ראשי מקרה.прוכה. ראשי מקרה. נכון. ראשי מקרה. אוהב על בון וידש לצאת של קורודים. We are here to present post-quantum evolution to the cloud-native stack. With me, Emma Dickinson from Washington State University and Daly and Rojana, I am Daron Podoliano from F5. In this talk, we are going to cover what does a quantum computer mean. What does a post-quantum mean. Then we are going to tell you about our experience converting modern cloud native stack to be post quantum resistant. Show you a demo of our work which include the world first post quantum service mesh and the end-wave proxy. Finally, we will conclude with an outline of what comes next. First we have to talk about modern cryptography for a bit. So, why is encryption secure? Common public key DB systems consist of three algorithms. one for key generation, one for encryption, and one for decryption. RSA is a modern key cryptosystem which, like other cryptosystems, rely on the fact that classical computers cannot solve hard mathematical problems in a reasonable time. RSA usually generates 2048-bit private key using two very large numbers, P and Q. It is not practical to factor N and find them introducing the concept of computational intractability. So what are those hard problems? In computer science, we categorize problems based on complexity measured by how much time or memory it takes to solve. Problems used for encryption are at least NP, which means that a solution can be verified in polynomial time. Also, unless P equals NP, finding a solution requires exponential time. If P equals NP, it also means we need no quantum computer to break encryption. We do not know if P equals NP and believe it is not the case, and so we are here. So what are the current industry standards in terms of cryptography? Like we can see on the Wikipedia table, commonly used encryption standards such as TLS-1.2 and older are still being used in all cases, include TLS-1.3, which makes stronger assumptions on the public key. There are no principal differences in the core encryption or the encryption algorithm. As a result, the problems discussed in this talk remain relevant. So let's get a very brief hot air balloon level view of quantum computing. Take note of this sphere on screen. It'll be more relevant later. It's called the block sphere. So taking a short walk starting from the 1981 Feynman paper 41 years ago, the first small-scale computer was made in 1998 with three quantum bits or Q-bits. Over the next decade, starting with the first execution of Shor's algorithm in 2001, major hardware advancements were made exploring the different ways to make a quantum bit. We can clearly see that while this is a very young technology, the rate of advancement has been increasing rapidly. Most notably in 2019, Google laid claim to achieving quantum supremacy, the long sought after exponential improvement over a classical computer. They performed a random circuit sampling computation in 200 milliseconds that a standard computer would take 10,000 years to solve. IBM, their main rival, disputes this, saying that it's actually closer to two and a half days. That being said, it's probably good to take both claims with a grain of salt. Now let's talk about some of the relevant phenomena that make this all possible. Diving into the subatomic scale, it has been observed that when two particles, such as a pair of electrons, become what we call entangled, they remain connected even if separated by a distance. As a result, their state cannot be described independently of the others. Measuring the state of a particle will tell us something about the other particle. Represented, repeated experiments have conferred this spooky action in a distance occurs immediately. Superposition is quantum phenomenon which is counterintuitive for us classical beings. One, not scientifically correct way to imagine how the superposition feel like is imagined being in multiple states simultaneously. Spend the weekend both on the forest camp and on the beach, wear a green and a red shirt, drive two cars at the same time, etc. This makes little sense for our classically calibrated minds, but turns out to be useful as we shall soon see. If we think about information that can be stored using this phenomenon, superposition allows us to, fundamental particle to store exponentially more information than the classical counterparts. For example, given four bits, classical computer has to store all possible configurations, total of 64 bits, while a quantum computer only needs four qubits. Now, let's talk about how quantum model of computation builds off this phenomena. If you haven't seen the comic The Talk by Scott Aronson and Zach Wienersmith, I can't recommend it enough. It's a pretty funny take on the common misconceptions like quantum computing tries all solutions at once. Essentially, we can think of quantum computing as an abstraction of the properties of quantum mechanics as generalized rules of probability. Each probability has an amplitude of likelihood similar to a wave. As a result, a quantum algorithm is a complex choreographed dance of probability waves that either cancel each other out or amplify each other depending on the answer you're trying to output. When using classical bits, we have to store every possible configuration of those bits as everything's in a definite state. On the other hand, quantum bits are in a state of superposition, so we can think of their values as probabilities of being in that specific state. How do we represent those probabilities? By complex numbers, whose sum probability always adds to 1. Take note of that formula at the bottom. It'll be relevant on the next slide. Take the example signed with amplitudes 0.5 and minus 0.5. We can represent that like the bar graph in the middle. To get the probability of being in a 1 or 0 state, we then use the formula from