What are some of the best work from home ideas that you've tried? Well, in today's video, we're going to cover the 10 best home business ideas in the UK that you can strategize and implement to earn you a great amount of profits. Before I dive straight into these ideas, make sure that you subscribe to our YouTube channel as well as join both our Facebook and Discord community where we all help each other grow on our dropshipping journeys. So without further ado, let's get straight into it. So let's briefly go over what are some of the pros and cons to making money online in the UK. When we sell both our products and services, we of course have access to a large amount of people from all over the world. Also, when you work remotely, there's no need to travel to work or worry about travel expenses. Another notice is that you don't have to worry about overhead costs such as paying office space rents and working from home just essentially means that you can work without restrictions. You can work in both a time and place that is suitable for you and you can work according to your own hours, which if you think about it boosts morale and improves your productivity. However, with some pros does come some cons. Because you're working from home now, it does mean that you will experience more distractions than usual. That's exactly why it's important to create an atmosphere at home where you can both work and live without blending the two. Remember, when you work from home, that does not exempt you from complying with traditional UK business regulations such as BAT and customs duty. Another thing to note is that your social life can take a toll when working from home. It becomes harder to connect with coworkers as well as the company itself. A great way to combat this is to frequently connect with your colleagues through Zoom or Skype meetings. Or better yet, if they are in your area, that's a great opportunity for you to meet up with them. So now we're going to cover the 10 best UK home business ideas to boost your profit margins. Let's go. The first home business idea we have is sell your homemade products. If you have a hobby that you really enjoy, then why not turn it into a money-making business? For example, if you really enjoy arts and crafts or painting, that's a great way to sell your skills online. You have to remember that social media such as TikTok videos and Instagram reels are trending right now. So shooting content of the things you create is a great way to market your online venture. Another suggestion is that you can sell your homemade goodies on marketplace platforms such as eBay or Facebook Marketplace. The more you sell your homemade products, eventually you'll be able to upgrade your selling limits too. Our next idea is that you can offer web design services. You have to remember that in this modern day and age, websites are compulsory for every business owner, which of course means there's a high demand for website builders and designers. So as a web designer, you can provide your services to business owners to either build their websites from scratch or to optimize their current websites. And of course, in return, you charge a fee for your services. Another idea on the list is to become a YouTuber, just like me, I guess, who doesn't want both the fame and fortune with millions of subscribers, except we at Auditius don't want the fortune parts. As we know, YouTube has become a platform that has provided many people with an opportunity to make money online.  Don't put anything past it. That of course also depends on how good your content is. Video creators can earn from their videos by either running ads before or during their videos. Another way to generate an income on YouTube is through sponsorships from other companies. Another great idea is to do SEO consulting. To clarify for those who don't know, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. And SEO consulting is essentially a service that helps people to improve their websites' search engine ranking. Some SEO consultants offer packages that include monthly or quarterly reports of the progress of their customers' sites. Other consultants will offer a more personalized service where they work with the customer on an hourly basis. Another work from a home idea is to create a blog. You have to remember that many businesses and service providers rely on blogs to promote their businesses. There are also different methods to monetizing your blogs such as affiliate marketing, Google AdSense, and paid reviews. So not only is a blog there to allow your creative passion to shine through, but it's also there for you to promote both your products and services. Our content team has done a great job to bolting our eCommerce blog to what it is today. The next grand work from home idea is to become a UK affiliate marketer. If you didn't know, affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing. Businesses basically reward affiliates for every customer that purchases products or services through an affiliate's marketing efforts. So how are you able to do this? You can use your blog to promote the products or services using your affiliate link. And when viewers click on the link, it redirects them to the other businesses' product page. If the customer buys the products or subscribes to the services, the conversions are tracked, which means that you can earn a commission on a per-click basis. The next idea is to start a UK print-on-demand business and if you have a passion for designs, this is a great way to make some money. Just to refresh your memory, print-on-demand is an order-performance service that allows you to customers' products such as t-shirts, mugs, hats, pillowcases, and so much more with your own designs and then sell them in your store. This idea is a great way to earn higher-profit margins because these products are unique and not so easily available on the markets. Our next home business idea is to buy and sell marketplaces such as eBay, Facebook Marketplace, and Amazon. Now, I know what you're thinking. Everyone can buy and sell marketplaces, but the secret is in buying low and selling high. Remember, with marketplaces, you're not restricted to only selling in one region. Just keep in mind, though, that that excludes Facebook Marketplace. If you do not live in the US or you do not have a US IP address and a social security number, it'll be very difficult for you to dropship on Facebook Marketplace because you'll have no available shipping options. However, with the marketplaces, eBay, and Amazon, you can enjoy selling in different regions. Okay, our second home business idea is to start a podcast. Besides optimizing a blog and a YouTube channel, you can also create audio content while known as podcasts. By starting a podcast, you can gradually build your audience base and attain a steady income stream. If you've never thought about it before, it's actually quite easy to start a podcast channel. The first step for you to take is to decide whether or not you want your podcast to be entertaining or informative. Then you need to select a category which will form as the base of your discussions in your podcast. Categories can be things such as technology, sport, fashion, travel. Another great thing is that you can invite people or influencers on your podcast to discuss various subjects. I can 100% guarantee you that if you had to invite an influencer onto your podcast, you'd attract more listeners resulting in a wider audience. And our final idea, which is the best out of them all, start a UK drop shipping business. As we know, drop shipping is an e-commerce business model where we fulfill customers' orders without holding any inventory. Instead, we just partner with well-known drop shipping suppliers who holds the inventory in their warehouses and delivers the products straight to our customers. And as drop shippers, we just act as the middleman between the customer and the supplier. The best thing about this whole business model is that we only actually pay the supplier once we sell the product. Therefore, this make money from home idea is the most efficient method with low risk and high reward. Not to mention all the ideas that I've mentioned thus far in the video can be combined in the drop shipping model to increase your profits. For example, you can combine blogging with the drop shipping model, which is exactly what we do on our e-commerce blog page. This is where we post all our drop shipping related articles, guides and templates. Another example is combining a podcast with the drop shipping model, which is again exactly what we do. We have a podcast where all our drop shipping episodes are available for download on various platforms. Let's go back to talking about combining blogging with the drop shipping model. So if your drop shipping store has been built on the Shopify platform, you can actually utilize the built-in blog tool feature. From there, you'll be able to write valuable content that can also help you to rank higher for SEO results. All in all, running a drop shipping business is profitable. And might I just add, when you add automation to your drop shipping stores, you're guaranteed to multiply your profits. Manually operating your drop shipping store can take countless of hours because you're constantly adding and fulfilling hundreds of products and customers' orders. But when you automate your drop shipping business by, for example, using Autodesk Automation Dropshipping Tools, you instantly avoid the time-consuming process of doing everything manually and you can easily scale your online store. Why and how you might ask? Because our automation features such as our product research tool, our product importing tool, our price and stock monitoring and automatic orders tool, as well as our complete order fulfillment solution and automatic price optimization does every single thing for you. So we've gone through the 10 best UK home business ideas. Let's now briefly cover how you can start a UK home business in 10 easy steps. The first step is to choose a profitable UK home business idea and we're going to go with drop shipping for obvious reasons that you can receive high profit margins between 20 to 60%. It's also a low risk and high rewards business. And even if you fail with one niche, you will not suffer major losses. There are hundreds of niches available, which you can easily test to see what works for you and your online store. Step two would be to comply with the UK business regulations. It doesn't matter which home based business idea you decide to go with. You are not exempt from complying with the rules and regulations related to UK based businesses. Now in terms of drop shipping, business owners should comply with the following standards. First off, you should make sure that you only drop shipping legal products to avoid landing up in trouble. You should not list any legal products such as eBay, Verra products and age restricted items. Remember that animals, drugs and weapons all fall under this category. You should also adhere to the UK special consumer laws. There are two types of different laws that you should follow. The first law is the competition and consumer laws for businesses. And the second one is the UK's online and distance selling law. So the competition and consumer law for businesses outlines how drop ship is compete, how they treat their customers and how they sell their products. And the UK's online and distance selling law regulates your drop shipping transactions. Step three is to perform UK product research. When you're starting your UK drop shipping business, you need to find the right products to sell. Therefore, you need to perform effective product research and offer products that are in high demand. This way you can increase your sales, lower your risks and eventually earn more profits. So how can you perform this product research? Well, here are a few ways. First up, you can check suppliers' trending pages like Amazon's best sellers or their movers and shakers section. AliExpress now has a new and improved drop shipping center that is made specifically for drop shippers.  