My inflation is a universal concern and Nigeria is no exception. Rapid price increases in construction materials, labor costs and even land prices can disrupt project timelines and budgets. In such an environment, it becomes essential to reassess strategies and adapt to the change in landscape. Now, my guest Oladeji Adilye is a seasoned professional with a diverse background spanning industries such as oil and gas, hospitality and telecom, with almost a decade of real estate expertise. He is the visionary founder of Fine Breaks Properties and Investment Limited. His dedication to alleviating Nigeria's housing deficit prepares his leadership where he guides a motivated team. He joins me now as we discuss how to unravel the elements contributing to failures in real estate startups. Many thanks for joining me, Oladeji. Thank you. Alright, like I said in my introduction, Nigeria is actually facing its own share of inflation and other macroeconomic challenges. But specifically, what are the foundational aspects that, you know, militate against the growth of real estate, specifically for startups who fail in less than five years? Thank you, my brother. I think the first thing that we need to know is information. We need to understand the dynamics of the market. It's very, very important. Real estate business is just like every other business. But the truth of the matter is there are things that you need to know that are unique to the real estate industry. So before you can say you want to start up anything first, you need that information. You need to understand the dynamics. Every business is our own, I mean its own dynamic, sorry. Real business is our own dynamics and if you don't understand this, there's no way you can be able to do whatever you need to do. After understanding this, then you need to also know what, you need to create your niche. What exactly am I doing? What value am I bringing to the table? When you know all those things then you can be able to plan your way through. A lot of, it's good that today we have youths, youths are taking over businesses, we're having CEOs everywhere, managing directors everywhere, the Gen Zs are taking over, which is good. I'm also a Gen Z, so it's fine but we need to plan. A lot of us don't plan, we just jump into it because my friend is doing it and I see that my friend do not have a car today, tomorrow he's driving a car, I want to do it too. So yeah it's good, any business that is viable, you see a lot of persons that want to do it, but again you need to plan your way. For us we plan, we have a milestone, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years and we know what we want to achieve in 3 years, we know what we want to achieve in 5 years, we know what we want to achieve in 10 years. So you need this, it's very very important to plan. The first like I said is to understand it, have an information about it, understand the dynamics, then you need to then plan, okay I've understood it, this is the way I want to run it, this is the way I want to do it. So these things are basics and they are important, they are fundamentals, if you don't have this there's no way you can move forward. It is when you are able to plan that you know the kind of team you want to bring in. Alright thank you Digi, I know the place of, you've talked about education and planning, but for startups who actually attend to failing in less than 5 years, where do they go to get the right education and knowledge and know exactly how to plan, you talked about milestones, 5, 10, 15 years, how do they get this knowledge? Okay so the thing is learning is continuous, you can't stop it, you need to keep learning.  Now what the mentorship, the mentor would do for you is to streamline your scope of experience, to tell you that okay you don't need to go that far, I've gone there before, I've seen the way it is, you don't need to go that same way, you can then look at it and say okay I think I can play around it instead of going through maybe going like a five years whatever, you can do it within a year and still achieve what you need to achieve and there are a lot of real estate schools around. We that are established, we also train people to do that you know but if you don't learn these things, if you don't learn it, there's no way you can't succeed in it. So there's a lot of platform, even online you can learn how to do, real estate business is just like every other business, it's just that you need to just understand some customise or unique dynamics about it but it's just like every other business. It's like every other business but then it's not an all commerce affair. Yeah yeah maybe, maybe it's not but again like I said if you understand business you can do real estate, all you need to do is just get a mentor that can mentor you, you know, understand some persons that have achieved in not just any other person, people that have truly achieved that you can say okay these ones have done this, they have achieved this. If you want to go into construction, I can just jump into construction. Yeah I studied accounting, but now I'm doing construction. I understood these some persons, I understood they ask questions, I went to schools, you know I'm running a program, I've done that before, I'm starting another one in Lagos Business School that tells me, you know, teaches me some things I need to know about real estate. So you can learn in all aspects of life, either go to the real estate institution that we have around the good one, not just any one or get a mentor that can help you or you look for, you join a real estate team and understand them so that you can have a practical experience. So the place of learning and education cannot be overemphasized. Okay let's talk about some people because I don't know if it's them putting their horse before the carts or cart before the horse as the case may be, but the thing is that over time you find some of them, I don't know if they're just been on screw pillars or something, but they tend to promote lots of business real estate opportunities, they tell you you can invest in this estate, you can invest here. So over time they tend to collect people's money, you know, and they're supposed to allot lands, landed properties to them, but over time you find that that they are issues, is it that they did not do their right planning or they did not set so the land grabbers or the community chiefs or what exactly are the issues, because they tend to collect money and at the end of the day people are looking for them here to scout them. So I was somewhere and I was discussing about the pitfall in real estate investment, I think I mentioned this too. Any business in the world or maybe in Nigeria, knowing the world that is viable, you see a lot of persons want to go into it, the business is selling, is making money, I see my mates, they are driving good cars, they are not doing yaw yaw yaw, you ask them what are they doing, they say they are into real estate business. So somebody says like money. Exactly. So the business is viable and any business that is viable, you see a lot of persons going into it. Now, it takes time, it takes consistency for people who are really serious to prove a point. It's not everybody that is going into the business that really want to add value, some just want to go there. But these days, they turn real estate business to show business. How so? Yeah, because I want to drive the best car and someone that is selling land somewhere that is having just 3A car, is driving a car of 80 million, is having like four different models, is having PA, is having this, is having that without proper planning. So a lot of distraction is there. Now, when the purpose, there's a say that when the purpose of a thing is not known, abuse is inevitable. If you know the reason why you're doing this and you really want to stay, I tell my client, I tell people that I don't want to be in the business because I just want to make money. Yeah, I want to make money, but I also want to add value. I want people to talk about my business, the way they are talking about Coca-Cola today. I want people to talk about my business, the way they are talking about the dango taste, the alabu kung of today. I heard that alabu kung is over 100 years. I also want to do, run a business like that. And in fact, I was, I was partnering with some persons before, but when I saw that they got distracted, I had to leave to start up my own, because I know where I'm going. So it's about focus. It's about focus. You have to be focused. If you're not focused, you get distracted. A lot of, like I said, money distracts you. You see money, you look at your account, you've seen 100 million, 200 million, 500 million. Ah, you're looking at, okay, what can I buy now? Okay, I want to travel this, I want to go here, I want to do that, without doing what you are supposed to do. Due to legends. And when you have too much money, you just keep throwing it everywhere. And that's a place of the information I talked about earlier. It's important that you are well informed before you go into the business, because there are a lot of, the more the money, the more the challenges. And it's very, very risky. The challenges, real estate can take you up in a second and bring you down less than a second. So it's crazy. So you have to understand this. If you don't, there might be a problem. Okay, fine. In as much as you talked about information and being focused and all of that, can we look at other pitfalls that are inherent in the real estate market? There are a lot of pitfalls in the real estate market. The first one is information. Another thing is financing. Financing is key. I thought there was so much money to play with in real estate. So yeah, there is, but it's for those that are well established. I will put my money if I don't trust you. True. I will put my money if I can trust you. Or probably I have someone that can vouch for you. So if you don't get those things, if you are just starting up, you might not be able to get that. So funding might be your problem. And I pray that Anjia will change soon because he's not really helping. Banks are not even looking at your side because you are just new. They can't tell what you can do. They can't answer. But you don't have a track record. Exactly, no track record. So funding is another problem. If you don't have good financing, it's a problem. Aside from people borrowing your money, there are a lot of regulations that you need to abide with.  