the last slide. The probability of being a 0 or 1 is then the squared value of the amplitude or 0.25. The probability of being between 0 and 1 is then 0.5. Let's apply this intuition to a fundamental particle in a quantum bit. Since all probabilities add to 1, we can show all possible states as vectors in the sphere we saw earlier. When subjected to the amplitude interference applied by a quantum circuit, we cancel out the possibilities we don't want, leaving us with the intended solution. The circuit we see in the middle is actually the first quantum search algorithm or Grover's algorithm. So that's fine and all, but how does this actually get us the answer? Why does this work? Grover's algorithm allows us to use a special version of a powerful mathematical trick called the inverse quantum Fourier transform. Imagine a car racing an unknown track from A to B. It would be very complex to predict exactly to the second how long it would take to get there. This mathematical trick turns this car racing around a track, it turns this into a car racing around a track, where the time it takes to complete a lap is the period or the private key. The quantum circuit then solves for this period, giving us the answer. So quantum computing currently. The classical bits have been standardized for decades, but there still is no qubit standard. All current working models are still subject to decoherence effects due to subatomic interaction with the outside world. While we may still be in the early days of this field, it's crucial for encryption to invest in new security paradigms to get ahead of the threats quantum computing can pose. In 1994, Petr Schor proposed a quantum algorithm to solve a large integer factorization problem. If a quantum computer with sufficient number of qubits could operate without succumbing to quantum noise and other quantum decoherence phenomenon, then Schor algorithm could be used to break public key cryptography schemes, such as RSA scheme and the finite Diffie-Hellman key exchange and other cryptosystem, which rely on the fact that private key cannot be discovered or reproduced using brute force. Based on Schor original works in 1994, continued research by Kera and Gideni et al. estimates that a 2048-bit RSA encryption can be broken in approximately five hours using quantum computer. Considering that RSA is considered computationally intractable for classical computers, this is truly unrelevable. As computational methods improve and the computational power of quantum computer computers have been using and the computational power of quantum computers increase. As computational methods improve and the computational power of quantum computers grows, this is becoming closer to reality by the day. This means we have to change the nature of the mathematical problems we have been using at the core of modern cryptography thus far. As we will soon see, a new family of cryptographic algorithms has to be used. While the mathematical details upon which post-quantum cryptography algorithms are based are not covered in this talk, we do not want to leave you, we do want to leave you with intuitive understanding of the differences. Solving mathematical problems used in classical encryption paradigms like integer factorization can be intuitively envisioned as finding branching tree contained in 2D graph that is shown here. On the other hand, problems used in post-quantum paradigms requires us to find a solution contained within a higher dimensional lattice. Extracting the private key by solving such a problem requires us to find a solution which is contained within a scope exponentially larger cardinality, which makes potentially computational intractable even for a quantum computer. So let's start talking about how we can solve some of these problems practically. So our approach was to tackle the most commonly used open source software packages for web authentication, encryption, and communication. In the order of development, it was anginex for a proof of concept and to develop robust benchmarking methods. Then we'd move to Envoy to solve the same problem in a more complex system. And then finally to Istio to deploy that system across a mesh network of microservices. All of this was made possible using the post-quantum library developed by OpenQuantumSafe. So we first began with anginex, the lightweight efficient implementation with multiple utilities. We focused on TLS 1.3 as it's the most recent standard. It simplifies previous protocols to one round trip as more information is contained in each communication between server and client. TLS for the post-quantum implementation is mechanically identical to a standard implementation. This is important for compatibility and a seamless transition between encryption paradigms. So let's see what this looks like played out. So we can spin up the terminal on the right and we're gonna attempt to make secured and unsecured requests using the standard browser. If I can pause this. Okay. Is that pausing? Okay, that's still going. So the secured and unsecured requests using the standard browser will fail because it doesn't contain the post-quantum certificates that are necessary. However, we can use a post-quantum-enabled fork of curl to return the webpage that was originally in that second terminal. And then using an open-source browser called Epiphany which is loaded with the post-quantum certificates, we are then able to see that the unsecured request works but the secured request accesses the anginex backend. So now that we have this quantum-resistant version of anginex, we wanna make sure that its performance is comparable to anginex used with standard encryption algorithms. We have done extensive benchmarking and instructions to replicate this on your own machine can be found by following that QR code to our GitHub repository. In addition, you