Lastly, you also have the Autodesk product research tool that allows you to expel various products from both US and Chinese suppliers. With this tool, you can expel high potential products using various search filters such as reviews, categories, price, ratings and much more. Step four would be to set up your UK drop shipping business. So you'll obviously need a platform to showcase the products that you're selling. Therefore, you need to open a store on a selling channel. So there are two types of selling channels out there. So one is a customizable e-commerce platform which allows you to create your UK drop shipping website with your own domain. You'll also have access to ready-made store templates, themes, logos, images and much more to customize your drop shipping websites. Now, the selling channels that fall under these customizable e-commerce platforms are both Shopify and Wix. Now, Shopify and Wix can be categorized under customizable e-commerce platforms. This is because you're able to personalize your drop shipping store according to your brand vision. The second type of selling channels are marketplaces. Now, marketplaces are trading channels with existing traffic and platforms such as eBay, Amazon and Facebook marketplace can be categorized under this type of selling channel. Marketplaces constantly have active users which helps your store to become more visible to customers. And although you don't really have the opportunity to brand your store like Wix and Shopify, you'll still be able to attract just as much or even way more customers to your website because of the organic traffic that is already there. Let's dive into some of the features of both types of selling channels. So starting off with eBay, eBay has a really easy to use interface and you're able to start selling on eBay as soon as you create an eBay seller account. The platform has a low setup cost which means that you can start selling with the zero upfront investments. As mentioned already, eBay provides you with organic traffic and you can easily promote your products on eBay with two promotional methods. The first promotion method is promoted listings standard and the second promotional method is promoted listings advanced PPC.  Now, when it comes to Wix's features, they are fully customizable platform. They offer a drag and drop tool which easily allows you to manage your website's content and visuals and they're integrated with advanced drop shipping apps and e-commerce tools that you can select from the Wix app markets. Now, when it comes to the features of Shopify, they have various design and made templates ready for you to choose from for your online store. You can customize these templates to make them more engaging because this will help to increase traffic to your store. Shopify also has an app store and from the app store, you can gain access to over 3,000 apps which will 100% take your UK drop shipping business to the next level. Shopify also provides excellent customer service which is available 24 seven in all languages. So if you are a beginner, Shopify is an excellent option because you may experience some issues or need help along the way. Step five would be to select a reliable UK drop shipping supplier and here are some of the following factors that goes into selecting a supplier. First up, you shouldn't sure that your supplier has warehouses located right in the UK. This is because your suppliers can swiftly ship products straight out to your customers which will result in higher customer satisfaction for you. You have to ensure that your supplier has clear business policies. You have to remember that your business policies are usually based on your supplier's business policies. Therefore, you should avoid working with drop shipping suppliers that has complex return policies and extended shipping times. You should always work with drop shipping suppliers where you can source high-quality products at affordable prices. Sourcing high-quality products helps you to establish your online store's name and of course, if you source the products at a lower cost, you can price them competitively allowing you to attain a higher profit margin. Always choose a drop shipping supplier that provides excellent customer service Remember that the customer service that you receive from your supplier is the exact same customer service that you'll extend to your customers. And last but not least, before choosing a drop shipping supplier, you should always check out previous customer reviews. This way, you'll be able to gain more insight into whether or not it's worth it to work with this specific drop shipping supplier. Make sure to check out the 25 plus drop shipping suppliers that AutoDS supports. This includes Aliexpress UK, Amazon UK, Wayfair UK and so much more. Now, step six would be to add products to your drop shipping store. This is the perfect time to incorporate the automatic method to keep up with orders and increase your sales. So what automatic tools can we use? Well, we can use the AutoDS product importer tool which allows you to import the product's title, description, images and variations in a few seconds which of course saves you so much time and effort as opposed to doing it manually. We also have a bulk importing feature which allows you to import tens and thousands of products in just a few clicks. Moving on to step seven, it's now time to market your UK drop shipping store. As we know, marketing your store allows you to increase your website traffic and generate more sales. So let's have a look at how we're able to market the top three selling channels, Wix, Shopify and eBay. So let's have a look at eBay first. There are two ways to market on eBay. The first way is to use promoted listing standard where you can feature your products on eBay. More customers will be able to find your products in their search results and hopefully buy from you. And if they do purchase from you, that is the only time you'll pay a promotional fee. Now, if we have a look at the eBay promoted listings advance, this allows us to run ads on eBay. This of course will help your products to rank higher on the eBay search result page and this marketing feature works on a pay per click method, the PPC method. So that essentially means that eBay will charge you a certain fee every time somebody clicks on your ad. Let's now have a look at Wix and Shopify marketing. Just like eBay's PPC method, dropshippers can promote their products on Shopify and Wix using the pay per click method on either Facebook, Google or YouTube. Just remember that you have to pay the platform that you're marketing on whenever somebody clicks on the ad. The next marketing method is email marketing where you can run an email campaign to help you generate more sales and of course, help you to build a loyal customer base. Our final marketing method is influencer marketing. Now, I would only establish this marketing method to dropshippers who have already established their online stores. The reason for this is because influencers have a huge amount of following and you have to pay them to promote your products or services. Now, this could either go left, a big waste of money or it could go right, a huge success, which means that that's more sales for your business or more traffic that's driven to your online store. You never know the outcome. Step eight means that you're finally ready to launch your UK home business and that means, of course, to optimize your store to the fullest. That means to automate your business to enhance your profits and to fulfill your store's potential. Make sure to check out our wide range of impressive auto DS features that can help you to automate your dropshipping business or better yet hit the article version of this video which can be found in the description box below where we go into depth about what each of our automation features does. Step nine would be to fulfill your customer's orders when you're selling your products online. You should also fulfill them promptly because it increases customer satisfaction and helps to build long lasting relationships with them. In short, order fulfillment basically means heading over to your supplier's website for each order, filling in your customer's details and then placing the order. And finally, step 10 is to always provide excellent customer support. There are various tools that you can implement on your website to enhance your customer service such as providing a live chat where your customers can instantly contact you. You can provide a currency converter tool which detects the login location of your customers and then converts all your product's prices to your customer's local currency. Not only that, but also just making sure that your website is user friendly. Customers will want to shop on your website if they can easily navigate themselves and find exactly what they've come there to look for. As small as these little things may be, you have to remember that these things help you to differentiate yourself from the competition and to help you build a loyal customer base. And there we go drop shippers. You've reached the end of this video. Thank you so much for tuning in and I hope that you found some valuable information out of this video. Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you're kept up to date with everything that's happening in the drop shipping world. I'll see you guys in the next video. Thanks for tuning in.