If you are doing construction, there are processes. If you don't do all those things, it can bring you down. But because I want to quickly make money, I don't have good intention initially. I just want to quickly make money. I won't go through those processes. I want to bypass the process. And if issues happen at the end of the day, it affects me. Another problem again that I can talk about is client retention. A lot of us don't have the ability to retain our clients. What is that an issue really? Yeah, it is because if you are servicing me, if I need your service and you are able to service me, you are able to provide my desire for me. You should be able to follow through. A lot of us don't do that. Now I can pick my calls. Client can call me just because I have some millions of NERA in my account. I'll give my phone to the PA. They want to talk to me. They can't talk to me. Even my partners in the business can't talk to me. People can advise me. I feel like I know too much because I've been able to do one or two things. Those things are also a problem. Okay, so I haven't looked at that. I know some people started business or the real estate business. Let's say they still test startups as it were. They started that maybe some two years ago and now this year we had a change of administration and the macroeconomic environment has been changed over time with different policies. So how far would you say or how much would you say the macroeconomic indices affect startups in the real estate business? So we all know that, like I said, it's still part of the funding because these days people don't even want to invest in real estate. They're even bound to tell you that they don't give loans to real estate companies because people are not buying property as such to them. They think the market demand is dropping because of inflation everywhere. You're having price increases everywhere. In fact, people want to eat first before they start thinking of buying houses and stuff. And people in the hospital that feel they want to do business, not those that just want to buy for residential or whatever. Those that want to do business in Nigeria, they're looking at the exchange rate and it's not encouraging for them. So most of them are taking their money out. So it has really, really affected a lot of startup companies. If not just startup companies, most of the companies are really being affected. But I hope this new administration, they are going to do some things to caution the effects. Okay, so fine. What would you really advise? Now, I know we've talked about some of the challenges that are facing real estate development in the country. But some people, despite the challenges, they still want to linger in the business. They still feel that there's much to be done. For someone who is just really starting out right now, and you've talked about education, you've talked about information and focus now. So what other aspects should he be focusing on aside from this client retention that you've talked about? There's a say that not all things are glitters are gold. True. You need to understand this ab initio that is not because the business is viable. It will have its own challenges. There are unique challenges, unique challenges. I can't start mentioning on her. So you need to be ready for this challenge. There's a level you get in business that you play to. So it takes additional information, additional knowledge. It takes people to push you further than the way you are. So you need to be ready to be mentored. You need to be ready for any challenges that come. Challenges come in different manners. The challenge you're going to face in this project might be different from the one you face in this project. So it comes in a unique system. So you need to be ready for this. And your purpose needs to be clear. You need to have a clear purpose. If you have a clear purpose, this guy will be your stepping stone. So as we round off right now, still talking about real estate generally. Now this is a sector where you've been there for over 10 years. And you know all of the issues, all of the challenges, the prospect, even threats. How can government come in maybe in terms of policies or regulations to ensure that the real estate market is stabilized and there's a bit of sanity in it? So I think the first thing is, which I think they are doing, but probably maybe they need to do more. Maybe they need to do more. It's having a regulatory body that will really do the job, not just there to exploit people. People that will really do the job. An association that will do the job, that will help to enlighten people, that will help to reduce the risk. That's number one. Governments also need to put more money in real estate because I think as of February this year, real estate contributed 4.9% to the GDP of the nation. And we know that this time around we're talking about diversifying because that's a way to go now. So if you're diversifying into buying local product and stuff, real estate is also what happens within. So if government can put more money into it, we would have enough time like for us because we can't do beyond 12 months payment plan. But if government can come in and assist financially, we could bring in more pages for like 10 years, for like 20 years and stuff. Thank you so much, Oladeji. There's always never enough time when you are talking about some salient teachers because time is never your friend. But I'm sure we'd have to bring you back on the show to talk more about the real estate problem. All right, my guest has been Oladeji at DOE. He is a seasoned professional in the real estate firm. And of course, he is a visionary founder of fine breaks and properties and investment limited. And he joined me to talk about the challenges for startups in real estate in Nigeria.


We're going to get started. Thank you for coming and braving the weather today. I'm Kayla Christensen, Director of Communications for Public Safety. It's my pleasure to introduce Executive Director Rivers. All right. Good morning. Thanks for braving the weather. I'm going to be quick and to the point. I want to begin by thanking the Chief and his command staff. They took over mid-year. They've done an exceptional job. But I also want to talk about some of the challenges for public safety, in particular the Police Department at this time in the history of Denver. You know, last year we have more and more people moving in. The largest population we've ever had. There's a lot of challenges for the Police Department due to that. But then if you also look at the events that we've had in the growth of events in this community, that happens kind of organically. A lot of people are out promoting those events. But that puts a lot of stress on the Police Department. Puts a lot of stress on public safety. And I can tell you that Chief Payson and his very qualified command staff have done a good job dealing with that. But I also need to say a thank you to our rank and file. Those officers and civilian employees, they're always nimble. They work very hard. They address some of the rapidly growing elements within our community. So we're very pleased with that. One thing that we're not so pleased about is that we're seeing some increases in certain types of crime that the Chief is going to get into here in a moment. I will just simply say this. When you look at the crime rates, I want you to remember, one, that we have far too many people using weapons to sell disputes at this time in Denver's history. And we need the public's help. If you see someone in an argument, you see someone that is in some type of altercation, please call the police immediately. You may be stopping an aggravated assault or potentially a murder as well. It's important for the police to be involved early and often in these cases. No one's going to be upset if you call the Police Department if you see someone arguing. We want to restore order and peace. With that said, I want to thank Chief Payson for his leadership. I want to ask Deputy Chief Archer to come up here as well and also answer any questions you may have. But thank you for being here in Chief. It's all yours. Thank you. Thank you, Director. We appreciate it. What was passed out, you have a copy of the 2018 crime stats. That's the UCR Universal Crime Reporting, as well as the Niber's National Incident-Based Reporting System. We share this, this is posted online, and really what we're here to talk about is digging into these numbers and seeing what trends, what patterns are taking place, and essentially what we can do about them. It's not a secret that our homicide rate is up and we have drilled down extensively with our major crimes and homicide unit team, our analysts to make sure that we identify any of those patterns, the causal factors, and really what we're looking for are root causes. Many of the initiatives that we have addressed or recently enacted are to directly target these types of crimes and do something about them. Violent crime is up, as you can see from the year-end reports. Really what is driving that is homicide as well as aggravated assault. Homicides are up 17% over 2017. In 2018, we had unfortunately 67 people in 60 incidents. We had many or five double homicides and one triple homicides that contributed greatly to that number. Aggravated assaults, we see nearly the same increase, a 16.9% increase on par with our three-year average. What we've noticed to reiterate the words that Executive Director Riggs spoke of is 25% of these increased with use of weapons, firearms. We need to do something about this. There were 214 guns stolen in Denver last year. That is up from the previous years. When we're looking at commonalities, gang violence is also up 15%. Over the three-year period, we're actually down 21%, but we see that spike from 2017 and we have plans to initiate or to address that. Domestic violence is also up 37% over our three-year average, 30% over 2017. Again, we have to do better moving forward. And as we alluded to those gun crimes, with the homicides, firearms were the most common weapon used. 47 incidents resulting in 49 victims. I'm sorry, 42 incidents resulting in 49 victims. Did I say 49 twice? I think I did. All right, thank you. Six of those weapons were stolen. All 10 of our gang-motivated homicides, a firearm, was used. We see an increase in robberies involving the use of guns, an 8% increase over the three-year period. We're about flat compared to 2017 with that same comparison. And then robberies involving a gun accounted for 41% of all the robberies in Denver. Many challenges there with regards to violent crimes. Property crimes, we see a slight increase in 2018 versus 2017. And really what was driving that number was car break-ins, step-for-motor vehicles. And we can talk more extensively about that as we move forward. Really, again, kudos to the analytical team in the Denver Police Department and the Safety Department for really drilling down into these issues. We have launched many initiatives. We have additional programs and initiatives that we will be launching or announcing as soon as next week. We have a couple more in the coming weeks that we will be talking about. But how we are going to address this increase in violent crime is utilizing our precision policing model. This is a component of the Denver Opportunity Index. There's a geographical and innovation and a technology component to this. Some of those initiatives that we've already discussed and announced is that city-wide impact team, that social harms reduction team. When we talk about drilling down and looking at those causal factors, we see a thread or a commonality with those social harms that we talk about, mental health and substance abuse. Utilizing this team, a team of officers and a full-time mental health clinician, we are confident that that will assist us, as well as additional partnerships and collaborations with other city agencies, other nonprofits, other faith-based groups to assist us in that level. We've also initiated, we see a nexus to narcotics. There were seven of these incidences where narcotics were involved, and we've launched a mid-level narcotics team to help us address these concerns. We started them just weeks ago, and the results have been great so far. Over 35 pounds of methamphetamine taken off the streets in just the last few weeks. Also, we've seen six incidences where domestic violence was involved. We want to continue to support the tremendous advocates out there that continue to help the victim side of the equation. What we are doing is launching a program to get enhanced resources and support enhanced outreach to the offender