Yeah, sure. OK, so I'm going to try and present in 20 minutes a project that Doug mentioned. It's essentially a project that we started doing in 2005. It was a DFID-funded consortium. And it was not just on Africa, but also in India. So we're going to try to present comparative work. And actually, this particular work that we started, I'm still trying to carry on this with this work in a new consortium, also funded by DFID, called Effective States Inclusive Developments in the University of Manchester. So this presentation is based on this book, which came out earlier this year. State Business Relations, Economic Dev from Africa in India. It's a Routledge book. Just probably came out a couple of months back. So it's going to be based a lot on the book. But we have also now got lots of journal papers in different journals, well-developed in JDS, JIG. So if you're interested in some of the journal papers, most of it could write to me and I'll send you those papers. So what do we try and do in the book? We try and address three core questions. The first question is, what characterizes state business relations, or effective state business relations, and how they evolved over time in the United States and also, as we'll see, across African, Sub-Saharan African countries over over 20, 25 years. And secondly, what are the implications of this for economic performance, particularly as an economist, I would like to know is there any causal role that effective state business relations play and can be asked to do that particular role or effect from other factors that affect economic performance? And the final question we had to answer was, how do these relations emerge? I mean, what are the political factors that explain the provenance? And why is it that we actually often see collusive state business relations that are not grown through the enhancing, persisting for quite a long time in many different countries? So this book, what we try to do in this project, actually, we brought in economists and political scientists. We used qualitative methods. We used qualitative methods. And we tried to do both case studies and also econometric work. And this, as I said, is based on this consortium. The website is still alive. It's the consortium finished in 2010. And you can go and check the papers if you want to. Right, so I think some of the stuff Ali Dirk has talked about. I mean, we have to keep in mind, we think about this work. There's been a lot of work already done, mostly by political scientists, who have argued for quite some time that collaborative relations between state and the business sector can be growth enhancing. We know that. And this is something we use to think about the current project. And of course, the case studies have mostly come East Asia. There was a lack of quantitative evidence of what decisions can do for growth. And so as economists, we were interested in this sort of questions. And there was relatively less evidence for African-South Asia. That's changed a little bit, as Dirk mentioned, in the last few years. But really, when we started out in 2005, there wasn't much work on African-South Asia. Just to be clear, what we mean by effective SBRs, and I'm going to use SBRs in short, is a set of highly institutionalized, which we mean repeated interactions, repeated games, can happen through formal mechanisms, but it also can happen through informal mechanisms or formal and informal institutions. So that's very important. Number one, it has to be institutionalized. It cannot be one-off. It cannot be really a situation where it's a one-off game. It has to be repeated interactions. Secondly, it has to be responsive from both sides, both parties, the state and the private sector. And thirdly, it has to be to some extent, to a large extent, public. Not all of it can happen behind closed doors. There has to be some kind of accountability and some transparency in this relationship and state and the business elite. So that's what we mean by effective SBRs. And effective SBRs are more likely to be characterized by collaborative and synodistic relations with the state and the business elite, by definition. And ineffective SBRs will be more likely to be characterized by collusive and trans-seeking relations in the state and the business elite. And that's sort of a way to think about this in an innocent way. And again, Dirks mentioned this, transparency and information. This, of course, the principles of good SBRs come from the work by Donor and Snyder and John Johnson and so on. So this is not our contribution. It's already there. Transparency and information. There has to be some transparency and information provided by the state to this private sector in terms of policies and so on. Reciprocity and actions. We know that in the East Asian case, if the state is giving some credit subsidies to the private sector, they expect something in return, exports for example. Credit working statements. It has to be essentially fixing the creditable commitment problem. The private sector has to believe the state and believe what the state is saying and doing will persist for some time. And trust, of course, has to be there between the two different parties. And so you have to see an absence of collusive behavior to the state and the private sector. How do state SBRs affect economic growth? And again, Dirks talked about it, so I'm going to try and go to this very quickly. Effective SBRs can help prevent both government failures and market failures. How do they prevent market failures? Will the health solve information-related market and coordination failures? For example, business associations monitoring their members and ensuring compliance. That's a very standard way you can think through how good SBRs can help in growth. Also, peak and sectoral business associations that are active, independent of the state, and represent the private sector, the region, can resolve into the curative action problems that are inherent in developing countries. Now, if I step back a little bit and just think about institutions, the literature institutions development, we think about the kind of two kind of dominance trends on that. One has been the argument that property rights are very important for development. This is the argument that Asimoglou Robinson and others have used. A second argument has been what transaction cost minimization functions institutions. This is the Oliver Williamson argument, which is informed to a logic so they're doing business reports to the World Bank. The way we see SBRs is as we see through a third function of institutions, which is coordination and solidarity, solving collecting action failures. We're not saying that you can't bring in transaction cost minimization or property rights within SBRs, but I think seeing institutions in coordination failures as SBRs are helping to resolve that is a very nice way of thinking about why SBRs matter purely from an institutional form. How do they, and so sorry, so the next point would be government failure. So essentially, as I said, the big issue here is that SBRs can lead to credible commitment as a part of the government to certain policies that can minimize uncertainties on future policy actions in months investors. And the next feature of this would be a creating institutional environment where the private sector can demand high quality public goods when the state has infrastructure effective public transportation and secure property rights. And finally, FHPSSBRs can provide check and balances about balance function of government tax expenditure policies because you'd expect within good SBRs the government essentially trying out different views on taxation and expenditure policies on the private sector who are saying to them, well, this makes sense, but this probably doesn't. So you'd expect some kind of a way, the calibration that happens within good SBRs that can provide a check and balance function government tax and expenditure policies. But to try then, so the question of causal effect of SBR, that was a big thing we struggled with at the beginning of this program. So how can we actually actually be convinced convincing other economies perhaps more so than other social scientists that SBRs matter of economic growth? And for that we had to obviously, as we are all in as in economics, we had to find a measure of effective SBRs. I mean, and here is where, because we were essentially trying to develop a measure of SBRs where we are not going to try and start doing a lot of primary, try and get a collection. We had to go back in time because we wanted to get a sense of how SBRs evolved in Africa and in South Asia. So we essentially find to try to find a measure that was time varying over time and across countries or regions, right? So we could, in that case also, purely methodologically, we could use panel data. It was very useful because as we know, there's a lot of criticism of cross-country regressions in institutions and developing literature. We don't want to avoid that. We had to find a measure which was based on observable features of effective SBRs because we were going back in time. So we were going back in time in African context about 30 years, 40 years. We had to find what is something we can observe. So the properties of a measure in most parts, it is objective and not subjective, not perceptions-based, like the governance measures, the Coffin-Gray measures to some extent. We captured more of the formal dimensions, less informal dimensions. That is a weakness of a measure. And we call it as a combination of both de-heure institutions and de-facto institutions.  Our measure combines both de-heure and de-facto. So the four dimensions we tried to do, this is Dirk Williams' pioneering work on this particular, on the measurement of work. The first is how is the private sector organized vis-a-vis the public sector? Is there an umbrella of association, for example, when was it formed? How active is it? And so on. Secondly, how is the government organized vis-a-vis the private sector? Is there an innocent promotion agency? When was it formed? How active is it? And so on. Third was the relations, interaction with the private and the public sector. How are state-based relations practiced and socialized? Is there a joint economic council, for example, when was it instituted? How often does it meet? And so on. And finally, what mechanisms are there? What is the harmful, collusive behavior? Are the competition laws? When are they enacted? And are they actually enforced? So in Africa, we had Dirk did this early work for us where we measure SVRs for 19 African countries for about 30 odd years. So I'm going all the way to 1970, use mostly de-heure measures. Mostly, as I said, you have to consider data collection. There's nothing stopping us if you want to do something, work in the future, to use de-facto measures and use perceptions-based approaches. There's nothing stopping us in this way. In India, we also went back for about 20 to 35 years, 1985, for 15 major states. In the Indian case, we had more time and we could do live more. In primary data collection, we visited every state and allowed us to bring in some de-facto dimensions. So the African case, just to briefly put up this plot, the group one of the countries that have been the fastest growing countries, this happens to be Motsbotswana, Mauritius, Uganda, Mozambique, and so on, so. And interestingly, if you can see in the African case, SVRs improved pretty much across these 19 countries, but the country that had the highest growth in the simple descriptive graph also had highest improvement in SVRs. This is just purely looking at a correlation, right? And the country which had the lowest