just me.  And I mean beat severely. But she hit him. I don't care, toughy, take it. See, I know this for a fact that I've seen this. You know, guys, well, she hit me. So I'm gonna hit her back. I've seen guys make that same, do the same thing but then when a guy much, much, much, much, much bigger, let's say you are Kevin Hart's size. You know, five, two, five, three. I don't know how big he is.  But then Shaq hits him. Hey man, what you give me for? Let's talk it out, right? So I think if you were a man, you can take it. If you can't take it, well, now's your training, learn it. I do not. No, no, and I've been hit a few times by women, by ladies, not by women, but by girls.  A girl hit me, she hit me good too. She got me good, but I just, hey, I got to take that. I got to take that. So, and if you're around a woman that's hitting you, well, then you need to do a better job of choosing them. That's your problem also. But I just think there are certain things that women should be protected on. And I think this, and you tell me, you ladies tell me this, in the church and in the household, I don't think a woman has a problem submitting to a godly man because they'll see that he is a godly man. I don't think people have, matter of fact, men don't have a problem with, she said, I can fight too, women don't have a problem with, or men don't have a problem with submitting to a godly man because he's a godly man. Even men, when they recognize a strong sound leader, they follow, no problem, no problem. And so I don't think women have a problem either. It's just that sometimes we don't see enough of them. But this issue of a co-pastor, there can be male co-pastors, there can be. Matter of fact, I can't, it escapes my mind right now, but I know of a church, I can't think of the name of this church, where the head of the church are two men. There are two men that lead the church. Now how they work that out, and there are other elders as well, but how they work it out, they're just fortunate to have two good sound men. And they do certain things different than the other, but they're both good sound men, strong men. But, but a man and a woman is co-pastor, no such thing. No such thing. Can he have under shepherds or assistant pastors? That's fine, does the Bible call out or name assistant pastors? Not necessarily, but again, somebody was assisting somebody at the first church. Remember, remember, Peter was called the first among equals. He spoke for over everyone, but was he the head of Bartholomew? No, could he go and tell, that is what to do? No, but did they kind of follow under him? They actually did, they actually did. How far am I from Flower Mount? I'm on the opposite end of Dallas County, Bray. So, let's just, Mr. Valentine, why are you so late, sir? Why are you so late, sir? I see you coming in. I'm just messing with you. I'm glad you're here, brother, glad you're here. So, if your church is a church where you've got women, assistant pastors, leave your church, leave, get out of dodge, get to moving because if you are going to start, remember, remember guys, let's just go back to the qualifications for, you know, let's stay in Titus, let's stay in Titus, let's stay in Titus. If you're going to just ignore the qualifications, by the way, the qualifications are pretty easy. These qualifications are pretty easy, and if you're going to ignore these easy and evident qualifications and start discounting this passage and other passages like it, well then, now you're going to start ignoring and undermining other passages, which is no wonder we see the deity of Christ under assault, which is no wonder why we see salvation under assault, which is why we see this distortion of the Holy Spirit, which is why we see a lot of compromise in the body, because if you can compromise on this passage, well then you can compromise on the next passage and therein lies the problem. If you don't have a fidelity to the scripture, well then you don't have a pastor and you don't have a church, you've got an assembly of some people who are trying to figure it out and they're not figuring out the right way. So guys, thank you so much. Be interested to hear your comments on the other side, but in the meantime, God bless and I will see you later.


