Thank you. That concludes General Questions. We will turn now to First Minister's Questions. Question number 1, Jackson Carlaw. In September, while publicly berating opposition critics, the education secretary privately commissioned his officials to probe the increasing failure rate in hires. Will the First Minister today publish their findings? First Minister. We will publish findings as and when we have them that this parliament should be aware of. Rwy'n credu i chi'n bwysig oherwydd, fel y First Minister yn ddamdlu i gyfwyrdau a Llywodraeth i'r Cymru o'r parlymynt yng Nghymru, oeddech chi'n mynd ddurwr 27 oedd y dylau gyda'r sgwafau ysgolion a'r ddweud i chi'n mynd i'n treidiau. Rydw i ddweud i chi'n mynd i chi'n y First Minister can be held responsible if the Tories are incapable of paying attention to what's going on in Parliament. Jackson Carlaw. As always, Presiding Officer, while it's not something I encourage, I always defend the right of people to express a view if they have the opportunity to do so. Sorry, I wasn't actually on my feet fast enough, I hadn't realised that was it from the First Minister, because I see that she obviously intends to begin this year in the same slippery fashion that she ended the last. It wasn't just conservatives, it seems to be the whole world that misunderstood what the cabinet secretary had to say. So just to take the spin-out of her answer, let's give the facts. In August last year, we learned that the number of students achieving A to C in hires had fallen. Mr Swinney promptly attacked us for daring to suggest this real something might be wrong with his handling of education. Then, over Christmas, we learned that he had at the same time asked his officials to find out what's going wrong. Yesterday in a letter to shadow education secretary Liz Smith, Mr Swinney declared that he doesn't need to explain himself to this Parliament because there's nothing new to say. That's what he had to say in his letter. I mean, I know education is no longer this Government's number one priority, but doesn't that smack of arrogance even to the First Minister? I gently suggest that perhaps Liz Smith should have a go at better explaining things to Jackson Carlaw, because Jackson Carlaw has stood up in this chamber and suggested, as the Tories have done over the recess, that John Swinney secretly commissioned an analysis of the 2019 exam results. John Swinney has pointed out the fact—I have done it again today—that he informed the Education and Skills Committee on 27 November that he had asked for such an analysis. I think that it is Jackson Carlaw that should reflect on the premise of the question that he is asking me today. Of course, the Deputy First Minister also informed the committee that, following the analysis, partners have been asked to look at further work to support learning and teaching through a number of actions. Of course, as that work progresses, the outcomes of it will be shared with the committee and with Parliament. It might be that reason that, as I understand it, although Jackson Carlaw can correct me if I am getting this wrong, the Tories withdrew their request for a parliamentary statement this week when that information had been pointed out to them. Wider performance, we know in Scottish education that, yes, there is more work to do, which is why it remains the top priority of this Government. We see attainment increasing, so the percentage of school leavers getting a level 5 qualification such as nationals has increased from 71 per cent when we took office to 85, almost 86 per cent now. Also the numbers getting a higher qualification has increased from less than half to now almost two thirds. Lastly, for the first time ever, we see more than 30 per cent of pupils achieving at least or more than five passes at a higher level, which is up from just over 20 per cent in 2009. We also, of course, see the attainment gap reducing. That is the progress that has been made in Scottish education. It is down to the hard work of teachers, pupils and parents across the country, and it is the progress that we will focus on continuing to make. Jackson Carlaw So, spin to the first question, denial to the second, spin and denial to the twin pillars of this Government. Of course, we all pay tribute to the teachers, to the students and to the parents who are working hard, but let's return to the issue at hand. The education secretary asked a fair question of his officials. What does the falling pass rate at higher tell us about the health of education in this country? Let me put that question to the First Minister today and give her the opportunity to explain. What does a drop in the pass rate tell us about education? What does a record low in PISA scores tell us about school performance? What does declining school subject choice tell us about her Government's record? I have just set out a range of statistics that reflect the real performance of Scottish education. I can understand why Jackson Carlaw chose not to listen to those because he does not suit the argument that he is making. However, let's not gloss over the issue at hand, which was of course the subject of his first question to me. He might want to call it spin, but he has stood up in this chamber and repeated an accusation against the deputy First Minister that was made during the recess, which is flatly wrong. I do not think that that is acceptable and I do not think that Jackson Carlaw should get away with that. I think that he should perhaps reflect on that and take the opportunity to apologise for it. We will continue to focus on the progress that is being made. If we look at this year's exam results, in fact, on the day that they were published, the deputy First Minister recognised that there had been a fall in the overall higher pass rate, although it remains very high. However, we saw generally a strong set of exam results with three quarters of candidates attaining a pass at higher grades A to C. Over a quarter of candidates achieving a grade A at higher, and we saw an increase in entries and pass rates across national 5, including a rise in passes for English and a rise in passes for maths. Coupled with the statistics that I gave them in my previous answer, I think that that is a performance that shows improvement. I want to see more improvement, which is why we will get on with the job at hand and leave Jackson Carlaw and the Tories floundering around making baseless accusations. Jackson Carlaw, so basically the deputy First Minister's position is, I'm just so misunderstood. So misunderstood, in fact, that journalists, students, teachers, parents, all misunderstood what he had to say previously. Presiding Officer, the issue here is really simple. Clearly there is something wrong with our education system. Parents know it, teachers know it, students know it and, in private, this education secretary knows it too. The problem is that when it comes to action we have a First Minister and education secretary more concerned with hiding their record than admitting to it or correcting it. First Minister, 2020 will be the year that this Government's diabolical domestic record and education will come home to roost. A year when we will see an SNP Government that will put its own survival on the light of events before the priorities of the people. Having promised five years ago that education would be her number one priority, is it not time to make it exactly that? The people got the opportunity to cast their verdict on the performance of this Government just a matter of weeks ago and I think that we all know how that ended up. Can I say to Jackson Carlaw that I say this really seriously? I think that the only people who have misunderstood are the Scottish Tories, and I am being charitable there. I think that what the Tories are doing is not misunderstanding but misrepresenting, and I think that that is what they should be apologising for. Jackson Carlaw says that the Deputy First Minister, myself, the Government is seeking to hide our record. Here is what the Deputy First Minister said on the day that the exam results were published. He said, and I am quoting, that there has been a fall in the overall pass rate. That does not strike me as trying to hide the matter. He then said that somehow the Deputy First Minister, having denied that fact, commissioned in secret an analysis of why the pass rate had fallen. What I have told him today, what the Deputy First Minister told Liz Smith earlier this week, is that he informed the Education and Skills Committee of that on 27 November. Perhaps it is the Scottish Conservatives that need to wake up and pay a bit more attention. This Government will get on the job with the job of improving performance in Scottish education, and perhaps Jackson Carlaw needs to think about making a less stuttering start to 2020. On 17 December, the Care Inspectorate served an improvement notice on South Lanarkshire Council's home care service for Hamilton, Larkhall and Blantyre. Inspectors found hardworking staff feeling overwhelmed, stressed and frustrated. Care users, anxious, frightened and stressed, and a service that was chaotic and disorganised. The council must make changes by the end of the month or face the real prospect of the Care Inspectorate cancelling their service registration. Does the First Minister accept that this situation is entirely without precedent in South Lanarkshire? Can she tell us what will happen to those of our most vulnerable people who depend on those vital home care services if the council's registration is cancelled? I expect the council and it is the council's responsibility to take the actions that have been recommended or instructed to it by the Care Inspectorate and to make sure that what Richard Leonard has outlined today does not happen. The reason why we have the Care Inspectorate is to make sure that we have the highest standards of care across the country, and it is important that that system works properly and robustly. The responsibility of the Government is to make sure that we work with councils in the provision of health and social care and that we do that in a much more integrated way than has been the case in the past. As best we can, within the resources that we have at our disposal, we properly fund local government services. That is why, in the budget for this financial year, local government budget saw a real-terms increase. We will continue to work with councils to make sure that they deliver services that elderly people and everybody else across the country have a right to expect. On 20 December, just three days after serving the improvement notice on the Hamilton service, the Care Inspectorate issued another report, this time into South Lanarkshire Council's home care service for Rutherglen and Cambuslang. It