Welcome to Cooper Union. This week we'll be looking at the world casting their ballot for a better America. Yesterday on November 9th, the U.S. actually appeared before the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and was actually examined on how they're doing with their human rights record. I kind of think of it as a human rights checkup. And the countries of the world over 120 took the floor to be able to share what they considered about the United States that they were alarmed about. In some ways it was an international intervention, very concerned about the direction of this democracy and where we should go as we move forward. I'm very fortunate today to have Kerry, Keith, and Krista with me. They're representing different elements of civil society that have been engaged in this process for human rights way before the UPR and will continue to work beyond that to make sure that human rights are realized in the United States. I'd like to begin with Kerry and ask her a question about what did you think or what are some of your initial observations about the UPR yesterday? It just happened yesterday. It was sort of painful to see the Department of Justice arguments in some of those videos. But what are some of your initial observations that you'd like to share with the world? Okay, so first, my name is Kerry McLean. I am the UPR coordinator for the U.S. Human Rights Network. So to answer your question, Josh, the U.S. presentation was disappointing to put it very mildly. There were several misrepresentations made, for example, regarding protection of the First Amendment, regarding immigration, regarding access to justice. I don't want to spend too much time on that, but you can view a recording of the UPR on the UNTV website. We also provide a link to the UPR recording on our website, which is www.upr2020.org. Over the past year, members of our network have organized briefings where they shared information with embassies and diplomatic missions about the situation in the U.S. in respect to protection and fulfillment of human rights. We were heartened to see several of our recommendations voiced by representatives of governments from all around the world during the UPR session yesterday. The vast majority of the members of the Human Rights Council talked about police violence and racial discrimination and call for change. Many government reps encouraged the U.S. to be engaged with the Human Rights Council and the Paris Agreement. Some spoke out about migration and one country, Burkino Faso, recommended that the U.S. government address the high rate of paternal mortality amongst Black women. So the high rate of paternal mortality against Black women in the U.S. is an issue that I've worked on in the past, so I was really excited to see at least one country talk about it. Thank you. That's actually a really good point because women's rights were mentioned by a lot. I mean, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, all talked about women, family planning and reproductive rights because the U.S. actually said that they were reversing course and added Geneva Declaration last week trying to outlaw abortion and women's rights. So that's a good point. And Romania talked about paid maternity leave and India equal pay for work. So we're very glad that the countries around the world will raise those points. And maybe, Krista, what were some of the priorities that you wanted to be addressed in the U.P.R. of the U.S., and did any states surprise you with their recommendations? I'm sure, I apologize, I didn't see it, but I'm sure nobody surprised me with anything they have to say. And it's my understanding that a few countries discussed police violence. And so that's what we wanted, basically. There's an understanding that there's pretty much nothing the U.N. can do except put pressure on the United States because the United States is so powerful. So we understand the name it and shaming game. I don't think it would work with this administration, but it may work because he wasn't shamed by anything that he said or did. But I think with the next administration, it's not about naming and shaming. I expected to be more like possibly the Obama administration knowing that this is Joe's administration now and he's not VP to Obama. I expect some of the same things to happen that there will be a move towards putting police departments back under consent decrees and there won't be that much of a fight about it. What I'm hoping is that he listens to the fact that we don't want more police and that there's the deep funding out there which is kind of musical chairs with money. Because I believe that they would defund for a little while and then give the money back. So I'm not quite sure whether or not that strategy would work forever, but we're looking at different programs to cover like 50% of the calls to police. You don't need to come armed too. So we're trying to do the Kahootz program. Have you heard of that program out of Oregon? Yeah. So that's what I was looking for, some kind of mentioning of police violence. And as far as women is concerned, because only 5% of women or only 5% of the shootings are women, but you have domestic violence in homes of police officers, which then spills out on the street. In Chicago there was a statistic that 50 police officers who had domestic violence going on in the home had 50% more complaints of excessive force. There's rape by police officers, which these guys can be predators and serial rapists. And under the conventions and under the UN, rape by a government official is torture. So it's my understanding under the Obama administration that they started to pick up with their sexual assault cases at the federal level. So we're hoping that they stay up there. So it was just good news all around to hear that they were addressing police violence, but we know that they were addressing it because of the protest of George Floyd. And funny that Oregon, which is in and of itself just a state would be so ahead of the game when it came to having programs where you didn't use as many police officers. So yeah, we were happy to hear about that. Okay. And building on that, Keith, I mean, what are some recommendations that we're hoping we can put forward to the new administration that then would say what we can focus on realizing of human rights in this next UPR cycle? Because it'll sort of go with the same time as Biden will be four and a half years. So what are some recommendations you might have that we can focus on? Well, let me echo what my colleagues have said that there are a lot of half truths and in a few cases, whole lives that were presented in a diplomatic manner at the UPR. But once you cut through the fog, there were some general recommendations to the U.S. that could in fact help us form our human rights agenda that we could present to the Biden administration. A couple of them are not new. The need for a national institution focus on human rights, the need for a national plan of action for racial justice. Many people were outraged that the U.S. would reengage in the expand rather the death penalty use of the death penalty at the federal level, many of the most of the European countries in fact called for an immediate moratorium.  And this was an echo throughout. I was able to watch at least 95 countries. And of course, George Floyd's name was invoked many times as well as the excessive use of deadly force by the police. Some of the remedies that were offered included human rights education for the police. There would be some consistency between any federal policies and state-level policies. Unfortunately, there was no mention my colleague, Ms. McClain says it was one country. I heard the elections mentioned, congratulatory notes, and perhaps it was just a timing. But I was still surprised because everyone on who was testifying must have known that the president had just tried to inject himself in the electoral process by calling for an end to the vote counting and to provide misinformation to millions of Americans and to show not thinking of an appalling disrespect for people who at risk their lives, their safety and security, braving long lines in order to cast their vote, to participate in the political process that would be consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with the International Convention for Civil and Political Rights, and with the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. I could say more about that, but I don't want to dominate the topic right now, because I think when you look at the thrust of what happened at the UPR, you can say that yes, the U.S. complied by participating, but what is the content of that participation? And if this is the best that we get out of this administration, on one level you can understand it, but on another level, at the subliminal level, they made sure they had people of color delivering some of the messages. And I think that our movement needs to think through those issues. We can't stop who an administration like Trump might put forth, but there is recognition of the work that groups like the network have done in the past by bringing more people of color and the issues that African Americans and Latinos, Latinx and indigenous peoples and Asian Americans are concerned about. Keith, you brought up so many good points. I mean, the 222 a.m. press conference where, of course, they were all spread in COVID in the White House, we see now saying, frankly, we did win. And then the November 5th moment, where even it was sort of a McCarthy moment, where even the networks just finally cut them off when he's still saying that he's spreading more information and they're fact-checking right then saying something they should have done a long time ago. And now with Pompeo's statement today, saying, we'll have a smooth transition to our second administration, it's not going. So we did need, in some ways, some stronger recommendations from our allies to say, this isn't normal. The democracy is being shaken and civil society has done everything they could by going out there and standing in the long lines and risking their lives to vote. And now the world needs to also cast that ballot for a better America. And so I think you did bring up a lot of good points. And, and Krista, I know you might want to feed on that as well. But yeah, I mean, we had it's national human rights institution. We don't have one. The countries that are telling us to create one is Somalia, Zambia, Qatar, Philippines, Nepal, Lithuania, India. All those countries have national human rights institutions. It's never been done. It also was, in a way, a repudiation of that commission on inalienable rights. Saying that body that was created is trying to create a hierarchy of rights that undermines universal norms. It's definitely putting women's rights underneath. And if there's any comments about the Unalienable Rights Commission we want to make, or to get back to maybe some of the priorities we have to realize human rights in U.S., we could look at either of those two. Well, the only comment I'll make about the commission is that I think there were a few countries, I heard a few countries actually praising it, which was disturbing. And I want to believe it's because they're not informed. They're not really informed about what it means. But there were a few countries that praised the U.S. for the commission. Yeah, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, go ahead. No, it's interesting that, you know, unalienable rights is part of our Constitution, right? I mean, I think the first sentence in the Declaration is something about unalienable rights. And you know that we're tied to our Constitution. So we're not going to do anything further than quote the Constitution, right? But with that being said, unalienable rights, they're not giving Black people unalienable rights, right? If you have slavery written into your Constitution, you're not giving people unalienable rights. You're giving people rights that can be alienated, right?  