side of the domestic violence equation. We believe that the program that you will hear more about here in the near future addresses both sides of this, and we believe that that will assist us in addressing the increase in domestic violence incidences. Overall, our precision policing model is about enhanced public-private partnerships, which again we'll be discussing next week, as well as enhanced local and federal partnerships. We have a great program that will be announced in the coming weeks with regards to this partnership with other metro departments, as well as enhancing that relationship with our federal partners, as well as using the latest technology. We believe that there are four small suppliers out there that can help us keep this city safe, and you will be hearing more about that. Overall, our precision policing model is a comprehensive approach that involves more than just the police department. Violent crime is an issue that we all need to work to address. That's connecting with community members, the nonprofits, the faith-based groups, the other city agencies, as well as our law enforcement partners to address this in a holistic way. I've spoken way too much as it is, so at this time, if you have any questions, we'd be happy to answer them. It sounds like violence in general is a gang violence, domestic violence, and is there any overall indication of what's causing that, or is it just cyclical? That's part of what our team has done, the deep dive into the data. We have looked for those commonalities, 10 incidents with gang members being motivated, as well as the six incidents with domestic violence. There are pre-indicators in some of these cases, and we want to make sure that we can identify what those pre-indicators are and do this outreach to folks to see if we can get them into supportive services and prevent the violence from occurring in the future. That's what you will hear a lot more of here soon with Division Chief Montoya's Domestic Violence Prevention Program that we have recently launched. Part of our model, we've actually increased the staffing over there. We've added six full-time members to the gang unit team. I can't emphasize this enough in our preventative model. Much of this is looking back at those social harms, mental health and substance abuse. We want to do outreach and identify if there are challenges within the home, if young people are dealing with parents or grandparents that have challenges with mental health and substance abuse, and they're out, they're concerned for their own safety, and that's why there's an increase in guns. We're looking at all of these, but there is just as much outreach as there is enforcement as we move forward in this plan, because we want to tackle this on multiple levels. It's more than just going out and arresting the perpetrator and thinking that all of the violence is going to stop in the future. This is a multi-tiered approach to really get to those root causes, the social harms. We're dealing with the current situation as well as looking forward in a proactive way to address these issues, and that's what we're doing with domestic violence. That's what we're doing with reducing gang violence as well. How about we go? So I'll hand just slightly each other. You were speaking about three-year trends being up, but then just from the data you gave us from 2017 to 2018, it's really relatively flat. Can you elaborate on the three-year trend versus the one-year and if there's any reason for the flatness? So, as we see historically, there's ebbs and flows, and when we do our crime strategy briefing, we look year-to-year as well as a three-year. We want to make sure that, for example, this time last year, if you compared the first three or four weeks of 2017 and 2018, you would see a dramatic drop in homicides. We were near 10 incidents at the beginning of the year last year where we were at one incident. We'd sit here and say, pat ourselves on the back and claim that we're making progress. You need to look at those bigger pictures and make sure that you're examining a broad view of these challenging aspects and making sure that our comprehensive plans are there to look at the short-term, making sure that we are addressing those short-term challenges without losing sight of the long-term preventative issues or preventative models that are going to assist us as we move forward. Did I answer the question appropriately? One year, though, the flatness, do you attribute that to anything or is that just kind of your saying is kind of a fluke because it must still be much? Exactly. I'm saying that it is important to look at year-to-year, but it's also important to broaden your perspective and look at that three-year trend as well. The more information with regards to violent crime in general gives us a better opportunity to enhance our strategies to address it. I'm sorry, at least. Have you guys looked at it? Were there any trends or factors that are shared? So without getting in front of our community partners and you heard us allude to these public-private partnerships that we have, we recognize that we as the police department can't solve all of these issues alone, but what I can say is we have a big announcement next week to address exactly what you've seen there, and it is truly a collaborative partnership with stakeholders beyond just the Denver Police Department, beyond the safety department, beyond the city and county of Denver to enhance the safety of the neighborhoods you just spoke of. A little off-topic, but I've been asked to ask you a question about post-city ordinance being considered next week that will allow the independent monitor to oversee investigations into your position, to your juxtaposition, and just your opinion on that. So we support oversight, we support... We just got done talking about collaborations and partnerships. We're being transparent with these numbers, providing them as well as our plans. We'll continue to do that. We'll continue to work with the OIM's office to ensure accountability and transparency within the Denver Police Department. What's their goal? So we're really excited about this team, and they've actually served us remarkably well in the short amount of time that they've been in place. You're right, there is a response. When you have a violent crime that happens, it has a negative impact on the community. Fear of crime, we have to make sure that we're addressing fear of crime as well. So with this supportive team, after a violent incident, we go in there and make sure that those needs are addressed. However, this team is designed to be proactive as well. So by permanently assigning or by having a full-time mental health clinician as part of this team, it's all about those social harms. Again, instead of just looking at the initial incident itself and holding an individual accountable for that and thinking that the crime is going away, we need to look at those drivers. Mental health and substance abuse has a tremendous linkage and root cause to many of these incidents, and we are proactively attempting to address this with this team, as well as with our homeless outreach team, with the clinicians that we have that are assigned to patrol officers. We want to make sure that we are looking at these violent crime issues in a much broader way moving forward. Signs leading up to it, and if somebody intervened, you could have perhaps been prevented. Is that kind of what you're talking about? Yes, it is. And we see that with domestic violence, our domestic violence prevention program. You heard that from Executive Director Riggs, the Denver Opportunity Index, using the data that we have to make sure that we're focusing our efforts, that precision policing model to reduce the social harms that often are the social determinants or the impacts that have causal factors to crime occurring in the first place. So you are correct. That's drilling down into the data that we do have, as well as looking at any of the pre-indicators that can assist us and do this in an outreach and supportive way. Exactly. I would love to just echo Executive Director's words. If you see something, if you see somebody that's involved in a disturbance, a fight, an assault, please let us know. We want to get there. We want to help people and prevent future violence or higher levels of violence. So to your words, see something, say something. We want for us to be successful, it's better if the 700,000 plus residents of Denver are assisting us in this, that they're letting people know that they're calling 911 when they see something and the police are responding to those types of situations. Thank you, Sharon. So again, to be respectful to our partners and all of the hard work that they've done over the last couple of months to get this, I don't want to get ahead of that particular announcement, but essentially it's technology, using technology that assists us in not only responding to crime but preventing crime. Yeah. You see, I talk too much, right? That's pretty much the same. I'm so glad that you asked that question. So domestic violence is one of the key areas that's up, but also assault to police officers or assault to sheriff's deputies account for 30% of these crimes. So that is a challenge, right? You have our law enforcement team that is out there trying to keep the community safe, and we saw a huge spike in assaults to both law enforcement officers, Denver police officers, as well as Denver sheriff's deputies in 2018. You're right. We are a growing city, and the mayor, budget management, city council has supported the Denver Police Department. We're a growing police department in order to meet a growing city's needs. So our staffing has increased, and we are continuing to work together to ensure that the police department has the resources necessary to meet these growing demands. We work very closely using data to ensure that we have the appropriate number out there, and we continue to look inward as well. And part of this process, we freed up at least eight officers and a supervisor to go back out on the street. So we look internally, are there things that we can do to maximize the staffing that we have? This is something that just happened over the last couple of weeks as well, at the same time that we're looking at a growing city and growing demands. Beyond just the population, there's also a growing number of events. This year was a record year for this city to host many great events. We want to make sure that each one of those go off safely, and so those are challenges that the leadership within the city has supported us, and we anticipate that they would continue to support us. We are working towards a number of officers, both internal and external, to make sure that we do have the resources necessary. This is part of the civilian report writers that we have. Again, if we want to make sure that we're rightsizing the department, if a position would be better filled by a civilian and allow for a patrol officer to get back on the street, then that's what we continue to do. We utilize data to make sure that the calls for service that we have, calls for service slightly increased in 2018, but our officers did more self-initiated, proactive outreach, subject stops, traffic stops, all of that than they did in 2017. At the same time that you have this growing police department and a slight increase in calls for service, I believe it was about 1%, you had about a 2.5% increase in officers doing self-initiated, proactive, preventative work to try to reduce the crime that we're facing.


