there YouTube. Well I finally get to use some of my 2N2222's and 2N3907's complementary pairs. I hope I've got that right now. 2907 yet. For this little tiny amplifier circuit nothing overly complicated. Got the complementary pair there. We've got the collector feeding into the base here. We've got a voltage difference between the two transistors using these two diodes. And we can connect our ATOM speaker to this. The input here should probably put a little long tabber input here as well. And that's where we're going to connect the positive side of the signal, the ground side of the signal to this. So I've built up the circuit. I've got to use three 10 ohm resistors here because here it wants 3.3 ohms and I don't have any 3.3 ohms. I'll just put 10 in parallel together and give me 3.33. And that's the only, that was the only snag with the circuit. Now any of these, these, as far as I can understand you can use any of these small signal transistors as long as you've got a complementary pair in them. Similar like a 2 in 22-22. To go there you should be okay. And it only requires 9 volts to work.  But just for a little amplifier circuit just to play around with. It's okay. You can build on these little tiny boards. So let's put some connectors to it. Let's find a audio source and power it up. I should probably do that first actually. Put fingers crossed. It'll work. This is the first thing I notice about this one. I connect up the connector. That's a good sign, right? Let's give it a little bit of music. We've got a track here, ready? Now it's not going to be the loudest, of course. It's not very capable. You've got to get a, I think these two in 22-22 and the other one can dissipate about half watt. Then can probably run to about 800 milliamps. If I remember correctly, I'm just trying to find something else to put on. I've no idea. It works. It's not too far off. Yeah, there's a bit of distortion there. Okay, after rooting around a little bit of my browser history, I managed to come across a circuit. It's from circuits.com, circuits-today.com, which is the same as quite a lot of those other particular websites from that. Chappy calls himself a professional blogger and just makes multiple websites. What I did as well as I made a couple of changes was I took out the little transistors and I put a, that's a D822 and that's a D722, so again complimentary NPM, PMP and I also, because it was the first time I'd ever seen actually, where you got such a big input capacitor. Normally I've seen like one microphone and this one was for 70 and I noticed that it had a bit of, thought a bit of distortion as you could hear, you know, in the video. So yeah, so I changed that and I tried playing around. Now I know that the bigger capacitor would have less resistance, so putting in the one microfarad, I think I've got like a 1k resistor there in line with the audio input, but because it was, you know, you could hear it, you can hear it just before, you know, this bit when the music's on and the previous bit of video. You could hear the distortion and I did, I did leave it like that first and I just thought no, I'm gonna change it and then I stuck in like a, this is a one microfarad, but it doesn't, it's almost like it loses a bit of roundness of sound, if you know what I mean, without the electrolytic. I tried a hundred nanofarads and of course it just made it tinier because that's more like a 10k resistor. So let me just connect up the audio source again and I'll show you, there's not a great deal of difference, don't get me wrong, we're not talking like banging hi-fi now, but it's just that subtle little bit, I see you can have it that little bit and that loudness without so much distortion I should say. So let me just connect up and I'll show you. Okay, so I'm gonna use the same songs as well. We're still on 9-volts, what? Bear-volts. There before we had distortion, I'm hoping that the audio levels from the previous sort of clip and video, that's the right 10-volta, I've got no idea if the audio levels are gonna be the same, but I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty convinced it's pretty much the same, so I'm just gonna just drop another little bit louder. We all God knows how many thousand and five, it's there to what's in front, but only see to the side, and everybody sees evil, devious minds, if the people are the power, then the power does shine. I'm just getting back in the distortion now, but that's definitely louder. Well yeah, it is a little bit louder, but it just doesn't have the amount of distortion, it certainly doesn't have the amount of distortion. And if I can use it at 12-volts as well, even at 12-volts it'll take more like 72 mA. We get even less distortion, which I suppose is about figures. Let me just try a couple of different songs. This one's not so good, because this is mono, so you're only getting to half the sounds and this is, it's got a lot of bass on this and you don't really get to hear on this so much. I'm just going to try and find a song that I know is quite good. That's probably a bit... I'm just going to try and get to a song that I know that's pretty good. Actually, that one smells pretty good. It's a pity that we haven't got another channel, because really you should be able to... Not really as rounded off as what those speakers are, but they take a bit more power to drive them. And they're not that great on a response to be fair. They're not really, you know, speaker speakers. They're not really forward-facing jubbys, I suppose to be like behind you, I think. Let me just find another track that's got a bit dynamic. That's pretty loud. I mean, that is... Especially if you're going to turn it down. Especially if you had the two speakers, two channels. That's pretty loud. That is pretty loud. That's more than enough for comfortable listening to, especially through this rubbish little setup. Don't get me wrong, I like to sit in that sometimes and listen to music. The rest of this is just... It's all open source music, that's why I have this on here. It's not because I sit and listen to it. I think this is actually from my phone, I'm not sure. So anyway, enough for all that. That makes a definite improvement. And I'll show you, I'll just show you the difference now between sticking the 100 nanofarads in. Let me just have it out of volume so we can just compare it. I know. I know. A particular song that I like, or tune, I should say. It's just quite good, but let's recognise that. It's going to be like, I'm probably going to try and find the tune that I want. I like this. I can't understand the word the same, but I just quite like the beats behind it. I'm just going to pause this for a second and find a particular tune I want, because I was going to be here all day doing this. So yeah, I found this tune because I think it was played on the previous clip. And I like this because it's got quite a lot of dynamics. And this while I'm playing, you can't really reflect why I listen to it. I'll listen to anything as long as it sounds nice. To be honest, I've got no preference. I won't say I'm particularly into this, or I'm particularly into that. I just listen to anything. As long as it sounds nice, the more... I like that quite a soul in my music, rather than pop. Yeah, if you know the difference, you're probably there with me on this. But I quite like this because it's got a lot of different dynamics. And it's open source again. All this music is open source. I'm going to skip forward a bit because in case for some reason it becomes copyright. I can turn that up. Again, a bit distortion there. But honestly, that could be down to this speaker as well. I have tried different speakers. I tried this is why I've got this lead on here now. I connected it to the bigger speakers up there. I connected it to this. It sounds all right through this. All those injuries are just the tone slightly because of the different speakers. And of course, how the speakers are positioned as well like that sounds completely different to like that. In an enclosure, of course, it will sound completely different to what it does. Not in the enclosure. Otherwise, we'd all have speakers with many closures. Yeah, that's all right. And it doesn't really raise too much on the milliamps there. It sticks around. When it's first cold, it's probably about 47. It goes up to about 52 like that. 53 maybe. And it sort of like just sits around there. So it's got its warming. This transistor, although it's not hot, I can feel a bit of warmth up it. And I can feel it more than I can feel on that one. OK, little project to build as well. Maybe not a project as such, but a little circuit to build. And it actually does work. And it works better in this configuration than what it does, at least with the values there. I have, I played around. I, you know, I swapped out the 22-ohm from the emitter to ground just to see what the differences would be. And there are differences, but none of them really improved. Second, bigger resistors on, putting less resistance on. Yeah, oh yeah, and what I was going to do as well was do this one. God, I forget what I'm doing. Let me just play that. Let me just turn it to this. OK. Just bring my mic down a little bit so I can see the heels. Whip that out. I'm going to put this 100 nanofaradine because you get to hear straight away the difference. Big difference though, isn't it? Now where's that 470, which is what is on the actual... circuit? I'm going to put that in. Let's whip that out. It doesn't matter which way that goes round of course because it's non-polarising. This one it does. Check out the one around. Oh, got to get it in the hole. So you can hear the big difference there. If I turn it up, we've got this staunch from there. Like it's, like it's ripping at the edges. And if I just take that out again, I'm going to put this one like in the one microphone which I think is the person which I think is better. Let's go that way round. I'm just not sure what's going on. I hope you can see what I'm doing because I keep looking at the circuit rather than the camera. Same volume. It knows none of that. Ripping at the edges of the same. I don't know if that's the right terminology for that, I doubt it. I don't suppose it is. I'm just making this a buzz ago or a long. There's definitely a difference on the distortion type of thing. Right, that's it. This video has gone for way too long. Yeah. There you go. It's a circuit that works. Anybody that just wants to do it up a little tiny circuit and have a little play around with it. That one does there. Look, it's circuits-today.com. Load cost, amplifier circuit, using, I suppose I was going to say, three transistors. Okay. Cheers, watching and see you in the next one.