growth, group four country, which, if I can just read off from here, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, and Zambia also had the lowest improvements in SVRs. And then we did some econometric work. Dirk and I did this, this came out in JDS a couple of years back, a general development studies. There's also a chapter in this book. This was a dynamical palliative regression we did on looking at economic growth and found whatever we did with cross-any controls, across any type of robustness checks, we found the effect of SVRs and a strong positive current growth, the significant 1% level in most regressions. An interesting thing was that when we also brought in other measures of institutions, the standard measures that are used in the literature, exploration risk, corruption, those other measures seem to lose significance versus the SVR measure, which was quite interesting. And also we found, and this was slightly less robust in the earlier finding, we found that good SVRs, very SVRs, seem to lead to proper growth because we also had data on poverty and growth over this period. Again, Dirk's got a chapter in this book with Mahavash Kureshi looking at, so suppose you are in a country which has good SVRs and you're a member of a Debit's Association. What does it mean for productivity? And so we also looked at micro effects of SVRs and here we find, interestingly, the work that Dirk's got here, we find the countries with the best SVRs for membership associations get the biggest productivity gains, and that's also interesting. So in a sense, as a firm, if you happen to be in a country where SVRs are improving or getting better, you tend to see much more productivity gain of being a member of the association. And actually, this particular work, we did it also for Indian states, with Indian data, we find very similar results. So in the Indian case, again, the advantage in India was that, obviously, with India, we have meta-institutions that are fixed, rule of law, legal institutions all are fixed. So the problem, again, comparing countries, often is not the case in India. And India also, we know that different states are done differently over time. And the fact that India, we also have a federal structure where we have significant political economy, a political autonomy of Indian states, allows us to explore sub-national variation in SVRs. And that's also important. So not only talking about cross-national variations, SVRs in the African case, but also talking about sub-national variation in SVRs. And again, in India states, very quickly, you can see that SVRs evolve very differently. There are states like West Bengal that's been very little improvement, states like Bihar that's pretty much flattening out and probably falling off. And the states are Andhra Pradesh, which have shown significant improvement over the speed of Andhra Pradesh is there. So is Tamil Nadu and so is Punjab. So we can see very different variations in the same country within different parts of India. Same thing we did for India as we did for the, as we had done for Africa. This is a paper I did with Max Calius, come out in World Development a couple of years back, and also chapter in this book, a version of the work we did. And here again, we estimated downloadable data regressions. Here we could do a lot more in terms of checking for endogenous concerns, because that's a big issue in institutions literature. That is the fact that growth is actually leading to better stability relations or vice versa. We did, we had a lot of range of controls and we found strong evidence of impact of SBRs in growth. The one person increase in our measure, our measure was from zero to one. A one person increase in our measure is a three person increase in long run state level growth. This is a very significant effect actually. Now, finally the last couple of slides, really. The third question was, why is it that we do get to see improvement SBRs? And we've seen that already in Africa, where we've seen improvement in some countries and not in others and in the Indian case. And this is where we essentially the case studies and political scientists did a lot of work for us in this project. And of course, there are different things. I'm gonna just sort of put this up in one slide. Develop an ideologies and go to dominant and political economic elites. What do they think about the, about growth? What do they think of the private sector? How much is that linked synchronized with effect of SBRs? That's very important. And the second thing that's important is just, the first one is probably pretty well understood. Nobody will have a problem with that. The second one, I think it's more interesting in the sense that we do think, and this is where Adrian's, the late Adrian's work is very important, that you can't really have effect of SBRs. We think of SBRs being a game, a game between two players, the state and the business sector. You can't have effect of SBRs if the population is heavily one sided. You have a very strong state and a weak private sector. You have a very strong private sector and a weak state, somebody could get captured. And you know which one could get captured. So symmetry of power is very important here. And we found that in our case studies, that you essentially, you need to have some symmetrical power relations within the state and the private sector. It also mattered. Again, I think this has not been discussed so much in the literature, how the bureaucrats is organized is very important and bureaucratization. So not just the IPAs, investment professional agency, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Industry, the different public sector organizations that deal with the private sector, like if a structure corporations, how are they organized, how do they function is very important. Along with that, on the other side, how is the business sector, the private sector organization is also very important. So if you see more than one business association in a country, then we know there's a bit of a problem. Particularly if those two associations are trying to speak for the same set of people, same set of firms. So multiplicity, form, structure, how is business sector organization organized, how effective is the organization, how often does it meet its members, all that we form are very important, explaining effective SPRs. And of course, along with that, formal and informal institutional links within a state and business, it didn't always have to be to formal institutions in the African case. It happened often to informal mechanisms, but we needed to see repeated, as I said, repeat interaction in the state and the business sector for effective SPRs. And finally, of course, leadership and human agency, you did see sometimes certain elites taking a particular role and interested in this effective SPRs. And we saw that and, in fact, it also used the Malawi Mauritius example, but I may not have time. That was very important. But the thing that was important in this work that we found was that getting good SPRs, effective SPRs not a technocratic fix. You just kind of said this ago and say, I'm gonna try and get good SPRs in this country. It essentially came from political processes, establishing, sustaining and renewing effective SPRs was essentially politically determined and could not be had to order. That was very important. So there's not a part dependency that came in having good SPRs. I'm gonna skip this next two slides because I don't think I have much time. I wanna just focus on this one slide, last couple of slides. The first thing is, what does it mean for Southern governments, our research? Our research sort of shows, and I think particularly the work that Dirk did with co-authors, including me and others also, that formal organizations and institutions that exist in the IPAs, formalized BPDs, private-settlement associations and enactment of competition laws into a matter for growth. And I think the way to think about this is that, when you set up an IPA, which is functional, when you set up effective competition law, it's the signaling that you're sending from the state of the private sector that we take you seriously. We take you seriously, we also want to avoid collusive behavior. So the way I think, I would see this as a signaling device, more than what the IPA really does, but the competition law actually does, it's a signaling that you're sending the credible commitment problem that you're going to fix, that gives you the growth effect. That's the way I would like to see it. And also if you have effective private-settlement associations, then and formalized BPDs, the private-settlement will just convey its legitimate concerns and demands of the state and transparent and credible manner. Very important to fix collective action problems in the private sector, and especially in the context, as in Africa and India, where we have very, very dispersed private sector, lots of small players, lots of small firms and some big firms. If you let the big firms do the talking for you, then you have a problem. You've got to find a way to bring in small firms in this intense interaction. For donors, what does it imply? It implies a different institutional approach to growth that stresses government, private-settlement relations, interactions, less focus on property rights, less focus on transaction cost minimization that's been there in the literature institutions. And the clear that evidence that we hope we present using this kinematic work, this relations interaction matter for growth. We hope we can convince those who take, who want to see causal stories that we have a causal effect of SBRs of growth. The other thing I think it's important to keep in mind that we're not talking about setting up an IPA or setting up trying to get an associate business association up and running. We're talking about brokering the processes that facilitate good SBRs. That's very important. And also, given that there was so much suspicion with these associations, certainly in India and perhaps also in Africa, you got to recognize the fact that business associations can be developmental in the sense that they can actually help in bringing in the private sector and actually play a very important role in the development process. In the Indian case, it's very particularly striking because those who have followed the Indian economic policy, there was this very strong command and control regime where the public, the state, did not really take the private sector association which was there very seriously because a lot of them in fact were engaged in significant rent seeking behavior. And then in the mid 1980s, the state at that time, the government of the time, decided to start promoting a new association called the Confederation Indian Industry which was very different, most composed engineering firms, not at all like the earlier associations which were essentially composed of traditional industries and that association played a very important role in brokering good SBRs in India. And there's some very good work by Ashima Sinha, not to our project, Ashima Sinha and Stanley Kochanic on that. But the other thing is that, we've got to be careful that as I was saying, that it's not really about trying to create formal organization, that's not so important. And again, we've seen many times, you have seen business associations out there who are not really doing their job. We've seen state agencies out there who are not really doing their job. The more important thing is trying to make sure that the interactions that are there have been set in business association, that the business elite actually gets strengthened and is effective. Okay, thanks, John.