So, you know, this administration, that's what they've been doing. I look forward to Biden having CERD, having ICCPR, and having the CAP conferences so that we can discuss everything we need to discuss over the next year or two. Yeah. Going back to the UPR itself, a couple of things, takeaways, I think, is important. There was a unanimous call for the U.S. to reengage with the United Nations Human Rights Council. This is something that Nikki Haley did who is likely to be a presidential candidate in 2024 under the direction of State Department and Pompeo, who's also likely to be a candidate and current President Donald Trump. But there was also a call for the U.S. to just have the standard operating procedures to welcome the special measures for all of the special rapid tours. And the U.S. expressed its, as Chris said, its supremacy of the Constitution theory, and what really amounts to U.S. exceptionalism, that our rights in enshrining the Constitution are better than the treaties, and that's why we don't sign them. I mean, give me a break. And the other thing was to say that there's this process that has to go through, it's complicated through the U.S. Senate, if they wanted to pass these to ascend to these treaties, they could. And again, this is one of those half truths. While they have signed certain, they have also applied reservations, understandings, and declarations, which basically nullify them and to say they're non-SEF executing. But that's okay. Just because you say they're non-SEF executing doesn't mean that people can't use the content and the language to help us. In fact, here in Georgia, where we have two Senate races coming up, we have to think about our right to participate in political process. The use of the U.S. Postal Service to delay the delivery of ballots, to hold onto ballots in Miami-Dade County that people knew were there. And then we had to go to court in order to make sure that there were regular sweeps to make sure that they were not holding ballots in a sophisticated way to delay. The other thing is the voter suppression activities that were undertaken, not just in Georgia, but across the country. And in fact, everywhere that President Trump is talking about recounts or that they were illegally cast ballots, those are African American areas like Philadelphia, Milwaukee, or here in the Atlanta metropolitan area, or Latinx and indigenous areas such as out in Muscogee County, I think I pronounced it right, in Arizona or in Clark County where Las Vegas is. So I think that I wish there had been more discussion, but maybe what we can do, the human rights movement, brother, is to provide some of the people who express some genuine concern about what's happening with the U.S. human rights record an update since they didn't have it. I'm assuming that's the reason they didn't say anything. Yeah, no, I mean, you brought up so many good points because with the treaty bodies, right, it's the same argument that's dusted off every four years. It's nothing we haven't heard before that in the U.S., we only ratify when we really are achieving.  Like, what are you talking about? And then the other side, they try to promote we've ratified five out of nine. Well, no, we all know they've only ratified three, civil and political, racial discrimination and torture. And the others are optional protocols. If you want to add optional protocols, we never recognize the optional protocol allowing individuals to petition those treaty bodies. So they're just playing with things and trying to make things. And we know that they're not even, I think we could all speak to this, the consultation this time was so much weaker and just not even an attempt, a genuine attempt. And also, the report, the report, I think that's an area we could all look at, that they turn in a report in August that doesn't even mention COVID. So they turn it in late. And then they don't even mention the COVID crisis at all with so many deaths. They just didn't even come to the game of this UPR, the Super Bowl of Human Rights, ready to actually talk. And probably, I think, Kerry, I think there's other things we could look at. But when they said, at the beginning and the end, we've enjoyed partnering with civil society and working with, you know, I was looking at who'd we partner with? Did I miss the meeting? The only time they had a consultation, they'd let us know with less than a week, and it's like, try to get to DC, and then the phones never worked. So it's the same game that every time a UPR or a treaty by view comes up, like, I'm not gonna work again, or what are we gonna do now? So we can think about how we move forward with these next steps and what we want to really push. So what are some of the human rights priorities, then, that we think we could get in Chicago, in Georgia, and at the national level, where we could then say in four years at the next UPR, this has changed? What are some of maybe the low hanging fruit that we could pick? And like, what are some of the longer term things? But what's the next steps we need to do together as a movement? Well, as I mentioned, we need to push for Biden to hold the ICCPR, the CERD, and the CAT reviews. He needs to hold those. And as we were speaking about, Obama did them within months of each other. So we can catch up. And if we're talking about those things, we can address a lot of the stuff that we're trying to do here on the ground. Well, we're trying to get civilian police of accountability councils, which will allow for independent investigations of police crimes, instead of them investigating themselves as independent. And since at least this DOJ administration, and even the DOJ administration from before, because my ground was murder, and the fact that even under Obama, the DOJ couldn't figure that out, leaves me pause when it comes to Kamala and Joe Biden. Getting involved with women's rights, right? You could pass the CDAL, you know, we could assign and ratify CDAL so that we could cover women's rights not only in the police violence sector, but across our country. And I think the last thing is to really get some of these consent decrees back out into some of these areas.  And then, I'm sorry, the last thing would be getting the Emmett Till anti lynching even and taking slavery. Now that's a hard one. Okay, because we're asking to amend the Constitution. So we would have to amend the 13th amendment to take out the clause that allows them to enslave incarcerated people.  And if I'm incarcerated, but it isn't a burden on my family for me to be incarcerated because you have to pay me at least minimum wage for the work I do. And I can send that money back to my family. And I can start becoming that caretaker that I need.  So those are those are the big, I think, five that I think need to be done when it comes to next steps with Biden. Thank you. So we have five minutes to go still carry and keep. Sure. Okay, I'll try to be quick. So just one more thing about the condition of unalienable rights for viewers. It's very bad. And in fact, there's a federal lawsuit against it and over 100 human rights organizations have spoken out about it. And I'd encourage people to do some some research to find out more, but it's definitely not a good thing. So I want to just say a little bit about what's going to happen post UPR. The United States, they have a couple of months during which they can respond to all of the recommendations, and they can think about, you know, which ones they support or note or which are pending or they reject. And during that period, what civil society can do is we can lobby the government to accept recommendation. And since we have a new administration going in, anything's possible. So we should definitely do that. And one thing that we're talking about within the network is it's possibly working on developing a draft implementation plan. And another thing that civil society can do around March or April when the Human Rights Council holds a session, you have the opportunity to actually intervene with an oral statement regarding the UPR report and acceptance of report that comes out of the Human Rights Council. So everyone can think about that and please keep visiting our UPR 2020.org website for information and to see how you can possibly get involved. Thank you so much. And that brings us to Georgia. Georgia is definitely on our mind. We're talking about the New South, but the now South keeps what's going to happen between now and January 5th and how we need to mobilize. You can already see the national strategy of the Republican Party unfolding. The two Republican senators, Kelly Loeffler, who either owns or co-owns the Stock Exchange and David Perdue, whose cousin is the Secretary of Agriculture, sent out a note saying that the Secretary of State should step down. This is an attempt to put a blanket or a cloud over the entire electoral process in Georgia. And that's consistent with President Trump and quite frankly the 70 million people who voted for him. And that's what we have to look at. Trumpism will not be disappearing even if he does. And Trumpism fights against the things that we are fighting for. And I think we have to translate certain things like the right to the adequate standard of living to minimum wage, etc. And I think at the end of the day, we should come up with a list of things. Biden has already said that they will rejoin the Paris Accord. That's great. But what does that mean for us at the national or state or local levels? And I think the road ahead is complex and contradictory. We have to fight for ratification even though we know that maternal health is off the chain, problems of maternal health is off the chain. And then at the, you know, women are still being shackled in prisons to have babies as well. And so I think that the outrage that we feel when we understand what human rights violations are in this country, we have to find ways of translating that so that people can understand. And I for one can say very clearly, I'm really not interested in embracing my abuses. And that's what the Trumpism and the 70 million mean. We can't ignore that. And in my tradition, we say that every goodbye ain't gone. So I don't think that Donald Trump is just going to disappear. No, I agree. And it is great to say the former administration as we're doing events now, and we can all do the dancing that we saw around the country, but we definitely know this dance for democracy will take a lot more. And I want to thank all of you for taking time and being here today to discuss and look at the world casting its ballot on human rights in the United States. And we look forward to continuous conversation every two weeks to see how we can then change the situation we have on the ground. Mahalo. Thank you so much, everyone.