was another damning report. Inspectors highlighted practices that they said were unsafe for both service users and care staff. Care users and their families are entitled to hold those responsible for the mismanagement of care services to account. First Minister, it has been almost five years since the integration of health and social care, and still the system is not working. This week, Scotland's councils have warned that the Government's cuts have put their budgets at breaking point and put community services at risk. Will the First Minister accept that responsibility? Of course, it lies with councils such as SNP South Lanarkshire, but it also lies with the SNP Government as well. If Richard Leonard had listened to my previous answer, he would have heard me talk about the responsibility of councils and the responsibility of this Government, and our biggest responsibility is to work effectively in partnership. As I said earlier, the reason why we have a Care Inspectorate is to make sure that we have the highest standards of care across the country. It is right and proper that the Care Inspectorate looks at service provision and where it considers it appropriate and makes recommendations. The clear responsibility of any council is to respond to and address those recommendations. I would expect the SNP to do exactly that. On the responsibility of my Government, integration of health and social care is an important reform. It is helping to deliver improvements in the delivery of social care. We are investing significantly more in the way of resource into social care services, and we will continue to make that a priority. Within the confines of a budget that has been reduced over the past decade by a Conservative Government at Westminster, Richard Leonard and his colleagues appear to be content to allow making the big decisions about budgets in Scotland. We have delivered, in this financial year, a real-terms increase for local government budgets. Of course, local governments work under pressure. This Government financially works under pressure, but we will continue to work with local councils to make sure that delivery of local services is the priority and have the priority that they deserve. Richard Leonard. Let us fix on responsibility. The Government is responsible for quadrupling the cuts to local government over the course of the last 10 years. Cossillers' claims are backed up by Audit Scotland. They reported at the end of last year that 19 integration joint boards across Scotland required a financial bailout. Just over a year ago, we warned that acute pressures on social care services meant that they were reaching breaking point. Now we have care services in the Minister for Older People's constituency served with an improvement notice. First Minister, is not it time that Scotland had a Government that properly valued care services? Is not it time that Scotland had a Scottish care service properly resourced with consistent standards, compassion for staff and care users, one that meets their needs and respects their rights? First Minister. As I said to Jackson Carlaw, the people in Scotland have very recently had an opportunity to cast a verdict on the performance of this Government, and they did that, and we know the outcome of that. However, let us look in detail at local government funding. If we look at the time that this year's budget was set—if we take health out of the equation, because I think that all of us, even the Tories, although their policies do not match their rhetoric, accept that health should be protected—the Scottish Government's resource budget will be 7.8 per cent lower in real terms this year, compared to 2013-14. If we look at our funding to local government, we have managed to keep the pressure on local government beneath that figure, so we have in relative terms protected local government. Local government budgets have increased in recent years, but because of the deep austerity over the past decade, yes, there has been a reduction over that period of time in local government budgets, but it is less in Scotland than it is in Labour-controlled Wales. However, Labour does not like that. 6.2 per cent pressure in Scotland over the same period is 11.5 per cent in Labour-controlled Wales. In a very difficult financial circumstance, the Scottish National Party Government is doing more to protect local government than Labour has managed where it has the responsibility. That might help to explain why the people of Scotland cast the verdict that they did in December in the general election. We have a couple of constituency supplementaries to first from Alex Cole-Hamilton. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Last year, my constituent Malcolm Muirhead died after losing a stone and a half in a month whilst residing at the Drumbray care home run by City of Edinburgh Council. A social work report raised concerns that he was only being washed once a week in a sink. He had bloated, infected feet and overgrown nails. The home was closed to new admissions. This week, an unannounced visit by the care inspectorate found serious concerns about staff competence, about distribution of medication and treatment of residents. It will be deregistered in February if improvements are not made. Does the First Minister agree that this is symptomatic of a crisis in social care in our country and that our constituents have the right to expect a higher standard of care from public sector homes? I certainly agree in part with Alex Cole-Hamilton. I think that what he has described here is completely unacceptable. Yes, I believe that residents of care homes and their families have an absolute right to expect better standards than those that Alex Cole-Hamilton has outlined in the tragic case of Malcolm Muirhead. I do not agree—this is a disagreement that I will express here sincerely—that it is symptomatic to use his words of a wider crisis in social care. Social care is under pressure, as is healthcare, as are public services because of the austerity. Labour is shouting who's fault is that. The architects and the authors of austerity, which are the Tories at Westminster, previously helped by the Liberal Democrats, that's who's fault it is. Actually, it's to escape that, that I take a very different view on the future of this Parliament than other parties in this chamber. We will continue—as I have outlined in detail today, within a very constrained budget, we will continue to take the action that, as best we can, protects health and protects social care. That's what we have done and it is what we will continue to do. In October, I raised with the First Minister the case of my constituent who has been waiting on an operation. She has severe neurological pain, has been off work for a very long time and has to take 48 tablets a day to try to alleviate the agony that shoots through her head and face every few seconds. Falling my question, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport wrote to me saying that there is no suggestion of any kind that the delay to the new department of clinical neurosciences has anything to do with the case of your constituent. My constituent's case would be resolved by NHS Lothian. My constituent's case still has not been resolved by NHS Lothian. She remains in agony, has had her operation cancelled again and has been told by NHS Lothian officials again that this is due to the lack of staff and the lack of theatre space because of the sick kids' neurological centre debacle. Will the First Minister today take this opportunity to speak directly to my constituent who is watching this session and give her some hope that her living hell will end soon? As I always do readily when any individual does not get the standard of care that they have a right to expect on the NHS, I apologise to them and I will do that to your constituent today. As Neil Findlay has said, it was raised before the health secretary wrote to Neil Findlay. Neil Findlay clearly and his constituent clearly and understandably do not consider that the issue has been resolved. I will therefore ask the health secretary today to look again at this issue and to liaise with NHS Lothian and respond as quickly as possible to Neil Findlay once she has had an opportunity to do so. We will have a short suspension if the Parliament is suspended. We will resume First Minister's questions. Question 3, Patrick Harvie. The Government often quotes the work of Professor Philip Alston, the UN rapporteur on poverty and human rights. His report said that transport should be considered an essential service, equivalent to water and electricity, and that the Government should ensure that people living in rural areas are adequately served. We are a long way off that vision at the moment. Since devolution, bus fares have almost doubled, so it is no surprise that passenger numbers are down 15 per cent. Many of Scotland's communities are so poorly served that people feel that they have no choice but to drive, and the situation is getting worse, not better. We can change this. Scottish Green proposals to give councils the power to run local bus services and to improve reliability and fares were included in the recent transport bill. What practical help is the Scottish Government giving to our local councils to help them to use those powers? We have given local government those powers. It is for local government to decide how they want to use those powers, and on any other use of powers we will always be open to and willing to have a discussion with local government about how we can support them to do that. I very much want to see, and the Scottish Government very much wants to see, an increase in people using our bus services, not just in rural parts of the country, although that is particularly important, but across all parts of our country. That is why one of the key commitments in last year's programme for government was the £500 million investment in improving bus infrastructure, because often Patrick Harvie is right that the barrier is cost, but often the barrier is a lack of convenience and flexibility, so we want to improve that, and through the range of policies that we are undertaking, that is what we are determined to do. That £500 million on infrastructure is welcome, but it has spread over a very long period of time, and it is a fraction of what the Government is spending on new road capacity. We all know that transport in Scotland is unfair, unhealthy, costly and pushing carbon emissions up when they should be coming down. We urgently need to ensure that public transport is always the cheapest and most convenient option for people. With First Group moving out of its UK bus operations, there is a clear immediate opportunity across Scotland, including Glasgow and Aberdeen, to bring those