Hydiwg, rydyn ni'n gweithio. Ac ydych yn ddiddordeb y cyfnod o Debyn o'r Yw'r Ywch Tŷ Prowgect, oed yn ymgylchedd ein bod arall. Beth yna'n ddweud, mae'r rhai gyfreidio'r cyfrifio? Mae'r cyfrifio sydd wedi'u gweld eu cyfrifio o'r hamlau? Mae'r cyfnod o'r ffordd o'i gweithio, oherwydd mae'n ffordd o ddebyn projekty sydd wedi'u cywethaf ymweld. Felly mae'n ddebyn cyfnod o'r ddebyn. Rydyn ni'n gweithio. Mae'n dda i'r qurtaeth. Rwy'n meddwl yma'r ysgol yng nghymru? Mae'n ddod i'r ffordd, rydyn ni'n ddod. Rydyn ni'n ddod. Rydyn ni'n ddod i'r ffordd? Rydyn ni'n ddod. Mae'r cyffnod yr ysgol yn hyn o am erinol oherwydd am y ddebyn cyffnod. Rydyn ni'n ddod i'r qurtaeth i'r ddebyn. Rydyn ni'n ddod i'r ddebyn cyffnod yma'r cyffnod ym hyn o'r llwyffy Марfodd. Rydyn ni'n ddod i'r qurtaeth i'r llwyffy Merfer. Rydyn ni'n ddod i'r cyffnod. Rydyn ni'n ddod i'r cefnod o half iddyn ni'n gweithio ddweudio. Rydyn ni'n ddod i'r gweithio. I'm setting out to build a project, what should I use? And then I want to talk a little bit about Debian and the good things about Debian. And then I'll talk about Yokto and the good things about Yokto. And then I'll try and reach some kind of conclusion here. I've got to say this is not an in-depth technical presentation. I just want to discuss the issues around these two environments. So, the dilemma. So I'm sitting down, I've got a new device to design. How are we going to build it? On the one hand, I want to have it done as quickly and efficiently as possible. But on the other hand, I want it to be robust and maintainable. So do I choose Debian or Yokto? So yeah, you can go off the peg. So essentially, if you choose a Debian-type distro, you have an off-the-peg solution. You just grab the bits you want, put it together. You have a solution almost immediately. I'm using Debian here as a kind of placeholder for any other distribution of your choice. So it could be Ubuntu or Fedora or whatever else. So when I say Debian, I just mean a generic desktop distro. The other real option then is I can go bespoke. I can go to my tailor and have my suit fitted exactly to my wonderful form. So with Yokto project or build route or a similar build tool, you have a specification of exactly what you want to go into your target system and that's what the system builds. So off the peg or bespoke. Those are your options. So looking at Debian first then. So I think we all know what Debian is. It's a fully featured desktop and server distro. Tens of thousands of packages, very stable, long-term support. All that wonderful stuff. And yeah, the package feeds we get from Debian are binaries. So we can just install a binary package onto our device. No messing around with funny cross compilers and things. So it's a nice, easy environment to work with. I'm looking at Debian from an embedded point of view. So that means I'm typically not using PC hardware. So the architectures that Debian supports out of the box that are most relevant to us are really the ARM architectures. And it turns out that Debian supports three different flavours of ARM. 64-bit, ARM64, ARM-HF for the Cortex-A, 32-bit processors and ARM-EL for the ancient and probably not used anymore ARM 9.20 type processors. And I guess that the Raspberry Pi is one of the key reasons why I'm talking about this. Everybody has a Raspberry Pi. Anybody here not have a Raspberry Pi? Oh, three people. Well, you should get one. So we all know Raspberry Pi. You can grab this thing and everybody knows how to do this thing. Raspberry Pi actually doesn't run Debian per se. It runs Raspbarian. But Raspbarian is just a reimagining of Debian essentially because of the peculiar architecture that Raspberry Pi has. Things are compiled specifically for the Broadcom chip set. But other than that, Raspbarian is basically Debian. If you're familiar with the Beagleboard boards, so that's the Beagleboard, the Beaglebone and all the various other Beagles. Yeah, they will come with a Debian distraught of the box. And probably most of the shelf, single board computers and modules will come with a Debian type distraught. So the basic paradigm for developing with Debian and building up your product set on Debian is you have a root file system, which you've got from somewhere or other. Somewhere within that there will be a sources.list file. And that will point to the repositories where you can go and install additional packages. So you do something like apt install, name a package. It goes to the Debian servers. It will find the best match for your architecture and the versions of Debian you're using. And you download this deb file, DEB. And the deb file is the binder which contains all the stuff. You install it. Now you have the xyz command available. So this is typically what happens then.  You want to control some lights in a room or you want to control some machinery even. Raspberry Pi, let's start typing. So typically you start off with an off-the-shelf, an off-the-peg image from Raspberry and now from Beagleboards.org or wherever. Then you strip out the stuff you don't want. So you can remove some packages because there are some services you don't need and some other stuff. We kind of slim it down to just the stuff we really need. Then you add in the stuff you do want apt install. Anything that you've written using compile code like C or C++, you'll need to compile for the target board. And typically you do a native compile on the target board. So you can just run your GCC. You'll pick up all the standard libraries. Again, that's nice and easy if a little bit slow. Plus any other tweaks, configuration parameters, other bits and pieces you need to change. And at the end of this, you have a thing called a golden master. So this is now your system set up with all the applications installed or the packages installed. Everything's tested and working. So once you have your golden master, you then take a copy of it using DD, for example.  Okay, so that is the naive view of using a Debian-based distro to create a product. And I've seen people do this many, many times over on many different products. So who can see something that can go wrong here? Good, me too. So what can go wrong? The problem is this golden master thing. Typically it's not well documented how the golden master was created. It's kind of done on the fly with some command line stuff. Maybe you script it, but even so there's some steps that won't be documented. So it becomes kind of difficult to update this thing. You can do incremental updates easy enough exactly to do on your laptop. You can do apt upgrade. You can do apt install. You can do tweaks like that. But if you want to do something really major, for example, if you want to switch to a different, a later version of the operating system, you have to start over from scratch and reinstall everything from scratch and you can't exactly remember what you installed in which order. So doing major changes becomes either hard or just very, very hard. The most subtle problem is that probably the golden master was created by an individual or a group of individuals. They will have left some kind of footprint or fingerprint on the system. So maybe there are some user accounts and passwords which they haven't cleaned up. Maybe there is the bash history file which has the record of all the commands they ever entered which could be useful when you're regenerating this, by the way. Maybe there will be some old system log files lying around. It's difficult to clean up everything when you've done this kind of way. So you end up with something which is kind of not entirely clean. So if you really are serious about using distro like Debian for real products, you kind of need to go back and do it properly. So that means that you need to write robust scripts that are going to create the image from scratch using Rootstock or Debootstrap or Linaro image builder or whatever and create the root file system image from scratch. So now you're going kind of semi bespoke.  Then I import my own software configuration. So I cross compile my own applications, install them, install the configuration stuff. Ideally, if I want to make this really reproducible, it would be really good to take my application and build it as a dev file, a DB file, then I can distribute my application along with all the other DB files. So that's kind of the better way of doing it. Now you have a reproducible thing. You should be able to, at the touch of a script, be able to reproduce exactly that same image. So now doing updates is easier. If I want to switch to a later version of Debian, I can just make a few tweaks and I should be able to rebuild my system without too much effort. So now I have a clean copy of Debian, not one that somebody has fiddled around with for several months. So there are good examples of this. If you look at the way that the Beagleboard people do this, there's the reference there to the Beagleboard image builder. So that's how the Debian image for Beaglebones is generated and other Beagles. And likewise for Raspberry Pi, you can go and have a look, for example, at PiGen, and that also is a nice little build tool that would generate a clean Debian image from scratch. I just want to say a little bit about software update, by the way, because this is a beat I've had in my bonnet for a good many years, one of the apparent attractions of Debian is that you have out of the box software update. So you can just do apt update and it will update everything. I just want to say that this is not always the solution you think it might be. The major problem is that the apt command is not atomic. In other words, if your system loses power during an apt update, there's a good chance that you'll end up with a corrupted system. So really if you are doing system updates on Debian systems, particularly out in the field in remote locations, I just want to say apt update is not really the answer. You need something a bit more sophisticated. So Debian is now, or the off the peg approach now is looking a little bit less attractive. It's a little bit less off the peg because you're having to create some scripts to generate the thing from scratch. And even so, you still end up with something which isn't entirely embedded friendly. So it's going to be large compared to what you can do with Yocto. And the main disadvantage of large, apart from the fact that it's going to take up more storage space, is that you're running more software which means more attack vectors and therefore a less secure system. The fact that Debian only has a limited number of architectures can be a problem, especially when it comes to ARM processors. There are a vast range of different combinations of features on the various ARM processors that you can get. When you compile Debian, then you're compiling really for a lowest common denominator. So that means that the binary, the dead packages you're installing are not optimally compiled for whatever architecture you have. And that can have some impacts, particularly if you have co-processors and such like, which are not being used by the main Debian archives. Debian doesn't really know that much about flash memory. It's not optimized to reduce flash memory rights. And as you may know, one of the problems with flash memory is every time you write to it, you damage it a little bit. And typically you can write to each flash sector about 3,000 times before it comes unusable. So you want to try and reduce the wear on your flash, typically. Debian doesn't really have any options to do that. And coming back to this native compiling thing, one of the big downsides is if you've got to compile everything on the target board, these target boards generally aren't particularly powerful. They don't have that much memory or storage. And so compiling stuff natively can become a pain. It's slow and, yeah, is a pain. And even when you've done all that, I haven't really spoken about the kernel and the bootloader. Debian, of course, isn't going to supply kernel for your particular board because that's going to be specific to your board. Likewise, the bootloader is something very board specific. So I'm just talking, when I talk about Debian, I'm just talking about the root file system. You still have to provide your bootloader and your kernel outside of this somehow. So that's the Debian side of things. Let's have a look at the other thing. Let's have a look at Yocto project. Stroke open embedded. So I apologize to the open embedded people in the audience that I'm emphasising Yocto project and not open embedded here. Let me say again that, as with Debian, which is a placeholder for any distro, when I talk about Yocto or Yocto project, I'm also implicitly implying, implicitly including the open embedded stuff because that's what it is. So the thing about open embedded stroke Yocto project is that you basically give it a list of instructions and it generates the distro for you.  