President Mohamed Buhari threatens to ultimate destruction of bandits after another mass killing and urges journalists to be watchful of the wordings in their reportage. And the People's Democratic Party Convention will not truncate the tenure of the party's suspended national chairman Prince Uche Secundus, who shares a senior number of the party. Well, this is Plus Politics, I am Mary Annacombe. President Mohamed Buhari has reacted to the latest killings by bandits in the Northwest, threatening the country by the bandits with ultimate destruction. His reaction came a day after armed bandits attacked a market in Goronio Sokoto State, killing at least 30 people. The attack is the latest by bandits in Sokoto, one of the states most affected by a banditry in Northwest Nigeria. The President also urged the media to address the tone, content, and standards of reporting into security and safety measures. He asked that the term rising in security should be replaced with the reality of declining in security. Well, joining us to discuss this and break down, the content of Mr. President's speech is Kwanum Terence, a security expert and Dr. Monday Umani, who is a legal practitioner. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for joining us. Thanks for having me. Yes. Thank you, really. Great.  The President is talking tough yet again in terms of the bandits, in fact, generally about terrorism, and the fact that at least 40 people were killed in a part of the country. And this is not to, in any way, play down on the number of people who have been killed in that state. But we've had killings continuously happen across the country, and many people, especially in Kaduna State, have been calling on the President to, you know, somewhat do something to ease the pain of the people. We also know that Kaduna State has become more of a theater for these bandits, even though we also hear that some of these terrorists, such as Goharama, are moving now into areas such as those. Talking tough is something we've heard before. Is this enough for us to hold on to, or even the people whose family members have been killed as a result of banditry and the terrorism in this country? Is that enough of an encouragement or something to hold on to? Once again, thanks for having me. It's an unfortunate situation that we keep losing our citizens in this kind of situation, but the President's talking tough at the moment is not the solution to the issue. If you could recall, when these issues were hitting up in Zantara, we have discussed on this program, and we have set us on strategy that except we change the security architecture, where the command of security forces is deployed to the local levels, where these issues are taking place, we keep having this kind of explosion that will trick you down to other states. It has come to happen, and it's for the President to rather talk tough. I think we should rather change the security structure and architecture so that we can be able to achieve some results because if the command keeps coming from the top, it means that the criminals are going to have more space to explore. This explosion today, for example, has caused the intrusion of so-called the state, and if we keep playing politics with this and rather talking tough when the damage has been done, without actually changing the strategy, whereby a local government should also have a command to the security in this location. The governor should have command with security in the state, and ex-wife will keep having issues because the division of police officers that are in those local government where these issues are happening, if you go there you might discover that they are not properly armed, they are not taking direct service from the political head there. It has to trick you down from that local level sometimes up to a budget before they have to act, and if they are short of ammunition, they will not have the channel to get to the top for them to be re-armed and all that. It has to affect also inter before inter moves from the local communities up to the top to be classified and taken to the top. So the whole channel will not work. And today we have an explosion of bandits in Zahra that has intruded so-called though to murder my people down into another state and on and on and on. So I think the president should not go up top. The president should be able to reject his security architecture so that we should stop having security commands rushed from neighborhood so that we can be able to identify information intelligence at that level for us to be able to handle some of these situations because it's quite sad that until now we are in this mess having this thing on our hands for so many years and we have not been able to develop this strategy to protect this land. Every now and then we are here lamenting how we are listening to our fellow citizens because we are refusing to take action in our state. It's interesting that you mentioned all of these things again and again and what I'm thinking is what's the challenge? Because this is something that not just you but every security analyst in this country, whether they be on radio or TV, whether they be on round table conversations, these kinds of ideas have been thrown around. So my question is why is it so difficult or maybe why does it seem like a daunting task for the presidency to make this happen? He's the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. In other words, his word is final and we know just as you explained how power trickles down in terms of the forces. So what is the challenge? Why is this rocket science? And I always keep asking how many people have to die for us to be able to at least get it right? Even if it be a tiny little bit? I think it's a clear case of political leadership training us because like you say, yes, the solution has been there. The ideas have been there in public domain for them to use and therefore them not to be using them obviously. We have a problem with the political leadership, either they are politicizing the whole situation and we keep losing our citizens or they are just looking the other way and trying to make games out of what has come to face us today. And that is why at every point we keep in apology, they have to stand up and be able to protect themselves because we saw this kind of explosion trying to come up in places like Benway and then we saw how the governor stood up and took side with the citizens of the state to a point where he has to have issues with the federal government but he stood his ground and today those bandits that were trying to explode from there have been wiped out because the government there came out publicly to expose them and then keep insisting that they were there and they were ignoring them and to realize that they had been rooted out of that place and Benway is really still the same man except with some clashes of who are the headsmen and that's why I think that the political leadership is a failure in this situation because even if the federal government is there is being expressed some loyalty towards the issues on ground in your state the governor has to stop today to be able to stand up and defend their citizens the way governor would do with that attention will be given to them and their citizens might be at the safer side because the federal government is completely ignoring the rights countries that will be able to take decisions. I'll come back to you because there are a lot more questions that are gathering up in my mind as you speak but let me go to Dr. Bani. Dr. Bani, yesterday the information minister was quoted to be giving us a lecture on the difference between Boko Haram, bandits and iPob and he did lump iPob with Boko Haram saying they have ideologies and those ideologies are not in the interest of the entity called Nigeria but that the bandits do not have a flag, they do not necessarily have an ideology of sorts and so they cannot all be categorized. I'm asking this question because I want to talk about the issue of nomenclature. How do we deal with insecurity especially one that's a hydrated monster like banditry or whatever name we want to call it whether they are known gunmen or faceless gunmen or bandits or herders, killer herders how do we deal with that situation if the government is trying to tell us what to call it and how to report on it. Thank you very much for having me. When a government tries as much as possible to rationalize and call criminals a different name it would also affect their attitude how to tackle the state of insecurity and the things we've been discussing. I think we are also the empire of discussing this state of insecurity in Nigeria because virtually every week one television or the other radio station will assemble the SPATs and they profile the solutions and talk and tell us what is actually wrong with our security policing system and the government do not in any way take any of these suggestions and advise into consideration. You can't expect a different result. It's only a madman that does the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. What we do is to lament or to threaten or to use flower language in order to describe what has happened most of the times without any practical to the state of insecurity just as my brother has said if your policing system is over centralized direction and directive has to come from a Buddha in order to deal with the matter that is purely local there is no way we will expect an effective policing system. Now the bandits that came and attacked those people in the market in Sokoto I understood that there are more than 200 bandits where were they coming from were there no security you know on the road or on the way where did they come from and how did they manage to enter into such an environment such a large number of persons that came from wherever they come from and then did what they did and then escaped and nothing happened to them. So what manner of policing system are we using in this country in order to create a state of security what are we really protecting lives and property which I know is the primary responsibility of government so the reactionary strategy is not going to give us effective result there is no intelligence gathering there is no practical intention on the part of government to actually fight insecurity especially when a top government like the minister of communication or the minister of information is telling you that those who are bandits are so much lovers of Nigeria they are very patriotic that the only people that are not patriotic are the high power and those who are agitated for self-governance so those are people that should be considered an enemy and dealt with whereas those who are bandits and who are terrorists are very patriotic and they love Nigeria so much if the government officially is doing that by way of nationalization so do you expect the same government now to be regarded as enemies we should be dealt with that this government campaigned over and over again in fact this is one of the reasons why many Nigerians voted them into office one of the academy point was that they were going to fight and put an end to insecurity in the country we are almost 6 years into this administration and we have not necessarily been able to say that that has been done so really we expect them to whether they show us via their body language or not this is an expectation because they built up that expectation when they were campaigning for our votes yeah but they have shown you that they don't have the capacity to deal with those promises they made so many promises is it on the economics fair is it on the security they made so many promises what you and I know today those promises they have not been able to meet with it they have not in any way fulfilled those promises and they know it but my only problem and my own worry is that the same government that knows that they have held in keeping to those promises they made we come and on the office and throw it on our face and tell you that they are the best government that Nigeria has ever had from 1960 till then that they have done more than any other government and I tell you what have you done in what area can you really sell you sell Nigeria that you have exiled is it the time in the show of fighting insecurity which area to deal which region in Nigeria is planning to sell where can you go to your bed with your eyes closed in this country to then say I am safe because of the fact that the government is one if not for God who has been so magnanimous in protecting us the government has failed in this issue of fighting insecurity they have not succeeded in really keeping Nigeria safe but we have been iterated we have been saying that today virtually of all the regions the north west used to be safe Sokoto is a north west but you can see what happened in Sokoto where are many and now you are deploying the military so why we are the military not deployed in the first place to ensure that there is maximum security not if you look at Zafara it is very close to Sokoto whatever has happened in Zafara we can spread to Sokoto easily that there should be enough security so reactionary strategy cannot give us absolute security and as some people have said let's go through the issue of decentralization of the policing system we need state policy it should be local because security is local let people who are in need begin to man their own local government if every local government chairman man his local government everyone man his local government man his area man his world but this issue of waiting for Abuja to give directive what will happen in the remote village but we also cannot wait we still have to rely on Abuja in your own words because I do not