can also view all the results that we've done so far. In July of 2022, the National Institute of Standards and Technology announced the four winning algorithms from their six-year effort to call for the world's cryptographers to find the best algorithms that could resist a quantum attack against the quantum computers that are expected to exist in the future. The winners for digital signatures were Dilithium, Falken, and Sphinx. Extensive research has been done on these algorithms and we chose to use Dilithium for our prototyping as it is the fastest of the post-quantum encryption options based on the literature performance thus far. I will be demoing how we did our benchmarking for anginex that uses the Dilithium algorithm and how it compares to the anginex that uses standard RSA encryption. The benchmarking that I am going to show you was run on a clean installation of Ubuntu 20.04. For a benchmarking for anginex, we want to compare vanilla anginex to anginex used with the open quantum safe fork. It was not only important that the open quantum safe fork with the anginex had the proper functionality, but it was also really important that it had a comparable performance to the vanilla anginex in terms of factors such as load and latency. The anginex version we are using is anginex 1.20.0 and we use the open SSL version 1.1.1. To do our benchmarking, we use the tool called H2-Load which we built locally and configured with the post-quantum library. The instructions to do this configuration can also be found in a public GitHub repository. Now I'm going to walk through a demo of our benchmarking. So we start by running the init shell script which makes builds anginex with OQS and then we run the query shell script which will enable the OQS fork and as you can see, this shows that TLS at the top, it should say TLS 1.3, it should show that the TLS was operated and then terminated and then as well it also shows that it's running with the dilithium-3 algorithm. And so once we have that all set up, then we can start to run the H2-Load test. We recommend using our test script instead of just running the H2-Load command on its own because we want to see an average of around 10 runs so our shell script allows you to get an average of those runs because anginex sometimes takes a while to warm up and then also it'll just make the results more valid by doing so and within our test script that we created, you can change parameters such as the number of concurrent connections as well as the number of threads. So now I'm going to show you what happens when you run the H2-Load command on its own. As I mentioned earlier, we don't recommend this but it's just good to see. And so by running the H2-Load command, the results that you want to look for is where it says mean and request per second, that's the throughput for just one run. So here are some of the results that we found and you can see these results as I mentioned earlier in our GitHub. You'll be able to see our results from benchmarking regular anginex as well as anginex using the quantum-resistant algorithm dilithium and then most importantly, you'll be able to view our comparisons. So the figure on the left shows that anginex performance comparison for one client thread and then the figure on the right shows the anginex performance for eight client threads. The number just notes that it starts at 10 concurrent client connections for the eight client threads because you can't have more client threads or concurrent client connections than you have threads. So these charts show that all those predicted that the throughput for the vanilla anginex would be slightly higher. The difference between the two is only eight to 13% lower for the anginex using the quantum-resistant algorithm compared to the anginex using the standard RSA algorithm and these results map perfectly to prior research studies testing the same items. So one thing that's really nice about the H2-Load tool that we use to do our benchmarking is that it's highly portable and so that means we can use it to test different algorithms as well as to test different proxies as well. So we also did it to test the Envoy proxy and to do this we ran pretty much the same commands that we did for the anginex with a few minor changes. The benchmarking that we did on Envoy, some of our visualizations can be seen here and similar to the anginex benchmarking, Envoy that used the dilithium-3 algorithm, throughput was only about a 10% difference from that that used just the standard RSA and this is an acceptable outcome based on the literature performance that we've seen and is what we expected. So next in our development cycle is Envoy, the high-performance open-source server optimized for cloud and cloud-native application hosting. Modifying something so foundational to Envoy's capabilities was a little like teaching in a new language. We started with the latest Envoy open-source then forked the most recent boring SSL modified to utilize the entire OQS encryption suite. The Envoy dependencies were then modified to compile and load the static libraries. Building from source using Bazel was then fairly identical to standard Envoy versions. As a result, the source code was left largely unchanged at final commit so all capabilities are enabled in pass build tests. On screen you can see the commit hashes if you want to follow along yourself on the repository. Here's a sample architecture of how Envoy can be deployed as a front proxy for two services, in this case, Flask backends. We'll see a demonstration of this shortly. So just a reminder, all these QR codes will take you straight to the repose. So let's see a live demonstration of this. Once again, all of the demos come with initialization scripts and we'll see the Docker containers being spun up and we can query this using the query script. This