services back into public ownership, but it will not happen without clear proactive support from the Scottish Government. It is time to end the power of the private operators who cherry pick the profitable routes and instead build a public transport system that works for the public interest. Will the First Minister be bold and ensure that that happens across Scotland, urban and rural alike, so that all communities can be served by a quality integrated transport network that is fit for the 21st century? Of course, we have already taken important action in that regard. The Transport Scotland Act 2019, which Patrick Harvie referred to, has made important steps in the right direction, giving local government new powers. Alongside that, as I mentioned in my previous answer, we are going to deliver transformational long-term funding for better bus infrastructure. That is an addition, and this is an important point to the £260 million every year that we currently invest in bus services. However, I absolutely agree that we need to have a convenient, flexible, integrated bus service that is much easier and more convenient for people to use. The bus partnership fund will deliver that step change to improve the offer that buses can make to people. Patronage on our buses has been declining for a long, long time—for my entire lifetime and probably before that—from the 1960s. We need to turn that around by making sure that it is affordable, but also making sure that it is convenient and flexible for people to use. That is exactly what, through the legislation and the additional funding, we are determined and very focused on doing. The memorandum of understanding between Heathrow Airport and the Scottish Government supports 40 new long-haul flights, the growth of domestic flights and a £10 discount for every domestic passenger for 20 years. It is a plan for an expansion of the airline industry, and it is fully endorsed by the Scottish Government. Last May, the First Minister promised me that she would review the Scottish Government's support for Heathrow expansion, following the recommendations of the Committee on Climate Change. What was the outcome of that review? We are still reviewing policies right across the Government as part of the process of updating the climate change action plan. In fact, the Cabinet had a discussion on the climate change action plan and the progress that we are making towards that just this week. When we set that out across aviation and a whole range of the Government's responsibilities, we will set out what we need to do differently. On Heathrow, in particular—I should remind Willie Rennie that Heathrow last came to a vote in the House of Commons. SNP MPs did not vote for it, but we took the view as a Scottish Government, because we are not in control of the decision about a third runway at Heathrow. However, if it is going ahead, Scotland should seek to maximise economic impact and benefit from that. However, the climate emergency, the updated advice from the Committee on Climate Change, our responsibilities not just to meet but to exceed the obligations in the Paris agreement mean that we need to review all that. That is exactly what the Government is doing. We are doing that with a vigorously and a vigorously open mind. Some of what comes out of that will be challenging. I would bet my life right now that some, hopefully not on the basis of the tenor of his question today, Willie Rennie, but some in this chamber will oppose some of what we have to do to meet our climate change obligations. However, we are absolutely determined that having set those world-leading targets, we have to take the action now to ensure that we can meet them and lead the world by example. Thank you. We have some further supplementaries. The first is from... Oh, sorry, yes. Sorry, Mr Rennie. Willie Rennie. It is my fault, not Mr Rennie's fault, Mr Rennie. I know they do it. I know they do not want to hear it, Presiding Officer. We know why. This is months on, First Minister, and you are still reviewing the case of support for Heathrow expansion. Still reviewing it? This is urgent. This is a crisis right now. If our MPs have not supported it at Westminster, why is she still supporting Heathrow expansion here in Scotland? Climate change has brought Zambia to the brink of famine. Australia has been burning since September. The ice caps continue to melt, yet the First Minister continues to support Heathrow expansion when COP26 delegates come to Glasgow. Will the First Minister be able to look them in the eye and say that she is doing everything that she can on climate change? First Minister? Yes, that is the answer to that, but let me go back to a really important point here, because unless I am remembering this incorrectly, I do not think that I am, the Liberal Democrats voted for the new climate change act just a matter of weeks ago. That climate change act put a responsibility on the Scottish Government to bring forward an updated climate change plan within six months of draft, within six months of royal assent by the end of April. That is the process that we are going through right now, to make sure that we come forward with a comprehensive plan of action to meet the targets in that act. That is the right and responsible way for a Government determined to tackle climate change to behave. When we come forward with that plan, I hope that Willie Rennie will have the courage of his own convictions. His First Minister's questions, before he reminds me of that, rightly pose questions to me today, but I could equally ask Willie Rennie why, in light of the climate change crisis that we face, his party still opposes things like the workplace parking levy to try to get people out of the cars. All of us across this chamber and across society have big questions to ask of ourselves and to answer, and this Government will not be found wanting. I am not sure that the same can be said of the Opposition when it comes to the detail of this debate. Further supplementaries from Kenneth Gibson to be filled by Jackie Baillie. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Does the First Minister share my concern that amendment 9 passed at stage 2 of the non-domestic rates Scotland bill by Green, Tory and Labour MSPs, which abolishes uniformed non-domestic rates, will lead to the loss of over £300 million of rates relief to businesses across Scotland each and every year? Does she agree that Parliament should seek to reverse amendment 9 when we get to stage 3 of the bill, as advocated by the Scottish Retail Consortium, Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, Federation of Small Businesses and many others? Yes, I strongly agree with that. I think that the amendment, which would, of course, remove uniform business rates, would make it virtually impossible for this Government to continue to provide the support that we currently provide to small businesses. Kenny Gibson has just outlined the breadth and depth of opposition to that amendment. I do not think that anybody in any party in this chamber can claim to be on the side of small businesses the length and breadth of our country if they do not vote to reverse this amendment at the next opportunity, and I hope that members across Parliament will reflect very seriously on that. Jackie Baillie to be filled by Ross Greer. The First Minister may be aware that Ulster, the retail workers union, was campaigning outside the Parliament today to end New Year's Day trading for large stores. Many retail workers in Scotland had to work on 1 January instead of spending time with their families. The Parliament already has legislation in place covering Christmas and New Year's Day trading, which would stop large stores from opening, but the New Year's Day provisions have not been implemented. Will the First Minister commit today to backing Ulster's calls, consult on New Year's Day trading and give shop workers the festive break that they deserve? I think that shop workers deserve a festive break, like the rest of us get the benefit of. I will commit today to looking very carefully at the Ulster campaign. I absolutely understand the motivations that are driving that campaign and to consider what further steps this Government can take to address some of those concerns. When I have had the opportunity to do so, I will be happy to ask the relevant minister to reply in detail to Jackie Baillie. Ross Greer to be filled by Gillian Martin. The First Minister has been critical of the American Government's escalation of military conflict with Iran, so I would like to ask if she has taken the one measure available to the Scottish Government to restrict that escalation. Has the Scottish Government taken any steps to restrict US military use of Presswick airport, which this Government owns on behalf of the Scottish public? Presswick airport, of course, operates commercially and at arms length from the Scottish Government. If it did not do so, we would not be able to keep it open in the way that we have. Of course, we expect Presswick airport to operate ethically as we do any company, and we will continue as a Government to speak up for international law, for human rights, whether in the context of Iran and the recent very worrying developments in Iran, or indeed, for that matter, in a wider context. Gillian Martin. Yesterday, the Parliament voted overwhelmingly to refuse consent to the UK Government's UK withdrawal bill in the EU. If Westminster now, as we expect, will press ahead and legislate in devolved areas without the consent of the Scottish Parliament, I would like to ask the First Minister what the implications for devolution settlement and our democracy are. The refusal of Parliament yesterday to the Westminster withdrawal agreement reflects the opposition—the strong opposition, of course, reaffirmed as recently as the general election in December—of the people of Scotland to Brexit. We have a situation now where the vast majority of people in Scotland do not want Brexit. The Parliament has refused to give its consent to the legislation facilitating Brexit. If we are in a situation in which Gillian Martin is right, sadly, to anticipate that the Westminster Government continues to ride roughshod over the views of this Parliament and the wider Scottish public, what it will be demonstrating is that the UK, as it is currently constituting, cannot accommodate the differing views of people in Scotland. The lesson that I take from that is that people in Scotland deserve the opportunity to choose a different future and to choose to become an independent country and protect our place within the European Union. 