Two years ago, we sat in this room in front of maybe some of you where we gave an update on an initiative that launched in 2012 on the African Strategic Infrastructure Initiative. I'd like to thank you for all joining to hear the update on this. It's at the end of a three-year period. I know we have many people online that are viewing this as well, so welcome and we thank you for your interest. This press conference is to give you an update on what we've now done. Two years ago, we made a commitment as a group of leaders that we would work together, public-private cooperation to help accelerate infrastructure implementation in Africa. I'm very pleased that in today's press conference, we have a very distinguished set of guests and panelists who will share what we've done since then. In a nutshell, we've been able to move forward with one of the PETA projects, the Program for Infrastructure Development of Africa projects in the Central Corridor, to really try to advance and accelerate progress on that. Secondly, we've completed a final, a third part of a Knowledge Series report related to helping provide more guidance in terms of knowledge and practical implementation. The report that's been released at Cape Town is a special report on project preparation. And finally, we're here to celebrate the transition of the World Economic Forum's role to the rightful leaders in Africa, including the NAPAD agency. So with that very brief introduction, I'm pleased to pass on to my left former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who's been serving as the chair of our global World Economic Forum and Goals Strategic Infrastructure Initiative and has been very much leading the process over the last three years. Africa, as I think people know here, has $100 billion a year infrastructure gap. In other words, we need to spend $1.5 trillion on infrastructure in the next 15 years. If we're to provide the electricity, only a third of Africans have electricity, provide the water and sanitation, provide the roads and rail that are necessary for economic growth, and provide the jobs necessary for 80 million young people in Africa to get jobs every year. And so if Africa could solve its infrastructure problem and secure the investment that's necessary, the growth rate of Africa could approach that of China and India. That is the prize that is available to Africa if we can deliver better infrastructure. So as Alec has said for the last two years, we've been working with African leaders on creating a bank of infrastructure projects that need to be done, working out how they could be done, working out what are the priorities in doing them, and bringing to fruition a number of projects, including what Alec has just mentioned, the Central Corridor Project, which links five countries around Tanzania, including Tanzania, and has been supported by all the political leaders of these countries who are meeting regularly to move the process forward. And now we're at the stage where projects within the Central Corridor, which is a road, rail and port project, are nearing fruition. So four have already become bankable. Others are on the point of becoming bankable, and many others are either public sector projects that will be done when the finance is available, or a public-private partnerships in the main which can deliver results. And the lessons that we're learning is that there is political will in Africa to move and solve the infrastructure gap, that there is coordination taking place amongst the leaders of Africa, particularly with the support this morning and over the last three years of President Zuma, who has got a personal interest in moving infrastructure development forward. There is an emphasis on delivery and getting things done, and this has been the success over only a few months of bringing the Tanzania project together. And now we are sending a message out to the rest of the world that Africa is ready with projects that can be financed by international investors if they are interested in seeing the benefits that can flow from investing in Africa. So we are at the start, I believe, of an investment decade that will solve the infrastructure gap, that will give hope to Africans that if they do not have electricity and 600 million don't have it now, that electricity can be extended. If they don't have water and sanitation, that this will be done, and at the same time that the roads and the rails that are necessary for internal trade as well as trade from inside Africa to the rest of the world are going to be built to deliver the infrastructure we need. Now, infrastructure itself may sound like a technical or sometimes a boring word, but it is the social and economic fabric that is essential to prove the quality of lives of the people of Africa, and the combination of investment in infrastructure and investment in education are going to make Africa one of the leading economies of the world in the future. Thank you. A key to the entire model we have been speaking about is bringing together a collection of business leaders together with government leaders and experts. And fundamental to what we've done is created what we call a business working group that consisted of over 40 organizations. I'm pleased to then invite Simh Shabalala, who's the Joint Chief Executive Officer of the Standard Bank Group. He has been one of the anchors of the business working group to invite him to share some comments. Just a couple of comments. I think it's very, very important for Africa to successfully address the infrastructure deficit for there to be as much coordination and cooperation and trust as is reasonably practicable between the official sector, government, DFIs, developers, financial institutions and organs of civil society. And so when one sees the Central Corridor Presidential Roundtable meeting on a quarterly basis, you're seeing the leadership required from the official sector and from governments who have the mandate, and that is a good signal, I think, to business and financiers. You're also seeing the Central Corridor Transit Facilitation Agency, which is the institutional capacity necessary to execute the projects. That is meeting on a regular basis and is executing. And as has been pointed out, you're seeing the business working group making a contribution to the discussions so as to make the projects that are being discussed dankable. There are many topics that one could cover, but as a financier, the one