once again invokes the post-quantum fork of curl so it has the proper algorithms to access this. So let's pass the Q flag and we'll see that I can find the mouse. It is, okay. We can see that the TLS handshake is performed and terminated correctly and the JSON is returned containing the information of the page. Okay, let's see that front proxy at work. So we'll spin up the containers in one terminal and in the next terminal we're gonna make that request using the post-quantum curl. We can see that it returned service one at the bottom and then for the second one, it says hello again from the backend from service two. The final stage in development was Istio, a multimodal open source platform that deploys Envoy's sidecar. I hope you enjoy this, that took me like an hour and a half to make. Since Envoy's deployed as a sidecar by Istio, we didn't have to modify the Istio source code other than updating the repository targets. Building Istio then uses two repositories, the proxy and the main Istio. We can make Istio-proxy against that Envoy image that we've already developed and then make Istio using that modified proxy. So why Istio at all? Well, North-South encryption can easily be handled by an NGINX or other L4 proxies, but what ensures data transit security within a cluster? Sometimes this is driven by industry-specific regulations such as PCI compliance or HIPAA. In other cases, it's driven by internal data security requirements, but once inside the cluster, this is where Istio comes in, providing critical East-West authentication and authorization via mutual TLS. So let's take a look at how this works using Istio's Book Info demo. So it just adds up. There's kind of some long wait times as the containers spin up, so they're fast-forwarded. So if it looks a little rapid at times, that's why. Once we start the Minicube cluster, we install the default Istio configuration settings, as we can see right there. And then once we set the Envoy sidecar to be auto-injected into the pods, we can deploy the Book Info application. Once those are up and running in a second terminal, we start up the Minicube built-in load balancer. Here we go. And it's up. Once that's going, we go back to the main terminal and then run some commands to return the IP address to access this application. Finally, using the post-quantum curl, we return the Book Info application and see at the top that it's accessed using the dilithium-3 algorithm. So now what? Thinking about cloud native-based production systems, it is clear there is much work to be done. קריפטוסיסטמס, נוסלסאוס, איסטו-איסט, must be upgraded eventually. This process, as we have shown here, involves multiple dependencies and requires total planning and execution. Eventually, the entire stack should be upgraded. To better understand the scope of the work that needs to be done, let's look at major cloud providers. They've already been working on this transition for a few years. In the images, right to left are key hierarchy of a document encryption on GCP from unencrypted document all the way down to all the keys until the root key management system master key. The crypto systems, certificate authorities, basically all parts of public infrastructure has to change. Similar to GCP, AWS key hierarchy, starting from document all the way to HSM, again, all layers have to change. If you like turtles, those are only the bottom ones that we've seen. Our community contains multiple projects composing the best-of-breed modern cloud-native stack which we'll use. Think about what is running on the cloud infrastructure. Kubernetes, service meshes, poxies, sidecars, various repositories, compliance framework, policy framework, registries, workload identity, and attestation framework. The list goes on. In order to move forward with post quantum encryption across the cloud-native stack, we propose to form a technical advisory group in or alongside CNCF tag security in order to coordinate and govern community effort to deliver the required changes. This work starts as a joint project between industry and academy. There may be a continuation of this work in order to migrate more CNCF project in the future, and we are happy to talk to maintainers of projects that would like to PLC migrations. Most importantly, this is too big of an effort to complete without having community support. Please reach out and consider participating in this board initiative. Thank you. We have time for questions and discussion if you're interested. Thank you for the talk. Do we have any reason understanding as to why performance of Envoy took a greater hit than the performance in Nginx because it looked like the numbers were not statistically significant, but there was a fair bit more drop in Envoy than there was in Nginx. Yeah, we can go back to this. So I think you're referring to this right here versus the Nginx performance. So we can see Nginx kind of maps to those literature performances very perfectly, likely because it's a much smaller implementation. So when we go to Envoy, we see at some levels, it has kind of a greater than 10% hit. That's because when we deployed the Envoy for the benchmarking, it uses two containers. So there was one using the Envoy front proxing and there was one with the echo for the back end. So that echo added some slight latency to it. So that's likely why it went from about 8 to 13 to maybe like 13 to 17%. Okay. Thank you. This is more of just a curiosity question. Do you guys know if NIST is considering in the future using any quantum key distribution algorithms or like certifying those kinds? Or is that kind of just too far in the future based on what we have with quantum computers today? Could you repeat that middle part? Yeah. So the like I'm wondering if NIST is considering like certifying some quantum key distribution algorithms in addition to whatever ones