So the key difference here then is instead of taking binary packages and installing them, we are taking source code and compiling that source code to get the package for our target system. So Yocto project has very good support, pretty much industry-wide support in the embedded industry. So ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, X86 all have their own Yocto support layers. Likewise, anybody making single board computers or system on module devices will almost certainly have Yocto support. And there is also, if you want to outsource stuff or get commercial support for various things, there's a whole bunch of companies who specialise in this area. OK, so looking at the Yocto way of doing things, this slide here shows that we have this stuff called Metadata, which I'll come to in a moment. And you have this command called BitBake. So BitBake reads a thing called a recipe from the metadata. You give it the recipe name. It will then go to the upstream source code, download the source code, for example, a tar.gz file, compile it, using a cross compiler, generate an RPM file. So now we have xyzrpm. And then as a final stage, there's a thing called dorootfs, which will take all the RPMs you want and generate the root file system for you. So that's the steps are longer, more complicated. But the end result is we take source code and we generate a root file system. So the power of Yocto project is, yep, it's all in the metadata guys. And in this slide I just want to illustrate three particular types of the metadata just to give you an idea of the flexibility that Yocto gives you. So there are three key parameters when you do a Yocto build. Distro, machine, image. So the distro is a bunch of configuration metadata which says what distribution do I want to create. In other words, how do I want to put my system together? What initDemon do I want to use? What SSHDemon do I want to use? And various other policy decisions. Then there is the machine. So the machine is what target hardware am I building for? And I should be able to change that for a given distro. I should just be able to switch machines from an ARM-based machine to an x86-based machine to a MIPS-based machine. I should still get in each case a working system that looks exactly the same but just runs on a different architecture. And then the third leg of the stool is the image. So when I bit bake something I give an image that I want to build and it will then build the... So the image is just basically a list of packages, ultimately a list of the RPMs. So it should be able to cross compile all those RPMs, assemble them into a root file system for the machine using the distro configuration that I have. So that's the good stuff, obviously. So now let's admit that Yocto has some downsides. Probably the one that most people will initially come to is the learning curve. So whereas with Debian I can just do apt install and everything works apparently. With the Yocto project you have to understand how this metadata works and it's quite complicated and you have to invest some time and effort in getting this thing set up. So seat learning curve is probably the biggest reason I hear people say that Yocto project is a pain. Support is also an issue. So whereas with a Debian-type distro you're going to get long-term support for maybe five years or something. Each Yocto release is only supported for basically two release cycles. There's one every six months, so that's roughly 12 months. Once you get to the end of that 12 month community support you either go it alone or maybe you outsource to one of the companies I mentioned a few slides back who can do kind of paid for long-term support. And since you're going to be building loads and loads of stuff you need quite powerful hardware to build a Yocto system. And if you're doing this on a nightly build then you need something that will complete the build within eight hours or something or six hours. So you're going to have to invest in some hardware to do this kind of stuff. Okay, so that's the overview of Debian on the one side, Yocto on the other side. I'm at the point of coming to some kind of conclusions then which do I use in what situation. So neither is best in all cases. So Debian. Debian is really really good for proof of concepts and prototypes because I can put something together really quickly. I can have something up running within a couple of days typically. It's great for kind of one-off projects where you have just a small number of units in use. So I know people who for example use Raspberry Pi on production lines and they use the Raspberry Pi to run certain tests to check the quality of the whatever. So yeah, that's nice and easy to do. You don't need any particularly robustness there and you're only going to deploy half a dozen units so you can go around and update them yourself. That's easy enough. And yeah, it works best obviously if you have commodity hardware of some kind that supports Debian type distros. Conversely then, Yocto project is great if you have custom hardware. So there is no Debian port already for this hardware and you could make your own Debian port of course but that's almost as much trouble as making Yocto work in the first place. So custom hardware. Because you're generating exactly the distro specification that you want, you can leave out the staff so your attack surface is reduced and also your storage requirements are reduced and also in the same vein the amount of memory, the amount of RAM you're going to need is probably reduced. Okay, so we can make smaller systems more compact systems using Yocto than we can using off the peg Debian. And one final feature that Yocto has and also build route, I haven't mentioned that but that works as well is that if you want to do license compliance these open source build tools generally have a feature which allows you to generate a license manifest so you can see for each package exactly what license it's using. Getting that same information for a desktop distro like Debian is not so easy. So that's it. That is totally it. So let me open the floor to any questions you may have otherwise we can go and have a coffee. So questions. Starting over there. I have a microphone. So if you actually look at doing your own Debian packaging are you already alluded to if you're building Debian from scratch it's almost the same complexity as Yocto but just to do your own Debian packaging how complex would you see that as compared to writing recipes for Yocto? So in principle creating a .deb file a Debian package it's almost exactly the same steps as creating a Yocto project recipe. The syntax and everything is different obviously but the concept is the same. So it's pretty much the same level of complexity. Anyone else in the middle there? I'm sorry I'm going to have to ask you to pass the microphone round. But I would encourage you to use the microphone because if you just yell out then this microphone here isn't going to pick that up and it's not going to be on the recording. Hi. It's more a comment, not a question. I'm a Yocto fan so I'm totally on your side but to be fair I'd like to mention here the project Albe. Don't know if you know it. It's from the company Pangotronics and they are promoting to use Debian for embedded systems because their argument is for Debian there are thousands of developers they get paid from Debian project to work on security issues and this is the Yocto project clearly it has a community and it's part of the Linux foundation but there are not so much engineers working on exactly that topic, the security. I totally agree with you. So I think maybe I didn't emphasise it enough one of the key benefits of Debian is you do have that community support and you do have a bunch of people doing security updates for all the major components which you kind of get for free. That doesn't happen with Yocto quite such. Yes and just a laughing to that the Albu project supports also a meta Albu layer that can be used within Yocto to build up a root file system with Debian packages. So they access on the Debian database with the RPMs. The name of that project was? L-B-E-L-B-E I can give you a link later on. Okay cool thank you. Thanks. Okay anyone else over there? Thanks for doing the running Tim. I just wanted to add that there's a project by Calabora called Debos which is you describe the Debian root file system you'd like in YAML add the packages you want, custom scripts you want to do and it will spit out any Debian supported architecture root file systems or Tartballs. It's just a really cool project. KernelCI is using it to create the root file systems they do their boot testing with. Okay that's cool. There are many more ways than I realize for creating Debian root file systems. That's great. Just a comment on this L-B and Debos and I think that's one of the when you try to look at building a Debian embedded system there are too many ways of doing it so you have these Debos L-B there's 10 other tools that you can choose from so it's kind of hard if you're thinking long term or multiple hardware and multiple architectures that's one of the biggest big benefits of the Yocto project as I see it that you can kind of think long term in terms of hardware support and then these tools it's very fragmented. Yeah and that did actually occur to me when I was putting these slides together that when I do a quick Google for tools for creating Debian images a bunch do turn up but there isn't one that's kind of the way of doing it so you're right so there are lots of different smallest projects doing this kind of thing there isn't something with a push that say Yocto has but you know your mileage may vary it's still a valid way of doing things. Okay any more? Okay well with that then thank you all very much for being here and enjoy the rest of the day.


When you look at the Christian God, it's like they say no sex, no drugs, no f***ing this and that.  It sounds like Satan's like he's like popping off down there.   But Jesus came to this earth to take the punishment that we deserve, take all that wrath of God that was supposed to be placed on us. It was now placed on Jesus when he died on the cross. So we can be free, we can be exonerated from all that punishment and guilt and shame and live eternally with God.  Trust in Jesus and escape the wrath to come.


