The new DigiGov online platform was conceptualized by the Government of Salusia to revolutionize the delivery of over 150 government services. On Wednesday, September 30, representatives of the island's 32 Minibus Drivers Association participated in a DigiGov stakeholders' sensitization session organized by the Division of Public Sector Modernization, which has been charged with the mandate to implement the project. The renewal and the duplicate of driver's license forms part of phase one of the three-phase project. Marlon Nassis is the Acting Director of Public Sector Modernization. We're here today to present to you a new Sen Lusia, one that is driven by technology and a concept that we're going to present by the Government of Sen Lusia, where we're going to revolutionize how government operates and the services that are provided to the public, to the general citizenry, to stakeholders like yourself, as you continue to engage government on a day-to-day basis, whether it's to access your services or just in regular processes that you undertake in your daily lives. According to Mr. Nassis, the public transportation sector is a major stakeholder in the DigiGov project. So we no longer want you to have to go through a long process, going agency by agency to access one service. All of these processes would be integrated on one common framework and you will be able to do it at your convenience, stay at home and apply for your service, stay at home and apply for the renewal of your driver's permit, you know, stay at home and apply for your TV tests and these type of things. Vice President of the National Council on Public Transportation, Michael Flood, who attended Wednesday's DigiGov Tech Holder session, has lauded the initiative. Oh, of course, they will benefit quite a bit because we have drivers based on the first come, first serve system. Of course, they have to get to the bus stop to peg the buses. Without that, they would have to either take the buses off the peg or pay a bus fare to get to the ministry to do that. But this is something that could be done while sitting in the bus, at the bus stop, waiting for the queue. So I think it will work very, very long way and I think based on my understanding, bus drivers have welcomed it and of course we will work towards making it a lot better. The DigiGov project has also received commendations from the President of the Denry Mini Bus Drivers Association, Francis Edmonds, who also attended the DigiGov stakeholders session. I have been somebody that has been very critical of the transport sector in particular because as a mini bus operator, there are certain things that I see happening at the transport department and I'm not entirely pleased with it. But this initiative today, I think it really had me. I must say it's a fantastic initiative. I think it's going to be working wonders for us, especially with this world of technology. So I'm very, very happy with what I saw and what I witnessed today. Even as I sat at the meeting, I was already forwarding messages and pictures and so on to our WhatsApp group. And I'm definitely going to be meeting with my executive. We're definitely going to be taking that initiative to learn the process of how we go online to sign up and do all of the things that we learned today. Participants will also show in a sample of the new driver's license and its accompanying features. The online platform will notify drivers when the driver's licenses due for renewal. The DigiGov platform was launched on June 25, 2020, although registration onto the platform began on June 15th. As a result of this new online system, the waiting time for the renewal of a driver's license has been significantly reduced to 15 minutes. Services are available all day with real time notification, short processing time and can be accessed from anywhere from the communications unit of the Division of Public Sector Modernization, Julia Tepita reporting.


okay so you might be wondering what makes this the ultimate smoked mac and cheese well if you've seen our previous video my wife and i put five of the most popular recipes for smoked mac and cheese to the test and this recipe is kind of a frankenstein made with all our favorite parts of the popular recipes we think we've got the perfect cheese sauce everything cooks together in one dish and maybe most importantly of all we have a super crunchy crispy topping this has pancetta or bacon it's got this kind of like brown butter and olive oil this is like nutty flavor and it's super crunchy super golden brown and you do that in a pan separately so you don't have to worry about browning this on your smoker which isn't always easy to do so i think it's our ultimate smoked mac and cheese it's one of the best it's better than all the five we nothing against those recipes but it's the best of all of them combined into one so i'll show you how to make this you'll have to make it try it out let me know what you think see if it's the ultimate if it's not if you have a better recipe i would love to try it as well so let me know down in the comments hope you enjoy the recipe starts with one pound dry weight of pasta elbows macaroni and we'll use four ounces of gouda or gruyere and colby jack or cheddar we've tried them all they're all good that's a chipotle gouda i'm using there and then you'll add eight ounces of cream cheese and four tablespoons of butter i like to cut it up just to create a bit more surface area and then we'll add a tablespoon of your favorite barbecue rub this will be rich and pretty salty so you can get away with using a sweeter rub i'm using killer hogs all purpose seasoning there keep it light when you first start maybe a tablespoon you can always taste and season how you like a little bit later then we'll add two cups of whole milk and four cups of half and half we tested like seven versions and found that's the perfect amount for a rich and creamy sauce while having enough liquid in there to cook the pasta and not make it too thick throw this on a smoker at 225 if you're using a traeger and have super smoke use that add a little bit more smoky flavor into it and cook it for about 90 minutes this is after about 45 minutes or an hour you'll see there's still quite a bit of liquid in the pan don't worry it's going to cook off and this is exactly what you need to make sure the pasta cooks and that sauce stays nice and creamy and not like a casserole we kind of found all five of the popular recipes we tried turned into a bit of a casserole instead of like a creamy mac and that's what we were going for then it's time to make your topping when you have about 15-20 minutes left on the cook I used pancetta bacon works great you just want to dice it up cook it drain the pan then you'll add a tablespoon of olive oil and four tablespoons of butter let the butter fully melt and I like to cook it a little bit until the foam kind of subsides almost like you're making brown butter and you really do get some of that brown butter flavor in here those kind of caramel nutty notes which is really nice and you'll add a cup panko breadcrumbs to the pan this won't take long just a couple minutes and when it's starting to turn golden brown on the bottom give it a stir press it back out flat and then keep stirring until you've got an even golden brown color on this and then mix it with your cooked pancetta or bacon and once the mac has been on for about 90 minutes this is what it should look like nice creamy not very really no liquid to be seen in the bottom of the pan and at this point you're ready to throw your topping on cook it for about 30 more minutes it'll pick up a little bit more smoke but it's really just so that topping will kind of meld and get to know that cheese sauce on the top there that way it's not completely just crumbly when you go to scoop it out and there you have it our ultimate smoked mac and cheese I'm really happy with this one I think you enjoy it and I can't wait to hear what you think be sure to let us know in the comments if you make this and we'll throw a link in the description below to a printable recipe and be sure to check out our original video testing all five of the popular recipes if you'd like some more smoked mac inspiration see you next time


