and who since August 2020 has held the position of United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression. Irene Kahn has had a long and a very distinguished career in promoting human rights in respect for humanitarian law. Among other achievements, she was Secretary General of Amnesty International and head of the International Development Law Organization, IDLO, which is the only intergovernmental organization exclusively devoted to the rule of law and sustainable development. She is also the recipient of a number of human rights awards. We really look forward to hearing you, Irene, and I give you the floor. Thank you very much, Mary, for your kind words. It's an honor and pleasure to address the European Institute of International Affairs, and particularly as it is based in Dublin, where I have spent many fine summers as a young teenager. Freedom of Opinion and Expression is essential for democracy, development, and human dignity. It's an enabling right, and it's equally relevant to political, civil, economic, social, or cultural rights, as important for the right to education, for instance, as for environmental protection, democratic elections, or media freedom. Now, the core of Freedom of Opinion and Expression is the right to produce, access, share, and discuss information and ideas of all kinds. In recent times, digital technology has brought a paradigm shift to the way in which we create, search, and share information. The internet and digital platforms have amplified opportunities to communicate, to organize, to empower people, but along with those opportunities have also come new threats of misinformation, disinformation, violent and hate speech that have consequences, not just in the online world, but often in the offline world. And today I would like to focus on one aspect of that challenge, the manipulation of information during armed conflicts and its impact on human rights and human lives. By information manipulation, I mean propaganda, hate speech, and disinformation. And by disinformation, I mean false or manipulated information intended to cause harm. I'm just mentioning these definitions because there is a lot of confusion around it, and I'm sure in the questions some of comments that will come out as well. Now, my starting point is the information environment has become a dangerous theater of war in the digital age.  During and in the lead up to crisis conflicts and wars, states and armed groups, as well as their agents are weaponizing information to sow confusion, feed hate, incite violence, discredit human rights defenders, journalists, and humanitarian workers, and often obstruct peace processes. Of course, we all know that information has long been manipulated to instigate violence or to deceive and demoralize the enemy during war. Ethnic rivalries, grievances, political tensions have always provided the perfect breeding ground for disinformation, hatred, and violence. So what is different and significant today? I'm going to make four points in that regard. Firstly, digital technology has been a game changer, making it possible to distort reality with ease, for example, with deep fakes. And the business model and techniques of social media platforms, which amplify and spread manipulated and harmful information at a scale and speed never known before. Of course, radio, print and television are still the most common source of news for most people in conflict areas and traditional media, especially state-controlled media, and be super spreaders of propaganda, disinformation, and hate speech too. We all remember the role played by the local radio station, Milko Lin, in 1994 in promoting genocide in Rwanda, and that was long before the advent of social media. However, today, social media is a significant vector of manipulated information. In Ethiopia, for instance, 70% of disinformation and hate speech have been spread by social media. Secondly, the victims are often civilians, particularly vulnerable and marginalized groups, religious or ethnic minorities, refugees, internally displaced persons, migrants. For example, in Central African Republic, online hate has fueled cycles of violence against Muslims and Christians. In Iraq, armed groups have used Telegram, Facebook, and YouTube to propagate hate speech along sectarian lines. In Myanmar, Facebook was the vector used to incite genocide of Rohingyas. Information is also being manipulated to discredit humanitarian actors and disrupt humanitarian operations. In Ukraine, we remember last summer, this summer, the emblem of the Red Cross was distorted. In Syria and Palestine, online smear campaigns have sought to destroy the reputation of human rights and humanitarian organization. While it may be heard often to identify who gains from these actions, it is clear that innocent civilians are always the losers. During armed conflict, people are at their most vulnerable and in great need of accurate, trustworthy information to ensure their own safety and well-being. And yet that is precisely when they're being hit with false or manipulated information. And not only that, they often face internet shutdowns or slowdowns by the government, information blackouts, and other restrictions on information. When families cannot communicate, when people cannot access reliable information about the security situation or how to access essential services, they can't ensure their own safety. Furthermore, disinformation and false propaganda have a broader impact by creating public distrust in the integrity of information. And that hinders the trust and confidence that is needed to build support for peace processes. And we see that, for example, in protracted and frozen conflicts like Palestine. We can also see from Russia's invasion of Ukraine how internal security and global stability can be jeopardized by manipulating information to justify aggression as indeed Russia did. And this brings me to my third point and that is about the role of states. Under international law, states are the primary duty bearers of human rights. They have the ultimate responsibility to respect, protect and promote all human rights, including the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Unfortunately, state practice varies across a spectrum. From those that respect media freedom and proactively promote access to accurate verifiable information, to those that see the tackle disinformation in ways that undermine human rights, to those where the state itself is implicated in producing, sponsoring and spreading disinformation, false propaganda and hate speech. State-led manipulation of information has the most potent toxic impact on human rights because of the power, resources and reach of the state. And because of the ability of the state at the same time to suppress independent and critical voices in the country so that others cannot challenge the official narrative. Again, take the example of Russia, which has not only spread disinformation and false propaganda to justify its invasion and continued aggression in Ukraine, but it has simultaneously imposed an information blackout inside the country, shutting down, locking up or driving out all independent media outlets and journalists including notable figures like Dmitry Muratov, the Nobel Peace Laureate last year. Now digital technology has made it easier for some states and their agents as well as some non-state actors to spread disinformation and interfere in conflicts across borders. For example, cross-border influence operations and information operations in internal conflicts in Libya, Mali, Syria and Yemen, for instance, where many third states, including some Western governments have been implicated in disinformation campaigns. Now how do we hold states and non-state entities accountable for human rights violations caused from a distance? Now that brings me to my fourth and final point, legal ambiguities and gaps that allow perpetrators to operate with impunity. Manipulation of information in the digital age has brought about new challenges for international law. For example, international humanitarian law is primarily focused on the protection of civilians and not on the integrity of information or freedom of expression. It protects, for example, journalists as civilians but not journalism, not the information that they produce. Indeed, international law, international humanitarian law actually permits the manipulation of information by parties to the conflict. There's no expectation that one party to the conflict is going to reveal truth about its troops or soldiers or the way it's fighting the war to the other. And there are only some limited restrictions under international humanitarian law relating to information such as false information to instigate war crimes or crimes against humanity. But digital technology and the way in which disinformation and propaganda and hate speech are used today, I think that situation is no longer tenable. There is also considerable confusion and disagreement about what is disinformation? What is propaganda? What is false? What is true? And this confusion is not only legal but it's also highly political. The concepts are being turned on their heads, for instance, when some governments seek to delegitimize independent media as fake news or discredit human rights reports, for example, by UN special rapporteurs or reputable NGOs as disinformation. And they put forward their own patently false state propaganda as facts in official meetings of the United Nations. Now the international community cannot ignore the growing problem of information manipulation during armed conflicts. The stakes are too high for human rights, for the safety of civilians and for international peace and security. I believe our responses must be rooted in human rights. And this year, last month in fact, to the third committee of the General Assembly, I presented my report on armed conflicts and manipulation of information. And I made a few recommendations there. I want to just repeat them here and end my statement with that. My first point is, here are just four points. First, the right to information is not a legitimate target of war. It should not be seen as a legitimate target of war. It is actually a survivor right on which people's lives, health, safety and security depend. Freedom of expression encompasses the right to seek, receive and disseminate diverse sources of information. It's extremely important in times of war, as much as in times of peace, that governments uphold this right. Secondly, countering disinformation is important for safeguarding human rights and restoring public trust. But to be effective, these measures, whatever measures governments take must be grounded in human rights. Using national security and counterterrorism laws to restrict speech, censoring critical voices, attacking independent media, disrupting the internet, do nothing to combat disinformation and actually experience shows much to erode freedom of opinion and expression as well as public trust in the integrity of information. Freedom of expression is not the reason why disinformation flourishes. On the contrary, freedom of expression is the means by which to combat disinformation. The best antidote to disinformation is trustworthy public information from governments, access to diverse and verifiable sources of information such as independent, free, pluralistic and diverse media and investment in media, information and digital literacy of the population of the public, empowering people to understand the information that they receive. My third point is social media platforms play a dual role in modern conflicts. On the one hand, they actually provide a vital means of communication and access to critical lifesaving information. On the other hand, they enable the amplification of disinformation propaganda and hate speech. And many of the problems with social media platforms in conflict situations are very similar to those in other settings except that they're significantly more dangerous during war because of the higher risks to the users. And companies need to do much more to ensure that they carry out timely human rights due diligence in line with UN guidelines on business and human rights, adopt effective human rights compliant policies, processes and business practices to ensure user security and invest in understanding the local context and of course improve their own