أمين الحمد لله الذي هدان لها ذا وما كنا لنا اهتدي لولان هدان الله الحمد لله الذي انزل الفرقان على عبده ليكون للعالمين نذيره وصلاة والسلام على خير خلق ونور عرش أفضل الأنبياء والمرسلين حبيبنا وسيدنا وسندنا وشفيعنا ومولانا أب القاسم محمد وعلى آله الطيبين الطاهرين المأسمين المظلومين أما بعد فقد قال الله سبحانه وتعالى في كتاب المجيد وقوله الحق وهو أستقص صادقين بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم واستعينه بالصادق وصدقه ومزاقه هالكبيرة إلا على الخاشئين صدق الله العليا عظيم صلوات الله محمد وآله محمد كل مرحب يبقى لله سبحانه وتعالى ونبدأ في بلسة نايم ونكره ونرده ونرده حتى ركواننا ممتازا في الشرطة ونرده وننظر أمرد الله ونرده ونرده ونرده ونرده للمسلسل العلم ونرده ونرده ونرده ونرده ونرده ونرده ونرده where Imam Ali was leaning on a wall and it was a bit tilted. So he looks up, the companions are sitting around him and he stands up and moves to another wall and they all follow him. And they say, يا أمير المؤمنين, what did you just do? He said, I moved from one destiny to another. So notice there is destiny. The destiny is that the law of physics dictates that everything goes towards the gravitational force. The center of the earth is pulling things and hence we fall. There is this attraction, the law of attraction. So if you are on a leaning wall and it's weak, the law of physics states it will most likely collapse. Meaning the probability of its collapse is high.  So notice destiny has its powers and it's fixed. And if you and I get caught within those powers we may become victims of that destiny. So while God has built a fantastic system with our intelligence if we do not avoid the dangers then we may become victims. So our limited free will has been empowered for us to avoid and dodge the bullets. Allah has enabled us and blessed us with this capacity. And I begin in his name for giving us the opportunity to pray to him and to beg from him. And I recognize the fact that while he has made this earth transient meaning short lived. It's a very short world. Those of us who are older and those who are older than us if you ask them they will swear that yesterday they were born. They will swear that this world was so quick that how did they get to this old age when yesterday they were children running around with agility and now they have slowed down with inability. So this world is very short. Even 1,000 years when Nooh was asked he preached for 950 years and Malakulmota asked him How long have you terried on this earth? How long have you lived? He said like moving from the sun into the shade. That's how quick this world is. So we know that a merciful God having created a spectacular universe a universe you and I will never understand its full scope. It's so amazing. Allah says go look at it Go look again. Do you see any fissures? Any mistakes in it? You will come back tired and dazzled. It's just our universe. We don't know how many such universes exist and how many creations Allah has created for Allah continues to create. He never stops creating. What is his treasury like? It is impossible for you and I to know. Allah says سبعة أبحرن ما نفذت كلمات الله. Why you to take all the trees on this earth and there are millions and billions of trees and make them into pens أقلام والبحر يمده من بعده سبعة أبحرن You take all the seas and add 7 more seas You will not cease to mention the glory of God.  And because everybody does it sometimes for some of us it becomes wajib because everybody is doing it I have to do it And it's because these distractions cause us to fall to escape the very trial Yesterday a brother came to me and was saying to me that very beautiful brother and said I'm not sure if I believe in God And when I was talking to him I said you're a gamer, aren't you? You game I said I do, how do you know that? I said let's not go there I said You're not very social are you? I said no So you want to know why? I said yeah I said you can't control this world You have found too much evil in this world It's precarious There's no stability It lacks trust It's fluent It's shifting colors Like camouflage Like a chameleon changing colors And children get confused How do I hold on firmly? I said you found something to hold on to That gives you control It's called the joystick You said subhanallah You nailed it I said yeah That's why you're doing that It's a different world But you control it You can move it You can stop it You can speed it You can slow it You can decide to do what you want Why do kids go there? They have lost faith in the real world That's why you notice our children Are indulging in that area of the world When in fact Allah says Take control of your life عليكم ان فوسكم How far will you run? Where will you go? And I see such beautiful youth Like the one I was talking to yesterday Beautiful Pure at the heart They're looking at you They wouldn't harm an insect But they're telling us What else is left For the world has beguiled us It cheats us It lies to us Even from the home When parents are bickering And fighting on petty issues Children lose hope Then when it doesn't work They're frustrated They become self-destructive With the intent to indulge In any kind of thing That will release their attention Something that can give me Some level of control The real control brothers and sisters Is reflection meditation Real control is dua Real control is to meet The bull by the horns after that And bring it down The way رسول الله The center of the leadership Of the universe For the human race Is رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم صلى الله عليه وسلم له lines tonight I want to speak About the power of dua How should we pray For if we know how to pray We're going to be in control of prayer God says وقال ربكم أدعوني أستجب لكم many of us have lost fakes In asking God says those who are too arrogant to remember this we will punish them meaning they're going to create an alternative world because they do not feel that praying to God has any meaning because it hasn't worked we need to know how to pray and I love the fact that Allah doesn't just give us what we want in our foolish ways and instantly you know you pray to God give me gold boom gold pops up I hate that person let him die boom that person dies Alhamdulillah that doesn't happen can you imagine what would happen if it happened that way oh my God none of us would be existing we'd all be the first one to get rid of each other like Allah can get rid of all of them first Alhamdulillah that when we pray Allah says I give you what is best for you so the first foundation is to know the meaning of life we're not here to waste our time we're not here to grow old we're not here to occupy space and eat and be a massive body of some sort and be a statistic on some radar we're here for a reason ربنا ما خلقتها دباطلا سبحانك فقن عذاب النار my lord our lord you did not make this in vain this world is too valuable when people ask me that question that I don't know if God exists I ask them do you believe in truth and falsehood do you believe in good versus evil I said yes I said where in science can you derive that which science teaches you good versus evil all of science is good there is no science that is evil there is no such thing so how do you learn the difference between good and evil for science doesn't have any form of adjudicating a methodology of حلال and حرام and مستحب and مباه and مكرو as we call أحكام الخمسة the five laws of God where every transaction you and I do come under these five laws واجب حرام مستحب مكرو and مباه five rules واجب you must do it حرام you must avoid it مستحب recommended to do it مكرو it is better you avoid it and مباه it doesn't matter whether you do it or not this is the law of God where do you derive that in science you cannot it cannot be derived in physics chemistry, biology, mathematics there is no such thing where one can derive حرام from حلال in empirical sciences anyone who comes to this science is the mother of all tell them that why are the ethical bodies the ethicists dictating research in universities why is it that the ethical body tells the research institutions what they can do that's ethical and what they cannot do which is not ethical if science is the mother of all they should be dictating the ethicists on what is حلال and حرام why the reverse I speak about this in universities all the time and everybody is stunned by it I said then why do we teach our children that the axis of humanity is science when it is only a methodology of observing the broader spectrum of the human existence it's a false statement to say that science is at the center of the universe it's not there is an ethical body of حلال and حرام at the end of the day it stops between our relationship when we cheat each other when we are honest with each other when we are kind to each other versus when we are harsh to each other when we are trustworthy versus when we are not trustworthy I don't care how rich we are how powerful we are how tall we are how short we are what land we were born on all of those become inconsequential when the ethical matters are violated or upheld isn't it true so how is ethics managed who gives us such ethics if not a divine being from God can you and I make ethics if we do it's bankrupt the idea of a 51% vote is nonsense if we decide to become cannibals God forbid and we have a 51% vote that humans taste better than anything else God forbid it becomes حلال and let us say we say not eating humans is forbidden now you just made it haram not to eat you how ridiculous we say Hitler had a majority of Germans figure out that the Aryan race was superior to other races and therefore they needed to go out there and cleanse the gene pool and get rid of anyone who was non-Aryan and they had a majority within their land and then their expansion that led to World War II particularly one can argue from an ethical relativistic point of view that what they did was not wrong they had a majority vote but any human being in their proper mind will tell you that intrinsically it is evil to even consider such an ideology that means that morality cannot be adjudicated by any human being by any standard except to submit to it and to promote it and to forbid that which is immoral صلى الله عليه وسلم وآله محمد so then God has to give it to us الله says وين كانوا من قبلوا لفي ظلال مبين و الذي بعت في الأميين رسولا منهم يطلوا عليه آياتي they recited the signs they showed you the signs وين زكيهم purified you وين علمهم الكتاب taught you the law and gave you wisdom و الحكمة وين كانوا من قبلوا and before this you were in darkness you knew there is a God somewhere out there but we didn't know what it is how it is we just know there's a force out there how do I transact with it what do I do with it let us say when I believe in God how do I worship God do I need to worship what form of worship is essential what should I do what should I not do people experimented thinking that worship was to sacrifice children the Aztecs used to take one human being and tear their hearts out and give it to the gods because they thought that's what's going to appease the gods they would bury their children they would sacrifice and murder and cause all kinds of mayhem to please the gods when Allah says وين كانوا من قبلوا who gave you this mad idea of killing each other for the sake of God sacrificing each other for the sake of God God creates everything He doesn't need such sacrifice when we sacrifice an animal it is not to kill an animal it is to feed the poor and the hungry so Allah says I teach you if you experiment you won't know what to do so a prophet came to teach us and to guide us methodically villages upon villages Allah says every community has received messengers every community has received guidance and Allah promises us that we only punish those communities that have received guidance and Allah says every community has been so therefore the potential punishment should we be reckless in our morality is subject to question look if you and I were wronged some of us have gone to court to stand in front of a judge it depends on what judge you get what mood they're in and sadly what gender they are sometimes you'll hear a lawyer say oh she's a woman her judgment is going to be like that oh he's a man I'm thinking like wow judge justice is depending on who it is what his background is what his gender is oh my god is this real justice and then the judge sits there looking at you you may not like you maybe the way you're dressed that's why you've noticed even murderers they come with nice suits and ties they're sitting in front of the jury to look decent so that we can let them know hey I'm not so bad you could be a serial killer come with a suit you don't look so serial anymore and that judge now he's like and then the jury is scratching the head I don't know guilty not guilty what do you think and then you find these sometimes murderers get away sometimes innocent people are incarcerated because of their skin color and sadly the darker their skin color the more the chance of them going to jail like what a world we live in and then you hope that when you get accused that you can bring some evidence forward and lack thereof puts you sometimes in a quandary puts you in a very precarious situation you don't know and you're letting this judge know I'm innocent but that just says I don't know I wasn't there so my god I want justice we all want justice even when we go watch movies do you ever notice there's always a good guy or a good group and a bad group always Hollywood is not a religious organization you know it manipulates our minds but why is there always a good guy or a good group and a bad guy and a bad group we just love it because it's all about morals at the end of the day it's all about morals who's the good one now Hollywood is not a religious institution you will rarely ever find anything even in a documentary you and I are looking for the good stuff oh yeah that was a good person see he was honest look when they interviewed him and her you see she was very honest but that one was wretched I didn't