know if the police act has room for that you are a lawyer so maybe you would educate us there has to be room in the constitution to accommodate state policing doesn't it yes there is a process that is ongoing on the amendment of the constitution and one of the suggestions by espads is that we should go for state policing including the governments that were initially very selfish and not agreeing they have come to realize that there is no way we can effectively police this country without state police and they have all agreed so that are main main is something that is ongoing and people are deeply in conversation we have seen what have been in other nations that are in the republic and what they do in terms of security they say that even their university has their own policing system the government has their own policing system so where is it in a big country like this you know in Nigeria you want every directive to come from Abuja where it has to think that our own remote villages all over the country it cannot in any way work that way and that's why we are saying that the government must take everything and look at it deeply in order for the sake of this country to actually change the you know policing architecture that is only where we can get ourselves effectively police and I think the ongoing conversation we will issue amendment of the constitution is in that regard okay let me come back to you Koenem because issues of security can be very sensitive and of course as journalists were trained on how to report them but then the presidency is speaking about journalists using certain terms and not using the other but as an English student I am looking at both statements that the president has made and he is saying that we should use one for the other one means that well they are gradually winning the war but the other is saying well we are experiencing some form of insecurity so I am trying to understand how one replaces the other but maybe you could help us understand how we should what we should see and what we shouldn't see in terms of reporting actually in the first place we are trying to cover the assailant and not how the reporters should be because what is happening in Northwest and the middle of this country is not attacked by terrorists but they have almost changed the narrative to make everybody believe that they are bandits and the press has already joined them through calling terrorists in this country bandits maybe because the coalition that is happening between the press and them is failing and that is why he is questioning the press if not we have been in Cumbag in this country and the government is rather covering terrorism in this country so that they will not have international interventions to help assist them in this crisis and that is why they keep looking for one excuse or the other to take the international community attention away from what is happening in this country but it is quite unfortunate that we have a government in this country that have been attacked by terrorists and rather than look for assistance and a way to flush them out of their boundaries they are looking for ways to protect them and give them a leg up back in to keep oppressing their city and so I expect that you know this should be professional in handling these issues that have to do with security in this country because no one is safe at the end of the day because they have started killing the people in quotes the high places that were said the issue that is happening in this country is what the government they were sure they could have handled we have saved the time with that number and the stories that we are moving from the north east to the north west we are going to have more life spaces to we have more urban spaces in the north west and the north east that they were operating and if we allow them to provide our urban spaces in the north west it is going to be a huge challenge for the government to handle without the use of technology and with the intervention of the international community the rather than admit what is happening to us as the people the solar government has been deploying every to cover it up to the point where we need trying to dictate to the press and what they are going to tell us as citizens we need to and also seek for help ourselves because we are the ones that are in this and we need the attention of the international community immediately to be able to resolve this issue because everything now and then on the daily basis as we are speaking now it is possible we might have been attacked somewhere but they they have always started deploying the strategy of probably not setting attack that are not in public domain so that these issues will not be reported so what is happening to us from the president is quite unfortunate and I don't think any press president can say that I like to balance the equation because there are people who have a school of thought that the media can also over report issues pertaining to terrorists and this is what they want because they want to continuously be in the news and be on the lips of people that way maybe they spread fear or gain some form of prominence I mean before we started talking about Burkha Haram they were just a slipper cell that were not so known so could it be said that maybe the media has also played a role in making these people relevant again if we do not in any way name them and we just report it as a known gunman or just say terrorist we decide to change it to or we refuse to put out the numbers and reduce the census journalism or maybe just say people were killed and not give numbers will that in any way help in the fight against insecurity and this is the crux of the matter for me if we were to do what the government is saying or what the people who oppose what the media is doing are saying will that in any way change the situation of things will it give government the time or will we just be playing a fool well first off we are under reporting the killings in this country because they mean the journalism themselves how what capacity do they even have to even go to some of these places that these killings are taking place I have done assessment in the Northeast and part of the Northwest and I know that most of the territory that these people have occupied you and I cannot have access to them not every security person can even have access they are taking over our own government spaces they have taken over communities in this country they are killing people on a daily basis and you cannot even access those places we really know how many people have been killed and what kind of damage has been done even the government in those places have concluded that those places are out of their workflow we are not aware so at times when you run through people's you become so amazed of the damage that has happened to this country so already we are under reporting this Christ and I think what the freedom government should have been doing was to try to collaborate with the international community to step in immediately because if we look at the sandmissile that we used to call in Boronu state in the Boko Haram days it is something that has been driven through Zanfar onto the Niger border the sandmissile forest that have been tied down in the north west has never ever been reported by the press there is this one in the sandmissile forest of the Greening Forest of the Zanfarah of the Sokoto's and of to Jibya at the borders of Nigeria have you people ever reported that all the streets are occupied by the so called bandits in this country so there is another reporting of this crisis in this country and you can see that what the freedom government should be doing is to look at strategies that are on the screen and not dictate to people how to report and network this because the damage has already been done finally Dr Bani still staying with the issue of reportage which is the clocks for the presidency and of course those who work for him this year has been a very interesting year for the media by the way in Nigeria we've had all kinds of bills come back and go we've had the NBC tell us how to report on this particular issue the NBC being the broadcasting commission which is in charge of regulating media houses told us also how to report on these issues and it didn't really go down well with people in the country aside from the media we've also seen people stations being clamped down on and sometimes journalists we saw the very the most recent was the I think it was channels to television and some of the reporters so really where is the insurance that cover the umbrella of the constitution in terms of where the journalist is safe when it comes to reporting as much as the reporter wants to put out news and put out information gets facts and put it out there how do you deal with also not being victimized by the powers that be apart from the other three major arms of government I'm talking about the executive judiciary and the legislative our 1999 constitution under fundamental objective and directive principle of state on set section of that particular chapter 2 give a very great responsibility to the Nigerian press in order to hold government accountable and make sure that government is clearly, clearly under watch and then information of what goes in governance being made known to the people so they are under premise under the constitution to under obligation to do that and then the fundamental rights provision which is in chapter 4 issue of freedom of expression is there and is guaranteed by the constitution and so the press has a constitutional responsibility in informing and also in holding government accountable and so no matter whatever government want to do in terms of clamping down on free expression just in that time is a constitutional responsibility for which the press at every point in time be ready and allowed in order to fight and then with the combined position of the civil society government must always be put on notice that they have no right whatsoever to clamp down on free expression free expression of the people is a guaranteed right and the Nigerian press is under obligation to hold them accountable now let me say when there is failure in governance when they have failed in legacy they don't want people to know about this and the next thing they will do is to clamp down and to ensure that you do not have the freedom to report and when you do they pose all manner of pedal including fine which is what is going on presently and of course there are some of the views that are pending of which stakeholders are clearly opposed and they are still helping on trying to tackle the people and tell them that they have no right. Remember that I banned Twitter and I'm in court presently over that Twitter ban and many people including Nigerian bad association they are also in court and so many other Nigerians and NGOs are in court over this short Twitter ban and they have even threatened to ban more others platforms in Nigeria because according to them they spread fake news I see no reason why the government should not be tolerant of opposing views I see no reason why government should not be interested in getting a feedback system from the people that have elected them because feedback mechanism is clearly inherent in democracy you need to hear from the people how they are feeling with your type of style of governance if you are not doing well they will tell you if you are doing well they will also appraise you and say that you are doing very well and so this issue of being highly intolerant is something that has actually given this government part of the minus is that we talk about where is government so they have done it over years now it is reported that from 2015 to then Nigeria is clearly not under democracy in terms of freedom of expression that they have clamped down on media houses who free express and inform Nigerians of what is going on in governance and it is not a good thing because the world has become a good place so people are knowing what is going on here is not right Dr. Bani knowing is not enough I ask that question deliberately who protects the journalist yes it is the only profession in the constitution that has been given a responsibility to be the fourth state of the realm but where is the cover for the journalist where is the protection for the journalist we even see media houses that employ these journalists throw them under the bus when push comes to shove so really where is the encouragement to really be a journalist and be unbiased I don't think that the journalists are left alone in this fight the NGOs and some of the civil society groups have been always on the side of the basic responsibility that the constitution has assigned to the profession and of course judiciary is against any oppressive pronouncement of any government so the judiciary is always there if anyone freestreats at any point in time about this issue of clamp down on free expression the courts will become the last result the court will be able to protect and the courts have been living up the expectation as I said earlier on this year on Twitter and I believe that before the end of this year we should be able to know where we are with regards to that the government is also feeling the heat they are making arrangements now to leave the ban on Twitter and all that so what I think we should do that there must be a combined effort in order to let the government know that there is free speech in the country and that can be done by the populace resisting any sort of democratic or draconian policies of government especially against free speech that's what I think and then the judiciary is there for you that's what I can assure you well I want to say thank you Dr Mundi Ubani and of course Terence Kwanum thank you so much for being part of this conversation we appreciate it that's a pleasure well thank you all for staying with us we'll take a short break now and when we return we will discuss the possibility of the PDP convention negatively ending the tenure of its embattled chairman although he seems to think different stay with us