Hello everybody. Today we have a super interesting interview with Rafael who is a big YouTuber and Shopify seller. How are you today, Rafael? I'm great man. It's a great experience to be here and I'm happy to share my experience, share some tips for people that are doing dropshipping, Shopify all over the world. Cool. So first, thanks for coming. I'm listening to your videos and there is a lot of really high value and information which is very interesting. Can you tell us a little bit firstly about yourself? For sure. So I basically started around four years ago or so. I was traveling around the world a little bit trying to earn some money online, basically find something that I could do and then the first thing that I ever did was work for a Shopify store. So the first kind of job that I ever had was just working for a Shopify store and they were making about four million dollars a month, like crazy money. So I thought, why don't I just start a Shopify store like this and do it by myself? And back then, 2016, 17, there wasn't really any videos about Shopify, not that much content. So I just learned from doing it for that company. Like my job was kind of like my mentoring. The boss told me what to do. I learned Facebook ads on Shopify. And then I quit that job, did it for myself. And because I had all that background, all that good information from the job, then I did it really well by myself. I ran a few stores, then I got a partner in Hungary in Europe. We ran some really good stores again. And then a lot of people were asking me for advice, like, hey, how do you make money on Shopify? Because I started posting my screenshots, like 5k per day, 10k per day, people asking me for help, mentoring courses, something like that. And then I just started putting free videos on YouTube. And it started skyrocketing. People loved them. And that's how I started. So that's, that's how I'm here. And you came to this job without any previous knowledge? Yeah. So what I did know how to do was just set up a Facebook ad, like I learned for free different videos, how to make a Facebook ad, how to run some Facebook ads, spend some money on Facebook. And I did it by myself a little bit. Actually, I tried so many things. It's kind of funny. I tried selling ebooks. I tried like selling a website. I tried like so many different things. And one of the things that I learned through that process was like Facebook, Facebook ads, Facebook advertising. And that was the main role of that job. And then they taught me everything else about Shopify, about the backend, all that. And it was like pure dropshipping store? Yeah. It was pure dropshipping. It was like straight from Aliexpress, straight from like suppliers. It was called Shaper Mint. They still have a website, actually. If you check it out, they're making like, I think a million a month or something. So it's still a real website that makes money. So. Wow. That's cool. Right now, do you run any Shopify stores for yourself? Except the region? Yeah. I do have one Shopify store for myself. It's in the kid's niche. Like now we're selling a lot of kids toys and going through the holidays, Christmas. I am a little bit more focused on my client stores, like helping students. There's a few students that we have, a few clients that we have making 100, 200 K a month. So I, before I was doing like 95% my own stores, 5% helping people. Now I'm doing kind of like 50, 50. It's a lot of time just to help people with their Shopify stores. And that's how I'm making money with my own store as well as helping other people with their stores. That's cool. So you found that you're more passionate about like running the stores for other people. It's a lot more, I guess it's a challenge. I mean, once you get to a point where you can do it yourself, it gets pretty boring and you don't want to continue the path. You either like create a brand, like a real company, a real brand. I'm more of trying to help other people get to that point as well because it's harsh out there. Like, you know about drop shipping, you know about software, like the courses, the mentoring's out there are pretty rough. It's hard for somebody to learn, especially in the beginning. So I want to provide that mentoring, that help that, you know, nobody provided it to me. I got it through that job, but I want to give it to people and just help them. So that's how I do a lot of the YouTube, a lot of our trainings and so on. What are you doing in your training? It's like one-on-one or official before the course? No. So what we do is we do a free, like a live event before we're doing it monthly. Now I think we're going to do it every three months because it's a lot of effort more than I thought it would be. And now we're going to do it every three months. It's like a week live training all for free. And then if people want to work with me, working with me basically means like it's one-on-one, but also group mentoring. My team does a lot of the work for them. It's like a hybrid program between me helping them directly and also my team doing a lot of the work for them. Awesome. Sounds cool. And with which suppliers do you work on your Shopify stores? That's a good question. So the main one that we use right now is called Sourcing Box. Sourcing Box is a company in China. It's just a fulfillment company that basically takes care of all my orders, also the orders of my clients and my students. Now it's not the only company that I would recommend people because people that are watching this, like they might just Google like, oh, what is Sourcing Box? That's not the only company that you should use. There's a lot of them. What I recommend, it highly depends by product. Like every supplier will have their specific product category that they focus on. Like CJ dropshipping, for example, which is a pretty famous one. If you're selling sort of general trendy products, really dropshippy, it's really good for that. But if you're selling more of the branded side, let's say you're selling apparel, clothing, then you have to go more for like a company, let's say S Pocket, or somebody that has warehouses in the U.S., something like that. So the one that I use Sourcing Box, there's also another one called HyperSKU and a lot of private suppliers that we give to our students. But when it comes to a private supplier, it gets easier once you have more sales. So if you get to the point of making 50, 100 sales per day, you can pretty much guarantee that you'll find a pretty good agent. If you're making two sales per day, then you have to just use one of the companies that are out there. Yeah, good. And do you start your research? Like for a beginner who just started, would you go for AliExpress, for example, or would you jump directly to these suppliers even before the research? For the research process, AliExpress is good because it tells you how many orders something is getting, how much money it's made. It gives you kind of a sense of the market, how the market is doing for that product. Now, when it comes to ordering, if you have one order every week or two orders, three orders, sure, you can use AliExpress. The problem is it gets very addictive. If you use AliExpress for your first five, you think, wow, this is so easy. It's so fast. And then you get like a hundred orders and then you use AliExpress for all of those and you get a thousand and then the supplier just disappears. And now you have a thousand orders that you're struggling to find who's going to send them for you. So that's why I recommend people, sure, a few orders use AliExpress, but after you're getting consistency, two to three per day or more, you have to find a good supplier. Okay. That's an interesting approach. Okay. And do you work like the shipping time from China is fine for your customers? So do you use US warehouses? US warehouses, yeah. There's a lot of orders that are getting in like seven, 10 days, but they're still because of the lockdowns, all these problems, there's still issues. So if you do, if you are getting like a bunch of orders, like a thousand a week or more, you should get a bulk order from AliExpress or from, sorry, Alibaba or from any supplier, store them in the US and then ship them from US to US. I would not really, like if somebody's making more than 20, 30 K a month, you shouldn't really rely on China only. You should have some stock in the US or wherever you're shipping to. Cool. I agree with that by the way, because I think that to build a real brand, the shipping time is critical. That's why we also push always to the US suppliers and not something else. What is a good optioning product for you? Like we talked about the suppliers, but what about the product itself? Can you mention the criteria that you use to choose a hot selling product? The main ones that I sell or I try to sell, depending what time of the year it is, because right now it's the holidays, it's Christmas, you can get away with selling toys and a lot of decorations. But regular time of the year, I look for problem solving products. And if a product doesn't really solve a problem, then it's probably I'm not going to sell it because it has to solve some sort of problem that a customer struggles with. Then after you have that one, it's also a problem. Then you want to look for a product that has already made at least $5,000 to $10,000 on Aliexpress or at least has made 500 orders or so. You're not going to find the next fidget spinner if you're a beginner. Like a lot of people think, oh, let me just sell this product that has no orders because it looks cool. I'm going to be a millionaire. It's probably not going to happen. So you want to look for something that's already selling. And then you want to find some stores that are selling it. If there's a lot of stores that are running ads for it, selling it, that's a great indication. And then the last thing would be that it's not copyrighted, patented, not a product that is going to get you in trouble with any legal issues. I think those would be the main criteria. Okay. I agree by the way about the legal part. How do you do this research? How do you check if product is