element I would just like to speak about is the importance of early-stage project financing and the facilities that are available to give effect to that. The Boston Consulting Group as well as the World Economic Forum have produced a paper that sets out some of the principles underpinning this. But for me, here are important principles. First of all, you need developers that have sufficient equity to be able to execute on the early stage of projects. So they need the equity and the capability to be able to do this. To the extent that you need money from government and the official sector, governments can either recover this money through tariffs and or through making bidders pay for this and let the bidders recover their funds through the transactions. But importantly, there is funding from DFIs, from governments, from the World Bank which needs to be mobilized for the purposes of these early stages of projects. The importance of what is happening here, though, is the ability of the central corridor and the institution set up to execute against that opportunity to mobilize and coordinate the raising of those funds. It's truly a historic moment and we are immensely excited to be part of it. Thank you. Thank you, Sim. I'm pleased not to also call on another member of our Business Working Group but also as a chair. So we had two chairs, the Development Bank of South Africa and General Electric who chaired the Business Working Group. And in this regard, it's very pleased that we have Patrick Dallami who's the CEO and Managing Director of the DBSA here and he's been actually a very key stalwart pillar of the work as well, including the work at the central corridor. Thank you, Alex. Really, it is a moment of excitement indeed because if we were to look at when we identified the central corridor as the most impactful and transformative project of all the 51 PDE projects, we then took nine months. This actually involved workshops after workshops where we were discussing information as the teams were collating this information from the various countries. But the best thing was the political leadership that we saw in the five central corridor countries where they set that coordinating agency to say then each country will then make sure that their agencies coordinate and contribute and forward the information to the coordinating agent, the CCTTFA, that then we were able to collate the data and package this data and then analyze and putting our money into preparing these projects so that they are ready for presentation to the presidential round table on the 25th of March this year where the president from the five central corridor countries were present and on the 26th, we then were able to present those projects, the 23 projects that were presented to the investor community. We had over 200 investors in Dar es Salaam and Jura Sanyali Convention Center. And I'm quite excited because in the manner that we presented those projects, we presented projects that were ready for investors. We presented projects that still required further project preparation and projects actually that we still then need to put together and drive further. But what then we are now doing is the NEPAD agency will now be able to work with the CCTTFA of the central corridor to then ensure that all these projects are all actually brought into pangability and are all then actually brought into execution. But the leadership that has been played by the World Economic Forum in really bringing together all the various parties, it was a classical public-private partnership situation that we saw delivering such a massive project in a very short space of time which then says, going forward to the other 50 PIDA projects, we then can be able to really replicate the same model and framework to drive those projects into pangability where in we can get the investors to participate. Thank you, Patrick. And a core government partner or intergovernmental partner that we've had throughout the whole process, of course, has been the NEPAD agency, the African Development Bank, the African Union Commission. And in this regard, as mentioned by Patrick, we're very pleased that with the kickoff that we've lent, we're now very pleased and honoured that we can hand over the mandate of the secretariat in terms of accelerating the other 50 projects to the NEPAD agency. The World Economic Forum will remain committed to supporting infrastructure development in Africa with some future work and including supporting Dr. Miyake. But may I please call on Dr. Ibrahim Miyake, who's the CEO of NEPAD agency, to make some comments. Thank you, Alex. I would like to say three quick things. The first one, Africa did put its house in order in what relates to infrastructure development by designing PIDA. But we didn't have a governance model in the implementation of regional infrastructure projects. And this is why that partnership with the World Economic Forum, which gathered the business working group with the DFI's private sector, did allow us to frame a governance model. So now we have a governance model for regional infrastructure implementation. And once we have this model, we can accelerate implementation, go to bankability and go beyond bankability to issues related to maintenance, operations, and so on. So the emergence of that governance model is a key achievement of the business working group. And as Prime Minister Brown was saying, we are at the verge of that investment decade and that governance model will play a critical role in that investment decade here. Thank you, Dr. Miyake. I think we'll take time for two or three questions maximum. If there are any, please go ahead. Halmo Price, The Bricks Post. In terms of timelines, actual people on the ground, when are you expecting the central corridor to put down its first rail, build its first bridge, et cetera? Great. Let me take you if there's another question or two and then we'll answer them all. Yes, sir. Thank you. It's Muzoni Lombage from SAPC. Some of the disturbances that we sometimes see on the continent, I think currently, it would be kind of like Burundi and some pockets of disturbances, how much do they impact on some of those projects that you intend doing? And is the political world sufficient for you to be able to say you're ready to get going? Very good. One more question? Please. A very good morning to the panelists. Very good morning, Prime Minister Brown. My name is Stuart Lisulo, a business reporter