Welcome to the sixth meeting of 2021 in session six of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. We have one public item on our agenda this morning that is consideration of the continued petition PE1787 on the use of Macaton sign language in the legal system and our fair members to paper one. Members will recall that we took evidence from the petitioner Sandra Docherty at our meeting on 13 December last year, after which we agreed for the clerks to write to Scottish Government officials for their initial thoughts on the evidence. The clerks' notes summarises the Scottish Government response, which is included as an annex to the paper. Notes that Scottish Government highlights a range of measures that enable the provision of communication support within the legal system and suggests that perhaps a wider range of support is needed than Macaton alone can provide. Members will recall during the evidence session that we discussed whether there was any data on the number of Macaton users and support providers. The Scottish Government response points us towards the public guardian in Scotland and the Mental Wealth here commission for Scotland, who might hold that relevant information. The clerks' note also provides the option of us writing to the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service and Police Scotland to establish whether they have any records in that area. The Scottish Government also draws attention to recommendation 5.1 of the recent report by the Scottish Mental Health Law Review and offers to keep the committee updated in relation to its response to that recommendation. It is a relatively helpful response from the Scottish Government, but it is now for us to decide how we feel that we would want to take that forward or close the petition.  Yes, thank you convener. First off, I have to say that I am so grateful to Sandra for the petitioner for bringing this to the committee. She has done an exceptional amount of work to get it this far. I think that what she has also done is widened the conversation around Macaton. It has brought it into a lot of people's awareness and elected representatives specifically. The only concern that I would have in relation to the petition is that I feel that the scope of it is so narrow and that it would limit the potential of what we could actually do in relation to Macaton in the Qualities Committee. I would like to do a broader piece of work and I am not quite sure if we can do that with this. I think that the committee could take a decision to broaden the scope of a work that has been inspired by this petition for sure. I agree with the sentiment that Karen expressed there. With this petition, we have been able to consider Macaton and some other issues that maybe we have not before. For me, I think specifically about this petition. I know that if we could close it, we could keep it open, we could widen work. My concern with closing it just now, as it stands, is that I am not sure that that closes the loop for the petitioner, for Sandra herself. We have sent her the Scottish Governance response, but I think that I would like to give her the opportunity to come back to us with any final comments. I also think that there is something about that wider work that Karen talks about. The balance that we have in the papers is the balance between accessibility and judicial rigour, which is quite important. It is quite a narrow line in some ways, but I would like to see us explore, not only in justice but in other areas as well, how we can bring Macaton much more into our understanding of accessible communication and what are the knock-on consequences for the public services that we rely on. I think that I would like us to keep the petitioner open for now, to give Sandra an opportunity to come back to us, but also to say that we do see that as kicking off a wider body of work. We can then, over the coming weeks, months, however long it takes, see how we take that forward. I want to say that I agree completely with what Karen Adam and Maggie Chapman have said. I think that, ultimately, we need to be closing off the petition, but we need to keep Sandra involved in that loop and let her know exactly what we are thinking about. More work to be done would be ideal. We would give us time to develop what that work might look like, get it to Sandra in other stakeholders for their feedback on it and then progress it forward. Just like others as well, I want to put on record my thanks to Sandra when she came in front of the committee. She was absolutely fantastic in her passion for this area. It is there for all to see. We need to have that on record. She has done a really good thing by bringing this into the public domain and giving us the initiative, if you like, to take it further and to make life better for people. My thanks to Sandra as well. I am not overly comfortable with closing it today, but I do think that we need to get to that point probably a wee bit more work that we need to do just to get there. I would like to put on record my thanks to the petitioner for drawing this to the attention of not just the committee but other committees and indeed the Parliament. It is a really important issue that they have brought up. I am particularly concerned about the fact that the issues raised around people who have been victims of crime or perhaps witnesses and felt unable to represent what they had seen or experienced because of a lack of support perhaps to use or to communicate in a way that they need to. It is really important that we do that bit extra work on it before we close the petition. I am really keen that we explore a little bit further what the courts and tribunals service are doing, what Police Scotland's understanding is and also what local authorities are doing around the use of an appropriate adult in situations where the person needs support to communicate to the police. Once we have established those lines of communication and let that work continue, I think that we would be in a position to say that we have done that and we are now in a position to close it. However, as yet, I feel that we need to do that a little bit extra work and then we will get there. Again, I would like to say thanks very much to the petitioner. Most of my fellow committee members have covered what I was going to cover, thank you to the petitioner in particular. I do not support closing the petition at this stage, but I do support exploring other avenues that are wider than has been set out by the petitioner. I agree with Rachael Hamilton and everything else that has been said and put in record thanking the petitioner as well. I do not know whether that was mentioned. I had put down to write to the Public Guardian Scotland or the Mental Health Welfare Commission for Scotland for any information about the number of Macaton users and the level of demand for the interpreters. The other thing was to write to the Scottish Courts and the Tribunals Service and Police Scotland to understand how many requests they have received for the provision of Macaton interpreters. It is just a little bit more exploring, as everybody else has been saying, but keep the petition open. That is good. I think that Karen mentioned the link in the education committee as well about that wider Macaton is an amazing tool for those folk who do not have any other means of communication. I guess that there is a question whether the maximum number of people who could benefit from that means of communication are able to access Macaton in the first place. I think that the committee is unanimous on the view that we should keep the petition open for now, but definitely widen our work in this area. Writing to the commissioner and the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service, Antley Scotland, COSLA, Public Health Guardian and Mental Wealth, and to have a chat with our colleagues on the education committee about what further work we can do. We will develop that going forward, but for now we will be keeping the petition open. Thank you to everybody, and again thank you so much to Sandra for bringing this very specific area, but also the wider area of Macaton in general to the attention of the committee. That then concludes the public part of our meeting and we will now move into private session to consider our work programme.