like that one don't trust that one we're always constantly when we make friends same thing when we make even here when I'm standing up here you're all judging is he a good guy is he a bad guy is he like fooling us like here is I don't know what do you think huh well keep thinking so what are we doing constantly judging judging judging every single day at what level whether we have huge cars and huge houses that's secondary at the end of the day is this person true is he really saying what he means subhan Allah but he is the most amazing part every movie when there's a good guy and a bad guy in the end of the movie if the good guy doesn't win it's a sequel we just can't handle it like what the evil so proceeded oh there's gotta be a part two to this one just can't be like what's going on well maybe it's the end of the movie no if that's like I hate this movie I'll never watch it again why the bad guy won you know this movie is full of probabilities 50-50 sometimes the good wins you've heard of the yin and the yang right you know sometimes good guy wins sometimes bad guy wins so this movie was the bad guy won leave it alone go to sleep no I can't handle this don't ever show me a movie where the bad guy wins you hurt my feeling you hurt my conscience what are you trying to tell me bad is good you love it when the good guy wins especially the end you know they bring something out and boom you get rid of the bad person Alhamdulillah we all cheering you notice we all love justice we love that the end should be good Allah in the Quran says it is our desire to make you oppress people the leaders of this world and you will be the inheritors of this world Allah promises us Allah says I did not create this in vain even in your fitrah even in your own conscience you know that justice should prevail but how will it prevail if there is no being that sees everything how will I stand on judgment day and produce evidence to God and let's say I don't have it it got destroyed in a storm I am standing on judgment day Allah says so are you good or bad well I had all this data that was good God but it got lost in the way when I got it buried what a disastrous existence Allah says هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم هم لقمان yesterday was our mentioning. يقول يابنية إنها انتك مثقال حبة من خردل فتكون في صخرة أو في السماوات أو في الأرض يأتي بها الله My son you split the rock sky earth God knows الله لطيف خبير God is ever aware isn't that beautiful You have a judge who sees everything and justice will be met in its fullest form And yet it will be completely wrapped in the mercy of God for God is often forgiving And says that you have slipped many a times but I will expose it to you And your organs will talk you don't even need to be asked a question Your tongue, your heart, your hands, your eyes everything will talk You will expose you to the fullest and Allah says then I will judge you as to where you really stand And you will see how merciful I am but if you work hard against me And you work using those gifts that I have given you to cause mischief on this earth And to cause harm and damage and destruction to the progress of God's mercy Then Allah says we will punish you with a severe punishment God has made a calling if you are grateful I will give you more If you are ungrateful I will punish you but look at the whole system There is a higher authority looking at us, guiding us, holding us So when someone asked I am not sure about God Ask them how do you answer the moral question Where is it if it is haphazard and random Then if I can commit a crime that I don't get satisfied If it is haphazard and random then if I can commit a crime that I don't get arrested for It is not a bad deed If I steal and there is no one to catch me and I grow old and I die with it And I gain benefit then it is really not a bad deed Though I stole God forbid So notice morality goes bankrupt when there is no God Morality goes bankrupt when there is no overseer Morality goes bankrupt when there is no day of judgment Morality goes bankrupt when you and I don't hold ourselves liable Every piece of the equation starts to fall apart So if you and I have any doubts about the existence of God And the mercy that he has placed upon us Including the duties that you and I have to perform Then let's start thinking deeper because if you and I have missed that part Then we have missed the greatest thing in existence For then we will run to joysticks, we will run to drugs We will run to alcohol, we will run to gambling Because we won't know what else to do صلى الله عليه وسلم So I want to establish something very simple How do we pray? There is a beautiful book by Sayed Mushtaba Sayed Mushtaba Musavi Lari It's free available online It's called Hidden Truths in Quran Download it, read it It's very succinct to the point It's very simple And there is another book I would advise you to read Excellent book Some youth came yesterday and said Brother, how do I understand the history of Karbala better Is there an analysis that will enable me To understand the gravity of this event So that I can understand it better There is a beautiful book called A Probe Into the History of Ashura By Dr. Ibrahim Ayati Read that book It's a masterpiece in my opinion It's freely available on al-dash Islam.org It's a PDF Read it I've had people Even from other schools of thought Read this And they were stunned They said we couldn't put it down For the exposure And the events are so beautifully laid out About how the Umayyads And the Hashim The followers of Ahl al-Bayt Imam Hussein عليه السلام What was the scenario That took Imam where he went Why did the Imam do what he did And he exposes all the most salient comments Of Imam Hussein عليه السلام To pro To basically expose to the world Why this revolution is so important Please, I advise us all Please, if you've got time Read it Read it Study it Understand it It will give us strength To understand the valleys of light For there is no greater strength When we pray Than when we are knowledgeable When we understand The meaning of why we exist Let's not be oblivious Let's not be as they say in Arabic Let's not be reckless Let's not be by the day If we're impulsive And society controls us We are going to be the collateral damage I promise us But when you and I hold on To the rope of Allah We will dodge the bullets And even if it hits us We will die Shaheed Because we are in the pursuit Of knowledge We're in the pursuit of truth So how should we pray Simple principle Allah created us To take us to higher stations I'm simplifying it Allah created us Not for this world None of us were created for this world Even the Holy Prophet SAW Is stated That who builds a house on a bridge Oh companions Have you seen somebody who builds A house on a bridge And the companions is No يا رسول الله No He says this world is a bridge Our existence We're on a bridge Crossing the real world Don't build your permanent homes here Build it in the next world Use this world as a means For the next world المال والبنون زينة الحياة الدنيا والباقيات الصالحات خير عند ربك ثوابا وخير أمله The wealth مال والبنون Is the beauty of this world What's left are your good deeds That is most honorable to God And that is what will remain The Prophet said There are three friends you have He said How sad the world is busy Making friends with the first two And they have ignored the third So the companions said يا رسول الله Who are these three friends He said Your wealth and your family Are your best friends today You mankind Whereas your good deeds Is the real friend So the Prophet said Let me explain The first friend Will buy your grave And your coffin After that Your first friend Can do nothing for you It's amazing When you examine a person Who is extremely wealthy I remember Malcolm Forbes Who was a billionaire The owner of the Forbes magazine He's to fly His friends To his island Just for vacations That's how rich he was When he was on his deathbed He's telling the doctor Cure me I have this sickness I'm going to die I'll give you more money Can't There's nothing you can do And when you die You're going to leave everything behind And others are going to use it And you're going to Be examined for it Accounting is on you Imam Ali Alesson does that too On a horse From a battle He comes to the graveyard He says Peace be upon you people of the grave The company is Amir al-Mu'mineen What are you talking about He says no no They hear me They hear me Regarding those women That you were chasing They have been remarried to the men Regarding the wealth you were hoarding It has been distributed What is the khabar down there now Brilliant True This audience could be an entirely Non-Muslim audience They would have to know They say True There's nothing you and I Can argue about that Al-maloo al-banoon So the Prophet said Your money will buy you Your grave and your shrub Your second friend Will wash you Wrap you And bury you There is nothing else Your friends can do Your family and your friends Will feel sorry for you They'll make Fatiha They'll do Sbu They'll feed people But after that It's not going to help you They'll pray for you But trust me If you were against Allah No prayer will come handy Because it's Buck stops with you What did you want Allah says What's left are your deeds The Prophet said Your third friend Are your good deeds He said Most of mankind Has ignored the third friend Thinking the first two Gives them security When in fact It's a third friend That comes with you In the grave Stays with you Protects you Grows with you Forever Many of us said No A bird in one hand Is better than ten In the bush This is exactly How the Bani Umayyah did Says we've got him We've got Hussein Ibn Ali We've been promised Imam says You won't even eat The wheat From Ray The governorship They promised you You will not become The governor there Nor will you eat Their food Imam says to Ibn Ziyad He has built a white palace In Basra He won't sleep One night in it He has been promised Shaytan fooled him And he thinks He's going to get it But he's going to be Damned and doomed For the evil That is committing on this earth And so true the story Omar Ibn Sa'd never became governor And he never ate The wheat from that land And Ibn Ziyad Who orchestrated This whole battle Under the command of Yazid Runs away And doesn't even sleep One night in the white palace He built in Basra Because Imam said They promise you But it's a lie Allah calls you Towards grace But you reject So he is deed So he is deed So he is deed So he is deed So he is deed So he is deed So he is deed God forbid God forbid God forbid I swear So Allah created us To be good on this earth And it's a world Filled with trials Now there are two ways Allah says We guided you to two paths This is deep When you understand it You will see That Allah وصحة الجزء ودائم يوجد فينا مزاقات عزيزة ويوجد فيها مزاقات وريضة وحنها تأتي ويوجد بها مزاقات وغادر ومزاقات ومزاقات ومزاقات خلال ايضا بكل حيوان ايضا وقتيا بكتبون ، اهل and embrace yourselves for around the corner shall come a trial upon you when it's bad, then be patient and hope for around the corner is good news That's the way we should live those of us who have left God or lost faith in God because we prayed it hasn't been accepted it's a trial upon us and God is sharpening us and says are you patient وصطعينه بالصبري والصلاة سوط البقرة verse number 45 وصطعينه بالصبري والصلاة إنها لكبيرة إنديد وصيب it's difficult it's very difficult except those who are humble then it's not difficult so if you and I don't sit and reflect and know the value of life we become a burden on others you find marriages are constantly clashing because each side is demanding there is no thought to look at that other person and say how much can I give how can I be a caring sharing loving human being instead of constantly demanding marriages are breaking relationships are breaking children and adults are fighting we're all demanding demanding demanding we forgot it's a temporary world everything you and I demanding is going to perish كل من عليها فان ويبقى وجه ربكة الجلال والإكرام the only thing that remains is Allah سبحانه وتعالى and our deeds remain forever with Allah سبحانه وتعالى but we don't believe in it I've seen it when you do marriage counseling for petty things you have an axe to grind vendera anger vengeance I need to punish you forever and then they're going to رقوم العاف العاف استغفر الله ربي واتوب