5. George Adam Thank you, Presiding Officer. To ask the First Minister whether she will provide an update on the proposed Glasgow metro rail system that will connect Glasgow Airport to the rail network. Improving connectivity for the region is a priority of the Glasgow City region deal to which the Scottish Government has committed £500 million to the total £1.13 billion. We are committed to improving connectivity to Glasgow Airport in the 2019 programme for Government. We welcomed the Glasgow Connectivity Commission report and committee to consideration of a Glasgow metro as part of the second strategic transport project review. That review is the largest strategy in transport appraisal for a decade. Work on it is under way and it will make recommendations in early 2021 on transport interventions that are required to deliver the priorities and outcomes of the new national transport strategy. In addition to that, transport Scotland officials have already committed to working with the relevant local authorities to inform the on-going appraisal of the metro proposal. I thank the First Minister for an answer. The connectivity to Glasgow Airport has been debated for many years. The current proposal is the most ambitious yet and the best option to provide opportunities for the airport and Paisley. Does the First Minister support the case for a Glasgow metro stopping at the airport and Paisley Gilmour Street and agree that it will have significant benefits not only for the airport but for Paisley, Renfrewshire and the south-side of Glasgow? Yes, I have enormous sympathy with the case that the council is putting forward as the MSP for the south-side of Glasgow. That is one of the reasons why we have committed to working constructively with partners to consider those proposals and to consider them carefully and seriously. I absolutely recognise the potential that it has to enhance connectivity, including to the airport and to Paisley. That is why the programme for government committed to appraising the scheme in the strategic transport review. That is the right way to proceed. There will undoubtedly also be challenges, which is why it is important that we work closely with local authorities, which is what transport Scotland has committed to doing. Jamie Greene will be followed by Neil Bibby. I add my welcome to the fact that progress has been made on the issue, but can the First Minister provide one simple reassurance that her Government is entirely committed that, no matter what the end solution looks like, Glasgow airport will be connected to the city of Glasgow itself? I have already made my views pretty clear on the importance of good and better connectivity to Glasgow airport. I do not think that any responsible Government can stand here and say regardless of what the end solution looks like. We will go ahead and do something. It is absolutely vital that we go through proper processes. There has not yet been a full business appraisal of the business case that was made for the metro system. That is part of the work that still requires to be done. The Government's position in committing to appraising the scheme as part of the strategic transport review of Transport Scotland agreeing to work with the councils is the best way to take forward the case for this and collectively to consider how that can be delivered. It is important to say that, while we all and I certainly understand the merits of a proposal such as this, a potential investment of this scale must be subject to normal processes and, in particular, to normal statutory processes as well. Neil Bibby. First Minister, we have been here before, promises made and people let down. In 2009, the SNP Government cancelled the Glasgow airport rail link. In 2019, the SNP cancelled another Glasgow airport rail link. It now appears to have cancelled the personal rapid transit to Glasgow airport. When does the First Minister think that she will cancel this latest project? Again, I would say to Neil Bibby that throughout that period there have been many opportunities for the people of Glasgow to make their views known on the actions and performance of this Government. The outcome of that has not been particularly pleasant for the Scottish or the Glasgow Labour Party. This is a proposal that has been taken forward by councils in the region. That is the old purpose of the Glasgow city region deal, to ensure that those councils can decide on their priorities and to take them forward. This Government will support them as they do that. I have set out the ways in which we will support them. As we do so, we will continue to work hard to ensure that this Government and this party retain the confidence of the people of Glasgow that was demonstrated again just a few weeks ago. To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government's responses to reports that local authorities are having to spend millions of pounds from cash reserves in order to balance their budgets. My first response, of course, is to sympathise with local councils who, like this Government, are bearing the brunt of conservative austerity. Local authorities, of course, have a duty to set a balanced budget, and they have to decide how they do that. In 2019-20, the Scottish Government, for its part, provided local government with a settlement of £11.2 billion. Taking to get that in itself was a real-terms increase, but taking together with the flexibility around council tax, local authorities have had access to an additional £602 million, a real-terms funding increase of 3.8 per cent. It is up to individual local authorities to take their own final budgetary decisions on how to utilise this package of funding to deliver the positive outcomes that people across Scotland expect and deserve. All councils will consider properly the use of any cash reserves where they consider that it is prudent to do so. Alexander Stewart. I thank the First Minister for that response. The recent report from the Accounts Commission states that councils face increasing challenges in meeting changing and growing demands for services. Council income is straining to keep pace at a 7.6 per cent decline in real terms since 2013-14. The Scottish Government is piling on additional pressure to councils through priorities in education and home care, which is having a detrimental effect on their finances. First Minister, your Government has been in charge for 12 years, and during that time you have systematically eroded resources that are lifelined to local authorities. So when will you take responsibility to provide councils with the necessary funds that they deserve to support the communities that they represent? First Minister. Alexander Stewart. My apology, Stewart, is nothing if not brave. Local authorities are working under real pressure. That is because of the austerity that has been posed on this Government by Alexander Stewart's party. The Accounts Commission found that local government resource budgets had gone down by around 6 per cent in real terms since 2013. I think that that was the period that they were talking about. However, over that same period, the Scottish Government's budget was 7.8 per cent lower in real terms than it had been in 2013 as a direct result of Tory austerity. However, take that 6 per cent figure for local government in Scotland, which shows that in relative terms the Scottish Government has acted to protect local government. But what is the equivalent of that 6 per cent figure when we look at Tory-run England? I do not know whether Alexander Stewart wants to get up again and tell me on the assumption that he does not. The equivalent figure is 22.8 per cent. Real terms reduction in local government funding imposed on English local authorities by a Conservative Government. So I will take no lectures from the Tories when it comes to local government funding. Of course, my last point, if we followed the advice of the Scottish Conservatives and given tax cuts to the riches in our society, local government services would be struggling even more. I think that this is one of the many reasons that the Tories lost more than half their seats at the general election. To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government's response is to reports that 14,000 applicants missed out on a place at university last year. First Minister. UKAS data covering 2019 show that over 35,700 Scottish students were accepted to a UK university and 94 per cent of Scottish 18-year-olds who applied through UKAS received at least one offer of a place. That is actually the highest level since 2009. In 2017-18, there was a record high number of Scottish domiciled full-time first degree entrance to Scottish higher education institutions, which is an increase of nearly 16 per cent since 2006-07. Angry. It is the case that it has been three years since Audit Scotland told the Government that it has failed to raise the cap on numbers for Scottish domiciled students studying at Scottish universities in order to meet increased demand. Indeed, the number of would-be students missing out on university has almost doubled under the SNP. For those who get into university, funding has been cut by £700 per student. Will the First Minister commit to restore university funding and review the cap on university places to increase and widen access for students from all backgrounds? Perhaps I will repeat for In Gray's benefit the information that I gave him in my first answer. We have seen since 2006-07 a 16 per cent increase in Scottish domiciled full-time first degree entrance to Scottish higher education institutions. The 2019 figures that he has referred to today in terms of the third highest number of acceptances on record and the numbers not getting a place at university are at the lowest level since 2009. That is the record of this Government, because we are continuing to invest strongly in higher education and support to young people to go to university. In terms of student support, we have also raised the HE bursary income threshold from £19,000 to £21,000. We have increased bursary support for the poorest young students from £1,875 a year to £2,000 a year. We have increased bursary support for the poorest independent students in higher education. We have introduced the care-experienced bursary and removed the age cap on that. All within a budget that the Labour Party has sat by and watched, the Tories have the right to reduce over the past decade. Whether it is on health or education, within a constrained budget, the Government is doing the job of delivering the best we can for people across Scotland, which, again, is probably why people in Scotland express confidence in the Government when they will have the chance to do so. We will move on shortly to members' business in the name of Maurice Corry on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, but we will have a short suspension to allow the gallery to clear and members and ministers to change seats.