transparency and accountability including the transparency of their algorithms. Now it's interesting if you look at the situation in Ukraine, most large Western companies have taken steps to improve the crisis response and content moderation. And they have done a reasonable job. I would urge them to respond with the same commitment to human rights and adequate resources in all conflict situations around the world where they operate. Well, of course, we also have to look at international humanitarian law and strengthen it and the relationship between human rights and humanitarian law needs to be better protected, understood and protected during armed conflict. Finally, I would say threats to freedom of opinion and expression during armed conflicts as well as in peace times are very complex, multifaceted and need to be tackled with multi-stakeholder collaboration that fully engage civil society and media alongside states, international organizations and digital companies. It's through a multi-stakeholder multifaceted approach that we will find answers. There is no easy answer to the problems but the urgency requires us to come together to find solutions. So let me end by saying that it is through respect for human rights and humanitarian principles that the integrity of information as well as the safety of civilians during armed conflict can be assured. Thank you. Thank you very much, Irene. And that was very thought provoking. And could I urge anyone who has not read your report that was recently discussed, I think in New York and also in Geneva on this topic to do so. It's really very comprehensive and it doesn't take too long to read. It's about 26 pages but the same clarity that you had there is very much in it. And I love the way you take these concepts and you work them out and you get rid of the lexicon that has grown up almost making it respectable to have fake news, et cetera. I took four things from what you said there. One, and from the report one was how often misinformation campaigns are a precursor to armed conflict. And in fact, are the means by which the domestic audience is prepared to do what they normally don't want to do that is engaged in armed conflict. The second thing was how misinformation is not the prerogative of any one side. I think that was very clear although those who are aggressors seem to reach particular heights or depths. And the third and something I think we'll come back to is how much social media can exacerbate what is bad but how much the media can deal with misinformation and expose it for what it is and educate people. So to get the ball rolling, the first question I want to ask you is very specifically to do with the role of responsible governments because it's so easy for governments to use misinformation campaigns as an excuse but what if Annie should be the role of responsible government in balancing the obligation to promote freedom of expression against the efforts of foreign governments to undermine respect for democracy and build support for acts of armed aggression against its neighbors. Where is the balance there? Well, I think the first step of all governments should be not to produce disinformation themselves. I think trustworthy, reliable public information is extremely important and indeed there is a right under international law for people to have access to such information and governments should proactively provide it. It's about building, at the end of the day it's about building public trust in what you say as a government. And that comes when the public can judge whether your information is verifiable or not. The second thing is media freedom allowing media to act as the fact checkers in most cases, independent media. I think that is extremely important. And the third part I would say is empowering the users themselves and that is digital media literacy allow giving people access to the net. We need to be very careful that we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and in trying to restrict or manage of disinformation, misinformation, online violence we must not come to the point where we are actually cutting off people's access to information to the internet which has been so important in empowering people and helping activists organize and developing civil society. So I think there's a lot of good practice actually out there for example, on digital literacy if you look at the some of the Nordic countries if you look at the Baltic States they've done a lot of good work there. Media freedom of course in the European Union as you know, there's a media freedom act that is now being considered in Brussels that seeks to promote best practice in media. There has also been the Digital Services Act which the European Union has adopted and I believe that it's taking the right step towards the way of, it promotes more accountability and transparency of the social media platforms. That's important. Of course there should be some regulation of social media but it should be smart to regulation. It should not be regulation of content but much more regulation of the standards that these companies are applying their business practices whether that is in line with human rights standards and other laws of international law standards. So that is where I think the focus should be. And of course in the context of conflict there is a lot that governments can do to protect journalists for example, in the conflict zone to ensure good practice there also among companies but also among the warring parties themselves. I mean, my report does not focus on armed conflict, groups armed groups, armed groups are of course another matter but the state itself which is the duty bearer of human rights should not play an active role in undermining human rights. There's a question here from Keelan O. Sullivan a development researcher at the IIEA who asks in recent years, UN peacekeeping operations have been targeted by disinformation including false allegations that UN peacekeepers are trafficking weapons to armed groups supporting terrorists and exploiting natural resources. This disinformation makes it harder for peacekeeping operations to implement their mandates and has put the safety of peacekeepers at risks. How can missions better monitor and analyze disinformation both online and offline? Well, actually the UN is beginning to look into this much more deeply and there is a study being carried out of how disinformation has occurred in various parts of West Africa in particular number of countries there. It's something to be aware of and it's very important to make sure that there is factual verifiable information available to the community so that they know what the role of the UN is. And when I say factual verifiable information the source of the information is very important. You know, people believe information depending on who it's coming from whether they believe the person or the source of the information. And I think the UN has to do much more to promote the free flow of verifiable trustworthy information. And that means investing for example in developing the capacity of states to produce public and good public information for the UN itself to be much more proactive in reaching out to communities and building the relationships with the communities so that they actually believe the information when it comes from the UN. So I think at the end of the day I go back to the point about building public trust and confidence in information. Thank you, this is a question here from Seamus Allen, Digital Policy Researcher and he asked if you can comment specifically on the European Union spanning access to Russian media for European citizens. Yes, that's an interesting point. Both in my report on media freedom in June and again in my report on Comtice in October I have differed from the European Union's position. I believe that the European Union has been a, you know, I can go back and say the European Union has been a champion of media freedom. And when it is confronted with the problem its first reaction is to shut down a media outlet. Now shutting down a media outlet is a very severe step. And I would have argued for the European Union to have trusted its media environment and information environment within the European Union where there is free media where it is possible to challenge and disprove false information that it was not necessary to ban RT entirely. Yes, RT produces disinformation but the European audience is an educated aware audience. Europe has free and independent pluralistic diverse media that can challenge RT and Europe also has national regulators that regulate broadcast channels and that would have been able to use the tools, the policies, tools that it has at its disposal to address RT, disinformation by RT without shutting it down. Switzerland, for instance, has not banned RT. And the Swiss, I don't see the Swiss audience, Swiss people, listeners all believing the Russian media, not at all. So I think it's important not to set an example that goes on the side of the Russians where Russia immediately turns around and says, well, if Europe will ban RT, we will ban European outlets. So that, in fact, was the effect of banning RT. Didn't make much of a difference for European audiences but made a huge difference for Russian audiences who no longer have access to many Western outlets. Here's a difficult one. Is it not idealistic to think that armed competence aiming to kill each other could feel compelled to uphold truth or accuracy when it is inconvenient for their side? And on the other hand, is it reasonable to condemn victims of genuine state oppression from exaggerating their sufferings? Well, you know, international humanitarian law was born in that idealistic framework to make war bearable for civilians. The idea was not to abolish war. We realized that would not be possible but you can make war bearable for civilians. You can protect their rights and their dignity. And it is in that context that I'm arguing that parties to the conflict should respect some rules about information. Information has been sidelined. It is not seen as an essential right, like water or access to food or medical care during war but in an information age, information has become so vital for our survival that I believe some lines have to be drawn there about manipulation of information but also about the responsibility of protecting sources of accurate information for civilians. So yes, idealistic, but well, sometimes idealism pays off and we should not reduce our standards simply because something is idealistic. In terms of the suffering, well, you know, I lived through a war here in my own country in the 70s. I was a child at that time. And I remember, you know, what it felt to be cut off from information, to be lying at night under the bed in order to avoid any snipers bullets flying into our bedroom windows and listening with my parents to BBC as a reliable source of information about what was happening about the war. And the suffering, I think about people exaggerating their suffering, maybe some do, but most do not. I don't think any of us would want to exchange places for them. I think that's a good test. Colin Rafter, who is the retired diplomat, asks, who decides what is disinformation? Is there a need for an international convention on the right to information? There is international law that sets out the right to information. There is nothing that defines disinformation. And that is why actually international law does not, it's interesting, international law does not forbid false information. It does not prohibit information just because it's false. International law prohibits information that is harmful, such as, in fact, advocacy of hatred and violence is prohibited under international law. And international law allows restrictions, for example, to protect the rights of others, for example, through defamation laws or to protect national security or to protect public health. Governments can restrict certain information, but they have to be proportionate. They have to be necessary. They have to be legitimate, linked to the legitimate objectives very clearly. And the reason why international law does not prohibit false information is because what is false and what is true is very often a matter of perception or point of view. And yes, there are certain facts that can be proven scientifically, but that's very limited. Most information