for The Post Newspapers based in Lusaka, Zambia. A very quick question. I come from a country where the government in the last two to three years has gone to the capital markets to finance infrastructure development. Both in 2012 and 2014, there was a successful issuance of sovereign Euro bond for $750 million and $1 billion in 2014. The question I wanted to ask, Prime Minister Brown, is is it sustainable to contract debt to finance infrastructure development on the massive scale which the Zambian government is planning to do? Great. So I think let's answer those three questions. Again, the first one was a little more detail on the timeline on central corridor. The second was how do we deal with political risks that will inevitably occur in any region of the world? And finally, a question specifically on the capital markets and the financing. Mr. Brown, Prime Minister Brown, perhaps you can take the first answer. Well, in a way, the central corridor is already starting. These are projects that are now underway. I said that four had already been financed. Other four on the point of being financed out of more than 20 projects that make up the whole of the central corridor. So there will be road, there will be rail, there will be port development. And I think we're already seeing the beginnings of what's happening. As far as the risks are concerned, this is what we have got to show the world. That the perception of risk or the risks that people perceive are far less than the actual risks. Of course, you've got to deal with currency risk, regulatory risk, you've got to deal with construction risk, you've got to deal with what's generally called political risk. But I think the continent is now ready to show that we can actually minimize these risks and make the projects that we're talking about acceptable to investors. Because when we're talking about 1.5 trillion of investment, that cannot all be generated from within Africa. It's going to be generated from support from the international community. And we will have investors from all over the world. The political will, I am absolutely sure, is being proven to exist. When you have five leaders meeting regularly to discuss one project, and when you have today President Zuma lending his weight to the whole infrastructure delivery project that we're engaged in, and when you have the African Union next week going to be discussing these very big questions of infrastructure, you can see that the political will exist, not just for the central corridor, but for the north-south corridor, for the Inga project, which is a major project to deliver hydroelectric power into not just the DRC, but into the whole of Africa. These are projects where it's clear to me that the leaders of Africa now know that the growth of Africa and employment in Africa and the quality of life in Africa depends on these things. As far as the capital markets are concerned, I mean, of course, in every country there's a level of debt which is sustainable and a level of debt beyond which people are not going to lend to you, but that depends on the individual circumstances of the country. It depends on what its general surpluses and deficits are. It depends on the growth of the economy. All these things have got to be taken into account. Dr. Mayaki, on the political risk, since you have the overall mandate on all of the 51 projects, what would you want to give any additional thoughts back to that question? Let me refer to the fact that I'm the interim CEO of the African Peer Review Mechanism, which looks at governance on the continent. What we found, what we find is that the governance indicators have been improved substantially and that political risk has been reduced in this continent. Whether you take the Moibraim Index on governance or you take the reports of the African Peer Review Mechanism, the strong trend is a strong improvement on governance issues. And then, governance issues are linked to political risk. More and more stability does exist. It is true that we have pockets of insecurity and pockets of disturbance. But these pockets are also being managed by the African Union in a very organized way, which was not the case 15 years ago. So I think we shouldn't put too much emphasis on that issue. It is an important issue. But significant progress is being made in the domain. Great. I think we are out of time. But unless Patrick or Sim, did you want to add anything really quickly to answer the questions? I think what is important on the capital market and the euro bond, the sustainability of these debt payments by the countries, it's quite important that especially the economic infrastructure, the economic infrastructure have the ability to generate their own revenues. And hence, they can be able actually to serve the debt associated with the funding of this infrastructure. It becomes quite important that then in the structuring of these deals, the hedging mechanism and the hedging strategies to try and manage the currency risk, especially if we're to raise bonds in Europe and in Europe. And we are coming actually to fund a project inside Zambia and the fluctuations actually of the exchange between the quarter and the hard currency has got to be well managed to make sure that the commercial viability of the project is well protected. But I think it's something that we are seeing more and more element of servity and innovation in the structuring of these deals. But just a quick one on the central corridor, because the central corridor talks about the linkages of those countries to the Dar es Salaam support via rail and road corridors linking the Eastern DRC, the Burundi, linking Rwanda, and that goes through also the what we call the late Tanganyiga, which is 700 kilometers long on average 1.5 kilometers deep. If really, really, really, and those inland ports, you can imagine the linkages and the efficiencies and the effectiveness that actually it would provide in terms of the economies of those countries to the rest of the world. It's mind boggling. Thank you. Thank you. I think we look forward to being here again in a year or two is time to continue to give you an update. If you wanted more information on either the early stage project financing report or the overall initiative, we have those available, maybe not in this room. But they're lying around. But please give me a card or one of my colleagues a card at the back and we can make sure you have a report. Thank you very much.