My name is Noor Haris and we're here to tell actually our president and his administration and both parties That they're not claiming to be who they are They claim to be the leaders of the humanity that we've been lied to honestly for all these years Challenge these propaganda narratives that are put out that Israel is somehow a victim in any of this That we have to send her aid every year 3.8 billion dollars our earmarked since 2016 for Israel if Congress people want our support and want our vote The way to ask for it the way to get it By listening to people right now in this moment What can see it people realizing more and more that this government this hypocritical government from both parties Their game is about to just stop it in


All right, so good morning everyone. Thanks for being here today. We're going to be talking about a chaotic encryption key system It's not it's not encryption algorithm. It's more like a ratcheting thing. It's a it's a research project So just be open-minded. We're still looking for ideas. We still got a lot of challenges to solve So yeah, so we'll talk about that So I'm John Francois Kruzie from the Quebec I'm working for my own small company, which is our cost research. We're doing consulting and we are Investing in research as well and I'm Francois Gagnon. I'm a teacher at Cégep Sainte-Foyre We're also do research in the cyber security research lab So this presentation will be divided into five big parts At first we'll do just a small overview of what complexity sciences are and what they are studying What is a chaotic system and then we will talk about the the concept that we are presenting today After that, we'll do a small demo discuss about the future work. They still need to be done and the challenges that we have and we'll have time for questions as well so a brief history of that complexity sciences is in 1892 they were trying to find a way to Improve navigations with with the boats without necessarily using like stars and all those things So they were working on the three-body problem to try to define like the position of the people on Earth or on seas by using the position of the Sun Earth and the Moon and Henri Poincaré just discovered that there is no general mathematical solution to the three-body problem just only approximations that will necessarily offset over time and will be you know, not very accurate on the long term Then it took almost 70 years later for Edward Lawrence in 63 to To explicitly demonstrate that you could have a completely erratic chaotic result with only three variables, which is a quite small Then the almost ten years later It was able to explain Why it was happening. It was because very small changes in the initial conditions will yield to drastically different results So that that's a butterfly effect. So again, it was just rediscovering or explaining why you could only approximate and the approximation is not Accurate in the long term because you have what we call a strange attractor, which is a kind of a point over which The result will us see it, but the usiation will Hit at some point a tipping point and just us see it over another attractor, but it will still be Not accurate and highly unpredictable Then it's very five following those researches Lee and York were the first to use the term chaos to To describe those behaviors of some systems then in the at the beginning of the 80s There was a bunch of people amongst them Brian Arter It was an economist with a very strong map background and he was studying all those all those economic all theories which are Well, I don't want to I don't know if there's a economist in here, but sometimes Economists are way off the map with their theories like the invisible hand and things like that. So it discovered that You you could have increasing returns which is feedback loops that you could cause lock ins in the system and He also explained why the butterfly effect was happening and why over time a chaotic system is absolutely inaccurate It's it's caused to it's because of the pad dependency or sequence dependency. So without knowing the eggs the exact sequence you cannot predict the future and you cannot Backtrack as well because the sequence is not existing anymore Once you get there. So you've met with the several people like Murray Gellman physicist a Nobel Prize and at the mid 80s. They created the Santa Fe Institute Which is an Institute studying complexity sciences So that was the beginning of the science So what exactly is complexity sciences? That's that's a question mainly very Simple explanation could be that the complexity sciences is studying low-dimensional chaotic systems and I dimensional chaotic systems So sorry for that. It's a very theoretical part but Just don't know just try to stay awake It's I know it's gonna be boring. So a low-dimensional chaotic system is a set of intricate variables or agents in relation It's erratic and seemingly random seemingly because it's a nonlinear, but it's still deterministic But you cannot always express them using mathematical equations because even mats have some limitations When studying some phenomenons I dimensional chaotic system It's still a set of intricate variables or agents It's erratic, but it also possess real random properties It's nonlinear and non deterministic and They cannot be represented at all because of the non deterministic factor by mathematical equations Which makes sense and all that because agents in the system can adapt learn Change or act You know way that is totally random So can those two types of system interact together if it's closed systems or autonomous? No, if it's open to other system. Yes, they can what what's happening if you have two different Systems interacting together with different dimensionality Let's say you have system a this which is a low-dimensional system and you have the system B Which is I dimensional system the myth of system AB if they are interacting together because of the mutual impact will become In in turn I dimensional that's a that's an interesting point that we'll discuss later So examples of chaotic systems meteorological systems biological systems like François or Anybody of you or when you talk together your Your I dimensional chaotic system itself Gravitational system like solar systems galaxies universe Social networks stock market and colonies Some types of nuclear reactions as well What are the characteristics of those system you have agents and variables and relations you have temporal factors because it's still Temporal dependent it's an evolution you have tipping points you have Opacity Because you can't always know exactly what's happening in the system in the relations in the agents And because of those characteristics it generates a combinatorial explosion that could be Like for I dimensional chaotic systems absolutely infinite So because of those characteristics chaotic systems are highly unpredictable or not predictable at all For a rest for a second part of the presentation Francois will explain you exactly what a concept is about and how it works Okay, so what I'll try to do is I'll try to explain to you how we can leverage the chaotic systems into For for to use for encryption or especially specifically for a key management So just to set the expectation let's let's talk about what what is it what it's not so it's definitely a research project So whenever you feel something is wrong about it. It's because it's the research project. So That's it. So whenever you all the question at the end the answer will be well, it's a research project It's in very very early stage. So we don't have answers to all the question But please do ask them anyway. Maybe we we haven't asked some question ourselves It is a key management paradigm it's not an encryption algorithm like AES or something like that and We do have an implementation an implementation It is implementation. So it's not a good implementation yet So how it works? What we're going to use is we're going to use two chaotic systems to copy of the same chaotic systems One on each client that want to talk together and they will be will put them in a setup that they are co-evolving so they are synchronized and Those chaotic system will generate keys that will be will change the keys for every message So what we have a few priorities that we have is that they will look random and well look is a An important word here, we don't know yet our random they are we haven't studied that the theory says that it will be pretty random, but It's not clear yet. What it what it is They will have to stay synchronized all the way. So that's going to be a problem. We'll talk about it Our key will be used only once then we throw them away we we evolve the system and generate a new a new key and They won't be exchanged over the network. So the the systems are evolving and the keys are generated locally They don't have to transit on the network So let's say we have a chaotic system Which is build of 48 agents each agents as Many properties one of them we call the level which is 8 bits and what we'll do is we'll take the level of each agent at a specific moment and From that will be where it will derive key material. So for 48 agents. We will get two and 384 bits so when with that we can use a part for a key and a part for an IV and So what's important in all this is that the key part or the key material is just a very very small portion of the old system So the agent has a level but it has many other properties and those properties are very important for the evolution of the system But we don't use them for a key material I Just to give you a quick overview of what an agent looked like or what a system looked like So we could have for example a system with 48 agents each as a as I said 8 bit 8 bits level Each agent has a bunch of rule sets So 256 rule set the rules so think about it about the graph the nodes are the agents and the rule set are the Connections between the nodes and each agent impact other agents including possibly itself and the graph Will be evolving so the graph will be ever changing at some point We'll have a complete graph at some point. We'll have a disconnected graph so the the chaotic behavior will come and modify The underlying graphs so when we pick for the queue we pick only the the level so the The number in the notes, but then they're the old structure behind that is a Not related to the key part or not directly related to the key part and there's a notion of delays that a