Hi, I'm Jay Fidel. This is ThinkDeck, and the program we're going to do now is East West Center Insights. It's actually a program of the East West Center. This is the first iteration of it. And my co-host for this program is Karina Lyons. She's VP at the East West Center. Hi, Karina. Hi, Jay. Aloha. Thanks for having us here today. Yeah. Well, I think it's very important because going forward, you're going to be the host. So we're sort of introducing the program today. But they would rather look at you than me anyway. I know that. Yeah. So congratulations on setting it up, Karina. Thanks, Jay. And yeah, I'm looking forward to this dummy run. So why don't you host today, and I'll take my lead from you. Okay. All right. But let's have all your questions. Let's make it hot for Tim. Tim Brown is our guest today, and he is a UH professor, and he is going to talk about the global effect, the global process of coronavirus, which is very important. We talk about it, not dissimilar from a program he gave under the auspices of the East West Center only a few days ago. Welcome to the show, Tim. Nice to be here, Jay. So let me start this off by saying that I think the media in this country have focused inward, as the White House has, into international issues and arguments about who's in charge, about whether the job that the White House has done over the past couple of months is adequate about what the truth is and what it isn't. And these are kind of international issues that we have all seen on network television, cable television. But what we have not focused on nearly enough, in my opinion, is the relationship of what is going on in the pandemic here in this country and other countries and how it spreads, the nature of the contagion from one to the other. And I was hoping that we would talk about the global aspects and process of the pandemic with a view to looking at the contagion, look at the effects, and look at the steps down the road we will have to cope with. So can you give us some thoughts on that, Tim? Well, I think it's worth noting, first of all, that the United States represents only about one-quarter of the total detected coronavirus infections. In reality, it may be higher than that because our testing has been so inadequate compared to a lot of other countries. I think the global nature of this pandemic is clear. The importance of WHO, I think, in responding is another thing that we need to pay close attention to. And I believe that as this pandemic plays out, with the United States basically being in the number one position right now, we have a lot of lessons to learn from countries overseas. Yeah, countries overseas are in different programs. One small thing comes to mind. In Europe, they keep the staff, the employees on the payroll, even though there's no business happening in the given small or medium-large-sized businesses. In the U.S., there's no such rule, and so often they're being separated from their business with the problem of having to recreate the business later. So it's a different orientation, a different way of looking at the recovery, looking at the way the business decline is happening. But what about the notion of the contagion? We have hotspots hither and yon. We have people flying from one country or not to another and taking the virus with them. I'm reminded of the story of Ebola and Lagos. Lagos is a city of 10 million or more, and Ebola got into Lagos. It was a terrifying moment because Lagos is a global hub in Africa. And the concern about the epidemiologists involved was that it would spread to the world from Lagos. Luckily, they caught it. Luckily, it didn't happen. But in this case, it is spreading to the world, and there are many global hubs. Can you talk about the epidemiology of that and how the hotspots work and how the virus and the mutations of the virus are reaching every corner of the globe? Yeah, let me go into that. But first, I want to point out that there's a major difference between this virus and Ebola. Ebola is an even more contagious virus, but only through contact with bodily fluids and direct contact. And it also has a much higher fatality rate than this virus. It will kill 80 to 90 percent of people, at least in African settings where the healthcare is not as good. The fatality rate has been lower in the United States, for example, in the returned cases here. But because of that, it's very difficult for Ebola to spread very far. It usually in the past has burned out in villages. It never actually got to the large cities in Africa. So in fact, the outbreak we had a couple of years ago was a major change in terms of Ebola epidemiology and that it did spread to several large cities in a number of African countries. And that made it that much more difficult to contain because there were so many people that basically were at risk under those settings. This virus, on the other hand, has a lower fatality rate, probably only about one percent on average. We don't have the exact number now. We do know that it varies by age. Those who are in the older age groups may have a fatality rate as high as 10 percent. Those in the younger groups have a somewhat lower fatality rate, but it's still non-zero. It's also more contagious than Ebola.  And that basically makes it a more viable virus in terms of the types of global travel that we have today. And while this started in Wuhan, and the exact origins are still under debate and under question, it very quickly spread from there basically through global travel. I mean, as people pointed out, even once Trump had imposed the alleged China lockdown in January, there are still 40,000 people from China who still came into this country over the next month. So we still had massive introductions of the virus throughout the United States. Interestingly though, it's in New York, it's not the viruses that came from China that have driven the epidemics, it's the viruses that came from Europe. And the molecular epidemiology studies have shown that. So fundamentally, travel with a virus that's very easily spread through respiratory means gives this incredible reach throughout the world. Now, some people are saying that, well, if we lock down travel, we basically could contain this virus. And while right now that is clearly one of the steps we're calling for, studies have actually been done, which have looked at this. And what they found was that the travel lockdown that they did in Wuhan, basically only probably delayed the epidemic by three to five days. On a global scale, the international lockdowns, which did occur, depending on, you know, different countries ban travelers from other countries. And the mix of countries just vary depending on kind of political desire as well as what was going on epidemiologically. But those bans basically probably did slow the more rapid introduction of the virus into many countries. But once it gets in there, the entire population is fertile ground. It's important to remember this is called a novel coronavirus because we've never seen this one in humans before. And so we have no immunity to it, we have no resistance to it. And therefore, it's doing the same thing that basically happened in the Pacific in the past, where you introduced viruses where people had no immunity whatsoever. And basically we saw massive impacts on the populations. Now, the thing we're lucky about is the fatality is comparatively low. But we've already seen what, even with that low fatality rate, what can happen in the hospitals of New York, the hospitals of Italy. And basically it can very quickly overwhelm our healthcare systems even today. So basically travel contributed to it, but it didn't stop it. Karina? Yeah, Tim mentioned the Pacific and I'm really glad that he did that because we're here in Hawaii, and of course that's based right here in the Pacific. And some of your viewers may not know, Tim has been one of the experts has been informing and advising the state of Hawaii here. And yesterday, Tim, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm losing track of the days actually. I think it's yesterday, it was Tuesday today, Tuesday today. So yesterday, Tim, on Monday, Tim testified in front of the House Select Committee here in Hawaii on the COVID virus. And he tabled a study, right? I read your paper, Tim. When we talk about coming in hot for Tim, I think I should probably say at the outset that I'm actually Tim's boss. Tim is a senior fellow at the East West Center, so don't feel like this is a performance evaluation, Tim. This is totally just innocent questioning about your testimony to the state, I'm actually said. But bring it back to your paper. You said that there were three special circumstances about Hawaii that made a corona control plan, a coronavirus control plan possible. And the three circumstances were, and you might have to remind me, the geographic location, the relatively small size of the population, and the small number of governments here in Hawaii, we have four counties and one state government. And that's really similar to the Pacific, as you said earlier. So I was wondering whether you think your work on the corona control plan, whether that would be applicable to the small island nations in the Pacific here in our region? Well, I think that absolutely the types of things we're talking about here in Hawaii are relevant throughout the Pacific. I think they're also relevant in large island nations like New Zealand, which in fact has a very good control plan in place at this point, and which is probably the one country that's on its way toward elimination right now. And I think actually has a very reasonable chance of eliminating coronavirus within its borders, although the lesson we've learned from Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan is that even once you get it down to very low levels, you still have to guard then against reintroduction from other places. And I think that, you know, the interesting thing is that actually travelers from the United States are considered to be one of the highest profile groups right now in much of Asia, because of the relatively uncontrolled spread of the virus in this country. So I do think that, yes, the lessons here are probably relevant to a lot of other countries and could definitely be applied throughout the Pacific. But we're still learning here, we're far from settled on a final plan and we don't really know exactly how things are going to play out over the near future. We're still trying to get our own house in order in terms of testing and tracing, in terms of basically doing a better job, deciding when we can reopen and how we can reopen. I think all of those are open questions right now. Just as you are. Yeah, are we testing and learning in other countries too? But that's a question, by the way, came in on the on our Facebook page. And this is not directly relevant close. By his refusal to participate in global response to the pandemic, has Donald Trump increased the number of cases and fatalities around the world? Want to try that? Let me start first. I will say by his failure basically to react as a true chief executive should in the United States, he has already failed the United States and produced thousands of additional deaths, if not tens of thousands of additional deaths. And to this day, his response remains inadequate. He has not helped to mobilize testing resources. He has not helped to mobilize the personal protective equipment that's so effective and so needed in healthcare settings and for the public around the country. And he basically has failed to show any leadership, basically deferring to the governors, which is a good thing because frankly, they've got much more rational approaches to this than he has had. In terms of global leadership, there is no global leadership in this pandemic. And I trace a large part of that vacuum to the United States, which normally would have played that role. And in fact, all he is doing at this point is basically attacking the WHO, threatening to pull their funding today. And this is not helping matters. WHO is absolutely essential to the global response at this point in time.  So yes, I do believe that Trump is contributing to increased infections both in the United States and around the world with his lack of response. What about other institutions? What about institutions like the East West Center nonprofit, you know, concerned with the Pacific region and beyond? What can, what is the East West Center doing, Karina, or could it do in order to deal with and help some of these less developed countries in responding to the coronavirus? Well, in the first instance, we're lending out Dr. Tim Brown, so that when he is sharing his actual device, of course, right there. And in all seriousness, you know, part of the issue in Pacific nations is that there is access to quality health care is severely limited. And so experts like Tim, who are epidemiologists with years of experience are, you know, it's a few and far between. And so part of what we're doing is asking Tim these sorts of questions, you know, when people put out a really useful practical plans that policymakers can draw on. And then we have to do that next step of analysis. Is this applicable in other places? I mean, I've gone on record saying at least in the Pacific, I think the best bet is the elimination plan in the first instance. So that's step one of Tim's coronavirus control plan that he published with Sumner.  