not copyrighted? You go to USPTO.gov. It's the US Patent and Trademark Office. There you'll probably find everything, whether it's a patent, patent pending, copyright, trademarks, all that. And it depends because if you're in, like I have some students that are, for example, in Israel or in Greece that if they get into trouble with the US, there's, you're not really going to get into trouble unless you're based in the US, then you can have some problems. But I would still be careful because Shopify can ban your store, they can ban your payment methods, PayPal can ban you. I was selling, I think two years ago, like a copyrighted product from a big brand. And I thought I could get away with it. I just, ah, whatever. And it was selling so easily. I would run ads and started selling like crazy. And then PayPal and Shopify both send me an email like, hey, please stop selling this product or we will shut you down and we'll put you on a blacklist. And I'm like, okay. And like two minutes later, I removed that I stopped all my ads. So be careful, yeah. Yeah, it's always better to go on the safe side than not trying to. It's something that a lot of dropshippers are also trying to do in the beginning, like to trick the system and do some kind of things like this. But I agree with you, it's very better to go in a safe way. And when you search for a product, what would be the average price that you recommend for a beginner's? Around 10 to 25 cost, like the actual cost of the product. I wouldn't sell something that's like 10 cents or 20 cents, unless there's a strategy behind that or a reason behind it. Like if the product is 10 cents, but people buy 20 of them at the same time, or the product is like a dollar, but for example, as a set of products, like a set of 12 or a set of 16, that's great. But 10 to 25 would be the cost. Then you need to add shipping to that. And then you would sell it for around 50 to around 100. So that's a sweet spot. That's where you want to be. So you put how much percent of profit do you put on each product? I always take product cost and shipping cost together, multiply it by either two or 2.5. So cost is 10. Shipping is eight or for easy, let's say it's five. So that's 15 times 2.5 times two is 30. And times 2.5 is like 38 something. So just price it at 40. Then you write on your site, the product is free shipping or you add also shipping? No, free shipping. There's people that charge for shipping. I like charging for, I like putting free shipping and then putting insured shipping or shipping with insurance or shipping with, there's people that do shipping with tracking, shipping with no tracking. I probably wouldn't recommend that because people want to track their products, especially now. So you would do free shipping and then free shipping with insurance or 100% refund or something like that. And then charge for that one. Okay. That's interesting strategy. And how do you advertise the products after you found them? Mainly Facebook. Now, Facebook is having a lot of issues. So I'm going the route of Google, YouTube ads. Instagram, I don't dabble in it too much. I used to before, but I haven't really found like a new traffic method. I'm doing TikTok ads and beating everyone. It's the classic Facebook and Google. I think those two are the biggest, most powerful, most scalable platforms. Yes, Facebook has some issues, but it's still a great platform and very profitable. Yeah. I tried creating a WordPress WooCommerce store. Never actually ran any traffic to it. I tried creating a Squarespace website. Didn't really like the layout of it. And that would be all. I was tempted to do Weeks because I saw so many ads for it. But I think Shopify is the best for, like Shopify specifically for people that want to sell products. So if you go to like Wix or Squarespace or WooCommerce, yeah, they're for people to sell, but it's more, it's kind of like a general website builder. Shopify is more of, hey, we're going to help people sell products. And they help you do that with all their apps and their plugins. And the code is very easily written. You can edit it. You can add people to the website and kind of replicate the work. So we have a team of like 16 people that fix Shopify stores. They do Shopify work. And it's very easy to find new people that do Shopify. It's hard to find people that do WooCommerce or Wix or something. So that's why I love it. Yeah, I need to have much higher technical skills for WooCommerce. And about the products, can you explain a little bit how do you find these products? I use a lot of spy tools. What I like to do is look at Facebook ads, spy tools, like there's, there's a lot of them, drop point, dropy spy, ad spy. And then you find the product that, for example, is running on an ad has like 100,000 views or 50,000 views. Then you go to the store and you check either the best sellers or the recently added products for that store. You check how much money that store is making, analyze it really well, and then you find products inside of that store that are selling. You can also kind of double check it with AliExpress, see if that product is selling on AliExpress, not just on that store. I like spy tools. I know the owner of Ecom Hunt, he's great. I know the owner of a few other spy tools that are really good. I just wouldn't tell people that spy tools are like the ultimate cure. If you're going to use a spy tool, don't expect to find your next seven figure product. There's a lot of things that go behind that. So spy tools are the best way for a beginner that doesn't want to work too hard to find a product. Everything is kind of done for you. Like on Ecom Hunt, you have your targeting, you have your video, you have your ad copy done for you. Like literally everything. So you can just go and plug it in. There's a few other ones like knee scraper, sell the trend is pretty good. Those, I would definitely use them. My strategy is like reverse Facebook. That's what I like. And hiring people. So we have a full time product researcher on our team. All she does is literally just find products all day. And you can find somebody like that.  That's cool. So basically you use spying tools. So basically you recommend beginners using the spy tools and also the brain to analyze it in the right way. Okay, that's cool. What do you think about the future of dropshipping? Few years from now, five years from now, how do you think it will look like? I think since so many people are doing it and it's now especially like the more I don't live in the U.S. anymore, but when I live there, buying online is so easy. Like for example, I was walking down the street in New York and I ordered a suitcase for a trip that I had like in two minutes from my phone. And I thought after I bought it, I thought, damn, that was so easy to buy a suitcase. And now even more, like people are stuck at home. There's more lockdowns like California just locked down for another month. People are forced to shop from home. And I think e-commerce is going to be the thing that people do. Like a lot of brands are just going straight into e-commerce. They're not even bothering and opening a shop. So for dropshipping, I would say China is going to get better and better. At shipping is going to get faster. Like before you just had AliExpress with e-packet. e-packet was kind of slow, kind of messed up. Now you have these like 30 different shipping methods. Like I made a video today on the shipping methods that are available. I had a list of like 18 that were below two week shipping. So they're going to get better. They're going to have more companies, more teams doing this, a lot of more connections, more technology. And I think shipping from China is never going to actually die. You just have to not always rely on China. You need to get stock into the US. You need to get your private packaging, branding really good. And stores that are just a general store selling whatever kind of product, selling a very weird product page that looks kind of scammy, that doesn't work anymore.  Get it now before we run out. That doesn't work anymore. So what really works right now is like a branded store, really high quality, having products to solve a problem. And then just building an overall niche brand. You can't just like one guy showed me his store. He was selling like a fitness product.  That doesn't work. What really works is like make a niche store, branding it properly, getting a team together to help you and then scaling a real company. So I just thought even as a beginner, you wouldn't do a general store. I mean, I do recommend some beginners to do general stores. Like, for example, one guy, he came to us and he, he's a banker, like basically works in a bank, does a lot of money, but just wants to sell online. Like him and his wife, they just want to sell something online. And I told them, okay, well, what exactly, what are you passionate about, what do you like? And the guy's like, well, I don't know. I just want to sell something. And for a person like that, that doesn't really know what to sell. They don't really want to think about it. It's better to do a general store, test a couple of products and then find your way through the products and then eventually find what you want to sell. That in that case, sure. And for people that have no idea about Shopify, like if you're an engineer and you want to start selling online and you don't know what to sell, you don't know what sells, you're not really passionate about any type of product, a general store does work. I just don't want people to like think that they can make a general store, a million dollar store.   