الله says you could not forgive your own brother you come and ask me for إستغفار that's why Salah doesn't get accepted under these what we demand when we pray to God God give me Allah says have you understood the meaning of why you're asking have you fixed yourself have you become merciful says Allah then make me merciful Allah says okay so I test you with trials and tribulations let's see now here's the نجدان the two systems you'll find that in positives and in negatives when you know the way Allah works the only solution is to think positive when you lose say الحمد لله I lost but you lost it's okay sometimes I need to lose to gain something bigger oh I gained الحمد لله I gained now I must distribute for this must be a trial upon me for I've been given more than I deserve I must give it back many a times people come and say ما شاء الله what a nice project so what's next I said it's a nice question how about you say it's a nice project so what can I do with you next now no no you what's next for you I'm just watching you see I'm gonna come and pat you on your back and say ما شاء الله ما شاء الله beautiful job you've done what's next Hajj so what like you've reached nirvana karma you're like in paradise now you're just watching us little peons do good things and you're patting us on the back how about you no no no me I'm too busy you know what a prayer is prayer is that you ask Allah my lord you are very wise you created me when I didn't exist you shaped me when I didn't know you taught me when I was ignorant you guide me and I don't know where I'm going you've got my destiny set you have promised me a year after and you've created me for paradise by the way none of us were created for hell we take ourselves to hell God does not create any creation for hell none Allah created us for paradise this conversation is how do we work hard to get to the high stations of paradise very important and at the same time how can we avoid our stupidity and foolishness and arrogance and ignorance lest we go towards hell this is this conversation about it's very hopeful but the foundation states ya Allah you created me you fashioned me you know me better than I know me so God says I want you to be good كنت بخير أمتي نخرجت للناس تعمرون بالمعروف وتنحون عن المنكر you are the best in the community you promote good you forbid evil ya Allah what is that how much good should I do how much should I fight evil guide me my lord now your prayer starts to work when you pray to God you see when you pray this way and you say oh Allah you decide what I should get and when you make your dua you keep it generic and grand with no specific details for example childish people will say I really like that فلان بن فلان ya Allah I'm in love with that فلان بن فلان or فلان بن تي فلان I want him I want her I want him I want him to be mine I want him to love me so he said ya we'll do ya we'll do oh God please put love between us when I walk on the streets please God have a look at me I'll be so happy God I'll worship you forever wrong kind of dua wrong don't ever go there please it's very childish I remember one time I saw a four year old girl sitting there frowning I went to her I said why are you frowning she left me as my friend I said oh but I'm your friend really she said ya can I be your friend she said ya so okay let's be friends but of course in her mind she says you're too old for me but you get the point childish she left me she said that friend I want to die there is no God I want to stop praying now خلاص that's it I'm done I'm done with Dean that's it this childish form of prayer is many of us praying this way ya Allah I want this ya Allah I want that give me this if you don't give me this why is my friend better why does he have a better house than my look in the mirror for God's sakes look how beautiful you are look how gifted you are if you had a billion dollars and it cost a half a billion to get your eye back one eye you'd give it in a heartbeat and if you lost both eyes and it took a billion dollars to get both eyes you'd give it in a heartbeat you already have it but no the grass is always greener on the other side and I demand and I demand I ask us all when we go to pray to Allah first recognize the gift he's already given us so we don't bargain with him God I'm going to pray to you but you've got to give me the following Allah says come and ask me but not with conditions I've already given you too much what are you doing with it why don't you ask from me to give you more so that you can do more good the way زكرية said ياريثوني و ياريثوا من آلية قوب give me an inheritor so that we become leaders who bring good children forward to represent you this is the kind of prayer we should say يا الله make me honest look at Ibrahim after he built the Kaaba رب جعلني مقيمة صلاة و من ذرية our lord make us among the prayerful and our children that kind of prayer Allah immediately replies this is why many a times our du'as are not accepted rather than saying يا الله make me a good person let's not be petty and I'll show you what pettiness is about say مجتب العاري in the same book states that Allah never refused the prayer of prophets except one and that one was not because he made a mistake that was Prophet Nu when Nu was on the ark he saw his son drowning fatherly call a fatherly call fatherly love that the son is a disbeliever a rejecter a troublemaker but he's rejecting Allah Nu is praying to Allah save my son Allah says he is not from you leave him سبحان الله how amazing a prophet is praying Allah says my standards are built on principles when they are built on principles ask me anything and I'll give you so much you never imagine possible this is the kind of prayer you and I should be doing every du'a even if you read for example listen to this it's amazing when you read even دوة مكارم الأخلاق by Imam Zain Al Abideen I encourage our children else mothers, fathers brothers sisters please read دوة مكارم الأخلاق it's the highest moral traits we're asking from Allah written by Imam Zain Al Abideen and the amazing fact is he wrote it after Karbala I'll talk about the wisdom and the brilliance of a man who witnessed his family massacred yet he spent 34 years writing دوة and guiding humanity as a legacy you and I would have condemned God for our children being killed on a battlefield but instead of condemning he's done nothing but greater good this is the Dean of God that we're talking about in دوعة كميل he says listen to the du'a everything is generic listen to it و بقوة كالتي قهرت بها كل شيء و خضع لها كل شيء و ظل لها كل شيء و بجبروتي كالتي غلبت بها كل شيء و بعزتك التي لا يقوم لها شيء و بعظمتي كالتي ملأت كل شيء و بسلطانك الذي على كل شيء every verse listen to this دوعة listen to how it starts و الله I ask you by your mercy which embraces all things I ask you by your mercy and by your strength which dominates all things look you're making du'a but you're acknowledging usul you're acknowledging God you're giving him the proper du'a as Allah says و جاهدو في اللي حق جهادي struggling the way of your Lord the way he deserves it this is the struggle you're acknowledging my Lord I recognize you are the master I come to you إياك نعبود و إياك نستعين إهدين السراطة المستقين سراطة اللذين أنا عمت عليهم how universal is it guide me on the path of those you've chosen هاير المغضوب عليهم not those who invoke your wrath و الله الظالن and not those who are lost look how universal and generic it is we read this ten times a day is there any specific in it? no we're saying to God you bring me the specifics I stick by these basic laws this is Allah I ask you by the step which embraces all things and by your strength which dominates all things and towards which all things are humble and before which all things are low and by your invincibility through which you overwhelm all things and by your might which nothing can resist and by your tremendousness which has filled all things by your force which towers over all things and by your face which submits of the annihilation of all things and by your names which have filled the foundation of all things and by your knowledge and by the light of your face continue continue continue then we're asking forgive me for the sins my lord which tear apart my safeguards اللهم فل يدنوب اللتي تحتك العصام اللهم forgive me those sins which draw down adversities forgive me those sins which alter my blessings forgive me those sins which hold back my doaa my prayer forgive me those sins which cut down hopes forgive me those sins which draw down tribulations forgive me every sin I've committed and every mistake I've made look how beautiful it is so I conclude tonight with this doaa amazing doaa as you see this and we see when Imam Hussein is in Karbala the same thing but before I go there you find and I'll talk more about it as you know tomorrow night is our night of ashura we will not be having a lecture during the day but after tomorrow night many centers here are offering those services in the afternoon please join them and do the amal and so on but so tomorrow I will read the shahada in the night time and I'll talk tomorrow about tawakkal particularly about how do we reach a stage where we're able to sacrifice ourselves the way Imam Hussein was able to do when Allah says they go with no fear and they kill and they get killed how? how do we reach that it's not difficult and what that is a metaphor by the way it doesn't mean we go on the battlefield every day we work at work in the house in the family it's a battlefield how do I win against evil forces every single hour tonight just a simple example you find that companions of the cave they had tawakkal Allah they prayed to Allah and Allah says I'm speeding on this quickly because my time is almost ending but I want to remind us these youth that were going to be killed by a Roman king of the time because they didn't worship him as a god and they said we won't we refuse we won't worship you they said then I will kill you and crucify you and burn you they didn't know what to do they turned to God Allah says have you taken account of how great they are how? is it not ajeeb have you not seen they prayed to me ربنا آتنا من لذنكرحم our lord give us from your treasury give us from your wealth and make our affairs right we don't know we don't know what to do guide us when you and I pray ask Allah guide us even if we get massacred as it happened in Karbala it's a success because when you get killed under those promises you become the flag of God forever you become the spirit that's keeping us alive today we are here in this gathering tonight hundreds of millions of people on earth tonight I gathered tonight to commemorate this incredible event because they gave their souls to maintain a positive movement that is so positive that the evil forces of the world fears Ashura they are afraid of this night they know that the grand revolution that's going to bring justice and peace is going to come through these events of Karbala so Allah put them to sleep for 300 years they didn't know they woke up and they were younger than their 5 generations forward Allah said did you see that they prayed to me to make their affairs right so I made it right they didn't ask me to sleep for 300 years I gave it to them you and I brothers and sisters should make dua all the time and whenever problems come take it positive something good comes take it positive somebody denies you something take it positive somebody compliments you take it positive live nothing but by positive right and see how high the stages you will reach Insha'Allah tonight that positive behavior of Imam Hussein that after all the companions have been killed his family members have been killed Abbas alaihi salam has been sheheed Ali Akbar is sheheed Qasem is sheheed all his family members are sheheed their bodies are strewn on the field he hears Imam is getting ready to go and they are waiting thirsty to kill him eager to get the money from Ibn Ziyad from Yazid eager and they were going to fight as to who was going to take the head of Imam Hussein they were going to fight as to who was going to take his ring and his finger can you imagine how sad it is how sad it is Imam is standing looking at this world that has turned its face yesterday he was in Medina as the Prince of Arabia the Prophet used to carry him on his shoulders and he would ride him he would kiss him lip to lip he says Al-Hassani Wal-Hussein Sayyid-e Shabaabi Ali Al-Jannah