is about points of view, my opinion as opposed to yours. So what I consider disinformation, you may consider to be true. And if disinformation is forbidden as such, then what usually happens is that information I don't like, information that makes me uncomfortable is the information that I would forbid as a government. And I think that that's a very slippery stop. That's the problem with disinformation. And therefore, with disinformation, it is much more important to empower the listeners. It's much more important to challenge the disinformation with factual trustworthy, sorry, trustworthy information rather than to ban it. Usually banning it just drives it underground. And that's where we see conspiracy theories emerging and so on. It's very hard to fight disinformation through censorship. Here's another question. And it's on the same lines. It's from Alex Conway, Global Europe Researcher. He asked, goodness can comment on how the UN would balance freedom of expression in armed conflicts by not supporting propagandist media outlets. What criteria will it adhere to for this? Sorry, I didn't understand the second part of it. By not. What criteria will it adhere to for this? What criteria it would adhere to? In balancing freedom of expression in armed conflicts against the possibility of supporting propagandist media outlets. I don't think it's a question of supporting propaganda media outlets. It's a question of ensuring that there is a free flow of verifiable information alongside other sources of information and empowering people to be able to distinguish between the false and the true information or developing a shared understanding of what is truth, I should put it that way. If you, I was very interested in listening to a Baltic, a diplomat from one of the Baltic states who said that in their country, they had inoculated their population against Russian propaganda by promoting digital literacy and media literacy even in schools, elementary schools and for young children. And they felt that that was a better protection for them than trying to stop the information coming from across borders. I mean, technology being what it is. For example, right now in Russia, people can still access Western outlets. Very difficult, but they do it through VPN and so on. And in the same way, this information will also reach us. So there's no guarantee, there's no way that you can actually block it. If you try to ban it, it goes underground. If you try to block it, people can still access it if they want to. So it's much better to empower the users so that they can distinguish it properly. So I think the UN would not necessarily, freedom of expression is not an absolute right. So there are certain reasons for which you can restrict, lawfully restrict freedom of expression. But beyond that, I don't think freedom of expression should be restricted because it is only counterproductive. This is a question from me myself. In your report, you outlined the many reports from various sources, reputable reports, which identify companies you mentioned, Meta, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Weibo, Telegram, as having been used for disinformation purposes in conflict situations. But you have also outlined what some of these firms have been trying to do and especially since the war in Ukraine. And you would like to see more of that. You would like to see them more active in this area. What is the problem? Okay, Ukraine seems to be resetting this whole debate and making people more aware, and companies more aware of what they can do and should do. What is the problem outside of the Ukrainian conflict? Is it too expensive? Is it that there isn't sufficient market power there to ensure that these companies are held to account by their users even? Well, I think it's, first of all, it's lack of attention. There was, I think, one leaked report or a whistleblower's report some time ago where the employee was almost in tears because they could not get the attention of the senior management of Twitter at that time. It was just not important enough. Some African country was just not important enough. And most of these big media companies are driven by their big markets, which happens to be in North America and Western Europe. So they don't pay attention. They don't invest enough. This means investing in knowledge about the local context. Very often what is information or disinformation depends on understanding the context. So they don't get investing in human capital there to find out what's happening, human capital in the continent moderation. So they're not spending enough money. They're not giving enough attention to those issues and not developing policies that are appropriate for that particular conflict. They did that in Ukraine because internationally Ukraine was so high on the agenda and the market, you know, the Western Europe, North American market was so heavily engaged that I think they had to do it. But having done it, they've proven to the rest of us that they can do it. So it's now up to us to put pressure on them to make sure that they apply the same and that they are operating. I mean, why can't they do it in Ethiopia? Why can't they do it in Mali? You know, Myanmar, for example, Facebook learned, but learned way too late. So what international law of course also has, as you know, criminal liability. Companies have to be very careful and that they don't become liable for instigating or initiating or colluding with war crimes and crimes against humanity in some cases because where information is being manipulated to promote genocide, for example, or attack civilians, then that amounts to instigating war crime and companies that turn a blind eye to false information circulating on their platforms, hate speech circulating on their platform that then leads to killing of civilians could be held liable. So they need to be careful too. And I think that is creating a certain pressure on them now to try to do better. Here's an interesting question. Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, there is a clear information shortage, increased campaigns of misinformation and disinformation, and ever shrinking access to independent, incredible reporting of the situation on the ground. Journalists and human rights defenders have faced threats and many have fled the country. However, many still remain there. What is the UN doing to support Afghan journalists and human rights defenders, especially women, remain in Afghanistan while protecting their anonymity and safety to ensure that there is verified reporting on the situation in Afghanistan under the Taliban? It's very, very difficult to do much inside Afghanistan right now. I don't know exactly what the UN programs are doing because as an independent expert, I'm not up to date on all the information of the UN agencies that are working on the ground. But I do know from my previous hat, as head of IDLO, when I worked very closely in building the capacity of women lawyers and judges, how difficult it is for them now to operate. And it's no different. And also from my own mandate, I know that women journalists are, most of them are in hiding. Very few of them are able to work at all, not just independently. And it's extremely dangerous situation. What's happening there is that some European countries have provided visas to evacuate the journalists. Some are providing assistance overseas to create overseas outlets. Some are trying to provide assistance from abroad to them inside the country. But it's extremely dangerous for them to operate. And in the case of Iran, actually, I just saw today that some people have been arrested. A couple of activists have been arrested in Iran. Individuals have been arrested for providing information to the BBC. So it's very, very dangerous. And in those circumstances, it is actually, in some circumstances, actually advisable to support diaspora journalists and allow them to feed the information back into Russia. And now I know the question was about Afghanistan, but if I can turn to Russia again, something interesting is happening there where assistance is being provided to outlets abroad, to independent journalists who are out of Russia to continue the work and then try to get that information back into the country. Now, I would like to see more of what is being done for Russians and Ukrainians to also be done by donor states and others for Afghans and those in Myanmar, for example, in those kinds of closed states. What I see here is I kind of see a difference in standards and support to different conflicts. And that is where the injustice takes place. You mentioned a few times there, and in your presentation, you mentioned this need for resilience to enable people to understand, to access, to evaluate the sources of information. At what age do you think that children need to start looking at these issues? Is primary school too young or is it too late? In Finland, they are teaching, I read an article in The Guardian actually, that they are doing it in elementary school, in primary school. Six years old, eight years old, can tell the difference between a real elephant and a deep-fake elephant, for example. Things like that. So it seems that I suppose at a young age there's probably more acute digital technology than I would say at my age. So starting young seems to work. One of the things that has certainly struck me with the war in Ukraine is how one automatically turns to certain sources. And for me, it's always the sources that start with, such and such has been reported. We haven't been able to verify this yet. And they're the ones that I always check out now. Has this war really helped people to understand the difference between fake news and real journalism? I think we are constantly learning. On the one side, you see technology evolving and innovating and sometimes getting more and more complex in terms of the way in which false information is produced and spread. On the other side, I think journalists and journalism is also evolving. And more and more I find, particularly the outlets, well resourced outlets like New York Times and others are actually getting quite sophisticated in the way in which they collect the news check and do their fact checking. The BBC, for example, has a very elaborate program there. And so that's also happening side by side. And there are also some civil society initiatives, for example, of some forms of self-certification or kind of an iOS-type certification of sources. And also, if you notice, social media platforms are also now flagging or marking, labeling certain information or referring you to other information. They did that very successfully during COVID-19 crisis. If there was some false or semi-false information, they would also provide you with links to WHO and other sources. So I think on both sides, things are moving. So there is more awareness. The problem is how much investment is being made and how long-term are we getting? You know, digital literacy, when I mentioned that, that's a long-term engagement. And are we ready to do that until it costs a lot? Yes, but it'll pay back a lot too, perhaps. A question again on where information doesn't get to us at all. And one could say that Syria is, to some extent, a forgotten conflict. Yes. Now, that's not necessarily disinformation or whatever. It's simply no information currently. How does one deal with issues like that, where certain conflicts fall off the agenda? They're not covered any longer? Well, I think it's by keeping the issue alive. Just today I saw a report being issued, or yes, this week, a report being issued by one of my peers. I think the special rapporteur who's responsible for unilateral measures for sanctions, she had visited Syria and she brought out the whole issue of how the impact of the sanctions on the population there and how harmful it is for the population, even with the humanitarian exceptions. I myself and my report have also pointed out the impact of sanctions. The sanctions sometimes can be counterproductive when it comes to the information area, because by cutting off the population, the very population that you need to help. So you're right about these forgotten conflicts and we've just got to keep them alive. And in some cases, these forgotten conflicts are the conflicts that drag on for a very long time. And the prolongation, one of the factors, not the only, but one