Connection at one point will have an impact in some future in the system So the impact is not always right away It's quite hard to get an idea of what is the space of all this or what is the commutatorial explosion about this We're we're looking on it. It's not it's not easy when I have a clear answer What we do know and I'll talk about a little bit about that later is that? Even that know the commutatorial explosions is really huge. There's going to be a bunch of equivalent states That are not exactly the same as a number, but they might behave exactly the same and will I'll just maybe come back quickly later so Again with the keys place So I'm just going to focus on the one agent in my system just to show you a property is quite in we believe is quite interesting So we've got agent a1. Of course, there's other bircher another bunch of agents in the system So a1 start it at level 5 and it has another Other values for the other parameters So P represent all the other parameters I'm not going to give values for those parameters in the example So when the system evolve the agent a1 would will change its level from 5 to let's say 12 and This change will will be impacted by other agents as well. So the red arrows shows Potential impact for other agents. So then a1 will continue to evolve 29 28 blah blah blah tree and at some point Obviously, it will come back to level of 5 But what's interesting here is that the next step will not be 12 or will not always be 12 because there's there are other factor that will impact the evolution and The parameters are probably not going to be the same So even though the the key generated by a1 or the key part that is generated by a1 is the same The next evolution will not be the same. So we can oh sorry. Yeah, go ahead So earlier when I was talking about sequence dependency if you don't know where the system Is from you can't know where it's going. So that's exactly that because of the delays and stocks in the system, right? So we can imagine that at some point Generating a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot lots of keys will get exactly the same key add that we've previously seen But the next one of that key will not be the next one of the same key in the previous states So the loop will be much longer eventually. We're going to loop But it's going to be much much much longer So then again, we generate new keys and then at some other point will fall in a on a state that has been previously Visited and then we'll go in another direction because of the other parameters. All right. So that was for key materials So all the system works And it's it's quite similar in to what Trevor Talked previously. So if Alice and Bob want to want they want to talk together They will each have a pair of system that are matched together. So for instance The output of Alice will be a system. So a system ID a one two three four five six And that's going to be the input system of Bob and then the output system of Bob One a to b 3c will be the input system of Alice. So they have to have matching systems a pair of matching systems So if we take a message from Alice sending to Bob, so they both have the same system Alice will generate a key from the system. So give me a key Will encrypt the message she wants to send with Whatever in great encryption algorithm. She wants to use so they have to agree with that She's going to send the cipher to Bob Bob's going to derive a key from the co-evolving system So he's going to get the same key then they will It will decrypt the message using the same algorithm and then Important part. They will both evolve the system to get in a new state where they can generate the next So the evolution will be Quite important and they have to Stay synchronized if one evolve and the other doesn't then we're kind of we have a problem because now they cannot decryp The message of each other so I'm going to talk a little bit about how we keep system synchronized or how we fail to in Possibly in that case and what needs to be addressed So for first, let's start with the sender So right now the sender will evolve his system So he's sending a message over TCP and as soon as he received the acknowledge from this TCP he evolved its system Okay, so it's Well, it's not it's not really secure so we could Dysynchronize those system simply by having an attacker that's doing something like a man in the middle preventing The message to get to Bob so Bob will not evolve the system and just faking An acknowledge and then Alice will evolve her system of course the the agent that Yeah, that girl has to have full control over the network to do that or a good control over the network But what's interesting here that wouldn't happen. Let's say for Another attack using we can do that as well with SSL or something is She has to do it only once So she prevents one message to reach Bob She sends a fake acknowledge and then she disappeared from from the network She doesn't have to men in the middle anymore. The system are Unsynchronized and then the attacker doesn't need to be there anymore So if obviously we'll have to work on that to have a safer acknowledge that's not been done yet from the other way around So when the receiver will evolve his system So if we only encrypt The message Send the message Then there's nothing telling Bob that what he received in the crypts is not just garbage How can he differentiate between garbage with an attacker just send garbage to Bob Bob the crib and say alright You send me that message. I'm gonna evolve. So we need to have a stronger I'm gonna skip skip through those and we need to have a stronger way to authenticate the message what is interesting so Where we'll go is the last one What is interesting is that we don't have a shortage of key we can generate key material We've got lots lots of Key material so we can use one key to encrypt the message and another key to authenticate the message with something like HMAC or That requires a key and and the two-party the two entities will have those key Generated from the chaotic system. So instead of using Generating a tree under the 84 bits of key We need a longer key one part for encryption one part one part for authentication So what happens if if the and the attacker gets an encrypted message then he has to brute force in this case to key one for Encryption one for authentication. So that's nothing you dare So what happens if he gets an encrypted message and the two keys? Or the keys used for that message So obviously can get the plain text easily But since the keys are used only once Then after decrypting that message There's nothing he can do anymore and the keys are not related. So having the key or In in cardiac system it translated to having the level of all the agent as a specific point doesn't help you predict What's going to be the next step because you need as Jean-François told before you need the history to predict the next key So you don't know what's going to happen next Now what if he gets an encrypted message plus the initial state? So now there's going to be a problem we're going to solve that problem so if he has an encrypted message so An attacker will have the encrypted message if he has also the initial system state then he can catch up He can simulate his own system and catch up. So he takes the initial state generate the first key Decipher the message Get something that could be the plain text then get the second key To authenticate the message and say ah authentication doesn't work So let's evolve our system do the same thing They don't match. He's going to do that a bunch of time about a few times and then at some point He's going to get he's going to catch up with the state of The system for the two parties and he's going to be able to decrypt the message and Then he's in sync when the system with the systems So how we saw this particular problem? Is that we're using the message content with impact the system evolution So an attacker we need to we need to guess or to have access to all the messages and exchange so far To be able to catch up so it's still possible if you have the initial system and the full set of message exchange To do a catch up, but you cannot do it with only one message So the idea here is that the evolution will take the the exchange message as a parameter and From a specific state if you evolve with a given message you end up in one in States why and if you evolve with another message you end up in a completely different state That's also interesting is here the evolution because it might end up breaking the Equivalency of the state so you might have two equivalent systems, but since they are poked with something external Then they are not equivalent anymore. So we're gonna see if we can Have a better complex or better combinatorial explosion with An idea we're towing with so it's really important that it's an idea is using something that's related to the one-time pad So if we have a we're in a specific state we have we want to encrypt a message Of whatever night 900 bits So we're creating a clone of our system And then we're gonna generate key material as much key material as we need from that system So in that case, we're gonna need three states. These states are evolving without Any input from the the outside so the evolution years is with the empty message and We generate enough key material we encrypt our initial message Then the evolution of the original system will be done with the message and parameter So that's gonna end up with a completely new state That's not related with state x x plus one or x plus two And then we can delete all the clone we've got and keep going about just when the main system This is The same idea here of having a clone and evolving the clone will be applied To get one key to get two key or to get three key. So if we need one key for encryption one key for authentication Then we'll use we're using the same idea of cloning the system generate the keys on that clone and then Evolving the main So we'll go back to Jean-François So we had a great debate this morning Whether we're what we do is my computer or his computer. So I apologize. It's a Windows computer because that's that's his computer So Yeah, so just a little Precision is that when we say that the message is impacting the evolution We're talking about the plaintext message. So to guess the evolution of the system you would first need to decrypt the messages but to decrypt the messages you need to Guess the evolution. So it's kind