Al-Hassani and Hussein are the leaders of the youth in paradise that today it has come to a point where the women are in a tent unable to go to the water and the Imam is trapped and all his companions are butchered and the army has surrounded ready to kill him he is deciding what one more good can I do before I leave this world that was the wisdom of Hussein Ibn Ali he hears his baby six month baby Abdullah Razi known as Ali Al-Asghar his mother is holding him trying to console this baby because the baby is so thirsty it cannot stop to cry to the extent that it got tired to cry it lost energy to cry Imam turns towards her you know Rabab Allahu Akbar may Allah make our women like Rabab what a strong woman she gave two children to him رقية and Abdullah and both died soon after one in Karbala one shortly after in Damascus in prison رقية died at the age of four and she saw both of them die in the most tragic wait and she refused to go back to Medina this mother of Abdullah Radi refused to go back to Medina when she came back to Karbala she pitched a tent and she said I'm not going back to Medina I'm going to sit here and I'm going to tell every caravan that passes this region what the enemies of God have done against the Han she was a powerful woman and she became شهيدة there he was holding this baby Imam comes to her and says give it to me give this baby to me give him to me Imam puts his tongue and tries to quench the thirst of this baby whose tongue is sticking out dry a six month baby denied water how wretched was the enemy the trial is tough I asked the question ya Allah would I maintain my faith towards you under that trial Allah says my real agents I put them in the most difficult situations they never turn away from me this is why we love Imam who said so much not because he's only Imam but my God in the end of his history we've never found a human being under this condition to be so steadfast he said let me invoke from the enemy some compassion for they seem to have forgotten it so he says to the mother give him to me let me take him towards this enemy and let me invoke some compassion to the you know Imam is checking off everything in Karbala and says tomorrow if anybody has a question about the integrity of my truthfulness and the evilness of the other side you will not be able to overturn this argument he takes the baby he comes out in front of the enemy he says you are all jealous of me my father you know they were jealous of Amir al-Mu'mineen that jealousy continues until today in the world these enemies who hate anybody who has the name Ali or who is the lover of Ali they want to kill you or Fatem or Zahra that jealousy is in the Quran يحصدون الناس على ما أتاهم الله من فضل are you jealous of what we have given some beings on this earth that jealousy continues until today and we practice in our communities too please give it up Imam says what have I done to you have I harmed you have I challenged you they were kind even Ibn al-Mujim who strikes Imam when they capture him they tie his hand with tightness Imam says loosen the rope it is hurting him this is the man who killed him that's the the mercy of our representatives of God that's the compassion you and I need to have he takes this baby in front of the enemies and he places this okay you don't like me you don't like my father what wrong has this child done to you what harm has he brought to you if you think that I will drink this water and maybe I will have some satisfaction don't give it to me just feed the baby let him be satisfied look Imam wants to do good while he wants to save his child he wants to save the enemy and the army starts to look and says that's a valid argument we've cornered him he's alone and they start to have a little compassion even Saad the Mal'un Mal'un sees that he is trying to impress the caliph but he wants to be harsh like me some of us we do harm to impress others so he looks at Hormala Hormala was an archer he was a very very good archer he would hit his targets very accurately he looks at Hormala from a distance and says silence him while the Imam is talking he's holding this baby in his arms he's giving them he's giving them advice and an arrow comes in that direction and it strikes the neck of this little child and it shrinks then there's silence and the arrow strikes the little neck you know how small the neck it is at the speed it cannot stop it goes and punctures the arm of Imam who sings when Imam is bleeding instead of feeding this child they reply it with an arrow I swear that arrow lives in my heart every time I see an enemy coming from me who's against the hell of hate that arrow talks to me and says rise don't allow that arrow to ensue again hold on and fight back and beat this enemy Imam takes this child lifeless Rabab is by the tent looking she is what mother can watch her child die like that tell me what mother can watch that child die Imam comes back says إِنَّا لِلَّا وَإِنَّا إِلَيْ لَهِ رَاجِعُونَ رِذَمْ بِقَضَا وَتَسْلِيمَنْ لِأَمْرِيِ we are from Allah and we return to Allah and we are satisfied by your decree O Allah then he turns back and says إِنَّا لِلَّا وَإِنَّا إِلَّيْ لَهِ رَاجِعُونَ seven times his story and he came way back and forth إِنَّا لِلَّا Imam is showing the enemy this is what life is about you will kill me but you will not kill our spirit Imam goes by the tent and he takes a little grave with his sword he takes this baby and puts it into the shallow hole the enemy watch him do that رباحب is watching mother who is torn but satisfied وَسْتَعِينُوا بِسَبْرِ وَسْلَى be patient it's okay Allah is gonna elevate you to very high stations for the sacrifice his story and say after Imam Hussein became Shaheen the enemies came and they dug up that grave that you dug the baby out that you killed Hadin that you killed Hadin I am going to go to the wrong people and I will know who has been in the past peace be upon you peace be upon you the soul that is in your heart peace be upon you peace be upon you I never stayed I never stayed and stayed the night and the day and Allah did not make the last one of me for your visit peace be upon you and the son of Hussein and the son of Hussein and the sons of Hussein and the sons of Hussein especially the master and the master and the father and your sister and your daughter all of them peace be upon you and blessings be upon you my brothers let's sit a few minutes for the prayers so لا حب الحسين صلى الله عليه وسلم محمد وآلي محمد if you guys can please when I say ya mullah you guys can say ya mahud يا حجة الله شكونا إليك يا حجة الله شكونا إليك ادركنا ادركنا لببيك لببيك ادركنا ادركنا لببيك لببيك يا حجة الله شكونا إليك يا حجة الله ادركنا ادركنا لببيك لببيك ادركنا ادركنا لببيك


So, first time that I came to Dubai, I was detained at the airport, they said, where is my mom and dad, and I think this is going to be my last time in Dubai, man, because in Dubai, everybody thinks I'm a kid, bro. You said you want to see my ID before you allow me to enter? Yes. Because I don't look 18. Really? I don't look 18, man. Really?  No, I'm not young. I can give that to you. So funny, bro. She said I look so young. So she has to see my ID before I enter. Wow! Oh my goodness! This is like, oh my God! Only 18 and a half. Only 18 and a half. And now here is under 18.


The reality of it is, bro, it's really the bigger arts for this in the smaller arts. Hey, bro, I thought you'd just deal. We not gonna go through the label at all.   And then you don't gave, I'm saying 50 bands thinking you're getting the deal. And then, you know what I'm saying? You get cut out two months later by the label and they not give you the money back. They did that part. Let's get into this next topic. TJ's DJ, shout out to TJ. If y'all know TJ, he is BOB's manager, track backwards manager. He said, if you pay an artist for a feature, make sure you get clearance from the label so you can release it. I see all kinds of artists pay for features that they can't ever release because it wasn't cleared. If they do release it, it will be immediately removed from all DSPs and radio stations with a simple cease and desist letter. What is he saying? Yo, if you get a feature from Chris Brown randomly, but then his label has no idea about this, it can easily be blocked by the label. That's not anything official. You need to make sure it's cleared. So all these deals y'all think, oh, I got a feature, I got a feature. Do you really? Or is it just a feature that you can show at the family reunion on your Walkman or something? You know what I mean?  He's on your Walkman? I'm sorry, bro. I'm sorry, bro. I don't know where that came from. We're gonna let that ride. But no, you're right, man. And artists have to stop letting bigger artists finesse them and to bind these features that they're not gonna get clear. Because I've seen that, right? I do think there's a portion of artists that don't care that will in the shoot the shot. See if I can slide it through. Probably hoping that the song catches attention to the points where the label's like, we'll let that rock, you know what I'm saying? But the reality of it is, bro, is really the bigger artist finesse and the smaller artist. Hey, bro, I thought you this deal, you know what I'm saying? We not gonna go through the label at all.   And then you don't gave, I don't wanna say Chris Brown. I wanna ruin him like that.  And then, you know what I'm saying? You get cut out two months later by the label and they not give you the money back. They did their part of the transaction, right? They did what they were supposed to do. You just didn't know the game. And then you ask out or whatever you paid. So, yeah, bro. Like, this is what will happen. And I first heard this from an artist that, you know, did I know? He got a feature from an artist that pretty much all of y'all would know. And he was like, 50 bands is the price of this feature if you want it. But he was willing to give it all up.   Reflect. Hey man, saving this 50K all my life, it'd be nice to hold on to 20K of that. So I'm gonna pay for that.  You still gonna get the exact same thing for less money? I just gotta pay it cash instead of credit card or whatever. Now, if you're not thinking about refunds and having to be able to call the bank and say, hey, that's not official, then whatever. But who's not gonna take that deal? So why are artists doing that? Why would a major artist do that?  I don't want the label to get any of this money. And depending on the artist's deal, out of that 50K, I might only be keeping maybe 10K, maybe 20K. So why don't I just charge you 30K, keep all that to myself, just like the candy at the gas station. I don't know if you know that, a lot of people at the gas station, like a lot of these gas stations are when they get paid cash. Candy is one of the main things that they would use for particularly back in the day, when they get paid cash, they don't report that. And that's why the candy was like so profitable for them because they didn't keep that to the size.  Yeah. Right? It's also a similar effect. It's like that inventory can't be tracked. Nobody knows. And then if something pops up and the label's like, yo, where did this come from? I don't know what happened. I don't know where that came from. You know, these producers just be taking my joints and leaking them out to everybody, trying to do a flip. I never said anything about that. We don't have it on paper, right? No paperwork, no system transactions, none of that stuff. All cash can't be tracked. So like TJ said, hey, if it's not cleared, then shoot, man. Shoot, it didn't happen. It never happened. It never happened, bro. Yeah, say that for your homies to brag at the family reunion or the next meetup. Stop what you're doing. We gotta interrupt you to let you know you can win $20,000 by submitting your music to tulost.com slash collab for the crown. We're looking for the best songs and we're partnering with Tulost. So if you think you got some great music, if you think you got the goods, go to that site, tulost.com slash collab for the crown, check out the instructions for the contest, win up to $20,000 and make sure you put in no label when you create your profile on Tulost so you can make sure you get three months completely free. That's tulost.com slash collab for the crown. And again, when you sign up, put in the code, no label, all one word and you will get three months completely free.  Peace.