But a niche store, you have a lot better probability. Okay. So if I don't know, if I don't have any idea about what I would like to sell, I would go first for a general store and then find my niche and go down to the niche. Correct. Yeah. And what about one product stores versus multiple products? What is your opinion about this one? Multiple products to start. One product is more for when you really want to scale something. So the one product source that I've done, it's been like two or three in the past. They've all been from a multiple product store that is doing very well. That product is the main seller. Then that one, we put it into a one product store and scale it. That's when I recommend people to do it. Because you see a lot of people that are, they start one product store and then they're beginners and then they go and they take like, you know, the posture corrector or the bendable sunglasses that you can put here, like everybody's selling that or they take like a version of a fidget spinner. And they think that that's going to work because it's a one product store, because it's guaranteed to work.  You probably don't know how to sell it. So you need to first test it on a multiple product store and then sell it on a one product store. What about the Facebook campaigns? Do you push people to a specific product page or to decide itself? A specific product page is always better. Or if you have a lot of products that are very similar to each other, then a collection page. Like a carousel on the Facebook campaign? Ah, a collection on a Shopify. A collection on your Shopify store. Yeah. Yeah. And on Facebook, do you use the collection or? No, I don't, I don't like carousel ads. I like just image or video, video mainly.  You can retarget video views. You can create a lot of audiences based on that. So. And you create the videos by yourself or will you use any service for that? We're using now a new service.  So I'm not going to say them, but it's a service that you can basically buy like three videos at a time for about $60. So they end up being like 20 bucks per video, which is pretty cheap. There's other big companies that do videos like e-convids. Those ones are custom made. Like you send them the product, they do it for you, but minimum is like $3,000, $5,000 for a video. So if you want to start, you should get a $25, $50 video, really good quality and then run ads with that. Later on, you can do custom ones. Yeah. After we see that the product proven in itself, right? Exactly. Okay. That's interesting. Anything else that you would like to say to beginners or someone who wants to start a Shopify business? I would say just start because I've been working with a lot of people and a lot of people they, there's so many steps to this process. Like there's, and you first need to create the shop, you need to find the products, you need to do the ads, you need to scale the ads. What if you get banned and then you're going to do Google? And then what if Google doesn't allow you to sell some products? And then how do you scale Google? There's so many steps and so many problems. And I think especially beginners, they think, you know, how am I even going to get started? Is it too hard? Is like it's drop shipping dead? Just start, just step by step. And also for people that are thinking like, oh, does drop shipping work or not? Drop shipping isn't this like magical thing that makes money. It's just a business model. It's just a way of shipping your products.  And then another advice would be just don't try to sell something because it looks cool. Think about it as, you know, you're looking like, let's say when you learn math in high school, you don't just randomly find out the result, you go through a long step by step process of, oh, okay, and this is the result. And then your teacher asks you like, oh, how did you get to that point? And then you need to show her how you got to that point like, oh, this and this and this. And then I did the step. The same thing is with when you're running a product. Like it's not just, oh, I'm going to run it because it looks cool. It's because it has order volume. This other store is selling it. It's running on a Facebook ad. So always kind of thing that you need to show yourself the proof that that product is going to sell. That helped me a lot in the beginning. So just do it. Yeah, just do it because it's overwhelming. It's really hard. So just do one step by step. What is the budget that you would say to people to like put in the side for the option in business and say to themselves, okay, this is my budget to stop? There's a lot of videos out there on how to start dropshipping from zero, how to do dropshipping for free. And they get a lot of views. A lot of people watching because it's, you know, how to start dropshipping for free. And I've been tempted to do a video like that. But the reality is you can't start with zero. Like if you start with zero, it's going to take you a long time to do it.  If you're on a tight budget, you can't put too much, $500 would be good. And the reality is like, even if you live like in a third world country, $1,000 might be a ton of money for you. But I think if you save up, you work for a long time and you actually want to take it seriously, $500 is a minimum I would go for. If you're in the U.S. and you have a regular job, you know, you're a nine to five or something and you don't have a thousand bucks, you're not $2,000, it's because you don't care about it enough. You're not planning enough. You're not like, oh, you're going to a restaurant instead of staying at home. So I think anybody, at least in the developed countries like U.S., Canada, Australia, you can come up with $1,000 to invest in your business or $2,000. And that would be perfect for starting. Yeah, I agree. Everything is basically the prioritized that you're doing for yourself. Yeah. Cool. So thank you for the great interview. It was super interesting. And I will touch the link to Rafael's YouTube channel below this video so you can watch on the podcast also. And thanks again. It was a great interview. Awesome, Lior. Thank you. Bye.


My name is Ramesh and I'm associated with an organization called Ekta Palshit. It's a membership-based organization working in India. Very much with the tribal, Dalits, nomads, fisher folk and landless and agricultural labourers. We are here in World Forum on Access to Land because it's a very interesting event for all of us. The landless movement, the small peasants movement, the fisher folks movement, is coming from all across the world. We are here to discuss about the various issues which, how we can ensure the land to the landless poor, which is a very interesting question in India. I mean, the Government of India very recently said that nearly 29.9% of the population are landless and homeless poor. When I say landless, that means the people who don't have roots. And if you don't have roots, you cannot feel your dignity, identity and livelihood in the country. So that's why our struggle is very important. And just by getting a one-voter idea, you cannot feel that you are a part of the citizenship in the country. So better to ensure the land to each and every landless and homeless poor. And perhaps this is one of the best ways to secure the food rights, to secure the food certainty of the landless people. We do a lot of foot marches in India. I mean, we have walked more than 20,000 kilometers. We travel all across the country many times. In 2007, we walked with 25,000 people when we spent about a month in the national highway. That was a big challenge for central government to face this big demonstration. And the foot marches is a very interesting tool because once you are in the road, you can create a constant pressure. The constant pressure on government. It's not like a one-day event.  So after one month foot march, that was a tremendous pressure created on India, government of India. Finally, there was a negotiation between the movement between us and government of India. And the forest rights legislation has actually came into the existence. And after this 2007, nearly 3 million people in India, they are getting the land because of this momentum. In 2012, we were actually walked with 100,000 people. Again, same, Gwalior to Delhi. We spent about 15 months. But before reaching to Delhi, the government was decided to come and to negotiate with us. That time in 2012, we actually negotiated for National Homestead Rights Act. That means ensuring homestead plot for each and every homeless poor in the country. They are in the big numbers. And the next action is 2018. What we call millions can walk. So this time, please ready to see when one million people are in the streets in India. Thank you.


السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته ورحمة مباشرة مع الم�هيث تص всп ربما ليك By Umm Al Liebani ويجب أن ترى لكم all for the death anniversary of Um al-Baneen. أحب أن أردتنا اليوم مع نفسنا. دعاء مقظومي. السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته. عليكم السلام وبركاته. سيستدعاء. Who was Um al-Baneen? Um al-Baneen.  Her name was Fatima, the daughter of Huzam. Her father, Huzam, was the most renowned personalities of the Arabs and the Shaif of his people. The ancestors of this great lady Um al-Baneen are well known for their horsemanship, herism, bravery and courage. ونمام علي عليه السلام he lost his beloved wife Fatima al-Zahra. The daughter of the Prophet Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him. He simoned his brother عقيل who was a well-known genealogist and to ask for him, to search for him a lady who is a being of a descendant of heroes. In order for him to get a son who would be immaculate, brave and a hero like al-Abbas. عقيل told him لا أرى لك إلا Fatima but Huzam I do not find anyone suitable for you other than Fatima, the daughter of Huzam. So they went to propose to Um al-Baneen. And before even Um al-Baneen was born الله سبحانه وتعالى chose her to be the wife of Ali and she took this mission. Huzam her father Ibn Khalid he was once on a trip with his family and friends and relatives. And this is a very nice story. He said that once when he was on the trip he was sleeping and he saw in his dream that he was in a dry desert segregated from his relatives and friends and in his hand he was holding a diamond. He was twisting it with his fingers and he was amused in its beauty. Suddenly a man on a horse comes towards him and greeted him and asked him how much will you sell this diamond? Huzam said I don't know how much it's worth how much will you buy it? The man also said I don't know how much it's worth but I advise you to gift it to a prince who is more valuable than money and gold. Huzam said will you guarantee all this to me? He said yes and you will be favorite to him? You will have the nobleness and the honor for the rest of your life. Give it to me and he gave it to him. Now when Huzam woke up from his dream he mentioned what he had seen in front of his family and friends and relatives. One of them told him Huzam if your dream will come true then Allah will bless you with a girl where a great glorious man will marry her and you will be honored you will be favorite to him and you will have the nobleness And when Huzam came back from his trip his wife Thumama Batsuhaid was giving birth at that time and she gave birth to a girl when they congratulated him and told him Huzam you have a girl now congratulations he said لقد صدقت رؤي my dream has become true and they asked him what would you name her he said no better name other than name Fatima وكنوها بأم البنين give her a nickname أم البنين and it was a usual thing in the Arab time when a child was born they would give him or her a name and a nickname so for example يدهاب الحسن عليه السلام his nickname المشتبا يدهاب الحسين his nickname was أبا عبدالله you'd have someone like Al-Abbas you'd have a nickname أمر بني هاشم so it was a usual thing and there are several reasons why he gave her this nickname one of them due to her Aunt Layla she was also brave and at the same time she also had four sons or three sons I recall and her father took that nickname from her aunt's name and he gave it to her along that أم البنين عليه السلام had four sons her elder son was Al-Abbas and her young son was Jaafar and in between was عبدالله so she's the mother of the sons أم البنين and this great lady she raised her four sons to how to respect the two imams from a different mother their brother from a different mother even one day she told العبس عليه السلام أو صن عبس when you sit in front of your brother حسين do not sit with him as if you are sitting in front of your brother sit with him as if you are sitting in front of your master yes you are the son of Ali but don't forget that his mother is فاطمة الزهراء which fellow wife is so sincere to her step sons as much as أم البنين عليه السلام was عليه السلام that was beautifully said and you spoke about some of the qualities أم البنين stood up for being أم البنين for example the mother of the sons do you have anything other than her title what else did she stand up for she stood up for فاطمة الزهراء she stood for إمام عليه السلام she stood for الحسين she stood for زي نب she even stood for the sake of Allah now let's talk about her standing for فاطمة الزهراء because if you look at it she stood for فاطمة الزهراء in so many different ways one of them she took care of her orphans حسين حسين زي نب and أم كالثوم she was so sincere with them that she did not deny them anything and she was so sincere with them even that when she was newly married and علي بن أبي طالب called her فاطمة by her first name she told him او علي do not call me by my name فاطمة he said to her why? this is the name that I love I love this name she said to him او علي I am afraid that if you call me by my name حسين حسين زي نب and أم كالثوم will recall and remember their mother's name and in that case I'll put some sorrow and pain in your orphans hearts your children's heart she stood she sacrificed four of her sons for the sake of one of her son imagine that she stood for فاطمة زهرة علي سلام even when العباس علي سلام was departuring to Karbala with his brother المام حسين she told him او عباس I have one word with you he came to her oh yes mother what do you want she said to him do not embarrass me in front of فاطمة زهرة علي سلام sacrifice yourself for حسين and each mother that sacrificed her son for فاطمة زهرة she would come in front of فاطمة زهرة and would tell her oh Fatima I sacrificed my son for you so أم البني علي سلام did not want to be the mother with four sons and she did not sacrifice them all she even told العباس make sure that your brother sacrificed themselves for حسين and it is known in Karbala العباس was the last one your brother أولاد أمي came in front you wanted to make sure that each and one of them would be a martyr them for the sake of إمام الحسين علي سلام and he was the last one to make his mom's message and will come true he did not want to embarrass her so when أم البني she stood for فاطمة زهرة in so many ways she stood for إمام علي for being his wife for taking care of his children for raising عباس علي سلام she stood for إمام الحسين when she sacrificed her sons for him when she took care of him she stood for زيناب علي سلام when they came back from the martyrdoms of حسين they had to mourn and cry and they were together she stood for الله سبحانه وتعالى because she sacrificed for Allah's sake she sacrificed إمام الحسين was battling for إسلام for the teachings for humanity for Allah's teachings to remain since أم البني sacrificed her sons for that sake she stood for الله سبحانه وتعالى yeah so she stood for many reasons she did indeed especially when she looked up to إمام الحسين despite having before her blood her blood sons being she treated إمام الحسين more than she would treat her sons and she took care of him and and إمام علي's children more than she took care of her sons and she loved them the most exactly is that the only is it only because they were the daughters they were the sons sorry of أم البني or was there other reasons to it أم البني she comes from a family of nobleness and she was very humble she's known to come from a respective family so it's not just because they were the sons of but that yes is the main reason because imagine people at that time did not even respect the orphans of they did not respect فاطمت الزهراء herself أم البني she knew their state and their eyes in Allah's eyes she knew who they were she knew who that she was the daughter of the prophet محمد بيصام بلاسنسبي upon him and if you were a true Muslim you would not hurt that family you would not hurt فاطمت الزهراء even if she was a martyr and she was not present in that time you still don't want to hurt her you know how could she not take care and not have the sincere and the loyalty that she had and don't forget the family she comes from they were known for their nobleness their courage their bravery so it's not just because they are the children of فاطمت الزهراء she took care of them but also she knew that they were hurt they were broken they lost their mother that was also took an inconsideration very empathetic indeed and what did أمو البنين enjoy I know she enjoyed you know the loss of her four sons but what else did she enjoy during her life most of all was the loss of her four sons and on top of that and the worst of all was the most horrific news that she received the martyrdom of إمام الحسين عليه السلام إمام صادق عليه السلام says that أمو البنين he has narrated to the cemetery of البقية she used to labored with heart-running and strict and grief-words upon the loss of her four sons and إمام الحسين she would mourn she would sob she would cry she would have poems that she would mention and read and ladies that would hear her would gather around her they would all cry together she transformed جنة البقية into like a حسينية and she was the first lady known to read مجلس الحسين عليه السلام because she