So, you know, institutions like the East West Center, like the crop agencies, the Council of Regional Organizations of the Pacific, they all come together to coordinate and try to access and leverage resources, including expertise just like Tim. Well, that goes to a question I was going to ask Tim. That is this. You use the word learning. We both use the word learning. And so here we have a situation where the, you know, US has not learned very well. I'm sorry. The coordination, for example, the testing and isolation, those things, you know, could chart out pretty well and tracking. Those things all should be involved in a non-therapeutic and non-vaccine approach to the response. So I would imagine that the other developing countries, in fact, all the countries in the world have had, you know, similar problems. And we haven't shown any leadership on that. But could they learn anything from us? Is there anything we can do to expose our lessons so far as they are to this world? And is the developing world of any value to us to learn from them how these things interact? And for example, you don't have a lot of healthcare infrastructure in many places. You don't have masks. You don't have arrangements. India comes to mind as an exception, where you can, you know, order a shutdown and all this. But can the lessons go both ways here? Can we teach them? And can we learn from them in what they're doing or not doing now? Well, on the teaching front, I'm a little more challenged here because frankly, I think that, yes, they can learn from responses in places like California. I think Gavin Newsom has actually done a very good job as governor there. You know, San Francisco was one of the first places in the United States to impose lockdowns. Washington State is another fine example of a very good response after the initial outbreaks in nursing homes there. We also have examples of complete failures. I mean, we're still seeing ongoing transmission among church groups in some of the Midwest states. And this is really ridiculous at this point, given what we know about the virus right now. That we're still getting opposition to shutting down church services at this point in time as a potential vector for coronavirus transmission. And I think that so we have good examples, we have bad examples in this country. I think for this country, there are some excellent examples overseas of, I would say, actually smaller nations, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, that have actually done a very good job of containing this. They're still struggling and they're going to continue to struggle, as will any country at this point. But they are doing an excellent job, I think, of containing this and keeping it under control. There are steps forward and steps backward. Singapore was doing extremely well. But in the last week, they basically have had to go back to imposing lockdown constraints because of the growth of coronavirus among migrant workers in large dormitories. And that has produced more than half of the infections in Singapore at this point. So it's an evolving situation in every country. Taiwan has done the best job, I would say. Taiwan and New Zealand probably have done the best job of containing this at this point. And we're seeing relatively little in the way of new infections. They both really impose travel screening and restrictions very early on, quarantine requirements on incoming travelers. And I think those were extremely valuable and helping them to keep the epidemic under control. And then they have all had very good testing and contact tracing setups. I mean, one of the researchers in Singapore was pointing out that to get an idea of the level of testing they're doing in Singapore, only about 1% of the tests they do are coming back positive. In the United States, the last time I heard that number, it was on the order of 20% of our tests are coming back positive. So we're testing nowhere near at the level that Singapore is in terms of actually virus and picking it up. So our testing infrastructure is still far too inadequate basically to even be talking about opening a country up again. Just a lot of lessons that could go both ways. I think they can learn from the states here that have done a good job. I will hope that Hawaii will be in that class before too long if we can get our testing and tracing situation in order. And we can learn a lot from good responses that have been done overseas. I was going to ask you about trade and cooperation. But there's a question here. Let me address this and then we can get on to other things. This question on Facebook is, has China been acting in good faith in providing the virus genome, the PPE, and other help and supplies to the US and other countries? Or should we still be suspicious of them? China is a mixed bag. I think there's very little question that they were not open and transparent in the early phases of this outbreak. It was exactly the same way in the SARS. I do think they kind of got their act together though and did become much better about that in the last couple of months. And part of that is a response to the Chinese populace, which was not happy with the initial response to SARS anyway. The public in China was not happy at all with the way the government dealt with that epidemic. And so I think that helped to push the government to get more open. In terms of PPEs, I think they are still our major supplier of PPEs. They have continued to supply despite their economy basically, at least in some provinces, basically shutting down to a great extent. So I don't know that I'm necessarily critical of them in that regard. I think that the challenges we face are supply chain challenges that are tied not just to China, but the fact that so many of our supply chains are dependent upon things that come out of China. And once those commodities basically cease to flow, we lose our own capacity basically, for example, to develop some drugs, to provide PPE and so on. And we really do need to be thinking again at a national level of how do we build our own capacity so that the next time this type of epidemic happens and there will be a next time. I think it's important to remember the population of the world is growing very rapidly. We're over 7.7 billion people now. That's much larger than it was in 1918 when the flu spread around the world. And so I think that we basically need to be prepared for this to happen again. Remember how fast this one spread? I mean literally in four or five days it was everywhere around the world. Yeah, amazing. And with modern travel that's to be expected. Karina, you had something. Yeah, I'm still just a little chilled by Tim's last comments. But I was interested in countries that don't have access to adequate testing in some states in America that don't necessarily have access to adequate testing. Or are not doing the testing for what degrees and what can they do, Tim? I hate to say it but at this point to a great extent it's every man for himself. I mean every country really just like the states in the United States have pretty much had to take responsibility for setting up their own testing infrastructure for trying to obtain their own PPEs very often at loggerheads with the federal government that is actually trying to take the resources that they have located. I mean there's a rather almost hilarious story yesterday of 29 million pieces of PPE that basically the state of California had located and it turned out to be a fraud. But the reason they found it was a fraud was the federal government was basically about to steal those resources from California to add them to its own stockpile. And so we literally have the states at loggerheads basically with the national government here. And I think that if there's one lesson out of that it's that we need a coordinated response both at the national level and the local level. And I think at this point every country needs to be doing what it can to try to locate resources. Again I'm going to go back to what Jay was asking earlier. I think the loss of U.S. leadership at the international level is a major loss because I do believe in the past we would have been part of a coordinated international response that would have been looking out for developing countries and to help those countries that basically don't have those resources right now. But instead I think because of the disunity that has existed at the international level in recent years it literally has become every country watching out for itself every country competing with every other country for resources and it's a no-win game for anybody. Everybody ends up worse off because of that the prices get driven up.  But in general the people of the world are the losers of this game. You know in this in this country we've seen this kind of reverse federalism where the president has abdicated although he claims to have all powerful control he has in fact abdicated and and some states have gotten together they've made compact agreements between governors in a number of states in order to sort of step into the void and that's admirable and that's kind of an organic evolution you know necessity breeds invention. But I'm wondering if the same thing could happen internationally. If some countries got together with other countries for the lack of leadership by the U.S. and form you know groups self-help groups groups to be the leaders or elevate one country to be the leader and and and thus have some leadership on the field. A. is that happening. Is there any indication that that's happening. Could it happen. And if so who are the countries that would aspire to being in that leadership group or being the leader country. I think it could happen. I think the reason we haven't seen it very much is this virus hit so hard and so fast that nobody was prepared for it and everybody is so busy responding right now they don't have time to think about coordinating and getting their act together. And I do think that for example trade agencies like ASEAN in Southeast Asia basically could play a major role in terms of trying to obtain PPE for some of their member states and for other countries that are having challenges. China has actually stepped up and become a net donor of PPEs to many poorer countries even to the United States they've actually donated both test kits and PPE to the United States. So I do think that you know they're filling a little bit of the void that was left by the United States lack of leadership but nothing near what the United States would have done traditionally in a situation like this. Yeah. So I do think amazing where we are right now we're all too busy responding really to get our act together and really worry about coordination and I would agree with you I mean one of the problems we've got in the United States is the government the governors are pretty much in the situation where they have to rebuild the federal government which is what they're trying to do at this point. And in fact my partner has basically said that one of the things governors ought to do is they ought to just get get together all 50 of them and go as one to the PPE manufacturers and the others and say hey we're fixing the price and you're going to deliver this or else which is what the federal government should have been able to do. Everything is changing everything around the world is changing and certainly that part of American federalism is changing. So Carina we're just about out of time and as my co-host I would like to offer you the opportunity to summarize and take the big points out of the discussion by Tim Brown and create a takeaway for people who are watching. Thanks Jay. Well it's going to be really difficult because Tim really pulled his punches you know he's pretty shy about saying what he thinks so it's going to be tough. Tim and I go away and go away back. Yeah look Tim you know what I learned here today but also from the work that you have done with Subna iron COVID in particular but also your other work on infectious diseases that we didn't get a chance to touch on today for many of you who don't know Tim has been a world-class expert leading the response to HIV AIDS and I think he's really highlighted the importance of a coordinated and cohesive policy response to this because planning is critical and there's still a chance and amongst all of your realism Tim I got it I heard the optimism for the future there's still a chance if we knuckle down and plan now and you know listen to experts such as yourself look at some of the research and the modeling and the planning that's being suggested and then more importantly coordinate around a plan that makes sense I think that there's a chance to if not eliminate then actually hashtag flatten the curve. So thanks for showing up today Tim and thank you so much for the work that you've been doing at the center for the state of Hawaii and right across the globe over the span of your 30 35-year career is that right Tim? Something like that. Yeah flat again let's just say 10. Well thank you Korean Alliance thank you Tim Brown thank you both and I must say that you know the reference to Seminole Croy is very important because at the end of the day we're going to have to rebuild the economies we will come up with a vaccine someday and at that point we're going to have to fix the world economy and this is ultimately going to be an economic question isn't it? Anyway thank you very much Tim thank you for all the work you do and you know this is really remarkable that we have this kind of talent at the university at the East West Center and that we can actually provide value beyond our shores. Thank you so much Karina thank you Tim aloha you guys and wash your hands.