of the chicken or the egg problem here. So Let's say we generate like a two hundred and sixty fifty six It's key it takes a few seconds because it's like thousands of thousands of parameters that we need to initialize So it's like three seconds But after that if we say that we want to generate like hundred thousand keys It's gonna be a kind of fast Did I put an extra zero or? well, oh Yeah, I think I just rolled a million so it it should take about like 290 seconds so less than point three milliseconds per key generation and evolution and all the rest So based on that you can We we created a very simple test chat application So we first need need to open a system definition which will just you know with matching systems Then we Put the listener Then what we can do is that like send a message It's gonna be encrypted decrypted and if we send the message a couple of times like one The second time third time or even the fourth time What we can see is that because the keys are changing and the message is impacting Devolution of the system and a bunch of other parameters The IV will be different the authentication of the message will be encrypted using a different key and the message itself will be encrypted using a different key so Yeah, so it makes thing a little bit harder to To the crib even with the same message So we still have lots of future work to do We need to prevent malicious Disynchronization because right now it's only like on the TCP act that we are training triggering the evolution If you if you guys have any ideas We have discussed like few ideas like we could use a kind of a one-way DH calculation just to send An acknowledge that could be understood only by someone having the previous information or the initial message But we still need to to discuss about it and see what we can do and also we would like to work on the How could we resynchronize the system? We didn't work on the initial synchronization so far but another idea could be like to use the fielman to Generate the seed that will be that would be used to generate the system at first But or we could just not synchronized over the internet like if you have a dongle VPN dongle or something like that or a machine machine interface that you can just install yourself but it's still like along with there because we need to We still need to do a lot of work like to just make it work properly so we will still need contributors help and ideas are very welcome in this project and Yeah, we have a small challenge just to demonstrate or trying to to see if Someone can predict the the key sequence from having the keys only so In the summer what we're going to do is we have a small project that is funded by in part partly by NS ERC the research Council of Canada and We'll re-engineer the proof of concept because that's my own Implementation it's a proof of concept like patch over patch over patch over patches make it work So we're going to be building a new architecture with a better approach from what we've learned in the past So


احمده و نستعين به و نستخبره و نتوه لي اشهد الله إله إلا الله و اشهد ان محمدا عبده و رسوله أرسله بالهدى و دين الحق ليظهراه على الدين كله و لو كاله هالمشاركون اباد الله اؤسيكم و ايا يا بتقوى الله والكروا نعمة الله عليكم إذا كنتم أعداءاً فألَّك بين أحضبكم فأصبحتم بنعمته إخوانا وكنتم على شفا حفرة من النار فأمطركم منها الحمد لله على نعمة الإسلام الحمد لله على نعمة الإيمان الحمد لله على نعمة الإحسام الحمد لله على نعمه كلها ظاهرها وباطلها الحمد لله على نعمة حبيبنا وسيدنا محمدا صلى الله عليه وسلم خاتم الأنبياء والمصريين أما بعض السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته but also the Muslims in Burma are divided into four separate different groupings one of the groupings is the group that the British brought into Burma during the colonial period British again took over Burma around 1826 1827 and they brought with them from India what they call colonial administrators and so the British were elites they managed the colony and brought in various populations to do the management in a similar way that South Africa you go to South Africa there is the blacks and there is the category of colored and then there were the British and the Dutch who constituted the colonial image and that's why if you think about Ghana, early history was actually in South Africa as a colonial administrator similarly we see in Kenya likewise that the British brought in from various colonies one group of subjects to another area to administer their colonies so the British actually brought in around the 1827 group of Muslims to be part of the administrators as well as some Hindus and others to administer the bureaucracy now for us Muslims in America we actually not to say we see some lies but some of the early arrivals of Muslims into the US and Canada actually were coming from South Africa and parts of Africa because as soon as they came into those areas it was easy to jump into the new world and especially we find this to be the case in Canada especially for some of the early Muslims some of the early Hindus seats and then migrating south so you could see the global networks that existed in India other groups of Muslims in the hierarchy of Chinese background and these were historically merchants because China was connected to the global trade before Trump came into existence the self trade route is the longest standing transnational trade network in the globe it's almost 3000 years in the making you could actually trade that's why it's called the silk because silk was something that the Chinese perfected its production and shipped all parts of the world and we could understand this because historically why do people right now when they buy a tie it's almost silk tie is the highest because that was a form of dignitary and honor is that you actually give gifts of silk and we could see this throughout the silk trade route that was part of the tradition and what is remain of it is this silk tie right now that is seen to be the refinement of face we'll talk about the Hadith of the Prophet SAW prohibiting men from wearing silk ties set that aside but just to understand that that network was there present throughout history so we see Muslim merchants from China that were trading in for men setting up communities and we also see it in other parts and their connection to the Muslim world was also present from the earliest period for example for those who visited Yemen Yemen was the hub of silk trade routes and therefore if you go all over the coast in Asia you'll find some Yemeni communities that are based on that lineage of merchants and traders that brought the seeds in order to trade so if you go to Malaysia you'll find communities from Yemen you go to China actually in the coastal area it was as far as the 4th century of the common era almost 200 years before the arrival of Islam or a port city in China inhabited by Yemeni merchants who were engaged in trade if you go to the coast of India especially in the south something that I went there last year you will see some of those lineages and therefore wherever Islam came by sea it actually implanted the Shafi'i school because the Yemenis were the one that took the Shafi'i school and similarly also on the coast of East Africa where the merchants by sea wherever Islam came by sea it came with the Shafi'i tradition whereas wherever it went by land it carried the Hanafi'i tradition because the round ended up in Baghdad or around Iran or present day Iran and then out to parts of Europe or going down south so you will see in this presence of the Chinese Muslims in Burma they link to this part of the world of Muslims also in Burma are converts those who converted to from Buddhism to Islam and again this linkage of conversion is long standing now why didn't people in the olden days converted to Islam there are a variety of reasons but one part that we could actually point to is people tended to want to imitate those whom they assumed to be powerful and ascended and again if you look at the world from the 7th century all the way up to possibly the beginning of the 17th century people wanted to imitate Muslims people wanted to be married to Muslims people wanted to trade with Muslims not to compare just like today most of our kids want to imitate the dominant culture so they have their hats backward they have their pants to their knees why because they assume that is the cultural ascension that we are living in so you could see some of those dynamics in relation to the Muslim presence and the conversion that took place and we could see that marriage relations were prominent and we could study both in Africa as well as in Asia that was the prominent feature of conversion to Islam in its converted to Islam people followed the religion of their beliefs that people followed the religion of their kings or their affluent ones or their beliefs and that took place again in most of Africa and Asia it wasn't by means of military and often you find Orientalist writing that says that Islam was spread by the soul and they confused the massive expansion in the first 70 to 80 years with conversion to Islam and that's why if you read the book of Khaled the jihad state which was the first 92 years of the Umayyad dynasty you could say that there was an expansion military expansion but military expansion is different than conversion because conversion in many places took about 150 to 200 years the earliest place for conversion to take place is the area of what we call Iran against them and Iran those were the earliest about 150 to 200 years conversion in Spain Muslims arrived in 711 and literally even staying there for 800 years never reached a majority they always were an elite minority some were close to 50% but not really close to that governing over predominantly Christian and Jewish population so military conquest did not mean conversion to Islam it took a longer period of time Orientalist states that military conquest and immediately said that this one was spread by the soul it was not the case and we have in this country a clear evidence of this one of the fastest growing rate of conversion in America is African Americans and the place of conversion is actually in prison and definitely you don't see so many Muslims running in prison with swords converting people as under their own group there is an evidence against that major plague against what they assumed to be in this case now while we are having this major crisis in Burma is there is a military rule in Burma that classified Muslims as