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Well, thank you very much to the Institute for this invitation. I'm very happy to be here. My goal this afternoon is twofold. I want to explain and assess how we've arrived at this point of crisis, again, in the Middle East with respect to the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. And I also want to provide a brief assessment and critique of Obama's strategy with respect to ISIS. People at work, what are its strengths, what are its weaknesses. And if there's time left, I'll sort of insert my own set of policy recommendations in terms of how things should ideally move forward. This is a topic that's not going away any time soon. President Obama has stated on several occasions that this question, this particular issue, is going to be with us for several years, forthcoming. It will, I think, shape the politics of the Middle East in the coming years. I suspect President Obama will have to hand this issue over to the next administration. And I think it's for those reasons that because this is going to be on the agenda not only of the Middle East, but of the entire world for the next several years, it's important that the international community, Europeans, Americans, and others really start to think seriously and get educated on this particular subject. And that's why I've come here today to Dublin, and I'm happy for the opportunity to share with you some thoughts. Before I begin, I'll just show you a few slides just to sort of set the stage and establish a framework. There's some really good ISIS resources. A couple of weeks ago, the American television station PBS provided what I think is perhaps the most incisive backgrounder to the rise of ISIS. It's in two parts. I strongly recommend you look at it. It's online. If you want a good sort of background sort of look at the Islamic State, that documentary, which I showed to my students just before coming here, is really wonderful. And our website for the center that I direct, the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver, has an ISIS resource page that I'm happy to show to you. It provides, I think, some of the most useful links and background information on ISIS in all its various dimensions. And it's, I think, a great resource for people who are sort of thinking about this issue and want to know more about it. ISIS has expanded, surprising to everyone, within a short period of time, to occupy a piece of real estate in the middle of the Middle East about the size of Great Britain, but 81,000 square miles in the heart of the Middle East across the Iraq-Syrian border. I think that map here on the right, so it gives you a rough sort of layout of where the ISIS sort of proposed so-called Islamic State exists. And as you can see, the big challenge is that they are on the outskirts of Baghdad. That's how far they've expanded in a very short time. And so the big question here in terms of trying to understand this topic is how did we get here? And critically, what's the best analytical framework to use to try and explain the rise of ISIS? Is this problem fundamentally a problem due to something inherent within Islamic culture or Arabic culture? President Obama has spoken on several occasions of this problem of ancient sectarian hatreds in the Middle East between Sunni and Shia. Are we witnessing today some sort of Muslim version of the Christian wars of religion of the 16th and 17th century? Or is the problem with ISIS fundamentally due to the legacy of the American Anglo invasion of Iraq in 2003? What's the best entry point and point of departure to understand this particular topic? Now, my own view on how best to interpret this particular crisis, the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, is that I think we are experiencing this particular problem primarily as a result of the convergence of two sets of political processes and issues that when brought together, I think broadly explains how we got to where we are today with the rise of the Islamic State. And these two issues are, first and foremost, the very sordid and negative legacy of the politics of authoritarianism and despotism of the post-colonial Arab state, meshing with and converging with the predictable consequences of state breakdown and collapse. And it's, I think, important in this context to ask the question, why Iraq and Syria? Why is it in Iraq and Syria that the Islamic State has arisen, established territory and has laid claim to a piece of real estate? Why is this not happening in other parts of the Arab Islamic world? And I think the reason and the answer to that question is because it's primarily in Iraq and Syria where you have the most negative legacy of the post-colonial Arab tyrannies that have destroyed and deeply shaken up and ravaged these societies. If you were to put on a spectrum and compare the human rights record, the state society relations, the form and character of political rule of all of the 22 countries of the Arab League, Iraq and Syria should be located at the extreme end of a spectrum of repression. The bathest rule in these two countries was the most sordid, was the most horrific, was the most destructive. And I think that has left a particular legacy in terms of societal consequences. Also in Iraq and Syria, these are the two countries that are most adversely affected by the consequences of war and state breakdown. Take Iraq, for example. For the last 35 years approximately, Iraq has been facing some form of war in one form or the another. Eight years of war with Iran, Iraq. A brief interim period then the Iraq-Coate crisis. Incredibly robust and intrusive draconian sanctions that destroyed Iraqi civil society. And then in 2003 until today, the American invasion and occupation of Iraq, which has really broken that society apart in many ways. And then in neighboring Syria, similar situation. Since 2011, you've had an uprising, a conflict that has deeply shaken Syrian society. The nature of the conflict in Syria for the last three and a half years has been borderline genocidal. And that's not something that I, a word that I use lightly. If you read the human rights documentation on Syria, the terms, state-sanctioned war crimes and crimes against humanity litter the documentary record with respect to Syria.  The nature of the conflict in Syria today has been described, I think, accurately by the United Nations on several occasions as the biggest humanitarian and moral crisis of the 21st century. That has destroyed Syrian society. And it's as a result of these two interwoven and overlapping processes of the legacy of political authoritarianism and state breakdown that you see in these two parts of the Arab Islamic world, a set of social conditions that have provided an opportunity, a ripe sort of set of social conditions for this type of militant extremism to emerge and to provide for some people an alternative sort of project for the future. So I think that's really the broad, I think, entry point for understanding how we got to this particular point of view. But there's other things that have been happening at the same time that I think explain why ISIS has emerged in these two parts of the world. The question of the political legitimacy of the state in Iraq post-2003 is a big part of the problem here. In the eyes of Iraq's 20% Sunni population, as a result of the rise of Shia political parties in Baghdad, over the course of the last 10 to 12 years, the Sunni population in Iraq has been marginalized, discriminated against, persecuted. And this is largely a function, I think, of the policies of Nuri al-Maliki, who has pursued these policies of Shia preference and also Sunni exclusion that has turned large segments of the Sunni population away from the central government and some of them are sympathizing now with ISIS as a group that perhaps can address and be a voice for Sunni grievances in the context of Iraq. That has provided a certain sort of territory in a population that is, in many ways, sympathetic to an alternative political project, in this case the ISIS project. And unless that particular issue is sort of addressed, the question of the future stability of Iraq cannot be resolved. And so the question of the political legitimacy of the state in Baghdad is a big part of the problem. And that same problem exists in the context of Syria. The only difference is it's 1,000 times worse. Because in the eyes of most Syrians, 70% at least who are Sunni, they view the government in Damascus as not only being a repressive fascist dictatorship, but they also feel alienated by a regime that is dominated by an Alawite sort of religious group that has, in the past three and a half years, persecuted and destroyed most of society, not to mention the 41-year rule of the House of Assad that has left a very sordid legacy. And so I think that's a big problem of the alienation and the marginalization of groups that have destroyed the political legitimacy of the two states and has provided an opportunity for ISIS to then step in and say, look, there's no future for you in your existing states. The legacy of political tyranny teaches us that we need to turn out square, come and join our Islamic state. That's the way forward. And that's unfortunately an idea and a message that has resonance in the eyes of some people in Iraq and Syria. Now, of course, Syria, I think, is really key also to understanding from a geostrategic and international perspective how we got to this particular moment. As I've said before, all roads lead to Damascus. And what I