Guys today at merch is out now very exciting I will have the link in the description below for you guys to shop. Thank you. Yay. Hi guys. Happy Friday, actually Welcome to vlog week day four. I got it this morning at merch is available I don't know what the song is going up at September 2nd at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time merch is now available There's limited quantities. It's really cute. It's a little sweat set. Um, you guys definitely want to pick it up Thank you again in advance to everyone who dies like it's just it really is like one of my favorite things to Do is really smart and you guys have been asking so much recently So it's available now trying to get the best lighting here, but now it's like Casper the friendly goes There's a limited quality though So you do want to make sure that you go pick it up as soon as you can. Oh my gosh. How exciting So this is what I'm wearing currently. I'm about to go to a blue bottle. I was just facetiming Emily We're about to meet good a blue bottle. I'm like worried. I'm gonna sweat through this shirt on our walk though So I don't know. Yeah, should I you know if I blazer I already spilled Um Unfortunately, some new oil into the op-up on my blazer, but like that was worth it. It's okay It's like obviously not what I wanted necessarily, but It's okay. I'm gonna like pack this tank top in my little purse But we're going to grab some breakfast and then we are going to the studio So today y'all's new apartment last night, which is so fun today I'm recording and I saw Margot and Katie today. I'm recording with Margot Katie and Emily So it's like OG YouTube, which is exciting. That's not really what we're talking about these episodes are gonna be good Honestly the episodes this week. I think are like my best yet. I really think they're just so good I'm listening to Jackie's pregnancy episode right now, and I think I might just go ahead and walk Who knows if you guys are in here subscribe. Oh tonight. It's Keaton's birthday today in the city. I mean, it's gonna be a good time Thank you All right, so obviously I'm your little milk, and then I also got one for Emily. I hope she doesn't hate it But we'll see we do it do it do it I'm literally five years old my apple juice. I normally only get apple juice on airplanes, but it seems fitting today We're gonna why is it so heavy do you vlog everywhere with this thing a Lot of my watch or my phone Wait, oh my goodness gracious. Oh Thank you so much Thank you. I'm ready for my first It's so good apple juice is incredible. Okay, everyone else I Know you actually look really cute so the outfit that you're wearing right now is like this is my fall look I've decided to like transition into the fall, but I want it to be like a jumpsuit bodysuit like one piece with lasers every day That's what I'll be active. I want the blast. Yes. It's always sold out though. Oh, it's back in salt right now Yes, oh, I'm gonna order it. Okay. I'm gonna order it. That's all you need to know Emily called me this morning and told me we could call her Met off hinge, and she's just now saying no, but I think that like maybe I can pull some strings I'm not calling I just look who I am so happy to be here. I'm so impressed. This is like the most legit. Oh my gosh Thank you. Your skin is glowing. It looks incredible. I just started using the Sunday Riley No idea what it's called, but it's like gold and white. Oh really acid something. Oh, okay. Let's get that up.  That's a wrap on this week's recordings. Oh My god, that's a wrap. I am officially braindead. We just did eight episodes in three days Which is a lot. I kind of feel like my voice going I am exhausted. It is currently I think like 5 p.m I actually have some emails and some work that I need to do. I just ordered room service So here we have that I'm going to Just chill out for the next hour or so And then like shower and get ready for Keen's birthday dinner Which I'm really excited I'm actually so excited to see Brandon too because I haven't seen him in Honestly since pre-covid, which is so crazy. So I'm very excited for tonight.  I am just braindead. I'm shocked. I just need to Take a breath. So I will talk to you guys later. Um, I need to eat. I'm just tired. Okay. I like I'm Delusional at this point like I just oh my god guys. I'm heading out the door. This is my outfit tonight I'm not loving it. It's a birthday dinner. We're going to be eating asics, but it's raining We're going after and I just want to be comfy But this I thought was fun, and then I just put Calvary boots on instead of sneakers Honestly, it looks better in person than it does on camera. Here we are. I'm gonna switch to vlogging in my phone I'm gonna head to Brooks right now and then go to dinner with her and Danny. So I'll take you guys along We're going somewhere. I'm not sure I was thinking about this on the way here. I know that everyone has to know all the colors I would never in a million years be able to memorize all those names in different colors So I actually was thinking that wasn't leechy. I think that's smoke. No, that is Is it brand new? Did you just get it?


Allah SWT, He says in the Qur'an, will be fadda ilahi wa bi-rahmatihi ab ibarika falyaf rahu. He says, say, the Prophet SAW, by extension to all of us, for the sake of the fadda of Allah SWT, and for the sake of his mercy, let them rejoice. Abdullah ibn Abbas, may Allah be pleased with him, who is Tujman al-Quran, he is the exegent of the Qur'an, the one on whose chest the Prophet SAW has placed his blessed hand, and made du'a to Allah SWT, to give him fiqh, to give him a deep understanding of the religion, and to teach him the taweel of the Qur'an, the interpretation of the Qur'an. This is ibn Abbas, radiAllahu ma'am. And he said here, fadda al-Nusayah, verse 57 and 58, to fadda al-Nusayah, the sacred knowledge. For the sake of sacred knowledge, let them rejoice. And then rakhma, rakhma here means Muhammad SAW. For the sake of the Prophet SAW, let them rejoice. So, insha'Allah, this is what we're doing here. We're combining both of them, right? We come here to gain sacred knowledge of the Prophet SAW. Blessed is the beloved of Allah SWT. And the evidences are, they're overwhelming. And we pray to Allah SWT, guide our friends and our neighbors, we're non-Muslim, and those of us who are Muslim, to keep us strong on the path, is bat with isti ma'ama. The evidences are many, many. Allah SWT says, sadaq Allah, it is he who has sent his messenger with guidance. And the deen al-haq, the religion of truth, who is al-haq, is Allah SWT, that it may supersede all other religions, even though the wushud-e-keen may test it. This is absolutely true. If you look at what's happening in the world right now, you have these proponents of weird philosophies, of just kind of postmodern madness, the current zikrants. Imagine they're, they have these swords or machetes of pufoo, and they're slashing through this jungle of religion. There goes Christianity. There's Judaism. There's Hinduism. Goodbye, Buddhism. And they come up to a wall, and they can't do anything. Because this wall is called Adi Islam. Islam will remain because it is zeed al-haq. Right? But not to mislead me. We have to pray for Allah SWT to keep us on the path. Right? Well, I'm telling you how much we shouldn't. Even though those who associate partners with Allah SWT may test it. Allah SWT says, Ya yuhal deena awana, mayyab tattam idkum an deenim. O you who believe, should one of you turn away from his religion? Right? If tidaa, riddaa, a hasty from the religion. Fa soba ya tilaaw bi qawmin. Allah SWT says, then Allah SWT bring up people. Qawmin. And this is naqira. Right? And the naqira in Quranic Arabic, the indefinite noun, in Quranic Arabic, in Quranic Arabic, means something that is beyond imagination. It is emphatic to the utmost. Beyond your frames of reference. Right? This is why Allah SWT describes the Prophet SAW using indefinite nouns. Ya ayyuha nabiyyu, Inna arsa'nahi shahidaan, wabbashiraan, wannadheeraan, wadaa'iyyaan min Allahi, bilitnihi wa silaajan ma niyaraan. Lam yathun al nadina kufru bin ahli kitabi wa moshrikina munfrakina hatta ta'iyya humul bayina, rasuhu billun min Allahi. Yabtuhu shmufan mutaharaan. Such a message, a messenger. What an incredible messenger. Faisal fiyat, Yabtuhu min Allah SWT will bring an incredible people. How does he describe these people? How does Allah SWT describe these people? You hipbuhu when you hipbuna. You hipbuhu when you hipbuna. That he loves them and they love him. This is their first sifah. It's about hope. And some of the theologians, they found this problematic. Allah loves us. We love him. This is really what it means. They say, no, it doesn't mean this. It means something else. It means you hipbuhu. He loves them. It means he rewards them. When you hipbuna, this means they obey him. But the imam of the sali says, that's not what it means. You see, you got the order wrong. The reward is before they get to you back. What does that work? That's in like the ayah, What do you think? Allah says, Say, if you love Allah, follow me, and Allah will love you. So here you hipbuhu, when you hipbuna, who Allah, loves them first and they love him. So this is his reality. What does this mean? Allah chose to love them, chose to guide them in his irada, in his pre-eternal will. Allah swt in his infinite knowledge, chose them. He loves them, and they love him. They're lowly, they're humble believers. And they have izzah, or the kufar, they see them as formidable. These people are no joke. When the kufar, at least this tone, this incredible people that are inundated with the love of Allah swt, they start shaking. They have izzah.  They strive in the path of Allah swt. They strive against, essentially, the Prophet swt defined what the mujahid is. And jihad takes many forms. Essentially he said, al-Mujahid, al-Mujahid, al-Nafsab, al-Qa'atillah. The true mujahid, the quintessential mujahid, is the one who strives against his lower self in the obedience of Allah swt.  