After a few months of intensive work, the KDE community is pleased to announce Plasma 5.9 which brings many improvements and features to your desktop. Global menu bars for applications have returned and can be used with either a desktop panel showing the menu or neatly tucked away in the window bar. Due to popular demand, we implemented switching between Windows and Task Manager using the new MetaKey plus a number key shortcut for heavy multitasking. It is now possible to create comprehensive look and feel desktop themes that will download all the extras needed from the KDE Store such as color schemes and Plasma themes. A utility called Look and Feel Explorer was added to create these Plasma themes and to ease publication on the KDE Store. There is a more compact and beautiful design for scroll bars and debris style giving our applications a sleek and modern look. KRunner actions such as run and terminal and opening containing folder are now also shown for the KRunner powered search results in application menus. Task Manager tooltips have been redesigned to provide more information while being significantly more compact. Plasma notifications now support interactive previews which you can drag from the notification pop up directly into a chat window, an email composer, or a web browser form. It's now possible to group together multiple desktop widgets in a single, tabbed interface. Applications currently playing audio are marked in the Task Manager similar to how it's done in modern web browsers so you can easily mute them. You can now add widgets to your desktop straight from the full screen application dashboard launcher. System Settings has a new module for configuring network connections with a fresh new look. The icon widget sees the return of a settings dialog so you can now change the icon, label text, working directory, and other properties. If you enjoy using Plasma please consider donating to KDE so that we can work together to make the best free software possible.


Welcome to the Network Engineering video blog. I am your host, Michael Crane. In today's video, we're going to use Wireshark to look at an A calls B, A puts B on hold, call flow, and analyze what happens when you put a SIP call on hold. We will be using our SIP test bed we built in video number 65 for this testing. I will also show you how to identify the SIP transactions and SIP dialogue to help analyze our SIP call. Finally, we will dig into the SDP to see how phone A puts phone B on hold. All right, so let's get started. Okay, so let's take a look at what's going on here. I've pulled up the Wireshark trace for the call on hold test, or call hold test, I should say. And let's look at the call flow real quick. So you go under telephony, Wipe calls, and here you can see the, this is, if there was multiple calls in this trace, you would see multiple lines. But since we just have a single call or a single session, there's only one line here. So we're going to highlight this guy and look at the flow sequence, okay? So let me see if I can make this a little bigger here. Well, it's not that much bigger. But it's okay. So <IP_ADDRESS> is phone A. <IP_ADDRESS> is phone B, okay? So we'll just, we'll start from the beginning. So the first message is invite with SDP and it's listing all the different codecs that the phone supports. And here is a little comments on the site. So phone A is sending an invite to 46, phone B, right? You can see the arrow kind of go on to the right. And then phone B sends a 100 trying. And the 100 trying, and I'm sure I've said this before, it's just a receipt saying, yes, I got your invite, okay? Then it sends a ringing saying, okay, now I'm notifying the, well, I'm ringing the phone basically and so it's ringing. And then as soon as phone B answers the phone, it sends a 200 okay, all right? And then phone A acts the 200 okay. And you'll see this 200 okay has the SDP and he's saying, okay, I wanna use a G711 MULA, right? And we could dig around into the traces of this, but I don't really think we need to. This is just looking at the call flow. We'll look at the call hold here in a second. Okay, so the act comes back from A and so now we have established a phone call, all right? And this is what you would call a session, right? Because it's using SDP to establish the media, all right? And SDP has session description protocol. So once B says, okay, we're gonna use G711 MULA, that's on the list of A, you can see it's the first one listed right there. And so now they're both using, you can see this is two one-way paths from A to B and from B to A, all right? They're both using G711 MULA and the phone will not split them. So we'll do a G711 MULA one way and G729 the other way. If they can't agree on a codec, it just fails the call. Agree on a codec meaning the same codec, right? Okay, so what do we have here? We're in dialogue, okay? And we've had one whole transaction. And we can go look at that real quick because this is important to keep the terminology straight, especially when you're talking to other engineers, right? So we're going to look at this real quick and we're gonna go into the message header. Here's our, this branch ID right here, lists the transaction, that's actually the transaction ID. If you remember from the last video, this tag ID combined with the call ID, let me start over again, the tag, the from tag ID, the to tag ID, and the call ID all compose the dialogue ID. Those three things are, determines a single dialogue, okay? Hopefully you're still following, going along with me. I'm just gonna scroll down here and we're gonna keep an eye on this, this branch ID, which is actually the transaction. It branches an old term, so I'm gonna call it transaction ID. Okay, so here we go. So here's the 100 trying, 17 E9 is the last four digits. Yep, they both match. Here's the ringing, yep, 200 okay, yep. And ACK, oh, oh yeah, that's right. The ACK is actually a new transaction, even though it's its own transaction. It's just ACKing the 200 okay. Okay, so just to be clear, since I kinda screwed that up when I was talking to you, from here to the media, these two are actually me, this isn't part of the SIP protocol, but from the invite to the ACK is actually two transactions inside one dialogue, okay? And that's just up to the ACK so far. From this invite to this 200 okay is one transaction, and this ACK is its own transaction, all right? And that's the end of the transaction. So the next message we get will have its own transaction ID, but it'll still be in the same dialogue. So we had two transactions, right? The invite through the 200 okay is one transaction, ACK is a second transaction. They're all in the same dialogue. And we can look at that. So remember I was saying that the dialogue consists of the from tag, the to tag, and the call ID, right? So you notice there's no to tag here. That tag has to come from phone B and this is the initial invite. So you'll see okay on the 100 trying that he got from phone B, phone B didn't send the tag because it's basically just a receipt saying I got your invite, but I haven't done anything with it, right? I haven't processed it yet. But then you know, gosh, what is it? A nanosecond later or something like that. He sends a 180 ringing. At this point, he attaches the tag ID to the to header. Okay, so now we have a dialogue. We've got the from tag, the to tag and the call ID right here. Okay, so that's our dialogue ID. So now what's gonna happen is this invite right here is when I pushed hold on phone A. You'll see phone A here sent another invite with an SDP to phone B, which is dot 46, right? Now if we look at that, well first let's look at, okay, so he's definitely in a different transaction, right? From the previous one or the previous two. So this is a brand new transaction. It's the exact same tags. So it's in dialogue and he is sending an invite and you'll notice nothing else, right? And there's nothing in here it says hold. And that's because the hold is in the SDP down here. If we come down here and look at this, we'll see that session and connection information. Okay, yeah, so there's a couple different ways you can put a call on hold. And one is to, you can do this media attribute where he's sending send only is that he's only gonna be sending RTP. He is not going to be receiving RTP, right? This is phone A sent telling phone B this, right? And another way of doing it, this is his connection. He basically is telling phone B if you're gonna send me RTP packet, send it to this address, which is 0.0.0. And that's basically null in the SIP world or SDP world. So he's basically saying send all your RTP to null if you send me any RTP at all, right? This is how you change the RTP IP address, okay? So then phone B turns around and says, okay, no problem. And we'll see that it's in the same dialogue, oops. Okay, so 21 F0. Yeah, 21 F0, tags are the same. Call ID is the same. And his SDP saying, yeah, no problem. Here's his connection information. And he still, he didn't change his IP address, but he's going into receive only mode. So he's telling phone A, okay, I'm just gonna go into receive only mode. And then phone A after getting the 200K sends an act back and I'd have to look in the spec. I'm not exactly sure he's required to send an act back on a in dialogue invite, because that's like sending a, let me back up a little bit. Phone A could send phone B invites all day long and phone B will just respond with 200K. And it's not to set up new calls that he could be just trying to, we'll put a call on hold as a good example or like keep alive, he's just keeping the session alive. There's other ways to do it besides sending invites, but some phones do send them invites. And that's usually if the other end doesn't support like notify or something like that or option messages. Yeah, that's why I'm kind of wondering if phone A actually needed to send the act back. It doesn't hurt, right? It's a, of course it's gonna be a new transaction since it's