The study aimed to explore maternal HPV vaccination acceptance, preference for 2-4 or 9-valent HPV vaccine and acceptance of domestically manufactured HPV vaccines among mothers of primary school children in southeastern region of Fujian. The results indicate that lower intentions to vaccinate daughters against HPV among less educated and lower income mothers may lead to significant social inequalities in HPV uptake in the country. This article was authored by Yulong Lin, Jitaisu, Fulian Chen, and others.


back to San Francisco next year, but we are here live with Rob Crawford, VP of sales at Q-Logic. Q-Logic, very interesting company, focused on sort of the glue between the storage and the systems, and we're here with Rob. Rob, welcome to theCUBE. Great, thanks Dave, nice to see you here. Thanks for coming on, so let's see, this is I think our 100th VM world in a row, but the ecosystem keeps growing, it's just amazing the impact that virtualization has had, particularly on your business, on IO, it's really transforming it, talk about that a little bit, and how so. Yeah, I think what we've seen, and we do a lot of customer end user knowledge collection, and one of the things we've seen is that of virtual environments, 80% of them are using a shared storage fiber channel environment, which is actually a higher percentage than I might have guessed. I think what you see is that with a lot of the features in VMware where you're sharing resources, you're sharing storage, it enables further extensions of the VMware capabilities, like the high availability capabilities, if you're set up with an ESX server that fails for some reason in a shared storage environment, that failover is seamless to the shared storage. So yeah, this 80%, that's interesting, I didn't know the number was that high, I knew it was high, because if you have any kind of mission critical application, you're going to put it on a fiber channel device, and I know a lot of end users, and we talk to them and say, look, I love iSCSI, I love all this other stuff, but certain applications, I'm sticking with FC, and FC is really your business, isn't it? It is, and I think if you look at our history and the fiber channel space, one of the things that people come to us for is the fact that we've got a proven fiber channel stack, it's an environment people are used to, they're comfortable with, they have confidence in, and that's one of our key differentiators in the market is that we understand that part of the market better than anybody. Why is it so hard to build a hardened fiber channel stack? I mean, it's probably more of a technical question, but you're in the business and let's face it, it's a technical sale, so why is it so difficult, and why are you guys so good at it? I think one of the most valuable things you're trying to build up over time is confidence in your fiber channel stack, and that only really comes with usage cycles, with end user customers, and years of experience, troubleshooting, improving, troubleshooting, improving, and that kind of bulletproof fiber channel stack that we've established in the market is based on our history, it's 15 long years of working with it, we've got a lot of history and a lot of experience and expertise in the company. So we know you do that well, but the sand is under fire, right? Yeah. It's been around, it's done before what now, more than a decade, driven great value, but a lot of customers are talking about, hey, we're doing scale out, we're using low cost commodity disk, those trends got to be on your radar screen, what do they mean to you, and how does Q-Logic respond to that? Yeah, I think largely what we're seeing is converged networking as being a trend that we're in front of, and we've been a very strong participant in, what you see with converged networking is that it doesn't matter if you're using, you know, iSCSI storage, if you're using fiber channel storage, if you're using FCOE as your protocol, you've got the ability to converge that traffic into a common network fabric, and that's really where we try to, you know, build a strong value proposition today. You know, obviously our fiber channel products are very strong, but as people move to Ethernet, 10 gig Ethernet, they want to use FCOE, they want to look at iSCSI, they want to look at, you know, in just regular network traffic in that same environment, so, you know, the obligation grows beyond fiber channel for us in terms of what we're bringing to the market, converged networking, we're a leader in that part of the market today, basically it's ways you can use 10 gig Ethernet to, you know, work with more of the data center traffic that you want to work with.  