And they are not afraid of people who reproach them for their religion. You don't care what people think about them. Because they hope certain beliefs. They have izzah in the religion. This is the grace of Allah swt. They need the stoes on you. On these people, on this phone. Allah swt says, Sadatullah, this is Prophet. What was this I revealed? In Mecca, there were a few dozen believers. And Allah swt addresses the Prophet and says, We have exalted your name, your remembrance. It's the most popular name in the world. The name Muhammad. The name of the Prophet Muhammad, the most popular name in the world. Literally his name is raised. Right now, someone is making iqama. Someone is saying Sadatullah. I just said, Sadatullah. This is going on 24-7 until the Sa'a. How is this not obvious? How is this not just a proof? His name is a proof. The Qur'an is saying this 1400 years ago. Allah swt says, When we put you in a raid and you didn't even send us back to our city, there will be a surah beneath him. What are you sure about? Who are you doing that? He put you inside a leak. Allah swt says, If you are in town, that's what we reveal to our servants from time to time, they produce one surah like them in this Qur'an. One surah. And call for your aid, anyone who you will. This is revealed 1400 years ago. There were a few hundred a few thousand believers. Today, there's nothing like the Qur'an. There's nothing in the same ballpark as the Qur'an. The Qur'an is predicting that no book in Arabic will be even near the style and elegance of the Qur'an. This is a prophecy. There's nothing close to it. This is completely obvious. In laqtah al-A'būn, while that is completely obvious. In laqtah al-A'būn, while that is laqtah al-A'būn. And if you cannot do this and you will not do this, but taqūn nā, then fear the fire. In some Christian eras or something like al-Qarūl al-A'būn, it's a totally joke. Ivy League professors working on this thing, half of it is plagiarized from the Qur'an. And then this poor scene who wrote this as an Arab Christian, you got in trouble with the IRS.  This irony, taqūn nā, he's put in, he said, he's tribulated with the fire in this world. In shā'a Llāh al-Muqtawbah, and m'Allāhu s-Chā'a Llāh was saved from the nār, jahannam. We pray for people's guidance. We pray for people's guidance. You know? These are clear, clear dali. Right? It's amazing. And in the Qur'an, there's a very short surah Everybody knows it, but have you really thought about this? There's a surah in the Qur'an which is basically our belief about the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam in a nutshell. Three verses long, it's taqūn al-Muqtawbah. If you understand this surah, you have a very good grasp of our prophetology. Just like iqlās. Four ayyān. And there's a secret why we learn these surah when we're children. We memorize them. If we appropriate the meanings, assimilate the meanings in our own proper word. Assimilate the meanings of iqlās. We will have a very good conception of our theology. Theology in Greece. What does Allah swt say? In al-qawfah ʿunnā ʿatīnaka ʿtawfah ʿfasalli ʿrabbika ʿwanhawr ʿunnashāni ʿatamwātawr Indeed, we have gifted you ʿqawfah. What was this ayyān revealed to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam? It was revealed upon the death of his son, Abdullah ʿas-faltāhir ʿawdiallāhu ʿanīm. And the mushrikīn were literally laughing at him. You have to understand this. What kind of tribulations the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam had to endure?  Abdullah was right next to him. You can hear them when they were lamenting they start laughing. They go out to the streets. But wujira Muhammad they're saying that as the ʿqawfah. Right? Because they have a very low mushrikīn, they have a very low opinion of women. Right? Who's going to spread your religion now? You don't have any sons. Right? Who's going to spread your name around? ʿas-faltāhir ʿawdiallāhu ʿanīm. And Abdullah they're saying to him wujwusha your name is not going to be remembered anymore. How long can you be? No one will remember your name after you. This is what they're saying to them. ʿibnā ʿabaynā ʿalakawfah. The Prophet ṣallá Llāhu ʿalayhi s-salām was romantic. He said, he looked up and he was a smile on his face. And he said, ʿalāṣu ʿalayhi s-salām ʿabaynā ʿabaynā ʿabaynā ʿalakawfah. And he smiled. A surah of consolation. Indeed, we have gifted you. The Qur'an is a gift. We have gifted you our qawfah, our qawfah. This is an ʿapáxla yamana. In other words, this is the only occurrence of this word in the Qur'an. Nowhere else in the Qur'an. What does it mean? You're laughing at my terminology. They're used to my weird. Anyway, what does it mean? So, the Prophet ṣallá Llāhu ʿalayhi s-salām said, ʿadīth ʿahrufi ʿjannah. This is a river and paradise. But that's not all it means. This is ʿalawfah, which is a ʿabaynā ʿawfah. It's an ʿadīth ʿahrufi ʿajnah. This is a river and paradise. But that's not all it means. It's here because the wow is stronger than the yā in Arabic. And the ʿabandīth, so they say yes, this means a river and paradise. It also means ʿashafāʿa ʿanayom ʿʿiyamah. It also means that he's ʿabīm ʿu Llāh, ʿmahabah ʿu Llāh ʿsūt ʿanawat ʿādah. It means many things. It means the promise of ʿajnah. And if we look at the ʿsūrā, the structure of the ʿsūrā, right? Because this whole ʿsūrā, this is way past. Way past us sometimes. That there's a deep structure to the ʿsūrā. This ʿsūrā is a kāyās and it's like a circle. It's called concentric composition. In other words, the last word of the first ʿayā is an antonym. It's antithetical to the last word of the third ʿayā. In other words, ʿal qawthār and ʿal ʿabtār are opposites.   What are the names of their sons? The ʿāz is the ʿwād. Right? But the only occasion in which we remember his father's name is when we're saying ʿrādi ʿallāhu ʿanhu about his son who became a follower of the man that his father hated. That's the only occasion in which we remember his name. Who are the sons of ʿarāf ʿu Llāh? Who knows? They're ʿqawthār. So then one of the meanings of ʿqawthār is what? ʿfātum ʿsāhārā. ʿalayhi ʿsalaam. That from her is going to be an incredible fountain from her that's going to be ʿsādāt and ʿahdī ʿvayt. The family of the Prophet ʿsallāhu ʿalayhi ʿsalaam, this is from his ʿqasādīn. The ʿahdī ʿvayt is from his daughter, his daughter, ʿfātum ʿasāhārā. ʿalayhi ʿsalaam. And this is not, you know, some ʿʿiʿā ʿtafsīr. This is the ʿtafsīr out of the ʿʿu Llāh of ʿjamā'a. And it's totally in line with the ʿsallāhu ʿlūzul of the ʿāyah and the internal composition of the ʿsūrah that this was his daughter. And the Prophet ʿsallāhu ʿalayhi ʿsalaam had incredible love for ʿsādāt ʿfātum ʿalayhi ʿsalaam. Our mother ʿʿajār, ʿrādī ʿallāhu ʿanāt, another incredible woman, one of the seven or eight ʿsāhārā that was a ʿmūfīr. He was incredible and a fountain of knowledge. She said ʿmār ʿaytū ʿahdān. ʿkāna ʿashbāhā ʿkāna ʿashbāhā ʿsumtān ʿwahakyan ʿirusūr ʿidhā ʿi ʿsallāhu ʿalayhi ʿsalaam ʿi ʿfātum ʿalayhi ʿsalaam. ʿkār ʿmālāhu ʿajāh. This is from our mother ʿayh ʿajār, ʿrādī ʿallāhu ʿanāt. I never saw anyone resemble more closely the sort of mannerism of the Prophet ʿmālāhu ʿalayhi ʿsalaam Then his daughter ʿfātum ʿas-salaam ʿalayhi ʿsalaam. In other words, he met ʿfātum ʿas-salaam after ten minutes of interacting with her. You say, I completely see ʿfātum ʿalayhi ʿsalaam in her mannerism. Subḥāna Llāh. And when ʿfātum ʿalayhi ʿsalaam, one of her names is ʿūmu ʿabīhā, the mother of her father. Why? Because when ʿfātīʃu ʿkūbara ʿrādī ʿallāhu ʿanāt, when she passed away, it was just ʿfātum ʿalayhi ʿsalaam in the house. His three older daughters were married off, and she would take care of him, as if she was his mother. And she would be cooking and taking care of things in the house for him and defending him. Defending him. But the Prophet ʿsalaam ʿalayhi ʿsalaam were told this is in Bukhārī and in other multiple narrations that he went to the Masjid al-Ḥarām and he was praying and there was a group of the ʿūmu ʿas-salaam. These were people who used to mock and ridicule the Prophet ʿsalaam, the ringleader of Jihad. And he said to his cronies, who's going to take these intestines of this camel and this camel uterus and all these internal organs with this blood and throw it on his back while he's in Sajjah. And this takes like 100 pounds and a few of them raised their hands. So they went to the Sajjah ʿsalaam ʿalayhi ʿsalaam and they threw it on his back. And ʿabdu ʿalayhi ʿtas ʿalayhi ʿsalaam and he said, I was there but I froze. She had done something. I wish I had abandoned that with me but he froze. And he put this thing on his back and some of the boys that were there they went to the Prophet ʿsalaam's house and they told ʿtas ʿas-salaam ʿwāhi ʿajāriyah and she was six or seven or eight years old and she starts running to ʿmashir ʿal-Ḥarām and she starts removing this thing from the back of the Prophet ʿsalaam and she starts crying and the Prophet ʿsalaam ʿalayhi ʿsalaam finishes his prayer and he looks at his daughter and this looks at his darling.  This is his beloved. This is like his heart.  Allah swt will understand your father and then Abdullah ibn Masrood, he said, He said, And when he said this, these ʿis mustahizīrūd, they started laughing to the point that they were falling over each other.  They're falling over each other. And I told this anecdote to the brothers and sisters the other day. I said, you want to see a mild mannered man become a lion? Right? You want to feel the wrath of a man? A ʿrʿuʿud, a real man. I don't know about today. You got men breastfeeding. I'm sorry, chestfeeding. We have to use the PC language. You have men who don't work. You know? You have men doing... I don't know. You know, I'm talking about the ʿrʿuʿud. You want to feel the fury of a real man messed with this little girl. Messed with this little girl. Right? And the Prophet ﷺ he put the first people except our rare cane. But they're laughing at his daughter. He raised his hands to the ʿrʿuʿud. Allahumma ʿalayka biʿabi jahbin wa ʿalayka biʿutba wa shayba Do not reach ʿajab with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ for his family. Who said this? The namesake of this Masjid being extremely vigilant with respect to the Prophet ﷺ and his family. And so, in the Masjid, he said that they suddenly stopped laughing. The Prophet ﷺ ʿalīmu ʿabū in Masjid al-Kharām his raised his hands and made dua and the delivered Masjid ʿalīm said wa ʿalāhi on the day of ʿuʿāz wa ʿabādur all seven of these guys I saw that slain by our swords lying in the ʿalīm in the pit. Don't reach ʿajab with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. Don't sit with people. Don't entertain people. Don't platform people. Who are ʿustah ʿizmūn. Allah ʿsūḥāna wa ʿabī ʿsizm al-Qur'ān. We will take care of these people. Hold firm to your religion. This is extremely important. That we pray to Allah ʿsūḥāna wa ʿtaʿālā that we have ʿistihāma in the religion. Allah ʿsūḥāna wa ʿtaʿālā Grant us ʿistihāma. May Allah ʿsūḥāna wa ʿtaʿālā give us the ʿtawfiq to take the advice of the Prophet ﷺ. When he told one of his companions ʿul ʿāman ʿdu l-lā ʿimas ʿtaqim say I believe in Allah ʿsūḥāna wa ʿtaʿālā and I stand firmly upon that and may Allah ʿsūḥāna wa ʿtaʿālā give us the ʿtawfiq to take the advice of the Prophet ﷺ. When he told one of his companions ʿul ʿil ʿāq ʿun ʿan kan ʿmur ʿan ʿul ʿāt ʿakhab ʿil ʿlāhi ʿla ʿmū ʿta ʿā'im ʿuk ʿan ʿqāla ʿʿan ʿʿan ʿʿan ʿu ʿo ʿo ʿo ʿo ʿo ʿo ʿo ʿo ʿo Say the truth even if it's bitter and don't be afraid of those to find fault with you because of your religion. ʿū ʿsū ʿul ʿāt ʿan ʿmū ʿan ʿul ʿāʿi ʿu ʿsū ʿan ʿu ʿan ʿu ʿo ʿo ʿo ʿo ʿo ʿo ʿo ʿo ʿo ʿo