foreigners classified Muslims again they have been there from at least the earliest from 1400 if not before for the common era not 1400 today with the Islamic calendar they have been classified under the new regulations beginning at least this 1974 onward is to classify Muslims as foreigners now this get me to the connection to the period of Muslims in Spain which I brought it in earlier now what Muslims were expected in 1492 by classifying them to be something other than being Spanish and therefore beginning to see them as not European or not Christians and not Jewish so again the same structure of removing from the rule and generalizing for something that was carried out in 1492 and in here you have a population that existed in Spain for 800 years meaning these were Spanish that were actually born generation after generation and it ended up again in completely ethnically cleansing Muslims from Spain that today we are speaking about the ethnic cleansing that took place and more importantly there are also people who converted to Christianity forced to convert to Christianity they were also expelled in 1609 650,000 were expelled that existed or lived now mostly in North Africa and we met some of their descendants just recently in Spain in Granada now what is the reason for again we could discuss the reasons for the expansion of Spain and so on the fragmentation the lack of cohesion the lack of unity the inner fighting the lack of a purpose for the Muslims made it possible for the calamities to take place that were still facing like every week you read the news you think that we stopped digging and you find there's a lot of people that still digging alright so we are at the lowest run of our history the lowest run of what we are attempting to see in essence it has become a normal slide we don't even feel the news in terms of what is taking place toward Muslims bought in part of the Muslim world but also you could see some of our circumstances in this country as well so that the crisis is real the crisis is real and what is requires for us is to ask that question and how to change it because I could sit in here and I could cry from you again from the collapse of Baghdad in 1258 we could take you to the collapse of Spain and we could detail you the history go through the inquisition go down to the 20th century and we could enumerate and not mention it just in case what is it to be done what is it that we need to be done and I think one of the fundamental issues that we need to do is how for us to develop a unity toward the coming good among ourselves part of the issue is that we have left aside the collective good as a way for us to work collectively not to use the shoe rack as an example I usually use that as an example everybody wants to put their shoes and they are concerned about their shoes but nobody is concerned about everybody else's shoes the moment that you begin to think of everybody's shoes ahead of your shoes is a moment of a change the public good the collective good is more important and more critical than the self good in general so the concept of what is public interest for Muslims what is the public interest for Muslims is it oh Allah oh myself that's what we hear after but to get to the holy after you have to sacrifice for the other you have to sacrifice for the other we have a concept of ita trying to think of the other ahead of yourself to try to think of the other ahead of yourself so how we develop this as part of a public policy for us how to develop that as a part of a public policy how to teach it how to inoculate ourselves with this particular paradigm in order for us to actually quality and make a difference the process I said but if you have a Jama'a that are punching each other there is no yadullah in there we often think of ourselves in a boxing match and we confuse theology with public policy so we only encounter each other in debates of theological so we think of the other that unless they agree with me theologically and legally on every point I'm not going to do anything with that relative to the shuraq so if all of us get the shoes thrown on us while we are entertaining ourselves with the main theological and legal debates right so how to create this as a major way for us look at this room we might end up with almost 500 or 1000 people what is our common collective public policy in general for ourselves how to transform it into an applicable strategy to change in corporate world you call it corporate culture and the corporate culture everybody has to adhere to the corporate culture so what is the in the public space as Muslims we say in Arabic if you don't respect yourself nobody else respects you are we at a point where we respect each other respect the dignity that each one of us want as really representative of God in this world if we don't have that respect then we cannot ask the others to respect us one and then we can't really complain about the multiplicity of issues that are facing and that has been one of the most driving points that we need to change is to utter and to manifest our collective public interest as a community and look for the interests of the other and of yourself which is again at the foundation we have a hadith of the Quran none of you truly believe until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself so when you apply it into a public policy a public engagement then that will make a qualitative change in our conditions in here as well as inshallah we will manifest it across the world I will say this I will say this I will say this I will say this I will say this I will say this I will say this I will say this I will say this I will say this I will say this I will say this I will say this I will say this I will say this I will say this I will say this I will say this هذا هو ما يدعوك الهيرو سندرون الهيرو سندرون فقط ننتظر من شخص إذا كنت ننتظر من شخص ماذا is the response is you're sitting and sitting your child out there right I'm wearing a Starbucks because they have Wi-Fi and when صلاحة الدين or رحمة الله و بلاك I'll get a Twitter what you call an alert and then Masha Allah things will happen Let me tell you the person you're waiting for is sitting in here you need to take yourself seriously in order for you to begin to make the change that you would like to see doesn't mean that you're gonna again think that I'm just gonna muscle everyone else is that you have to think that you are capable as a person to take matters of significance and act upon it كلكم واعين و كلكم أسكولانا روايات and each one of you is an overseer and everyone is responsible for that which they have to oversee including all the way to the servant that is engaging in service for the house that they're responsible for the wealth that is under them now you know this you know again in your work you're responsible you don't what you call if you leave it to somebody else and you only evaluate as you can show where so and so but he didn't do his work he didn't do this he didn't do this he didn't do this he didn't do this really we have to part company with you so in matters of world we know what is responsibility but in matter of higher magnitude which is relationship with Allah and relationship with the humanity because each one of you for me is a representative of God on this earth fulfilled that role in their capacities so how we begin to actually shift from one level of hero worship thinking that somebody is going to come and knock in the door while you're again sipping your child out or consuming from the world without thinking of what needs to be undertaken so how to make each one of you actually fulfilling that role each one of us is responsible each one of us is responsible with it or circle of influence each one of us is connected to someone else you're connected to your own house how many children you have the wife you have your nest your lineage all the people around you if you think you say oh I can't do much you can most everyone in here is responsible for a circle between 100 to 200 individuals right at minimum you are a circle of 200 individuals what is your خلافة in that I'll tell you what خلافة we take the خلافة and we say حرام حرام right and basically we transform all of our needs miscondemnation of the other this is again is taking the mind and make it into a public house and often we try to force people in things that we ourselves are not adhering to right so how to transform ourselves in a reality to be people that actually aspire to transform not only ourselves but also the community that is around us كلكم رائع وكلكم مسولون عبائية and don't think that we're safe in here or any other place Muslims in Spain for 800 years they thought that they were safe your safety is going to Allah سبحانه وتعالى and safety in terms of what you make is an impact at the moment that you are present and the moment that you are able to contribute so we ask Allah سبحانه وتعالى to protect us our brothers in in Burma to help them in this calamity that they are facing we ask Allah سبحانه وتعالى to protect us that we don't face the same calamity because the calamity that they are facing is not because of their lack of relief and the calamity is not because of us is not because of our magnitude of relief so Allah سبحانه وتعالى we are living in the world that Allah سبحانه وتعالى but we ask Allah to continue to protect us to continue to make it possible for us to actually get up with it and do our prayers without anybody interfering in our affairs we ask Allah سبحانه وتعالى to give us the ability to see truth as a truth and act upon it make it make it possible for us to enjoy our hearts so we will actually united both in prayers as well as in action in this world because of the calamities that are befalling us أقولوا قادي هادا وستخفوا الله يوليكم فاستثرو إن الله هم لائد يصول على النبي وما يصول عليه وسلمه تسليمه ألقا اللهم الصدي على فإننا محمد وعلى آل سيدنا محمد كما صلى الله عليه وسلم على سيدنا أبواه وعلى آل سيدنا أبواه في العالم إنك حميل المجين اللهم إني داعن فأمي اللهم هدنا في من هدى وعافنا في من عافي وتولع أحي من تولع وبارك لنا في كامعة طايت وقنا وصف عننا بالخيب شرمات طايت فإنك تطدي بالخيب ولا يضاع عليك وإنه لا يدند من ورق رابنا ربنا رابنا هدى ل اللهم اقلو بين قلوبنا اللهم اقلو بين قلوبنا اللهم اقلو بين قلوبنا والارض effective وزوطنا اتباعة اللهم اؤمننا في كل مكان يرغب العالمين اللهم إذا رغبونا فنصرنا اللهم إذا رغبونا فنصرنا اللهم إذا رغبونا فنصرنا وآكل العوانا الحمد لله رغب العالمين وآكل الصلاة إن الصلاة تنهى عن تحشاجهم والمنتج وباري يعيبكم لعلكم تذكرون