they come up with for things that are secure against quantum computers. I think there are a few key exchange mechanisms that were yeah, I think yeah, I think there was at least one that was. Okay. Yeah, I think there's like three or four. So if you really want all the full information on these algorithms, you can go to the open quantum safe GitHub because they list all the ones that are NIST level two and three certified. And there's also hybrid algorithms like like combination RSA 3078 and Dilithium two or three. Right, okay. So you can you can combine RSA or elliptic curve algorithms with the post quantum ones as well. Okay, cool. Thank you. Are there practical implementations of Shor's algorithm breaking RSA and elliptic curve? Only in simulations. I think the largest number they've factored now I think is like 51. Okay. It's like 17 times three. Okay, okay. So it's getting there. And what is the size of these lattice groups for I mean, you mentioned because I hadn't really studied post quantum cryptography but like what is usually the size of the public keys for this Dilithium three for example. So can you repeat the question? So what is the size of the keys? For Oh, the size of the keys. Oh, yeah, it's a they're about two to three times the size. So that that was part of the issues with the development of getting on void to recognize those those keys and certificates because there's a lot of functions built into boring SSL that specifically look for, you know, like the certificates are the certificates are standardized. Right. So it looks for like certain leading characters, certain trailing characters and certain components. So having a key that was three times the size was kind of one of the biggest impediments of actually getting it to recognize it. So it's a it's a it is a much larger key. Thank you. Do you have another question? What language support would be available for OQS? I'm assuming since you've written it and you've added it to Envoy it's based C++. So OQS is mostly written in C. OK. So all the all the header files are in C. So Envoy does a lot of its compilation files in Go. However, it it properly queries and builds and compiles off of those C headers. OK. Thank you. Well, if there's no questions, thank you guys for coming. Thank you.


Narcissists are possessive and controlling. They are depressed and miserable, yet they realise that you do not deal with these difficult negative emotions.  In their minds you are their possession like an object or an extension of them. They own your body, mind and soul. They have the right to dictate your thoughts, emotions, behaviours and interests. Any time where you display your control over your own thoughts, emotions, behaviours or interests will cause a narcissistic injury within them. They are depressed and miserable people. You are not and that's why they become envious and resentful towards you. They see you as an object and expect you to comply with the programme which they have created for you. The programme where they may dictate your thoughts and control your emotions as they please. Anything that conflicts with their programming of you will cause a narcissistic injury within them. You are showing them everything they are not, everything they wish they could be and to them that is an insult. It's like you are putting your hands around their necks and strangling them.  They cannot discard their programming and simply try to operate on your frequency. They cannot partake in your happiness and fulfilment. They cannot live up to your expectations of them so they will not even bother trying to do that. But they will observe you from a distance and do everything they can to emotionally dysregulate you because their happiness isn't like that. They want to feel good but they don't. So now they become envious and resentful of you. It becomes an endless competition to tear you down. You are like a bird flying high in the sky. The narcissist has no wings so instead of appreciating your ability of being able to fly they will tear off your wings. Because your ability to fly causes them to reflect and experience a sense of loss. They literally see you as being above them. So they will develop these abusive and manipulative tactics in an attempt to regulate your thoughts and emotions. They don't want to watch you flying high in the sky experiencing happiness and fulfilment while they are on the ground feeling miserable and depressed. To them it feels like an insult. Like you are attacking them. So in their minds they are simply getting you back by emotionally or even physically abusing you. They will even try to engage in activities that give the illusion that they are happy and fulfilled. But the narcissist can never experience genuine happiness or fulfilment. They do not have the emotional capabilities to experience that. It's simply a never ending game where they are trying to prove their self worth to you. They are trying to prove their self worth because they see your value as being greater than theirs. If this was not true they would have no motive for constantly trying to prove their self worth. So they will devalue you.  But deep down they are secretly admiring you and worshiping your every breath. They admire and adore you so greatly that it soon becomes hate when they realise that they cannot possess the same qualities. They cannot partake in your greatness.   