I think one of the big things we see from customers is a requirement for flexibility. You've got some customers that want to try and converge everything, they want to simplify their networks, converge their traffic, you've got some customers that want to keep it separate, you've got some that want to migrate over time, you've got some that want to, you know, maybe have remote sites that are in different environments than centralized sites. So I think flexibility is probably one of the main things we're focused on and making sure that we, you know, continue to bring products to the market that enable flexibility for customers. Basically, if they, you know, migrate their environment using latest technology, 10 gig Ethernet, and migrating, you know, the way that they're moving their data over time, we're able to accommodate a good, you know, flexible solution there. So how about InfiniBand? It's a topic that comes up a lot. It's an area that, you know, I've said actually I think it's an opportunity for QLogic. I think frankly you guys over the last couple of years could have maybe even done a better job in InfiniBand. And I think you've really started to focus on that. You're seeing a lot more server to server communication, you know, the high speed, low latency activity, obviously HPC, but increasingly more commercial applications. What are you guys doing in InfiniBand? What are the customers telling you and what are you delivering? So InfiniBand's an interesting part of the market and I think one of the things you're seeing is that being implemented in broader use cases, used to be HPC was kind of a focus point for the InfiniBand market. We've got a very strong presence in HPC. Recent customer wins you may have heard about this year at places like Trial Labs that are doing large deployments. Very differentiated strong solutions from QLogic in that space. But I think what you're seeing is underneath that there's a core low latency capability of InfiniBand that is applicable for a variety of markets. You see it a lot now in financial markets, you see a lot in terms of the way people are building their vertical stacks around storage. So InfiniBand's a part of the market that we're excited about. We think we've got a very compelling solution there.  We're kind of the number two in that space. You know, there's another guy that's got more market share than we do. But we feel like there's a lot of opportunities for us to still be a strong player in that space. I'm a Red Sox fan. We were number two for a long time. And now it's working out okay, baby. So I wanted to ask you, you had a management transition, I guess it was about a year ago, a little less than a year ago. HK, your previous CEO, chairman, visionary, unbelievable individual really saw the future and made some big bets. You know, people thought QLogic was crazy, you know, five, seven years ago. You know, going after it the way you did and putting everything into silicon.  And now you've got Simon running the business, CFO. That's right. What's that transition been like? How do you preserve that vision and still the execution ethos? What are your thoughts on it? I think one of the main things is it hasn't really been a light switch in all honesty. So HK's got strong heritage, obviously with the company, you know, the company was built around him largely.  Really? So I see him on a regular basis. He and Simon are very much in lockstep. I think it's looked at being a phased, you know, transition over time. I think Simon's an interesting guy. I've come to know him, you know, better in the recent months. You know, from a CFO, you don't expect a guy to have a lot of technical background. He understands our technology as well as a lot of our guys on the technical team. So he's got a lot of breadth and he's got a lot of, you know, vision for where he wants to take the company. I think we're seeing a gradual transition from HK. I think what you'll see is a consistent vision for QLogic moving forward. I don't see it's going to change course a lot. So Rob, what are you guys doing here at the show?  Yeah, we are. I mean, you know, there's some things that we have in technology that are pretty compelling for virtualized environments. One of the big things we're pushing a lot today is the VM Flex capabilities we have basically allows partitioning of a NIC to, you know, to take it, let's say a 10 gig adapter and break that into multiple partitions. In a virtualized environment, that's really helpful because you're using a shared IO path and it allows you to have dedicated IO for specific applications if you want that. Gives you a lot of flexibility for configuring your network. Also gives you a lot of, you know, benefits in terms of just simplifying the number of slots, the number of ports, the number of cables. So the converged networking, one of the challenges of converging your networking is that you're converging your IO and by offering NIC level partitioning, which is something that's unique to QLogic, we're able to allow the administrators to kind of define how they want to manage their IO path, where they want dedicated bandwidth to be available, those kinds of things. It's a great capability and it works really well in a virtualized environment. Yeah, I mean, we've seen, it's interesting. I mean, we've seen just an explosion in everything, right? Processor prices come down, virtualization is consolidating, everybody said, oh, Intel's in big trouble and I think they're selling more CPUs than they've ever sold before because we live in an elastic market and we're seeing IO go through the roof with a combination of Moore's law and now multi-cores and virtualization. You have this multiplicative effect and customers aren't just going to say, okay, let's just go buy more ports and more cards from QLogic, are they?  