was enduring a lot and she was suffering a lot from their loss even مروان ابن الحكم مروان ابن الحكم is known to be a man who made أهل البيت عليه السلام suffer in so many different ways he would pass by and he would hear أمو البنين words and moaning and crying and sobbing and he would say رحم الله أمو البنين رحم الله أمو البنين uma she would even break his heart so she did endure a lot because on 13th جماد ثاني أمو البنين 64 after Hijra she passed away كربلاء and the tragedy of كربلاء and the loss of her four sons and حسين عليه السلام her master was 61 after Hijra so imagine two years after the tragedy of كربلاء أمو البنين passed away she did not لم يكن لديها أكثر أسفرات وهذا هو لماذا نتذكرها نتذكرها في حياتها نتذكر ماذا تساعدها لأنها أفضل نتذكرها لأننا نعرف أن الله سبحانه وتعالى لدينا أم البنين لأنها تساعدها أيضا أصدقائنا الكثير من of us have tried ourselves لأننا لدينا أسفرات أنهم يساعدون كثيرا ونحدث يساعدوننا ونحن لا نعرف ماذا نفعل لذلك في حالة فقط نحن نأخذ فاتحة أم البنين ومany of us have tried it الله سبحانه وتعالى لأنها لدينا أم البنين لأنها لدينا أم البنين الله سبحانه وتعالى سيجعلنا أسفراتنا ومany of us have tried it لأننا نأخذ فاتحة أم البنين ونكون الان ماذا يبقى كان anything to be honest with finding a parking I know it always works with finding a parking for example يجب أن نتعلم الناس and do that because it's actually فاتحة أم البنين لأن الله سبحانه وتعالى He knows how much He gave to Him لأنه يجون لها something when we ask for Allah for the sake of a man to be helped He will like solve our problems لأنه has a great positionWoman in a great position in the Law of his Eyes Q.How important is it You'll mention onπόνN quite a lot And I know they do gatherings... How important is it to hold this Sophra and what is the meaning behind it Is it just gathering of few ladies And remembering on nível Because she has a great position I'm in aaga و عندما نفعل صفرة لأم البنين نفعل دعاة و نفعل مرنشنها و زيارة نفعل نتذكرها لحياة و نفعل نسمع مجلس و نرد فاتحات لأم البنين و نحن فاتحات صفرة كلها لأم البنين عليه السلام و نتذكرها و لأننا نتذكرها و نحن نفعل صفرة لها لأنها يوجد ايضا مزيد جيد جيد الله أعطى الله سبحانه وتعالى يتذكرنا بها لأم البنين يتذكرها لأم البنين فهي سأعطينا نجمه نحن تسألنا نقوم بناسة و همنا نحن نفعل ذلك لأننا نحن نفعل دعاة و نفعل مرنشنها و عزيزا و الأشياء الصحيحية التي لا نجد أشياء الأشياء الصحيحية التي لا نجد أنها like a key with أم البنين يجب أن تصفرها أو تذكرها يجب أن تصفرها و الله سبحانه وتعالى يجب أن يفتحك للمساعدة من this lady لأن she was a great lady she sacrificed her sons أعتقد أن لا أم ستفعل that she would humbly sacrifice her sons للمساعدة من الله أعجب أن تتحسن أكثر إذا تسلس one it's horrible أعجب أن تحسن أكثر نعم نعلم أن أم البنين كانت أم البنين كبيرة و أنها تسلست كبيرة كبيرة جيدة من نهاية كيف تتبع أنها تتبع هل فقط تتبع أنها تتبع أنها تتبع أنها تتبع للمساعدة من أم أم حسين أم البنين كيف تتبع أنها تتبع للمساعدة من أم البنين لأنها لم تتبع و أن بشر بن حدللن تتبع أنهم أم البنين فقط تتبع أن أم البنين كانت أم أم الحسين لأن she had love for him she did not want to lose him so what gave her this patient was أم أم الحسين she had no patience if you come to see what أم أم زين العابدين came back from كربلاة مدينة and he told bishr go send the message that حسين has been martyred because people had brothers they had husbands that went with أم حسين in كربلاة and they wanted to know what happened to أم حسين they wanted to know what happened to their husbands to their brothers so أم زين العابدين said to bishr you go tell the news spread the news and bishr went and he said يا أهل يثرب بلا مقام لكم بها oh people of يثرب you do not stand in يثرب people told him oh bishr what are you saying this is the city of رسول الله how are you saying that he said the news is near the grave of رسول الله so every lady was out from her home every child was out from their home no one remained at home they were all they all run ran to the grave of رسول الله to know what's the news bishr was yelling to everyone oh people of يثرب قتل الحسين حسين has been martyred الجسم منه بكربلا مضرج his body is slaughtered and thrown on the field of كربلا والرأس منه على القناة يدارو and his head is on a spirit taken from one city to another فأدمعي مدرارو so shed your tears bishr says all I see I've been screaming and yelling all I see is a lady running and she trips and she gets up again and she runs and she trips until she got into the middle of the crowd she told me oh bishr tell me about حسين he said I was shocked I've been yelling حسين has been martyred look at her how she had no patience for the loss of her say she had patience for losing her sons she never asked about them so he said I've been yelling حسين has been martyred they told him oh bishr be easy on her this is أم البنين she lost four of her sons in كربلا bishr said when I knew that this was أم البنين I wanted to condolences her on the loss of her four sons so I told her my condolences for you on جعفر أثمان عبد الله she did not fall she did not scream she did not yell she told him tell me about حسين he said my condolences for you on your three sons she said yes she aquified themselves for حسين she had this patience to stand which mother would hear such a news and would not at least yell and cry and then ask about حسين but she had patience because she never had patience for her and you can tell when someone doesn't have patience that person would keep repeating the question over and over again and he would tell them can you have some patience أم البنين showed that she didn't have patience for Mamحوسان because she kept repeating tell me about ونحن لم تتحرك في العلسة من أجلها ربما ستتحرك عندما يجد أن أعرف أن العباس كان مرتفع وذلك فتحها لأجلها لك على العلسة العباس عليه السلام هناك المساعدة تقول أن أم البنين كانت تخلقها لأجلها وقد فتحها من أمها هناك أم البنين فتحها على أجلها وقد فتحها أنها تقول أنها تخلقها لأجل حسين when he told her about Imam Hussain, that's when she screamed, she yelled, she hit her head and she went to Zaynab al-salam. So by just looking at the scene that we just mentioned, she had patience to lose her sons, but she had no patience to lose Imam Hussain. So what is the reason that this mother like أم البنين have patience along losing her sons? Behind it was because she had zero patience for losing Imam Hussain al-salam. And she did mourn, she did remember them, she did cry. Of course. It was hard for her to lose them, but what gave her patience and how she showed patience because she didn't want to lose Imam Hussain al-salam. Subhanallah. Indeed, what you've mentioned about being patient and I wonder what is patience. I know أم البنين showed patience. What is it to be patient and how is it to be patient? I know people define patience in just waiting maybe or is it more to it? Is it taking action and where are we rewarded when we have patience in this day and age? And how can we relate to أم البنين? Being patient is when you know that this problem you are suffering from is temporary. You will be out from this problem one day or from what you are suffering from. For example, when we lose a loved one and we have to be patient, we have to move on in life. We would cry a day or two, a month or two, a year or two. But at the end of the day, what makes you patient is that life moves on. You're going to have to start going back to eating if you lost your appetite at first.  Life would move on. So it's a usual thing that when you lose someone or you are suffering from something.  So you might have a depression moment. It might take you a year or two. It might take you a month or two. You might be losing your appetite for a while. But you will come back to it. It won't stay. When you have patience, you don't commit suicide, for example. People who don't have patience. Or self-harm themselves. They harm themselves.  And as a believer and a Muslim, we're all learned to have some patience. Because we cannot get rid of our lives for the sake of something that happened. We know like الموت حق. It's the right. And it's one of Allah's right that we give it to Him. He created us. And He takes us whenever it's time. So us as believers, we know that. And we have patience for that. Yes, we do cry. We mourn. We take it out because we're human beings. We can't keep it inside us. Even if it wasn't a loss of anyone. Even if it was just a problem we're suffering from. We could be patient by not committing suicide or not harming ourselves. But at the same time, we would cry. We would take it out. Every time we would remember, we would like cry and mourn and take it out. Sometimes we'd be in our small depression area where we just want to be alone. And then while you're being patient, it comes out. And you move on to your daily lifestyles. Just like those mothers who lost their sons. They do cry a month or two. And they move on. But أم البني عليه الصلاة والسلام was different because the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, he says In the hearts of the believer, the martyrdom of Imam الحسين عليه الصلاة there was a burn that will never be healed. And أم البني showed that burn. That was never healed. And as I said previously, she did not last after the tragedy of Karbala only two years because she could not inhale any more sufferings any more last. And she can't be any more patient. And زيناب عليه الصلاة والسلام she lived one year after the tragedy of Karbala imagine. Because she loved about herself so much. Indeed, a patient woman. Indeed, a woman of knowledge and wisdom. A woman we can all learn from. Be it men or women. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Stay tuned for our next part of the segment with Fahima Muhammad on a one-to-one coaching session. السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته السلام عليكم Thank you sister for being here today. We're going to be discussing in this session The loss of your son. I'd like to start firstly by you telling me what was life like living in Iraq in the time of Saddam. It was awful. I can't even begin to tell you how awful it was. Saddam and his men were just pure evil. I swear by Allah they didn't have a shred of mercy within them. They had no freedom of speech. It was like there was flies on the wall. Every day was tense. Every day was just hard to live. Could you explain the difficulty and the hardships of the actual daily living a little bit more?  Children were tortured. We don't even call them Saddam Hussein. He doesn't deserve to have that name. It makes me sick just thinking about it.  That wasn't the worst. People had been hung from their hands. People's bones. Burn them and throw acid on them. How had this impacted you in particular with your family situation? I tried to keep my family safe. Every move, every day I'd be inferior of going out of leaving my house. I dread to think how many people have been tortured. What was your coping mechanism to get you through each day? Every day, pray to Allah then I'm Al-Bali Benin. She helped me overcome the tragedy. It was my son actually that reminded me of this figure. So speaking about your son could you describe to me the relationship that you had with your son and how did you lose him? My son was killed. My son was killed but I can't tell you how proud I am of my son my blessed, beautiful boy. My son was everything. He worked so hard every day. What was your relationship with him? I had a very close relationship with my son. He was such a good boy. When he would do something wrong I would say to him do not do that because our master Hussein is watching and instantly he would stop when I think back to times with my son I always think of that moment because it reminds me of how I look up to figures that help me try and stay positive every day not use inspiration and my neighborhood my friends and family around my son would always support me and he'd try and help it overcome the injustice of our country he said to me one day this injustice is not right he always said he wanted to put it right he tried so hard Can you give me a little bit more details about your son as to how you come to terms with this I don't think I'm ever going to come to terms that my son is not here anymore months went by with no word from my son I didn't know how to be I didn't know how to act I was still hopeful that my son was alive I would sit for hours on my prayer mat crying I would slap my cheeks until they were red raw hoping that the pain would just go away and when you actually did hear of the news what was that like for you then it kept running through my head that Sardam had killed my son I didn't want to believe it I tried to stay positive I have no words so going back to the character of Ommel Beni as you mentioned it helped you overcome this tragedy can you be a little bit more specific with the reasons and how did this actually help you she's just so extraordinary she was able to give away a son to give away four sons honestly I don't know how she done it she's inspired me she's made me strong I look up to her every day she keeps me positive she gives me life to carry on but try to carry on living each day she's incredible and the way that she achieved this she just put Allah first she put him above all else she's my inspiration and she keeps me going if it wasn't for Ommel Beni I don't think I'd be here today so let's just highlight that even through this tragedy even through the pain even through the hurt even through the constant reminder and memory of the loss of your son there are times that you have to continue to practice and continue your faith and an amazing figure like Ommel Beni is someone who gives you that daily through reflection and prayer she's so powerful and so enduring that I'm just so thankful for Ommel Beni so how would you maybe give someone similar strength or advice if they were watching or experiencing loss in their family if there's someone out there that's experiencing loss they shouldn't give up hope of hopefully one day seeing their son or their loved one again I believe with strength you can carry on going to be positive and don't let anyone ruin your life well thank you so much for your insight and your story as difficult as it is it is something that a lot of people will actually benefit and Insha'Allah I only pray for the increased strength that you have and thank you so much for being here today what a touching story what a tragedy an awful story it's very sad because she's one out of a million there's a lot of ladies who lost their sons in Saddam's regime and I'm proud of her that we remember Ommel Beni because it calms us down there's this poet once that says oh master Hussein your tragedy has came upon before our tragedies and it makes us feel that no tragedy like the mom of Hussein so we always remember Ommel Beni which is something good because what we suffer from is nothing what they suffered from but you know Saddam's regime was very horrible because her son was killed for no reason I mean killing Saddam hated all the Shia Muslims and that has there's no reason for killing just because you hate Shia it's just like Hitler who killed all the Jews because they're Jewish or killing all the Christians because they're Christians it's very horrible there's no reason for you to kill so what a mother knows that her son has been martyred for the sake of the religion even though when she wants to have a patient she knows he was martyred for nothing he was killed and captured and thrown in one grave for nothing Ommel Beni she did know that her sons will sacrifice themselves for Imam Hussein because she had a convincing reason before Imam Ali proposed to her she knew that she was going to be blessed with four sons who she was willing to sacrifice so it gives her a convincing reason when she found out that her sons were sacrificed, they were martyred she was proud, she was happy yes, she did cry, she even wished that she had more sons to sacrifice them for the sake of Hussein so there was a convincing reasonable reason behind the martyrdom of her sons just like those mothers today who lost their sons due to protecting the shrine of say the Zainab due to protecting Iraq and standing against that many examples they become like proud I've heard so many women where they go on TV and they're like I'm proud that my son became a martyr because Allah gives you a great position in Jannah in Paradise and many mothers what convinces them and makes them proud yes, they do cry, they remember they go off a mother's face by just looking at her that she has a son who is a martyrdom because the happiness in that face it just goes away and it's very stressing and disappointing to hear how a woman lost her sons and as this woman that we just watched for no reason, just because he wanted to walk with a pilgrimage towards Imam Al-Hussain and indeed Imam Al-Hussain will honour him and we'll honour her as well because he was going to Paradise let's say Jannah is Paradise insha Allah indeedonas we mentioned she did bring up the beautiful she'd always referred back to Ul-Mal-Ben-een and she remembered Ul-Mal-Ben-een there's no comparison to Ul-Mal-Beneen actually right and from losing her son is there a practical way هل تعتقد أن هناك طريقة بحيث أنه عندما لدينا الكثير من الناس نحن نتكلم عنه قبل لكن بعض الوقت when you're in the tragedy you lose it, don't you? ونعلم أنه صعبًا أن يتذكر ورغب إلى إمام حسين أو سيدة رقية when you've lost a young child أو سيدة رقية عليم السلام كثيرًا أثنين more examples كيف يمكن أن يرغب لهم to find this strength it depends on your faith so when you have a very strong faith and believe in Allah and this is why we remember إمام حسين every year we remember عبد الله رضي every year we remember the martyrdom of Fatima al-Zahra and her محسن the martyrdom as well for being in a miscarriage we remember إمام عليم we remember أهل البيت yearly in order for us to have this faith in them and to what they went through because one day we will experience what they have for example many mothers have experienced miscarriages and Fatima al-Zahra's miscarriage was worse because it was a martyrdom of her and her baby so we remember her due to our strong faith this is how we have very strong faith in the day and believe in them year after year it gets stronger and stronger and when we go and we try their position we experience what they experience half of what they experience or not even close to what they experience we are always remembering them because we do مجالس and we remember أهل البيت so for a mother like losing her sons she always flashbacks to