of the factors of prolongation is the production of false information that Nagorno-Karabakh, for example, in Syria is one, Nagorno-Karabakh is another. Even Afghanistan has slipped off the agenda to some extent, thinking that it was only a year ago, a little over a year ago that we were talking about that terrible evacuation out of Kabul and it's already off the agenda, Ukraine has taken its place. So it's extremely important and here I would put a lot of emphasis in civil society and the role of human rights organizations and others to keep these issues on the agenda of the governments and of the UN Security Council. Turning to the UN Security Council, I have a question here. You have a long career in multilateralism. But given the state of fragmentation of the global architecture and the disregard of major powers, some major powers are concepts such as non-aggression, respect for ethnic minority rights and widespread disregard for other human rights norms. What gives you hope today that things can improve? Well, I agree with the situation at the level of multilateralism. I've seen it in the Human Rights Council myself. I saw it in the Third Committee in the way in which governments just divided themselves up, took us back to the Soviet times. So that is disheartening. But what gives me courage and inspiration is I think civil society and ordinary people today, thanks to the same social media and internet that's creating so much problem for us, people are getting information. They are learning about the other side and therefore the ability to reach out is more. And secondly, young people. I think young people, look at Iran, look at all these young girls who are out on the streets and standing up for their rights. Look at the climate justice issues where youth have taken a very important front seat there. So I think youth and our ability today to reach out to others and to organize and to connect. I think those are the two, I would say, hopeful signs that I see and that give me encouragement that I think in the end humanity will win. Can I go back? And this might be our last question today. Can I go back to the social media? And in response to an earlier question, you said that the role of governments should be to set norm standards, not to get involved in the actual story as it were. But could that be construed as to some extent allowing social media to please itself? And is it, hasn't that proved not really to work? And I know it's a very fine balance between that and interfering in freedom of expression. But governments do it a bit more. Well, you know, I would say it's social media, what we have to do, given the way things are. And normally I would say, yes, of course, social media should follow the laws of the land, should follow the international standards and so on. And governments should enforce that. Unfortunately, many governments in the world today, their own laws violate international human rights. And therefore I'm very hesitant to allow to agree that governments should sort of moderate social media. They are likely to impose their own laws in many countries. I'm not only talking about China or Vietnam, I'm also talking about countries like India where you can see freedom of expression now under pressure. Under those circumstances, it's very dangerous to let governments restrict free speech. Companies, however, should be held accountable as to what rules are they applying? Are they applying international human rights standards? And usually it's easy to find out what is criminal and should be unlawful and should be banned. That's a simple thing like child pornography, for example. The challenge comes with the kind of law that is now, I think in the UK in Parliament, which is lawful but harmful information. What is lawful but harmful?  That is, I think, a very tricky one. What is unlawful in the offline world should be unlawful in the online world by and large within the limits of international human rights law, I would say. But what is lawful but offensive is a tricky one. Freedom of expression actually recognizes offensive speech and that is why it is allowed under international law to insult a monarch in Thailand but not under Thai law to insult the monarch because you're offending the monarch. You get all those kinds of dilemmas coming and that is why it's very dangerous to allow governments to interfere with content. At the same time, companies, of course, should follow international rules but in Thailand, they are forced to follow national rules. So ultimately, the answer is to create an international understanding of how these companies should behave. And there is a project in the UN right now, the global digital compact that the Secretary General has proposed on which consultations are taking place with various stakeholders, civil society, within the UN system, with member states and so on. And eventually, I hope we will be able to agree on international rules, cross borders, social media platforms operate across borders. The rules should be across borders. For me, they are of course human rights rules and get agreement on that. I think that's the way forward eventually through this multi-stakeholder, multi-lateral arrangements that I mentioned in my talk earlier. I think we have... Sorry, no, I have one more question here from Seamus Allen. Can you comment on, I think you might have mentioned this already, European Digital Services Act empowers governments to ensure that social media platforms take down illegal content but many European countries already have laws that threaten freedom of expression, such as Hungary and Poland, for example. Would you care to comment on that? Yes, I actually carried out a official visit to Hungary last year and I was very disturbed by what I saw in terms of the restrictions on independent media. There is no independent media traditionally in print or broadcast in Hungary right now. They are online under huge pressure. What the Digital Services Act will do is it will allow Brussels to oversee what is happening. So yes, national regulators will be in place, but they will have to follow some rules from Brussels. So I hope that will help to provide some form of control. At the moment, there is very little control of the media from Brussels, social media or otherwise. A Digital Services Act, because social media is across borders, allows Brussels to intervene. I think it's a good thing. The important thing will be to make sure that Brussels does it. On Hungary, I think the European Union has been far too lenient when it comes to freedom of expression. And I have actually called in my report for Brussels to be much more active in ensuring that freedom of expression is respected within the European Union, as well as outside the European Union. I think that that final question and your response is a clear illustration that we can't be complacent about this, that this is a problem that faces all parts of the world, including our own part of the world. Thank you very, very much, Irene. That was an absolutely fantastic presentation. I think it was very thought-provoking. It certainly has opened up a lot of areas I hadn't thought of before. And thank you and wish you all the best with your work. Thank you very much.


Liaison is most generally defined as the smoothing out of syllable boundaries in speech by adding a phoneme that is not heard in isolation. Let us identify the linking phonemes on the basis of a sentence read very carefully. The aroma of tea greeted you as you entered our office. Using liaison effects this sentence can alternatively be read as the aroma of tea greeted you as you entered our office. Thus we can identify three linking phonemes in present-day English. Yeh, where a final high front vowel precedes another vowel. Wa, where a high back vowel precedes another vowel. And the insertion of R. In each case the additional phoneme bridges the gap between two vowels. In present-day English liaison on a phonemic level is mostly associated with the use of R in this context. There are two variants of this R liaison in present-day English. In cases of linking an orthographically present and phonemically final post vocallic R is pronounced when the next word starts with a vowel. So we get cases such as here in London. Since American English is highly rotec linking is a standard feature of it anyway. The phenomenon of intrusion or the intrusive R is confined to the non-rotec varieties of English. Here the phoneme R is inserted between two vowels even if it is not represented orthographically. The condition is the final vowel of the first item must be a low back or a central vowel. And the next word must start with a vowel. So in RP we get low end order and so on. Similar to the other connected speech effects such as assimilation and delusion liaison is mainly optional.


So, he goes and he finds over $600,000 at the label head for me.  And I was like, what is that? And then he was like, man, you got to get a lawyer. So I searched, I found Jay-Z's auditor, right?  I'm going to take a piece. And I was like, okay. So, he goes and he finds over $600,000 at the label head for me. So, I was like, wait a second.


Hey guys, this is Gabby from Brain Education TV. If you're new to this channel, consider subscribing. We make weekly videos on wellness tips for the brain. And if you're already a subscriber, welcome back. In this video, I will talk about the importance of self-love and some simple self-love habits that you can practice every day. So there's really nothing better than being truly admired, respected, cared for, and appreciated. But there is a big secret that you may or may not know when it comes to love. The secret is, we are the only ones that can truly make ourselves feel that way. We can't rely on one single person to make us feel fulfilled. That love has to come from within us.  So here are five practical tips to give yourself a big dose of self-love every day. Number one, morning positivity. Start each day by telling yourself something positive. It can be anything that can make you smile or something that you're grateful for. For example, I'm grateful for this great breakfast I had. I'm grateful for my body. I'm grateful for my life. Things like that. If you tell yourself something positive like that, it will set the tone for the day and start it on a happy and positive note. Number two, turn off and inwards. Grab your favorite cup of tea, coffee, whatever your favorite drink is. Snuggle up on a couch in a blanket and turn off all phones, TVs, all distractions and just take some time to be alone with yourself. No social media, no distractions, just you. This is a great time to get in touch with your inner dialogue. If it's anything less than encouraging and supportive for yourself, then it's time to make a change. You deserve to be spoken to in the same way you would speak to your best friend or someone important you care about. Number three, end toxic relationships. Anyone that makes you feel less than amazing should not be a part of your life. Try to surround yourself with people love, encourage and support you. This will help you on your own self-love and self-worth journey as well. Number four, keep your space tidy. Cleaning is way more therapeutic than you may think. It allows you to get rid of any old things and allow new things to come into your life. Cleansing your mind can sometimes work in the form of getting rid of old clothes, shoes, jewelry, things because if they connect to something in your past, they can be linked to a negative vibration. So getting rid of them can open you up for more new things. Number five, stay healthy, feel good.  Be intentional about what you put into your body and not because you want to look good but because you want to feel good and feel healthy. Also, make sure to try to move your body every day, whether it's through rigorous exercise like cardio, running or yoga, pilates or even one-minute exercises every day. Make sure to keep your body moving so that you could stay healthy and show yourself some love. Okay, that's all for today on my mini lesson on self-love and some self-love habits that you can practice every day. I will link below some more resources about this topic if you're interested. Let me know if you have any questions, comments or concerns down in the comment section below. We look at all the comments and thank you for watching. I'll see you in another video.