I mean, have you seen that in the market? Are you seeing this elasticity that I'm positing as the case? No, I think what you see is that data growth continues at a pretty astonishing rate. I think everybody's predicted it forever but it continues to exceed expectations, I think. Basically, we need fat pipes to get data moved around. It's as important in a cloud environment as it is in a data center, as it is in a desktop. That requirement to be able to move data quickly and across fat pipes is something that we're on top of, it's the core of our business. I think one of the things that's interesting, one of the trends you see in the industry right now is that you've got a lot of consolidation in the storage space. Some of the little guys that were startups were a little disruptive. A lot of those companies are now part of bigger companies. HP, 3par, left-hand, you look at Dell and the compelling acquisition and equal logic. So what you end up with is that those large Tier 1 OEMs have multiple storage protocols that they're trying to support. They're building environments around that and being able to operate between those different protocols on a common network is one of the big requirements we're seeing out there. It's a place where we really exceed because we've got great fiber channel technology but also the converging networking to bring in the other pieces. How about your switch business? I've always thought of Q-Logic as the switch for techies. Like my friend Eugene Hakopians who's at Caltech. He uses the Q-Logic switch as part of a block that he uses to build an archive where they basically are documenting the universe. Pretty intense project. And he's pretty techy though. But last year, a year before, I can't remember exactly, I think it was last year, yeah. You guys began to expand into more commercial markets, broaden your brand beyond just sort of a card supplier. You want to deal at HP and some other deals. Give us an update on the switch business. How's that going? I think number one, we need to be clear about where we compete and where we don't. In the switch market, we're at the edge, largely with the switches that we sell under our brand. And I think what we do is we offer a differentiated solution, the stackability, the scalability of our solutions is different and it offers a pretty cost disruptive and flexible solution for companies to build off of. So we feel like we've got a great solution in the switch space. It's an interesting part of the market. If you look at storage as a whole, we own a lot of the host side of the storage market through our adapter technology. We also, a lot of people don't know, we own a lot of the target side as well. So a lot of the tier one storage players that are out there, they're using Q-Logic technology as their target for how they connect into the fabric. And it's really logical for us to be the centerpiece with our switch as well, because then you end up with an end-end fabric story from host to switch to target. So host to CNA to the switch to the target. Yeah, okay, good. End vision that you guys have talked about for a while. All right, Rob, well listen, we're out of time. I appreciate you coming on inside the cube. Great to see you again. I appreciate your time. Good luck with everything.


I'm Surush Visuki. I'm a postdoc at the MIT Media Lab. I also live my PhD at MIT and I've been a fellow here at breakfast since September. Well, the question I'm really interested in and what I'm working on as a fellow at breakfast and also as a postdoc at MIT Media Lab is interventions to dampen the effects of misinformation on social media. My PhD focused on automatic detection of rumors on social media and right now I'm interested in intervention strategies. So one idea I have is maybe an automated tool like a bot on Twitter and Facebook that would detect misinformation using my algorithm that I developed for my thesis and then contact people who are on the path of the misinformation to let them know that they might be exposed to this thing, kind of vaccinating them before they're actually exposed to the virus of misinformation. Now I think it's become pretty obvious that rumors and misinformation in different domains are super important and damaging to society, specifically rumors in the political domain. They undermine the core democratic values of our society because if you don't have a shared truth with the other people who are voting in the same election as you, then you're not judging the candidates based on the same facts. I think technology is always neutral, almost always neutral. So it can be used for good or evil. And what excites me and what makes me fearful is actually the same technology, which is specifically recent advances in deep neural networks. A lot of the problems in classical AI have already been solved using this new method in the last decade. So problems that we thought we would not be able to solve for maybe a century, we've already solved. So that's really exciting. But again, the same algorithms and systems that we use to solve these problems are big black boxes. We never know exactly what goes in them. And so if you give them too much power to govern our society, they might actually make decisions that you never understand and not really be able to interpret. And that scares me.