mean by that is that we are dealing with the ISIS crisis as a result, primarily, of the failure of the international community to take seriously and to respond effectively to the crisis in Syria that began in the context of the Arab Spring in March 2011. The story of ISIS really begins. You can begin it in different places, but generally it begins in the context of 2003 in the aftermath of the American occupation of Iraq. Sunni militancy emerges. A big part of that is al-Qaida, an al-Qaida franchise in Iraq. But what happens to that al-Qaida franchise in Iraq as a result of the American troop surge, as a result of this Sunni awakening plan that tried to sort of buy off and win over Sunni tribes back to an allegiance with the central government in Baghdad. If you look at what happened to this al-Qaida movement that emerged in Iraq after the American occupation, by around 2011, by the time American troops were planning on moving out of Iraq, al-Qaida in Iraq is basically a broken movement. It's defeated militarily, largely speaking. It's defeated ideologically. It's a shadow of its former self. But what happens in 2011 is you have the Arab Spring uprisings. And of course, the Arab Spring comes to Syria at that time. And as a direct result of the crackdown, the brutality, the ferocity of the Assad regime's response to a citizen's revolt, and the militarization of that revolt that an opportunity emerges for the remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq to move over into Syria, take advantage of a power vacuum, and within a couple of years to sort of reconstitute themselves to become the most prominent and efficient and powerful group among the Syrian rebel forces that are fighting Assad. And if you think about the whole question of Syria over the last three and a half years, when the uprising began in Syria in March 2011, there was no militant Islamic presence to be found. There was no radical Sunni presence. It was a citizen's revolt. It was largely sectarian, largely nonviolent. But that changes as a result of primarily Assad's crackdown, also as a result of the intervening sort of intervention of neighboring states, Saudi Arabia and Iran in particular. But also because the international community really chose not to come to the aid of the moderate Syrian rebels who did have a presence, I think, in the early parts of the Syrian uprising, but were effectively abandoned and left to themselves. And that created an opportunity for other groups to step in. And ISIS emerges by 2013 as a major force to dominate the landscape in Syria. There's a lot of, I think, testimony that's coming out from close allies of President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, all of them who sort of said that Obama misjudged the situation in Syria. He should have acted earlier, should have armed the moderate Syrian rebels, should have taken it much more seriously. And because he hasn't, it has led to the ISIS crisis. And I think those are perspectives that I am sympathetic with. Right now, there is a major debate in the United States over this whole question of the future of Syria, now that the United States is getting back involved in the conflict. The whole question of Obama's Syria plan is a big question mark. What does Obama plan to do? We don't know. There's a lot of confusion and chaos within the White House over this particular issue. And recent reports, just when I left the United States last week, is the Obama administration has now called for a big review and reassessment of US policy towards Syria as a result of the rise of ISIS and as a result of these airstrikes that have begun against the Islamic State. But the key point here, I think, with respect to the ISIS crisis is that there's no fundamental solution to the ISIS crisis. President Obama, there's no way that you can fundamentally degrade and destroy ISIS unless you have a plan for the future of Syria. These two things are intimately linked. Because if you read American intelligence, two-thirds of the ISIS military forces are in Syria. Syria is the location where the five Western hostages have been beheaded. Syria is the place where ISIS reconstituted itself and reemerged after having been defeated primarily in Iraq as a major fighting force. It's where most of the foreign fighters have gone. It's where ISIS has its unofficial capital in the eastern town of Raqqa. And so ISIS and Syria, the political future of Syria, are deeply interlinked. And there's no way of getting around this. With respect to the international community, I'm struck by the parallels that I see today with respect to the conflict in Syria and what happened 20 years ago with respect to Bosnia. The abandonment of conflicts that involve gross human rights violations that in the case of Bosnia were genocidal, in the case of Syria are neo-genocidal, thinking that these problems can be contained within their borders, that they won't have a spillover effect, have proven to be much more complicated to fix the more you allow them to fester. I mean, that was basically the view of Bosnia 20 years ago with the Clinton administration. There was a sense that Bosnia really didn't matter for the West, for the United States. It continued for three years until you had the Shreber Nizam massacre and the destabilization of a large part of southeastern Europe. And then the United States had to get involved to try and resolve it. We're having a similar situation, almost a replay, broadly speaking, of what's happening in Syria today. The general view in the United States, you can listen to a lot of these realist theorists of international relations, such as John Meersheimer and Stephen Walt and others, who argued we can now see incorrectly that Syria just doesn't matter for US national security or for global security. Syria, quote unquote, could be contained within its borders. Yes, there was gross human rights violations, but from a realist perspective, so what interests, core interests were not threatened. And it's a direct result of, I think, that miscalculation that we can now see that actually Syria does matter. Matters profoundly destabilize. It has destabilized not only the border areas, but it's a direct result of inaction and failure to respond effectively to Syria that we have the ISIS crisis. These two things are intimately linked and here we are again. Obama thinking that he could ignore Syria, he could ignore ISIS has now begun a global campaign to mobilize the international community and is now sending advisors, troops, aircraft, mobilizing the world to re-intervene in Syria, but of course the challenges of trying to put Syria back together today are far more difficult than they were three and a half years ago. The other element here, I think with respect to the rise of ISIS that explains, I think, some of the ideological appeal and the recruiting of ISIS from the region is that there was quite a bit of optimism and hope that the Arab Spring could produce some democratic gains for the region if it was allowed to continue on a particular course of democratization. But as a result of the failure of the Arab Spring or more accurately the crushing of the Arab Spring by the deep states, by the authoritarian regimes in the region, primarily the old state, I mean the big case here is really Egypt with respect to the military's reassertion, it's a version of democracy, supported and financed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. That the prospects for political democratization in the region have been shut very firmly and have been closed and as a result of the inability and the failure of moderate political Islam to have a stake and have a foothold in the politics of the region, the crushing and the attempt to label the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization and to eradicate them. That has produced as an ideological alternative and option the rise of an extremist political Islamist movement. There's a deep and intimate connection between the crushing of moderate political Islamic alternatives and the rise of a radical Islamic alternative. You can see this quite clearly in the case of Syria. When the Syrian uprising began in 2011, no radical Islamist movement to be seen. They emerge and they gain currency and support as the doors for peaceful political change are closed and people start to look to alternative solutions and options. And this all just confirms I think what we've known for a very long time that when peaceful revolution becomes impossible, violent revolution becomes inevitable. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that that's the case if you sort of look at some of the narrative statements that were put out by al-Qaida as a result of the Arab Spring. They were completely perplexed, befuddled, their message was incoherent and ineffective when dictators were being toppled as a result of peaceful political change in Tunisia and primarily in Egypt. There's a really good study that has been put out by the Center for Combating Terrorism at West Point called jihadi discourse in the wake of the Arab Spring where they chronicle what al-Qaida was saying in 2011 primarily. They had a message that simply could not make sense. Their message was the only way for political change is through jihad and through violent revolution. When revolution was happening and dictators that they had targeted were falling as a result of peaceful political change, their message did not have resonance. But now that the doors for peaceful political change are closed, now that General Al-Sisi is back in power, you are seeing the radical message of the radical Islamists resonate, reports that I'm getting from Egypt or that there has been a major influx and transfer of young men looking to the Islamic state as an alternative. You see an uptake in violence in Egypt as a result of the closing of that political process of democratization last summer. And I think these two processes are deeply connected. It's not a coincidence that ISIS is emerging as becoming an attractive alternative in the aftermath of the crushing of the Arab Spring. The other I think key element here, if you wanna understand the rise of ISIS is that a big part of the ISIS crisis is related to a development that has been taking place in the Arab Islamic world and the broader Muslim world for the last 50 to 60 years. And that is the development and the main streaming of a particular interpretation of Sunni Islam that is deeply sectarian, that is anti-women, anti-minority, deeply intolerant justifies the support of violence against alternative interpretations of Islam. This trend of Islamic interpretation is fairly recent historically. It really has its roots, I would say, in the last 50 years of the Islamic world. And it is deeply connected to what UCLA law professor Khaled al-Fadl has described as a phenomenon that he calls the rise of a culture of ugliness in modern Islam. It is this culture of ugliness that he describes as a recent development and it continues to be the single and most important obstacle to articulating reasonable narratives of the legitimate possibility of Islam's contribution to human goodness in the world. This interpretation of Islam, the dissemination and proliferation of this extremist, ultra-conservative and puritanical interpretation has its political roots in the internal policies of various countries in the Middle East, but primarily it is a direct result of the policies of one particular major country in the Middle East, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Just to give you an example of what we're dealing with here, there has been a lot of justifiable horror and outrage at the beheading of Western hostages in the last few months by ISIS. But how many people know the number of people that have been beheaded in Saudi Arabia this year? 64, public beheadings. And so one of my students asked me, Professor Hashemi, why is the beheading of four Western hostages the cause of global outrage? But the far greater monthly, sometimes weekly, routine beheadings in Saudi Arabia, not the cause of a similar form of outrage. We're dealing here with a particular country and an interpretation of Islam that is deeply connected to the rise of what is widely known as Wahhabism. This puritanical interpretation of Islam is, I think, deeply connected to the ISIS crisis. If you look at the political theology, the justification of the brutality, the attack on Yazidi minorities, on women, on violence, the justification of violence, the demonization of Shia Muslims, the attacks on other Sunni Muslims who happen to have different interpretations of Islam, this is all deeply connected to the teachings of Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab, the sort of founder of Wahhabism in the 18th century. His ideas have been spread, disseminated and taught in Saudi Arabia. But then, as a result of the marriage of Saudi Arabia and oil money, there has been, over the last 50 to 60 years, a spread of this particular interpretation of Islam across the Islamic world. The Saudi education system, the scholarships that have been provided to students from different parts of the Islamic world that come to Saudi Arabia to become, quote unquote, religiously educated and then go back in their communities has, I think, spread this particular form of Islam and has become so mainstream within Sunni Islam that a lot of Sunni Muslims simply think that the Wahhabi interpretation is authentic Islam. The idea that you can't listen to music, that women have to be deeply segregated and marginalized, you can't wish your Christian friends marry Christmas, all of these issues that didn't have any particular grounding in Muslim societies until relatively recently. If you look at Muslim societies in the 40s and 50s, they were much more tolerant, much more open than they are today. And a big part of that has to do with the spreading and the mainstreaming and the negative effects of Saudi education. Just to give you an example, I was in Malaysia in late September and I was actually shocked when I went to Malaysia how mainstream Saudi Wahhabi views had dominated the periphery of the Islamic world. And so the big debate when I arrived in Malaysia is how there is this debate in Malaysian society as to whether minority groups, Christians and Hindus primarily, can use the word Allah, which means God in Arabic, in their own religious scriptures and texts. And these Sunni Muslim groups were saying, no, that is a word that can only and exclusively be used. And this is a big debate. And this comes out of a particular Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. But of course, you can't, I think, understand the negative and corrosive effects of Saudi Arabia and Wahhabi Islam, unless you also honestly look at the very close and symbiotic relationship that Saudi Arabia has had with the West since 1945 when President Roosevelt met with then-King Ibn Saud on an aircraft carrier and struck on a certain alliance with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is often referred to as one of those moderate Arab states, but I don't see any moderation within Saudi society. And we're really exposed to this. This is not something new. Everyone sort of instinctively knows this. And on September 11th in the United States, it was reported that 15 out of the 19 hijackers came from one country. That's not, Saudi Arabia, that's not, I think, an accident, it's not a fluke. It suggests something deeply problematic, something deeply wrong with internal Saudi politics that a lot of young men, and we're not talking about the poorest of the poor, we're talking about middle-class educated men feel that their best way to spend their lives, or in this case, end their lives, is to engage in this type of suicide operation. It's been reported that Saudi nationals have carried out 60% of the ISIS attacks in Iraq since September and October of this year. 60% of the ISIS attacks are coming from Saudi nationals, many of them coming across the border, for reasons that I think are deeply connected to, 9-11. And the fact that 15 out of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, so this is a big part. If you look at the actual textbooks that are used in the ISIS schools, the interpretation of Islam, the sighting of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, it comes straight out of the Saudi Wahhabi narrative. That's the dominant ideological interpretation. So in summary, I think it's due to this particular puritanical, idealized, and thoroughly mythogelized view of the past that Wahhabi Islam cannot, I think, reconcile its theological interpretation with the complexity and the diversity of cultures that constitute our modern world. And as a result, Wahhabi influence has added a dimension of oppressiveness and vehemence to contemporary Muslim life that frequently borders on the morbid, and you can see it in the theological justifications and the behavior of the Islamic state. This also, I think, partially explains why some young Muslims in the West have left their homes thinking that the Islamic state somehow embodies this model of Islamic authenticity because it's very much the mainstreaming of Sunni Islam in North American communities and in Western communities that contributes to this type of radicalization. There's a lot more to the question of youth radicalization, but this is a big part of it. So in summary, just by way of a conclusion here, I think we're now facing in the Arab Islamic world a series of events that in many ways were predictable and were actually forecast many years ago, 14 years ago, in a series of Arab human development reports written by a leading team of Arab social scientists, they actually forecasted and predicted that the region was heading toward a deep crisis and a coming explosion. In 2002, in the first of these UN Arab human development reports, these reports concluded that the Arab world is at a crossroads and that the region is hampered by three key deficits that are considered to be defining features of the Arab world. Number one, a freedom deficit. Number two, a women's empowerment deficit. And number three, a knowledge deficit. Compared with the rest of the world, the Arab countries have the lowest freedom scores in the 1990s and when measured by indicators such as political processes, civil liberties, political rights, and free media, the Arab region had the lowest value of all the regions of the world when measured by voice and accountability. Similarly, in terms of the status of women, the Arab Human Development Report of 2002 revealed that by applying the UN gender empowerment measure to the Arab world, it revealed that this region was suffering from a glaring deficit of women's empowerment. Among the regions of the world, the Arab world ranks next to last as measured by the gender empowerment measure. Only Sub-Saharan Africa had a lower score. The 2004 UN Arab Development Report on the theme of freedom and good governance focused on questions of civil and political rights, popular participation, representative institutions, political accountability of leadership, the existence