أم والبنين because she lost four of her sons and it's something that one will believe in it and will put it in their faith you know so when you experience the loss of a father and you are a daughter who do you refer to say زيناب عليه السلام when you lose a brother you remember say زيناب عليه السلام and when you listen to what she went through it will make you forget what you went through so it has to do with one person some people they don't remember أهل البيت at all you know when they lose a loved one they would just put قرآن and they'd sit down and they'd cry but nothing calms them down i personally have seen myself in the فاتحات when someone passes away and you go to condolences them on the martyrdom one of them was a sister and the sheikh was reading about say زيناب عليه السلام so he was reading about how she loved her brother and how she lost him and all those stories about say زيناب when she cries she's taking it out because she is flashbacking to what she lost but when she hears say the زيناب's words her story how she lost him on her say it's nothing compared to hers so it helps a lot and it like it's good for everyone who has lost the loved one whether it was a brother a sister a child an uncle to remember أهل البيت's martyrdoms because they experience a lot more عليه السلام indeed they are my blessed aren't we to have such role models and examples in our lives because again referring back taking seeking lessons from them learning from them daily in our daily lives not just during their martyrdom or their birth anniversaries but inshallah daily thank you very much sister you're welcome that was such an insightful knowledge thank you you're welcome and inshallah we will see you soon thank you Dave Hewes for watching our i remember umal benin series السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته


Last week on the program, we talked about a bill that the Republican controlled legislature in Arkansas passed that would ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth, something that would be absolutely detrimental to the well-being of young transgender people because this is a group that isn't just more susceptible to bullying and this would further make them a target, but they're also highly statistically likely to attempt suicide or contemplate suicide much more so than their cisgender peers. So all this would do was make their lives, which are already difficult, that much more hard. And it seemed very likely that the governor of Arkansas would sign this into law given that he just recently signed a bill that would ban transgender high schoolers from participating in sports. The unthinkable happened, actually. We got some unexpectedly good news. Asa Hutchinson, the governor of Arkansas, who's a Republican, actually decided to veto this legislation. So as the ACLU reports, the governor of Arkansas just vetoed HB 1570, an extreme ban on healthcare for trans youth. This victory belongs to trans youth in Arkansas and the parents and doctors that have come together to speak up. Now upon vetoing this legislation, he explained his reasoning and he says, I was told this week that the nation is looking at Arkansas because I have on my desk another bill passed by the General Assembly that is a product of the Cultural War in America, Mr. Hutchinson said, and announcing his veto. I don't shy away from the battle when it is necessary and defensible, but the most recent action of the General Assembly, while well intended, is off course. Actually, it's not well intended. It goes against the advice of medical experts and scientists having said that though I don't necessarily care what his reasoning is, regardless the fact that he vetoed this is exactly what I was hoping would happen. The bad news, however, is that that doesn't necessarily mean that this won't become law. Because there are other bills being considered currently in other legislatures controlled by Republicans. Alabama may be the next state to pass something like this. And even in Arkansas, the battle isn't necessarily over just yet because as the New York Times explains, the Arkansas State Legislature could override Mr. Hutchinson's veto of the bill known as HB 1570. Republicans hold large majorities in both chambers and passed the bill last month with mostly party line votes 70 to 22 in the House and 28 to 7 in the Senate. So if they want to, they could easily override his veto. And it seems as if that may very well be the case. Although the fight continues and I will say the video that I put out last week is still super relevant because I don't just talk about the legislation in Arkansas. I explained specifically using the medical experts and scientific data that we have why these types of bills are absolutely detrimental to the well being of trans people. But if you look at the comments on any video when as it pertains to trans youth, all you see is ignorance. Denial of science, denial of the existence of transgender people. They say, oh, there's no such thing as a young transgender person. Absolute nonsense and your ignorance, if you are part of that is fueling these types of legislative efforts. Trans youth exist and you can choose to ban gender-affirming care for them and make them suffer, make them highly susceptible to self-harm and suicide. Or you could actually trust the science and medical experts and the community of doctors that treat trans youth who say this care, it's medically necessary. It's medically necessary and puberty blockers are 100% reversible. So rather than trying to justify your bigotry with bad data and misinformation, actually listen to transgender people get to know a trans person and it might actually change your mind. You might actually learn something, but you see in America what we usually do is we spend a lot of time demonizing one particular group of people. And even though we know that historically we're going to be frowned upon for the way that we're treating this group, we still do that anyway. Because ignorance and prejudice, it's as American as apple pie, right? I mean, we just learned that anti-gay prejudice is immoral because a lot of people slowly but surely got to know.  And so they realized, okay, they're not the boogie man and boogie women that we were told. But rather than applying what we just learned to the trans issue, people are choosing once again to not do that, to be prejudiced. And as a result of people's unwillingness to learn and change and open their minds, guess who's suffering for that? Transgender Americans and disproportionately trans youth who are the targets of these types of legislative efforts. But I don't want to be too down because this is good news, but I don't want to celebrate too much because this could be a short-lived victory. We just have to wait and see and continue to push back against these types of absolutely horrible, destructive pieces of legislation that we are going to continue to see around the country.


I think maybe people think that you can't change your injury, that if you get injured, it's just going to be what it is. So teaching people that there are new opportunities and new discoveries and the way we can improve your outcome, you can maybe delay getting a joint replacement or something like that. So that's part of our goal is educating people to get them inspired to support the research. We always make the joke that the low-hanging fruit is gone in the sense that the easy problems have been solved. And so one person isn't going to come up with a new cure to bone disease or a new cure to fixing an articular cartilage, it's really going to take a team of people. And so here is the place you meet the team that you're going to go on and work with and you have to find someone who has, you know, similar passion, similar research interest but brings a different approach to it. I just started at Sprye this fall and it was a great full circle experience for me to come back. I was a patient of Stedman's in 1998, so almost 20 years ago. And so he's really what inspired me into regenerative medicine based on the bad outcomes you have for ACL injuries in juveniles or teenagers. So these sports injuries that you get when you're racing in, I was racing skiing in high school and college. So understanding the trajectory of that injury and disease and then understanding what Stedman was doing to create new solutions was really what inspired me into regenerative medicine. So it took 20 years but I would just say I'm back. What is really great about working at Sprye is the bench-to-bedside commitment that we have to really accelerating discoveries that will make a difference in patient outcomes. So the way we've been able to do that is the research collaboration between the Sprye scientist and then the Stedman Clinic physicians. And that's just enabled by the close proximity and the shared core value of making new discoveries that can lead to patient treatments. I think that reflects our membership here at ORS. So ORS is clinicians, veterinarians, scientists, engineers, and we have that entire group kind of available to us within Sprye and so we reflect that diversity and that is really the team you need to be able to translate something bench-to-bedside.