What's going on you guys? Rafe Derrazy here and today I'm going to be discussing, for those of us living with HIV, when is it a good time to disclose our status to those while we're dating. First of all, I'd like to say that I do not post my status on my dating profiles. I don't feel it's necessary to disclose things on my dating profile that are going to deter or detract someone from actually wanting to get to know me. The way the dating apps and sites work today, people's attention span is so short. I mean it's just as quick as a swipe to the left or to the right a lot of times and if people are willing to glance at your profile, just a few more seconds to scan the profile and then a swipe to the left to the right. That's how quick it is. So I don't want in that initial moment for someone to see something go, nope, moving on and not even give that a chance. People are so fickle and so picky now. They're looking for a reason to swipe left, you know what I mean? Personally, I've met a lot of guys who otherwise would have been reluctant to meet me or to get to know me but because I let them in on who I am first and I gave them the opportunity to kind of to see if there's a kind of chemistry with us in the first place, that opened up the doors so that when I did reveal my status, they were more open to it and most guys in my experience who didn't know about HIV were a little hesitant and a little reluctant but after I educated them a little bit and calmed some of their fears, then they were open to the idea and were willing to proceed with more dates, stuff like that, whereas had I posted on my profile, that experience might never have happened in the first place and these are good, generally good, honest people. With that said, there are a lot of people out there who do put their status on their profile and to that I give mad props, mad kudos, that is brave and it's a strong thing to do and I wholeheartedly support anybody who's doing that. This is not to deter from anyone who is confident about their status and who wants that to be a defining factor in who they're dating and who they match with and stuff like that. I personally, it's not a defining factor for me. It's something that I consider to be off radar and not even that important in my day-to-day life so I don't want that to be a primary factor in someone that I'm dating or someone to consider that as a primary factor which is why I disclose it at a later time when it feels right in the process of us dating and getting to know each other. What I don't want you to worry about or feel is that you're being dishonest or disingenuous if you don't outright disclose it. A lot of people in the community I've noticed want to shame those of us who are HIV positive who don't disclose it at the outset like we need to wear as a banner on our head for everyone to see otherwise we're somehow being misleading or something.  People don't put that they have diabetes or that they have they're struggling with depression or that all the other STDs that they may have or may have had in the past or anything like that. We don't do that. There's a reason we want to put out our best selves our genuine best selves out there and then as we start to get to know the person more and more then we'll start to disclose it more of our personal stuff and then show that we're a three-dimensional well-rounded human being not just light and fluffy and airy and great. Now whether you decided disclose your status on the first date the second date the third date a week in two weeks in that is a deeply personal decision and I feel it should be and it should be tailored to your own experience to the speed of your connection with the person that you're dating and just vibing off the other person. That is something that you have to feel out for yourself as you are getting to know each other. Every person that we date is going to be different the speed at which we get to know the other person is going to be different so that is something that I feel you just have to experiment with play with get used to and see where you're comfortable. But I think it's important to make that leap to go ahead and trust another person if they've given you the space to do so.  That this is a point where it's no longer just about you you're involving the other person and they in a way in a sense have the right to know what they're getting themselves into regardless of whether you're undetectable or not or whether they're on prep or not whether using condoms or not. It's just a matter of respect and being honest and acknowledging that the sexual act is between two people and you need to have that respect and that honesty there for it to be something meaningful and something where if you don't tell them and they find out later that can breed resentment and anger and ultimately hurt your relationship with that person and any potential future with that person. Also here in the States I'm not sure if it's still the law or not but I believe that by law you're supposed to disclose your status to anyone that you have sex with. It's a little I believe that's outdated because HIV is not what it once was and it should be in line with other STIs STDs but regardless my stance on it is that you it's your moral imperative to let the other person know about your status before you engage in any kind of sexual activity. In the end sexual activities aside there really is no right or wrong way to go about doing it. The important thing is that you do it in a respectful way in a way that makes you comfortable and feels right and genuine for you but is also going to be done in a way that promotes the possible relationship with the person that you're trying to date and that you're interested in letting them in. It's about it's a give and take trusting that person allowing them to trust you and moving forward from there and and knowing that that their initial response might not be favorable it might be with some reticence or reluctance or whatever but that gives you the opportunity as someone who knows what it's like to live with HIV who knows how far we've come how good the medicine is now how how much of a good life we have at our disposal despite that our diagnosis to be able to educate the other person and open their eyes up a little bit. In the end anyone who is truly worth your time who is truly worth your energy and your commitment and worth dating is going to be willing to hear you out to listen to what you have to say to open their eyes and their heart a little bit to not judge you for your diagnosis and anyone who is not willing to date you for that reason or just can't get past the stigma of it or the judgment of it is not worth your time. In that case the universe, God, whatever is doing you a favor by getting that person out of your life by you not having to waste your time dating this person. So sometimes it's good that we lay our cards out in the beginning and that person extricates themselves from our lives because they would have done so anyway regardless at some point so it's just better that we save ourselves the trouble and the time and we leave ourselves open for those good kind-hearted people who are worth our time who are going to see us for who we are and not based on our diagnosis. So that's that's how I feel about it that's the way I handle it. I don't put it on the apps but again I'm blasted all over social media so one cursor we look at my Instagram or my YouTube you're going to know of HIV. I just don't put it on the actual dating app and then once we go on a date and we start we have our little heart to hearts and talk openly about ourselves and all and if they haven't seen it by then I'll be sure to disclose it and let them know at that time. So I hope this helps. I hope this gives you some idea something to think about a kind of a framework of how to go about tackling that issue. I know that's really difficult for a lot of you and I've had a lot of questions about that. Please leave a comment below. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. When do you disclose? How do you disclose? What are your ideas on that? Like this video if you liked it. Share it with anybody who you think might find this useful and if you haven't already subscribe because I've got a lot more great content coming for you soon. Alright cheers guys. Peace.


If you're a Christian and you felt guilty about not reading the Bible consistently, this video's for you. Perhaps it's been days, weeks, months, maybe even years from the last time you intentionally spent time in the Word of God daily. You want to get back into it again, but there just seems to be this barrier, this wall that prevents you from being consistent. Here's what I want you to do. Set a timer for five minutes. Starting the beginning of a book, my recommendation is Proverbs, John, or James. Read for five minutes, that's it. The goal is to keep you wanting more after one week of doing five minutes a day, add five more minutes. Even five minutes can be game changing as you meditate on the truths of scripture throughout your day. So what are you waiting for?