an act. So 21F0 is our transaction ID for the invite. I'm sorry for the hold and then the act is its own transaction ID. Okay, so time goes on, you know, we put the call on hold first, I don't know what is that a couple seconds it looks like. And then we took phone A off of hold and that's what this other invite is. So now phone A sends another invite to phone B and this is of course a new transaction ID or everything, this is still the same dialogue. See this invite here and this invite up here are exact same 12C7. So we're still in the same dialogue but this time he's saying, where is it? Okay, well he fixed his IP address so he's saying, yeah, send RTP to .44, which is good. And now he's going into send receive mode. All right, so now he's expecting to receive RTP from phone B and phone B says okie dokie and sends back his 200 okay with send receive in this, in the SDP, right? And then phone A sends another act back which I still don't think needs to be there but I'm not going to go looking the expect to figure it out. And then at the end, you know, we just hung up phone A. So phone A sends a buy out and that's going to be in its own transaction ID. You see he's got a different transaction ID from the previous ones. So it's a separate transaction. Of course the tag is the same dialogue so the tags and everything are the same and says wise, yes, I'm going on hook. I'm hanging up now. And so goodbye. And phone B responds with 200 okay, see ya. And that's it. Okay, so you can see in this call we had, let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven different transactions in this one dialogue or one phone call. And that'll change when we start, when we have multiple dialogue calls which will be if we put someone on hold and then initiate another call for like call transfer or something like that. And we'll get to that in the next video. Okay, so to get back to our SIP call flow here. So we looked at what happened up till we had our RTP or our media set up. Okay, then we had this invite from phone A which is dot 44 to phone B, right? Which is dot 46 where he's putting the call on hold, right? And we get the 200 okay back from phone B. I don't know why you said G7 on the telephony event but anyway, we got an act from phone A, right? From the 200 okay. And then when we took the call off hold we got another invite from phone A basically saying I'm taking the call off hold we're gonna go into send receive mode phone B sends back 200 okay. And as you'll see the leg of the media path is set up from phone B. We get the act which is kind of this trace is kind of funny the way that they haven't set it up but anyway, this act right here is for this 200 okay right here. And here's the media from A, right? And of course then we have the buy in the 200 okay. At the end, this is where phone A hangs up and he says okay. So yeah, if you noticed it was actually in if you remember when we sent this invite with SDP it was a send only and then a receive only, right? So you would think there would still be one path set up but there's not, there's no media and we can go check that real quick by looking at the RTP and our SIP trace right here. So okay, here's our initial invite. Here's the invite to put on hold, put the call on hold and here's a 200 okay. So now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put SIP or RTP and as you can see, here's our 200 okay. Here's our act and you can see between until we get this other invite right here there is zero media and you think there would be one way but media but there is not. And the reason why there isn't is because there's no reason for the phone to send media if he's not gonna be listening to anything, right? But theoretically it would be one way media. So like if you got that from a server, right? And let's say you wanted music on hold. Well, at this point that's where that send only receive only comes in is it'll start playing music or something. So the person on hold here is the elevator music but that's only so the phone B is listening to the elevator music and phone A is sending it, right? Or the PBX or the proxy, right? But in this case they're not phone A isn't sending anything so there's no RTP. And then here's the invite taking the phone call off hold I'm sorry taking the SIP call off hold and here's the 200 okay and here's phone B sending starting to stream its RTP here's that act that came in a little bit later and that's it don't forget you can support the network engineering video blog by donation using a credit card and PayPal or by purchasing products at the Muxall store. Details and links are in the description under this video. Well, that's it for this video. If you liked the video give it a big thumbs up that helps and hit the subscribe button that really helps. If you have any questions or comments post them in the comments under this video. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.


He's not answering the questions. I mean, he's saying something, but he's not answering them. Why couldn't they just come put a gun to your head and say, give me all the money and you're safe? Thank God they didn't. Dude, you're not answering the questions. This is he's evading everything he possibly can in this thing. Thank God they didn't. They thank God they didn't. I would have got it killed. When he answers the question about extortion, I still don't get how killing Dan Markell advances the ball for them to extort money out of you. You? Yeah, I have a theory. They could extort me for life. And I don't think they knew exactly how much I had in the safe. That was loaded. He was ready for that one because he leans forward. And it's a little bit louder. I think he was ready for that one. And then we see his stress continue to increase as he starts swaying back and forth in that chair more. So I think she's starting to get him on the ropes there.


Hey, we're back real live. I'm Jay Fidel here on Think Tech. Welcome to Community Matters on Think Tech. Our show today is called The Role of Religions. That's a plural in world peace. We're going to talk about bringing the global community together and religious leaders together to emphasize world peace. How do you put that together? If you want to ask a question about this bad discussion, you can tweet us or you can call us at tweet us at thinktech.hi or call us at<PHONE_NUMBER>. That's our new number. Our guest for the show, very important, is Ved Nanda of the University of Denver. He's a columnist for the Denver Post and he told me before I could ask him any questions. So watch this. Welcome to the show, Ved. Thank you. Thank you. I've enjoyed being with you and looking forward to a discussion of a very lively and very controversial and very important topic. So I want to pose a proposition to you. Religion, which I thought in my younger years was declining in the world, and was less influential, less effective, has turned around. I remember when George Bush, George W. Bush, was sworn in and he was promising allegiance to faith-based organizations. So what's this about? And no sooner did he get in than he directed the Department of Justice to help the religious community instead of separating the two under the First Amendment Establishment Clause of Separation of Church and State. And since then, it was almost 20 years ago, since then, we have seen, we have seen religion play a bigger and bigger and sometimes very negative role in politics and in our government. Elsewhere, you know, Russia sort of denounced religion at the Revolution and I think it's pretty much stayed that way. China has effectively denounced, you know, religion. Look what they do to the Falon Gong, which is not even a religion. It was just a sort of state of mind and look the way they persecute them. And I think even in Europe, you know, religion is sort of on the decline, except in the Middle East it's not on the decline. It's still very robust and strong. And a lot of people argue that that has a lot to do with the violence in the region as we feel it here. So I'd like to get your take on this sea change. What kind of sea change are we really having here? And we can examine how it started and where it goes. What do you think? Well, I think you're right about Europe because as you go, all those churches, huge colossal buildings and they are empty. Yes. People don't go there. Yes. But I think you also know that for a long time, Islam has had religion and politics. They interrelated. They are not separate. And so in Islam, religion plays a very, very important role.  