I have been working in Peru with other colleagues for the past about 15 years doing inventories in different locations in the lowlands, mountains, forests and highlands in the Andes. We compiled a species list of the amphibians and reptiles and we found that altogether there are 287 species which is a record of diversity of these type of animals for any protected area in the world. Mano National Park is a protected area in southern Peru. You have to travel to Lima, take a flight, then take another flight to Cusco which is a city in the Andes. And then from Cusco you take a road. The first part is paved, the second part is a dirt road. And we just go through the forest and we set up different plots which are areas where we survey for amphibians and reptiles. We use leather gloves, we are on our knees or we are squatting and we are searching, digging through the grass turning over trunks, debris, everything because a lot of these species are hiding underneath this debris. When we find them in the field, a lot of them are just either hiding or they are sitting on top of a leaf or underneath the grass or in moss searching for food or waiting for food. We have to dig sometimes four hours to find a single individual. Whenever we find any of these species it's very exciting because we know they are there, we are assuming they are. They are still doing okay and we always hope to find more. The specimens we bring back to Berkeley we take a lot of measurements of the body size, the length of different parts of the body and that's used to tell species apart based on their different measurements. We take a small piece of liver to do DNA analysis and we use the DNA analysis to tell species apart to confirm or verify which species we have found in different locations in the park and also to detect potentially new species. This type of work is important because for example the government has been awarding a lot of oil and gas concessions to international companies that are going to go and exploit those resources underground. They are affecting a lot of the areas of rainforests and also not only biodiversity but also indigenous people living in these areas and we think it's important to inventory or catalog the species living there because knowing how diverse these areas are then people are going to pay attention and say okay these are worth preserving.


OK. Shall we start again? Hello? Is there any chairman clapping hands around? OK. Maybe several people have came to me a little bit. So without, let's say, a question mark in their heads of what do I mean by non-Marcovian, right? Because also, one has to say that the literature is not super, super clear about that. And let me clarify this a little bit. So there are, in my opinion, three main concepts of non-Marcovianity. One is, I would say, the traditional concept of when I was doing my PhD. My PhD was already on non-Marcovian open quantum systems. And by the way, everyone was asking me, why do you need that? So it was kind of, well, those were the times where people were thinking about open quantum systems in quantum optics. And in quantum optics, things are very, very Markovian. And at that time, by non-Marcovian, we were referring to those systems or to those dynamics where you cannot actually properly use the Limlan equation, right? So in that sense, this concept is very, very close to a paper by Gens Ayser, Dignasio, Sirac, where they actually propose a measure of non-Marcovianity that is related to whether your evolution can be properly described in terms of this dynamical semi-group or Limlan equation. So this is the first definition of non-Marcovianity. Let me not call it definition, but the first thing that people were thinking about when classifying the systems between non-Marcovian and Markovian. And then there was this, let's say, well, this emergence of non-Marcovianity measures. And I would say they are mostly divided into two main groups. One is that in which people consider non-Marcovian, those dynamics that cannot be described with a divisible map. And this was first proposed by Rivas, Huelga, and Plenio. And this is, by the way, what I was explaining to you earlier, the fact that, well, I think it's pretty useful. Non-divisible, I remind you, is whether when a map is divisible, you can always decompose it into little pieces, into little pieces, and more and more little pieces if you want. And each of these pieces is a dynamical map. And why is this important is because if you have a quantum information protocol and you have this property, you can actually use these little pieces in between operations over on your qubit. And it is important, again, that these are well-defined dynamical maps, because otherwise these guys would be crazy. They would do crazy things to your reduced density matrix. They would transform your reduced density matrix into something that is not a well-defined reduced density matrix. This is why it is so important to have pieces that are well-defined dynamical maps that preserve the nice properties of the reduced density matrix when applied to it. And then there is this other method, which is based on the backflow of information. And this was proposed by Breuer, Leine, and Philo from Freiburg and Finland. And it's based mostly on whether when your open quantum system is coupled to the environment, whether there is not only the information is flying or flowing from the system to the environment as it happens in many different cases, but also there is some backflow of the very same information back to the system during the evolution. Therefore, you see, you have the same names for three different things. And people then try to see what is the relationship between these concepts and so on. But I think the best thing to keep in mind is that they are somehow linked by the fact that, well, in general, non-Marcovian environments have a certain memory. And because they have a certain memory, there can be some backflow of information because the environment actually remembers. And in connection to this, the fact that you can divide into pieces, the map, it means that somehow the environment is recovering pretty well from the interaction with the system. And it is a good approximation to consider that from one piece of time to the next, the environment has recoiled back to its equilibrium state, roughly speaking. Please allow me the inconsistencies or the inaccuracies in this explanation. But this is just to, more or less, give you some physical ideas. So any questions so far or has this been clarifying or hopefully not un-clarifying at least? Okay, so let me go now to the next part we have, I think, 25 minutes until the coffee break, which is very encouraging. And, well, we have seen that we have different types of environments, but many, many of them can be described as a set of independent harmonic oscillators that are kind of connected to the system in this kind of a star configuration. Well, questions so far here, I added some slides to, well, trying to ask you questions. So what is the only thing we need to know so that we can properly describe our dynamics with a universal dynamical map? Well, it's actually that the initial condition is the correlated, although there are examples in which you can also derive a short of a map or a combination of maps for more complex, initially correlated states. But also you need to think that the universe is quantum. This is the only assumption that we have so far to describe everything in terms of a dynamical map, the fact that it's written in terms of cross operators and remember that these cross operators are related to the unitary evolution operator for both the system and the environment. So we need the environment to be quantum also. But, okay, we all agree that quantum theory so far has worked pretty well. Ah, why the harmonic environment model is so successful? Any ideas about that? Why Gaussian statistics are so nice? Well, this is related to the central limit theorem. So in a sense, when you have a complex system with many, many degrees of freedom and you go to the thermodynamic limit where you have many entities in your system, in this case in your environment, then the statistics tend to be Gaussian. And this is what lies below this harmonic, the success of the harmonic assumption. What, I mean, you know, when you think about a quantum information protocol and people are applying maps and maps and maps in between unitaries on the qubit, the assumption that is below that is that somehow we can describe this environment in terms of a dynamical semi-group. This is something that we just saw before. Well, just to catch up with you, well, when we have a closed system, this can be written in terms of a pure state, but here we need to deal with the reduced density matrix. This was meant to be a catch-up sliding between two blocks of the talk. By the way, just to mention here, before I was saying, look, if you have an environment and this is the total Hamiltonian, for some reason the laser is, I think it's, well, it's disappearing. Well, you can solve the full dynamics of the system and the environment with the total Schrodinger equation, but just to let you know that it could also be in the case that your environment and your system are described or have to be described not with a pure state psi of t, but with a reduced, not a reduced, but with a density matrix because it could be a mixed state. Well, why? Because you could initially start from your universe being composed of, still the open system and the environment, but the initial state that we would be considering, this is the total density matrix, being a mixed state that is still a correlated state between the system and the environment. And this is, by the way, the situation we were considering before that the environment is in a thermal state. It's actually exponential of minus beta, h, did I call this e? Sometimes I say e or b divided by the partition function, okay? Yes, yes, so far, yes. Indeed, there are many works in which people have considered more generally initial conditions. This only makes things more complicated. I'm gonna approach because some, yes. If you consider an initial entangled state between the environment and the system, things, I mean, you would have more complicated equations. So, well, you can still extract the reduced dynamics of the open system, but you would not, for instance, be able to describe everything in terms of a single dynamical map, for instance. Yes. Okay, but so far the situation I've been considering is kind of the quantum thermodynamical situation where you have an open system that is coupled to a reservoir, and this reservoir is in an equilibrium state, a thermal equilibrium state, for instance. And the only thing I'm saying here in this slide is, look, when you think about the total evolution, and you start from an initial state which is not a pure state, but a mixed state, you have to consider this von Neumann equation with the total Hamiltonian here. This is just what I was saying. Okay, and we have seen that we have this general form of the Hamiltonian in which the environment is Gaussian, has Gaussian statistics, and the point