of the rule of law, quality of treatment and independent judiciary, et cetera. All of these were in short supply. And so I'm reminded of, I think, the words of one of my favorite commentators on the Arab world, Rami Hori, who in commenting on the rise of ISIS, had the following words to say. He said that in the 45 years of his writing about the Arab world, observing and commenting on it in terms of the conditions on the ground, the only thing that surprised him was why such an extremist phenomenon, such as ISIS, had not happened earlier. At least since around the 1970s, the average Arab citizen has lived in political, economic and social systems that have offered zero accountability, political rights and participation. States have been characterized by steadily expanding dysfunction and corruption. Economic disparities have driven majorities into chronic poverty and humiliating inaction. And he goes on to note that these trends are a direct result of the existing authoritarian political order in the Arab world. This political order has virtually banned the development of one's full human potential in terms of intellect, creativity, public participation, culture, identity. The Islamic State phenomenon is the latest and perhaps not the final stop on a journey of mass Arab humiliation and dehumanization that has been primarily managed by autocratic Arab regimes that revolve around single families or clans with immense and continuing support from foreign patrons, foreign military attacks on Arab countries in Iraq and Libya, I think of, in some cases, exacerbated this trend as has Israel's aggression against the Palestinian people. But the single biggest driver of this kind of criminal Islamic extremism that we see today in the form of ISIS is predicated on the fact that several hundred millions of individual Arab men and women find that generation after generation that their own societies, in their own societies, they are unable to achieve their full humanity or potential or exercise their full powers of thought and creativity. And in many cases, they are prevented from obtaining the basic necessities of life for themselves and their families. There was only one anecdote to the antidote to this long run process that can, I think, fundamentally eliminate the Islamic state and all that represents. That is to stop pursuing the abusive and criminal policies that have demeaned millions of Arab men and women and shaped Arab societies for the last half century. Bombing Iraq and Syria, I think, will gain some needed time and probably must happen in combination with a series of military actions by local governments and Kurdish forces. However, if the ways of the corrupt Arab modern security state are not radically reversed, the mass desperation and hysteria that the Islamic state represents, I think, will only reemerge again in more extreme forms in the years to come. And so I think that, in a nutshell, I think provides the broad political and historic context that explains the rise of the Islamic state. I wanted to comment on the whole question of Obama and his strategy, whether it'll work or won't work or what the best plan forward is, but I want to leave some time for questions and answers and I think I've gone over the 30 minutes that I was allotted. So I'll stop there. I thank you for your attention. I look forward to your questions. Thank you.


She has about four thousand dollars worth of items that are from big screen televisions to computers to Keeneland bags plus UK basketball tickets plus four big blue madness tickets. Those tickets will be raffled off at twenty five dollars each or five for a hundred dollars but if you want to come up here on the evening of Wednesday the 21st or the day of Thursday the 20 seconds you don't have to be a player bring a bag of non-perishable food and that will be given to the Mud Creek Food Bank Clinic which is part of the clinic the Food Bank and you'll get a free raffle ticket.


YouTube, how's it going? Should I say, how's the trollage? So one of your little trolls suggested that I watch some of these trollage videos as we are on Groho's Tube channel. Shout out to him, go check him out and all that good stuff.  I don't know man, let's just go ahead and watch them. These things are twisted. And our first video is the trollage playground incident.  Step two, you want to play on the playground in the mall. Step three, call to your friend and say him about your idea. Step four, he agrees. Step five, don't say your mom about your plans.  Son? No, I want to go for a walk with my friend. Okay, but don't walk too late. Okay, let's go outside. Step seven, meet with your friend. Hi, what's up? Okay, some of our classmates playing on the playground not far from here. Let's play with them. Alright. Definitely sus. Step eight, go to the mall. Step nine, enter the building. We need to find this place. Step ten, find the playground and play on it. Three hours later. Step eleven, you have been playing so long that you didn't know this place closed. Step twelve, get call from your mother. Where are you? You made me worry. Mom, don't worry. We played in the playground at the mall for so long that we didn't notice the place closed. We will have a serious conversation. Oh, he's in trouble. Find sheltered place to sleep. Okay. Good night. Wait, was she? Good night. She told him to sleep in the mall. Step thirteen, your friend had the same conversation with mom. I don't want to sleep. Do you? No, I don't. Step fourteen, you want to sleep. Step fifteen, sleep. What the heck? Step sixteen, you wake up with strange voices in the middle of the night. Bro, I think that's like the back room, bro. Explore the stories of sound. They're like in the back room's playground or something. Step eighteen, it was a strange creature. Step eighteen, it's not a spew. Yo, what the? I feel like terrified. Step twenty, run to your friend and tell him about it. But I wouldn't have been out of that. Step twenty-three, die. Okay, maybe not. Step thirty, although he found you. I was right. Oh, it's a worker. Oh, man. And that's why you shouldn't sneak off to the playground. That took a turn, man. All right, our next video is the trollage empty world incident. Step one, wake up. I believe there's steps to these types of videos all the time. It's really nice weather today. Step two, have your breakfast. It's very tasty. By the way, where is my mother? Maybe she's at work now. Step three, go to your friend to play in his house. Why is it so quiet outside today? Step four, don't pay attention and continue the way. I would totally freak out if I were to be like the last person on earth. Step five, you have arrived. Step six, knock on the door. Step seven, no one opened the door. Strange. Step eight, call to your friend. Step nine, there was no connection. Oh, he started to freak out. Step ten, go for a walk in the city. Three hours later. Damn it, I can't find anyone for three hours. Step eleven, it's getting dark. It's getting dark. How do you not realize? It becomes creepy. I need to go home. Step twelve, you see someone at the end of the street.  That was easy. Oh, heck no. Dude, that didn't look crazy. Step twenty, go up to the second floor. Come on, you got this, I believe in you. What's going on here? Where is my mother? Where is my friend? Where is everyone? Step twenty-two, I heard that someone break down the front door. Oh, why did he shoot? Bro had the shawty on there. So did that like eat everybody on earth or what? All right, that was crazy, man. Now we got the trollage swimming pool incident. One, watch some TV. Step two, realize that you want to swim in the pool. Step three, go to the swimming pool. There's someone stalking him. Step four, I know you have came. Step five, swim. Step six, have fun. Step seven, note the strange corridor pool. Step eight, explore it. Don't mess up. Bro, he's creeping hard. You have found another path. Step ten, realize that you are alone here. Step eleven, go back. Step thirteen, don't panic. Try to find another ways from here. Hey, where did the other guy go? Oh, heck no. He just came up. Transformation. What happened to my man? Dude, what happened to him? He was trapped, he panicked, and he transformed, but... What? Alright, and for our final clip, we got the trollage, the falling elevator incident. Step one, sleep. Step two, someone is calling you. That's a scam, likely, bro. Step three, it's your friend. Step four, he suggests you to go for a walk. Okay, a little straw with a friend. Step five, get dressed. Step six, call the elevator. Step seven, get on the elevator. Step eight, press the button. Step nine, the elevator starts going down. Oh, here we go. Step ten, start getting discussed. His face. I just have to wait until it gets fixed. One hour later. Oh, yep, he's gone insane. Why does it take so long? Step 11, you hear that something is ripping. Step 12, it was the game of the hell. No way. Oh. The falling elevator incident 2025. What? Bro, we're building 2022. Right, so, actually I heard one way to survive an elevator when it's like collapsing, you have to like lie on your back and apparently you'll survive it. I don't know if it's true or not, but that's what I heard. All right, well, those were some trollage videos. If you guys want to part two, let me know down in the comments below because there's just a lot of these videos. There's like endless trollage videos. It's insane. It feels like it's almost a troll itself. But thank you all for watching. Thank you all for making support and I'll catch you guys in the next one.