She said, what are you going to be talking about? And I said, religion and world peace. And her response was, huh. And she said, you should stop kidding yourself. So that is the response. And as you probably know, that Samuel Huntington, of course, he got the right. And in that clash of civilizations, his main theme was that it is religions. That are driving all these cultures towards that kind of clash and that clash of civilizations. So the point that you're making is correct that at the present time, all of a sudden with ISIS, beheadings, people who are on the move simply cutting heads and suicide bombers. And therefore, religion is seen as the one that is causing conflict. And the point I want to make is that the potential of religion for creating peace, for maintaining peace, for peace building, that has not been covered in the academia that is not being at the present time in our conversation. And we need to explore that. Well, yes, we do. And I'm just taking, I mean, I think the title of the show is correct to say religions, right, because there are so many diverse religions and some of them, in my view, are more than more legitimate than others. I mean, for example, some of the megachurches in this country, they're into money. They're into social media. They're really using technology to reach as many people as they can and harvest as much money as they can and pay their executive as much money as you can imagine. I don't know if that's really religion. I don't think there's a morality or an ethics at the core there. I think it's money. On the hand, there are some religions that, and I can't make heads or tails really of what's going on in the Muslim world right now. There are people who are legitimately Muslim and there are people who hijack the religion. And what's the connection? What's the relationship? Does one tolerate the other more than say I would tolerate them? Where is it all going? It seems like if you can justify violence by the Koran, and people say that two people on opposite sides of the pole can read the Koran two different ways on critical issues. So which way is the Koran really going? Which is the real message from the Koran? Is it religion we're talking about? Or is it people using religion to suit their own goals? Is it overlays, I'm having or anything? It's a distortion. Yeah. And that distortion of religion is the basis for all these problems at the present time. Because if you look at major religions, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Bahai faith, all of them have got certain values that are common. And if you're going to find a global peace, then you need to find universal values that are common. Yes. And those universal values, if you want to find common, then it's only the potential of religion and religious potential that's going to give you that commonality. Because you look at any of these religions. I chair a small foundation. It's called the Ubara Foundation. And it's only the Indic religions. These are the Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. And the purpose of that foundation simply is to create awareness of those religions in this country in North America, and to ensure that their goal for global peace, their desire in order to create that kind of harmony among people, that that ought to be understood. In my faith, because I'm a Hindu, and you probably know that the basic tenet of Hinduism is universal brotherhood, that the entire human race is one family. That one part of that family is Sikh. The entire family suffers. In that family, one person is happy. Others look at the face, smiling face, it's contagion. Yeah. And then so the entire human family is interconnected. Yeah. Are you a devout Hindu? And devout, I don't know what it means. But I think I'm practicing Hindu in the sense that I grew up in it. And I feel that the tenets of Hinduism, where it says, for example, you remember, or you know that when I greet you, and I say Namaste, what I'm saying is divinity in me is boring to the divinity in you. And so once you think about in those terms, that all human beings are divine, and then you cannot have anything else, not only about tolerance, but you go beyond that, you accept differences. You go beyond that, you respect differences, and so that diversity becomes enrichment. Is the Hindu religion, I mean, I admire it very greatly. And I think you, to me, you are the living incarnation of the brotherhood of mankind, womankind. But you know, I, I just, I'm Jewish, by the way. And I'm not devout you, but I am a loyal Jew. And I'm faithful to it. And I don't mind talking about it. And I'm very sad about anti-Semitism. I mean, there was an article in the paper this morning about some policemen at the Temple on the Mount who were killed by some, I guess you'd say terrorists, but that was clearly motivated in their mind by religious principles, religious, arguably religious principles. I think they're hijacking the religion to do that. And so you had this violence happening, this anti-Semitic kind of experience in this country, plenty of it, and look what happened in Germany back in generations ago. So, you know, I'm wondering, you know, can, can with this kind of brotherhood of humanity approach, you know, to find morality, to find ethics in a given religion or combination of religions, is it possible? Given the species, the species has come for hundreds of thousands of years, it had to survive against very difficult odds. And it changed the way we do business. And somewhere in there, we got religion. And somewhere in there, the religion turned somewhat violent, at least in some places. Can we get along without scapegoats? Can we find a morality that avoids anti this and anti that? We can. And that is what Interfaith dialogue does. I am the Vice President of our Interfaith Alliance of Colorado. And we've got Muslim, we've got Jews, we've got Christians, we've got Sikhs, we've got Baha'is, we've got Hindus, and all of them together. And then I'm just absolutely amazed how much that Interfaith dialogue helps. One thing that is very common between Jews and Hindus is that we don't proselytize. And in Hinduism, the nicest thing about it is that it does not consider itself as superior to anybody else. And it does not consider that that is the only way to achieve the ultimate reality of God. And that there are different ways, different paths, and all those paths lead on to the same goal. And it's the rivers, all of them streams, different ones go into the ocean. Yeah. Well, I hope so. I want that. I think right thinking people all want that. But you know, you have these practical considerations. I mean, for example, if you don't proselytize, then maybe you decline in numbers or you remain flat in numbers. I don't know how the Hindu religion is doing, for example, globally. But I think the Muslim religion is probably expanding more than even the Christian religion, which is I don't know if it's bigger or not. But point is that if you if you proselytize, and if you advertise, and use social media and every advertising device you can think of, you have more members, right? And you know, the Christian Church, the Catholic Church is is devoted to improving its own lot to improving it, you know, keeping the flock in the flock, proselytizing, if you will, and avoiding people from leaving the faith. And so, you know, I'm wondering, you know, if the good guys, ultimately, the good guys, the ones who believe in in, you know, brotherhood for everyone, that's my opinion, in my opinion, if the good guys will prevail when everybody else is using proselytization to expand their own domain. I think the realization is growing, that proselytization is not the way, because there are many progressive Christian Christians who believe not in converting people. I sit on the trustees, board of trustees of a Christian institution, and that they do not believe in converting, they do not believe in proselytizing. And that's why I sit there, I have chaired their curriculum committee, their important considerations that they have in their own institution. So I think that can happen, it is happening. And I think gradually, that kind of realization is growing, that it's not necessary, that you tell people to be exclusive. That inclusivity pluralism is the answer, not exclusivity. Sure. But query, are those religious notions or they just ethical notions? I remember back in the 30s, and it's here say, but my mother belonged to something called ethical culture. It was a non religious, but very ethical organization. They had principles that I suppose you could say, emerged from an assortment of religions. But they together in that form, the form she practiced it in, was not religious. And yet they were very ethical moral principles. Do we need the old fashioned religion in order to achieve morality and ethical purity? Or can we find it without religion? Actually, at the United Nations a few years ago, it resolution was set. And that resolution was ban all religions. And they said ethical considerations, moral considerations should be there. But this organized religions should be all banned in the United Nations. Obviously it went nowhere. But that resolution was put there. The point simply is that religions are the ones that ethical core are telling us about ethics. They are the ones who at their core are giving us all those moral principles. The religions are the ones that have those universal values that embody a person to move up. You remember the UNESCO, United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization talks about it. It says that all these wars as wars are born as wars are the creation of a human mind. You know, I'm paraphrasing it. And that said that because of that, it's only human mind, mind that is in which we can create defenses of peace. And what they really meant was that it's internally each person who has to reach that level where that understanding is there.  Wow, this is great. We're going to take a short break. We're going to come back, and we're going to talk about the possibility, the process of religion being corrupted. And people, you know, sort of sliding down a slope and becoming more base and less moral, all within the context of religion. Let's take a one minute break. We'll come back and discuss that and more. Fed Nanda. I'm Richard Concepcion, the host of Hispanic Hawaii. You can watch my show every other Tuesday at 2 p.m. We will bring you entertainment, educational, and also we tell you what is happening right here within our community. Think Tech Hawaii Aloha. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, 25 talk shows by 25 dedicated hosts every week, helping us to explore and understand the issues and events in and affecting our state. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Okay, we're back. We're live here in Think Tech Community Matters with Fed Nanda, the University of Denver. His professor there, an international law and matters in general. And he's a columnist for the Denver Post. And he's here in Hawaii, teaching as a visiting professor at the law school. Yes, it's wonderful to have you on the show. Well, thank you very much. I've enjoyed Hawaii every time. Many years ago, I came here for a year as their distinguished scholar or whatever. And I enjoyed it. And they have been very gracious. I've been inviting me ever since. And I come back occasionally to teach for them who I am and go back. But this, you know, very soft culture that is very hospitable and warm. And it's wonderful to see that you're perfectly aligned with it. So religion, I mean, and you see it in, for example, my earlier reference to the American South, see people who not satisfied with their lives, I guess it's always been people who are not satisfied with their lives. They have vacuum apuca in their hearts somehow. And they need, you know, they need human company. They need to be in a group. They need to ally themselves to connect with a group. And religion offers that possibility. It makes people brothers in the course of that religion. But the problem is that religion historically is just as a matter of, you know, the historical progression of it. It has its ups and downs. Some religions get better and some get worse. Some do the moral job and others don't do the morals. They lose their way.  And I think you see that in the Muslim experience right now. But could you comment on that process? What causes that process for a perfectly good religion to become, you know, the harbinger of bad things? How does that work? I think it's people and it's time. And because of all that, I think occasionally, not occasionally, but often, you find that after a period of time, then those rituals, those traditions, they become so embedded. And in the process of all, you are right, it can get corrupted. And that has happened to many religions. And then reform movements in those religions move up and try to create a better setting. Look at the popes and you go back hundreds of years and see what those popes did and what the religion did. And then all of a sudden you find that there is a change. Reform movement came up and the process again began. Decline. And I think as you rightly said, ups and downs have happened. But these, I think, major religions that I mentioned, you know, Christianity, you are right, is the religion with the largest number of followers. Then comes Islam, then comes Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Judaism. And these religions have gone through that kind of corruption, almost all of them. But then reform movements bring them up and they are again back. Because basically their values at the core are good. Morality and ethics that you said, all these religions teach us. And also there are many people, for example, in my school, I talked with kids and a kid is going to say, I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual. And then you can see that religion is the one that teaches spirituality. Yes, spirituality is its own religion somehow. But you know, then you have this very important historical intersection between religion and government, you know, the social compact, if you will. And I look for a long time and still in some places religion is government, it's the same thing. But our founding fathers in this country, you know, saw that problem. They saw it because their experience in Europe. And they separated the two, the First Amendment, separation of church and state, which to me was the smartest thing they could possibly have done. It was the cornerstone of the Constitution, but it has seriously eroded. So, A, may I ask you, do you think it's right that they separated the two? And what do you think now? What should we have? Should we have, what kind of connection should we have between religion, the church, and the state? Or shall I say the religions, the churches, and the state? What sort of connection is there? Very short answer is that there is a brilliant move and the thought to stay that way. Because religion should be simply individual faith and individuals should follow any of that faith and that is in our own Constitution, that is in the United Nations, that faith and religion, there should be freedom of that. And the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that Eleanor Roosevelt was the one responsible for, a basic tenet of that is that every individual has a right to religion, right to faith, and that nobody should interfere with it. Oh, that's so important and I wish it were plenary, but it's not plenary. And there are so many places in the world where people argue and hurt each other because of religious principles and because of the other guy's religious principles. I remember hearing, you know, a speech by a Muslim teacher in one of the countries in the Middle East, a college teacher, and he was saying not only does Quran tell us that we have to kill our enemies, but we have to kill all the people who are not killing our enemies. I mean, it was so extreme. There's a lot of what is going on. I went to Pakistan on a debating tour and everywhere that we went, four or five places, six places probably, students would tell me that, you know, we love you, we are so glad that you are here.  So he and I, we weren't the two people debating them in different universities and they would tell us that if the Mullah tells us tonight that we should kill you, we couldn't kill you. And they were very, very friendly, but that is the kind of Islam distortion of it which can at present time result in that kind of action. And you can look at Taliban, you can look at ISIS, you can look at when Yugoslavia split. Sure, same thing. And then you can see three different settings, Serbians, fundamentalists, you can see Kurds who are Roman Catholics, and then you had the Bosnian Muslims and at each other's throats and you have again Iraq, Shia and Sunni, sects, and then that I think in, at the essence at times there are political and economic issues that are also mixed up with religion and faith. Well in this country it's a huge, it's turned into be a huge issue. It wasn't always thus but it has, in my view, declined into a real squabble over religion and rights under government. And so we've had all this controversy about Roe v. Wade and, you know, the right of a woman to have an abortion or not and there are attacks going on daily in every state of the Union, all 50 states by various organizations who would like to curtail the possibility of an abortion. We have the the gay community and we have people all around the country who would like to, you know, restrict them, limit them, punish them, whatever it is. And that's all really I think in the name of religion. So what you have is government has gone soft on this issue. Government has let this happen. The people, the legislative and the judicial branch, for that matter the executive branch, they have failed to enforce the brilliance of the First Amendment, separation of church and state. So, Vett, this is not an easy question. What can we do? I can simply say, amen. You are absolutely right. If I had the answers, I would be sage Arisir. I don't, but at the same time I do understand that, that that rule of law that we believe is very important is absolutely essential in this kind of his setting. First amendment rights, separation of church and state, enforcement of those rights, LGBT are all those people who are at the present time disadvantaged, acceptance of them, all that is absolutely imperative. And you mentioned very briefly, you didn't dwell on it, but anti-semitism at the present time in Europe, in this country, is absolutely ought to be totally unacceptable, intolerable. I'm the person who believes very much in tolerance, but for on those kind of issues, I have zero tolerance as such. So, last part of our discussion. So, if I want to do something, and I do, and I know what you do, and I know a lot of people who do, what do I do? Because right now, the sign curve seems to be going down morally and ethically on these kinds of issues. What do I do to stand up? What do I do to make people realize that we all have an obligation to love our brother no matter, you know, what his situation is, to not to not have anti-this and anti-that and punish people for no reason. What do we do? I would suggest to be part of an interfaith alliance. I would suggest that at the University of Denver, we have got a religious advisory council. People from different faiths, getting together, talking to each other. At the present time, the difficulties are there, but you know that there are many organizations in Palestine, in Israel, working on Palestine-Israel issues together, and I admire them and marvel them. And last time we talked about NGOs and last time we talked about civil society. So the hope in my mind is the civil society, individuals working through these groups of people together on dialogue. Dialogue is the answer, not conflict and not fights. But in civil society, in a place where there is a rule of law, and hopefully you can say that here still, even with current administration, they have to do something too. In other words, if you and I, an interfaith alliance, all agree that we must return to this kind of morality and appreciation and love for each other, for all of humanity, how do we get government to go along with that? How do we stop people who don't believe in that, who practice anti-Semitism, anti-Muslimism, anti-Hinduism, anti-everything? How do we stop them? What instruments can we use after we make an interfaith agreement on the point? Two things that I would suggest. One is that these civil society groups have a great deal of say on decision-makers. They need to be brought into the picture. They need to be convinced and at the present time they listen to people. If we can create that kind of an awareness, then I think we can also create awareness among decision-makers and so that we can have the enforcement, as you rightly said, that church and state kind of separation and then an effort on our part through an organized kind of way of civil society and decision makers to make sure that what your goal is can be accomplished and achieved. So then what, where do I look it up to find out about the interfaith? I'll send you the information. All right and I'll share it. Thank you so much Vang Nanda again. It's wonderful to talk with you. Aloha in the fullest sense of it. Aloha. Thank you very much. Enjoy the conversation. Thank you.