is, again, that we want to be able to solve the dynamics of the open system in its reduced Hilbert space, and we want to simply use as the statistical properties of the environment these correlation functions, in particular this second-order moment for the Gaussian environments. And now, okay, what do we do? How can we have access to the dynamical equations of the open system? Remember at the beginning I was telling you, well, in most of the cases, what you need is to make some sort of assumption that actually has to do with considering this coupling strength between the system and the environment to be weak, and what does it mean weak is what I will explain now in a minute. So remember, we have two different time scales that are relevant in our problem. So we have an environment relaxation time, which is the decay time of the correlation function, which is roughly speaking, the time that the environment takes to bounce back to its equilibrium state, to its give state. And then, as you will see later on, now it's hard to justify this without actually having seen the dynamical equations of the open system, but you have to believe me that the evolution or relaxation time of your open system is related to the inverse of the integral of the correlation function, which is kind of funny because this means that somehow the correlation function is going to be key to determine the two main time scales of the problem, namely the relaxation time scale of the environment and the relaxation time scale of the system. And by the way, I'm going to define a weak coupling parameter, which is G. I'm sorry that the laser is not really helpful, that is related to the relaxation time of the system. This is what we call the weak coupling parameter in which we will make perturbative expansions of our equations and therefore we will be able to have well-defined master equations for the reduced density operator of the system. And as you may imagine, there are three different, well, three different regimes. We are going to be focusing on the weak coupling and Markov limit. These two regimes correspond to cases in which there is a large separation of evolution time scales, in which we can basically assume that the environment is recovering very, very fast in the weak coupling case or almost instantaneously in the Markov limit from the interaction with the system. And later on, you will see how awful things become when you, well, at least you will get some ideas of how things become when you are in the strong coupling regime, yeah? Well, that's also a very good question, tricky one. I would say in the Markov limit, well, let me start with the weak coupling, okay? What do you assume is that, roughly speaking, you assume the born approximation. This born approximation is, as you will see later in a couple of slides, have to do with neglecting correlations between the system and the environment beyond second order in G, in this coupling parameter that we have there. So, this born approximation is allowing you to consider the correlations between the system and the environment that occur at very initial time, so to say, until the environment relaxes back to its equilibrium state. And actually, the Markov approximation is assuming even more, it's assuming that during the evolution, the total density matrix can more or less be approximated. This is also something that is assumed in quantum thermodynamics in the Markovian interpretation of quantum thermodynamics, can more or less be written as a product between the system and the environment state. And the environment is usually considered to be remaining in equilibrium. This is more or less the assumption that is behind quantum thermodynamics in the Markov limit, which is where the different laws of thermodynamics are justified. It's much stronger, of course, than the born approximation, but we will see this later on in more detail. Okay, so let me go a little bit to explain this.  So, you visualize the open system is at the turtle and the environment is a bunny. And well, the nice thing about these approximations is that the dynamical map is reachable. You can really reach the master equation and the dynamical map. And actually in the Markov limit, in the limit where you have a Markov approximation, and actually another one that is called the secular approximation that we will discuss, we will not discuss in detail, but it's related to total energy conservation of the full system and the environment. The map will become a dynamical semi-group. And then now we connect a little bit with this concept of noise, right? Because well, so far we have been talking about master equations, the evolution of the reduced density matrix of the system. But just to let you know, we will also check a little bit this other way of expressing the reduced density matrix. Actually, this is called unraveling. So, this was a terminology that was coined by Carmichael in the 90s. You can also consider the reduced density matrix to be written or unraveled in terms of projections over stochastic wave vectors. So, the J stands for each of the stochastic trajectories in which you may unravel your reduced density matrix, and which in the Markov limit can be made to correspond to the trajectories that you obtain in each experimental run, only in the Markov limit. We will discuss a little bit also today. So, you see there are two different type of, or two different ways to access the open system dynamics, in particular the reduced density matrix. One is through computing the reduced density matrix, which by the way, just for those of you that are not so familiar, this allows you to calculate the quantum in value of any operator of the system A, just because this is written as a total trace over the environment and the system of the total density matrix times A, but this is equal to a trace over the system of a trace over the environment, because A is a system operator of Rho T, okay, and this simply is Rho S of T. So, you see that the reduced density matrix is actually allowing you to recover any quantum in value of a system operator A. And so you can compute this Rho S of T with master equation and with stochastic Rheninger equations that are driven by a noise. So, this is the connection with noise, okay? So, how can we access master equation just very briefly because, well, it's not a question today to come into details, but the idea is to remember this for Neumann equation for the total density matrix of the system and the environment. What you do is you expand it up to second order in the coupling parameter. So, every time there is an interaction Hamiltonian, you have to think that this is proportional in magnitude to G. So, this means that this term is of second order in G, at least, because you have twice the interaction Hamiltonian. I have changed a little bit the notation just to, I realize it's too confusing. This, well, the evolution with respect to the free Hamiltonian, I'm sorry about the laser, is written as Bt over A acting over the next operator, V tau Bt. So, this means that this equation, I have to ask for another laser, but, well, this equation is in principle dependent on some operators. So, the interaction Hamiltonian evolved in time with respect to the free part of the Hamiltonian, the Hs plus He, but here you have the total density operator, right? And by the way, what we are going to consider is the case where you have an interaction Hamiltonian which describes the different particles J coupled to the field. Like, for instance, when you have a photosynthetic complex of antenna molecules, J stands for each antenna molecule. And what you have is that, well, for instance, this is for the Fena-Matthew Orson complex of antenna molecules, found in part of bacteria. These guys are actually receiving light from the sun and they are transporting this light into a reaction center which should be somewhere here and within the complex. And this transport process is occurring in the presence of a phononic environment. So, this is the interaction Hamiltonian between the antenna molecules and the phononic environment where the phononic coupling operator is B, right? Environment coupling operator. And this is where the Born approximation is coming into play as we were mentioning before. So, as you can see, it's coming into play by replacing this total density matrix that corresponds to both the system and the environment by the correlated version of it. So, it's a soft version of this assumption where you assume that every time you are having such a decomposition and it's softer version because somehow you are making such a replacement in a term that is already of second order within an evolution equation. So, in a sense, this means that you are considering correlations up to second order if you like. You are neglecting whatever correlations because once they are plugged here, they would be a fourth order term, okay? Good, so, and then what you get is what is called a weak coupling master equation. It's kind of interesting because, well, here I have already replaced the form of the interaction Hamiltonian here and here, and this is how you have in this equation only the system operators, the system coupling operators, SJ and SL, and the environment coupling operators have gone through the trace to this correlation function which I should have written, but it's really looking like this. So, this CLJ of t is a trace over the environment of the initial state of the environment times BLTBJ0, where this guy is the exponential of minus IHETBL, I think this should be plus, right? So, this is a correlation function that, well, it's a second order moment if you like or a fluctuation of the environment coupling operators corresponding to the particle L and the particle J. So, it's a kind of, well, it's a kind of, well, it's a kind of, well, the particle L and the particle J. So, it's a kind of very, very nice object because it connects different particles. It connects different antenna molecules through the field. So, even if they were not connected through this coupling, through the Hopin process, they would be connected by the phononic field through the fact that you have these correlation functions. Well, that depends on different, that connects different particles. And as you can see, thanks to having considered the Born approximation, which is a kind of equivalent to a second order perturbative expansion, we have obtained a master equation in the reduced Hilbert space of the system. So, this equation is only living in the Hilbert space of the open quantum system because it only depends on reduced density matrix and operators of the open quantum system. And all the information of the environment, as I was announcing earlier, is encoded in this correlation function, which is the second order moment or a fluctuation of the environment coupling operators, connecting between different particles. And it's probably, I think, a good moment to stop for the coffee break. I'm correct. At 11? Yes? Okay, so, well, is there any question? We have three minutes for a question. It's probably more important to get the coffee, no? Okay, so we will resume in half an hour, I think. Thank you.


Patriot Prime Reviews is a channel for adult collectors and may not be suitable for children under 13 years of age. Viewer discretion is advised. Hey, what's going on guys? Patriot Prime here once again with another video. But before I get started with the subject of this video, I want to give a huge shout out to my sponsor toyhacks.com. Toyhacks is a company that provides upgrade decals for modern transformer figures along with reproduction decals for the vintage ones. While visiting Toyhacks, make sure and check out the Toyhacks Armory to see their line of Transformers weaponry in multiple collars. And toy stages for awesome display backdrops. Each purchase from Toyhacks earns you Robocents that you can use for future purchases. You can check your balance anytime in your cart. Toyhacks is a company run by collectors for collectors. So make sure and check out toyhacks.com and tell them Patriot Prime sent you. Now, on to the review. The featured button in this video is the brand new Transformers Beast Wars reissue Cybershark. And I got to give a huge shout out to my friend Alex who found Cybershark for me because my Walmart never gets anything. So Alex, thank you so much. So let's take a quick look at the packaging. We've got Beast Wars Transformers. Some great artwork of Cybershark right there. Cybershark himself behind a big plastic bubble. Maximal Cybershark right there showing his transformation. The back of the package has his file card and the instructions. And I am really excited to get this guy opened and check him out because I have no experience with this figure. This is one that I just didn't pick up when Beast Wars was out originally in the 90s. I only collected Predacons for some reason, but this guy looks awesome. So now without further ado, let's get this shark out of this bubble and check him out. And welcome to Patriot Prime Reviews. Now once you get Cybershark all opened up and out of the packaging, you'll see that he actually comes in two pieces. The main body here and the tail. And all you need to do to put him together is right there is a hole on the back of the shark. And you have a peg right there at the end of the tail. Just slot that right in and now you have Cybershark hole. And this is actually a really good looking shark mode. I love the paint applications. As I said earlier, I have no experience with the original figure. I'm just going off of this guy right here and he looks awesome. So I didn't know if the original had all this paint deco or not. I'm not sure if Hammerhead sharks are spotted, but is what it is. I think he looks great. Got red eyes right there at the end of his hammer. And I like the fact he has metallic teeth, though I do wish the jaw or the lower jaw came out just a little further. He's kind of got a derpy look to him. But still, this looks really, really good. Of course, underneath you can see the robot legs hanging out underneath and he's got a pretty sizable gap right there. And it just, it will not shut. You're just going to have to deal with that as it is. Now articulation for his shark mode, the fins are attached via ball joints. So you can move those around for any swimming positions you'd like to do. But that's it as far as articulation. Now he does have a couple of gimmicks right here. You can see the switch on top of his head.  I don't know if the original could really shoot that far, but this one, it just falls off. And what's cool is it reveals a robotic skull underneath. And I do believe, if you look right there, that could be an eye. If there was some pain applications, that would look cool. It'd be like the flesh fell off the shark. It was like a Terminator shark underneath. So I like that. But yeah, there's not much force to that face falling off. Another gimmick is back here on the tail. There's another lever right here. Push that toward the tail here and this blade pops out. It's like a serrated saw blade. So that's pretty cool. We could swim up on somebody and just cut them right in half. So that is pretty much it for shark mode. Let's go ahead and get him transformed into robot mode. Really, really simple. What we're going to do is remove the tail once again. And then you're going to split the shark in half just like so. Then you're going to bring this section up here. And what's cool is for the transformation.  You can see his fist right here. And the heel spurs plug into those fists. I wanted to point that out for you. Now you're going to bring this whole section down. And there's a peg right here that's going to slot into that hole.  Push it into place. Go ahead and bring the legs down. Bring the feet out. You got the arms right here. You want to bring these out and rotate around. So the fists are facing the proper direction. And there we have Cybershark in robot mode. And he is quite top heavy. He's got a lot of backpack. So probably going to have to hold this guy for a while. Now robot mode is just bonkers. I love this robot mode. He carries over all the same color from the shark there on the chest. And I do like the inside halves right here. How that's red. It's almost like the flesh split apart. And he's got some nice sculpted details right there. I wish that was painted. It almost looks like ribs, but it's attached to the jaw. So I guess it's just jaw texture. Like I said, I'm not an oceanologist, marine biologist, whatever it is, you know what I'm talking about. But yeah, this guy looks cool and love the face sculpt. That is just so sharky. It even has a fin on top of the head. This figure reminds me. I'm going to date myself here. Remember the old toy line in TV series Tiger Sharks? It was kind of a thundercats ripoff. This figure reminds me of that show. Love the red eyes, the toothy mouth. I mean, that guy looks awesome. Let's get into articulation. The head is on a ball joint. It can look up. It can look down. Complete 360. The arms are on a ball joint as well. It's beast wars. They were all about ball joints. They can move all the way around, but they are going to get hit back here on this half, shark half. There is a rotation at the shoulder. There is an elbow bend. The legs can go back. They can go forward, but they're going to hit this shark head. There is a knee bend and the ankles can go back and forth. Now you have the tail. Let me see if I can get this guy to stand up. Straighten his legs out perfectly. Stand up. Okay. You have the tail right here. This will form his weapon. Now the instructions show, you flip this little peg out right here, that you make this an underslung weapon like so.  The instructions show underslung, but I personally like it pegged on top of his fist. That way, when he is attacking a Predacon, he can actually swing that forward, come on, and cut him right in half. I like him holding at the top better. We've got that going on. Other things he can do, let's go ahead and remove this weapon, is you can actually flip up the chest, just like so, and launch the head from robot mode. Yeah, it launches so good. Yeah. So, let's see, let's bring in the notoriously evil quick strike right here. None of my figures want to stand up for this video, and I'm going to leave it all in because I am home alone. The family is gone, giving me time to film. Of course, nothing is going right. So here we have quick strike, getting ready to attack Cyber Shark. Oh no, you don't. Okay, yeah, very anti-climactic right there. But with the Shark Head off, I love how he cleans up. That looks awesome, especially with the Silver right there. It just looks a lot better without the Shark Head. Now you can take the Shark Head, and as you can see, it's got a little peg right there. You can peg that into his hand as a melee weapon, like a hammer of some sorts.  But he's got some hidden features as well, extra hidden features rather. If you look right here, that is missile storage. So behind the figure, you've got the back of the missiles here. There are two of them. I'm just going to pull out one. And first off, look at the sculpted details on these little missiles. See how it's got a shark face on it? You can see the eye, the mouth, the teeth, and the gills. I think that is so cool. Nice little hidden details there. Go ahead and flip out this launcher once again. And this thing has a lot more power. Let me show you. Yeah, it actually launches across my table. So now let's bring in quick strike, talking smack to Cyber Shark. Now let's see what you got, buddy. Ah, that took him out. That wiped out quick strike. So yeah, the missile launcher for missiles actually works. Also, you can take the missiles, and they fit in his hand as well. So he has more melee weapons. So this guy is armed to the teeth, pun intended. So you got your missiles. You got your bladed weapon here. You've got your hammer. Now with all that stuff hooked onto Cyber Shark, maybe he'll stand up a little better. Maybe. Yeah, there you go. So there you go. There's Cyber Shark, all armed and ready for battle. And now for some quick size comparisons. Here is the new Transformers Reissue Beast Wars Cyber Shark with the original Beast Wars Optimus Primal, the original Beast Wars Cheetor, the Reissue Beast Wars Rat Trap, and Kingdom Air Razor. The Transformers Beast Wars Reissue Cyber Shark is a fun figure. I have had a blast with this guy. This is one figure when I got him, I immediately filmed the intro so I could hurry up and get him out of the package so I could mess around with him. And he is a ton of fun. I love all the gimmicks on this guy. And that's something I really miss with modern figures, like all the hidden gimmicks within Cyber Shark. The Beast Wars figures did that so well. They hid all those gimmicks and weapons and missiles within the alt mode. So you can take them out and use them in robot mode. Everything was self-contained and I miss those days so much. So yeah, this is a fun figure and I am really glad I picked him up. So there you go guys, Transformers Beast Wars Reissue Cyber Shark. So, does the Transformers Beast Wars Reissue Cyber Shark belong in your collection? Well, if you're a Beast Wars fan, absolutely, I love this toy. I have had a blast messing with him on my desk for the last couple of days. Love the hidden gimmicks. The sculpted detail is great, especially on the face there. So yeah, this is an awesome Beast Wars toy. It's an awesome Transformers toy. I love this guy. So just because he wasn't featured in the show, don't use that as an excuse not to pick him up because if you don't, you're really missing out on a great figure. So yeah, you see Cyber Shark on the shelf, pick him up. You are not going to be disappointed. Now guys, if you enjoyed the video, don't forget to like, don't forget to subscribe and don't forget to click that bell icon to get notified when I upload new videos. Also, if you're in any position to help out the channel, I have a new super thanks button that YouTube graciously gave me and I also have channel memberships. And I want to give a huge shout out to my current channel members because its support, like yours, helps keep this channel going. Once again guys, this is Patriot Prime signing out.


rocking and rolling. Got it. All right, YouTube is live. YouTube. YouTube. Yes, I'm weird. I know it. I get it. Don't judge me. Don't judge me for being weird. Actually, you can judge me. I don't mind. You can judge me. I don't mind at all. All right, so we're going to be talking a little bit about hacking better here in a second. I have some fun things we're going to be going over. Just have to pull up my notes. And of course, I put it on here. So we're going to do the best we can for what we got. All right. Here we go.  Live. YouTube's live. Everybody's live. All right. How many platforms going to run live at one time? That's the question. The million dollar question. How many we can go one at a time? So, hey, y'all, we're going to be talking hacking better in about a second here. I just got to adjust a couple of things.  What is it? Hacking better is an event that is absolutely a state of art. It's about human optimization and human performance. So if you're into like health and wellness and living better life, it's for you. But it's also around entrepreneurship and personal development, personal growth. So we have legitimately three of the top doctors, Dirkers, three of the top doctors in the entire planet on human performance. We're also going to have this guy. I'm going to talk about him in a second. I'm very excited for. So we have a naturopathic functional doctor, literally global international speaker on women, hormones, biohacking your body to get the most out of the human body. We have two gentlemen's PhD medical doctors, researchers at the University of South Florida, or sorry, out of out of Tampa, Florida and ASPI that will be presenting their formulators. They literally test real time people. They test to people like Anthony Pettis, a lot of Tony Robbins, a lot of the world global natural human performance freaks of the planet. They'll be there presenting on how to optimize human performance. This is hacking better, by the way. None of that we're going to ever see you, Brian Underwood there, who is just an inspiration and has a vision of making the world a better place. And then my boy Ed Milette will be there. I say my boy, I got to hear Ed a few times now. And he's a stud, one of the biggest entrepreneurs that we'll see probably in our current lifetime. He's made a huge impact in the network marketing space. He's a big on personal development and growth. He's big on becoming the true, like finding your own identity, finding yourself. He really, really thrives on helping people step into their own greatness. We'll have him in person, which I'm super excited about. I literally just opened this today. I got his book in the mail. We actually have two copies. My wife had a copy. I got a copy in the mail. It just came a second ago, which I'm super, the powerful of one more. We all have a little bit more in ourselves to get that little bit more, that one more. And then we're going to, I'm going to mess up her name is Lisa. I'm going to say it wrong. I'm going to try to try more time. Lisa, Bill, Bill, why you? Bill, why you? Bill, why you? Bill, she's from the, across the pond. She's going to be presenting. Y'all, if you don't know her, she's dynamic. She literally had gone through a whole, like she was on a journey of her life and realized that she was found a life that somebody else wanted for her. And she had basically decided that she's going to step into her own greatness and decide that she's going to live her life. She's now a part owner of a billion dollar company. She will be there. So hacking better is a, is a, an environment for you to not only, if you're into health and wellness, like I am a freak of wellness, I love it. You're going to get your cup so filled at the same time, if you're into entrepreneurship, personal growth, personal development, becoming the best version of yourself from how to make impact in the world, you're going to be cup is filled. But if you're into both of those, you're going to, it's a game changer forever. It's absolutely an extraordinary opportunity to really get to embrace and learn what this is all about. And it's all in Louisville, Kentucky in like two weeks. So I wanted to share this with you all. What's up mom? How are you doing, Brandy? I'm going to say hi to a few people first. Carol, Andrea, how are you? Tito, super nice that book is fire. This is a game changer where he's going to be live at our event. I've got to hear him speak a few times and just say, he's a stud. He's an absolute stud. Super stoked to get to spend more time with him. The next event, we're going to be spending more time with Jay Shetty, which is really, really exciting. Janet, you're going to miss it. You're going to miss it. But here's what I wanted to say to you all. It's almost like an invite. If you're, people watch, I mean, right now, if you're currently in our company or in our community or with our team, let me know down below. If you have no idea, you're like, dude, I just follow you because somebody told me to or because you like my teeth. I don't know why you follow me and like my information, whatever it might be, let me down below. This is, I wanted to share this because I'm going to tell you a story. I'm not going to tell you mine this time. I'm going to tell you somebody else's. I know this gentleman and he's basically a construction worker and he's in his mid 40s. His back is shot. His leg is shot. His body's fallen apart. He has a young child and like, he can't keep doing what he's doing into his 50s and 60s. It's not going to work. The math isn't going to add up, right? He has to, if he doesn't decide now to make a change in his life, what's going to happen in his 50s and 60s is going to be really tough. He's going to have to rely on something else, probably not what he planned for. But what I found, there's a really cool video out there called the strangest secret. Has anybody watched the strangest secret by Earl Nightingale? I encourage you to watch it. What's up Tiffany? I encourage you to watch it because most people don't plan for five or 10 or 15 years from now. We're just surviving today. I get it. I have three babies, three young kids, one on the way. We just moved, we'd moved like six times in two and a half, three years. I mean through COVID, life is complicated. At the same time, if we wake up five years, 10 years from now, we're going to be super stoked with where we're at, our health or our finances, either one. I'm a promoter from Singapore, not sure about hacking better yet. Singapore, Alex, come. Silver has a video. Silver, if you get hit silver up and tell them, come, come. She's from Singapore. We have people literally flying all over the world to come see this. It's going to be an extraordinary event, absolutely extraordinary event. But my whole point to this is that I've watched too many, been doing this for seven years. I sat on it for eight years. I sat on changing my life. Things are going to be okay. I'm going to get there. I'm going to do some things. It's going to get better and nothing was changing. I had to decide to make a change.  Find people that are thriving in this world, this chaotic world right now with the whole coming out of COVID, coming out of the world, coming out of the doom and gloom of Canada and Australia and the UK and the United States and Mexico and wherever else in the world you're at. Not everybody's in doom and gloom. It doesn't have to be that way. There's so many opportunities that are coming in front of us. But I can tell you this much is that you got to get healthier. You got to work on this mindset. You got to get this thing straight up here. You got to get healthier and you got to find a path that move yourself in a better direction because right now there's more opportunities in business, more opportunity and entrepreneurship than ever before. And now that could be part-time at home, that could be full-time, that could be a life-changing transformation like it was for me and my family. But I promise you right now in the next three to five years, more amazing things are going to come out of the craziness of the last three years if you're in straight, if you have your health under control, if you're focused on improving your life in the right direction. And that's what hacking better is about. It's about giving you really great information on health and wellness and vitality. Listen, you can have all the money in the world and if you're not, if you're not, if you don't have a great relationship with your family, you don't have a great relationship with your team, if you don't have a great health, it doesn't matter, right? It doesn't matter. Your relationships are going to be important. But the same time is you can have all the health in the world and be broke as ever and be depressed and down and moved and stressed to the gills because you have no financial security or future in your family, in your future.  You can be healthy as ever and be broke and still be miserable. So you need them both. They go together. They go together and it doesn't mean you have to be billionaire. It doesn't mean you have to be an Iron Man and super buff. You just got to be better. You got to be in the right direction and the right way. So hacking better is bringing us together to give us all that opportunity to do so. So here's me inviting you to better. I'm going to keep this bad dog short. So if you're interested in hacking better, reach out to me. I will give you some information on it. You can still come. There's a few tickets left, maybe like 10 or 12 tickets left. There's a lot sold, but there's a few left. And if you want more in your life, tomorrow night, we're going to be doing a special, special, special opportunity. This is about how to make money while getting healthier. This is what I'm being truly transparent. I talk about ketones all day long. This is about financially, do you want to move your life in a better place? Are you looking for better? Do you're looking for a side else? Are you looking for extra income? Are you looking for a part A or a plan A over plan B? Whatever it is, tomorrow night, we're having a special call. We have two of them, one for dudes and one for ladies. The beauty and the beast, whatever you want to call it. Beauty just joined. That's so funny. I say that beauty just joined. But if you want to be part of that call and you want to get that information, send me a private message. Tomorrow night, we have ladies only. I think it's going to be at 830 Eastern, but I'll get the information. And then men at 9pm Eastern Standard Time call. If you're ready for a change and ready for a shift, come get the information. See what this is all about. How you can play roles that you can play in the success that you potentially can have if you're willing to go after and do the work. So with that said and done, Saturday night, we're going to have game night with the kids and the family. So I appreciate all plugging in with me here until the next time. Peace out. Bye. I got a lot of things to shut off right now. All right, here we go. We're going to start with Facebook. Hi, Facebook. All right, that's one Facebook down, two Facebooks down. All right. Instagram. Bye, Instagram. I love to go, but physically can't go. Come on, Peg. You got it. You can be. Come on, Peg. We want you there. We miss you, Peg. Bye, TikTok. Bye, YouTube. YouTube always gets last as you're on my computer.