They will abuse, manipulate and devalue you out of the intense frustration they feel from being incapable of possessing your good qualities or partaking in your greatness. But all of these abusive and manipulative acts come from a deep rooted feeling of insecurity and an inferiority complex. The narcissist never self reflects so they do not feel guilty for abusing and manipulating you. Although they do feel more and more shame every time they do it. Which only causes them to feel more and more insecure. Their insecurities and inferiority complex causes them to abuse and manipulate you even more. And this becomes an endless social validation loop which they can never remove themselves from. It develops an obsession and an addiction within the narcissist. They appear to revolve around you and no one else. They want to possess and take control of you. They want to control your thoughts, your emotions, the people you associate with and the places you go. In extreme cases they will leave an attempt to control your environment outside of the home. In these situations they will gather fly monkeys and create smear campaigns where they can then get everyone to see you the same way. Please see my video on the fly monkeys and the smear campaign for more information on this topic. So as the narcissist develops their obsession and addiction to you, it will appear as though you are the only significance in their lives. You are the centre of their world but it has nothing to do with love. They have simply become extremely possessive and controlling over you because they are so obsessed and addicted to you. They may become hyper-vigilant and paranoid of anyone you might be talking to, anything you might be doing that might fulfil you in any way. Any fulfilment or progression in your life which is caused by an external source outside of their control triggers them to become even more hateful, angry and envious of you. They appear offended that you would even require or desire an external source outside of their control and this doesn't have to be a physical person in your life. It could be a television character, a celebrity, singer or actor or even an inanimate object. The narcissist wants to be your only source of happiness, fulfilment and progression.  It is your duty to provide them with the attention and validation they crave and desire whenever it is needed but no amount of attention or validation can ever fulfil the narcissist which is why they will become hyper-vigilant and paranoid that you might be investing your time and energy into something other than them. This then leads them to become more possessive and controlling over you. They will do whatever they can to prevent you from giving your attention and validation to an external source outside of their control. It makes them feel as though they are not a part of it. They feel unable to partake in your activities or interactions and this makes them feel insignificant and insignificant, undesired and insufficient. Narcissists are obsessed with power and control, without it they feel very uncomfortable. Imagine a basketball game where you are about to shoot the winning shot for your team. They would happily sabotage their own team's winning shot if it meant that you would then steal the attention and validation from them. They hold on to their control and need for the limelight with a tight grip that can never be shared with anyone else. The thought of someone taking their attention and validation is very painful for them. The narcissist will make you believe that they want you to help them. They will tell you or imply that they need your help but they will never let you help them. They just want you to try while they abuse and manipulate you. It makes them feel powerful and in control. In their minds they are thinking wow I can get this victim to do whatever I want to help me. I am powerful and I am not letting them help me which puts me in control. If they do allow you to help them they will then lose their grip on the control. Their personality disorder allows them to maintain their traditional sense of power and control in any situation. Everything the narcissist does or says has a purpose and is designed to abuse or manipulate you in some way. They are never in the moment everything has an agenda with them. The agenda is to obtain narcissistic supply and this is often done by possessing you like a toy, pet or slave. Controlling your every thought or emotion, abusing and manipulating you. This then gives them their narcissistic supply. It gives them attention, validation and a sense of power and control of you and the situation. Why do they have this obsessive need for control at all times? The reason is because they always feel powerless and out of control. They have no self control. They cannot control their thoughts, emotions or actions so they try to control you. It gives them the illusion that they are powerful and in control but really they are not. All of these tactics give them a false sense of power and control over you. They are abusive and manipulative tactics to make them feel above you and in control. In reality they are not in control at all and they have no idea the amount of power they think they have and deep down they know this. Because if they were really in control they would not have to do any of that. They are over compensating for the lack of power and control in their lives and they are demonstrating this with no guilt or embarrassment for their actions. This just proves how little control they really have over themselves. They cannot operate at your level of happiness and fulfilment so now their purpose is to tear you down.  They will emotionally abuse and manipulate you. Their agenda behind all of this is to bring you down to their level of self-worth and self-esteem which is clearly much lower than yours which is why they become so possessive and controlling over you. They are trying to tame you. They are trying to tone down your level of happiness and fulfilment so that it makes them feel more comfortable.  The narcissists can never have a genuine deep emotional connection to you. They can never emphasise, empathise or have consideration for you. It's like every time you have this sense of happiness and fulfilment and you are walking on the clouds they are trying to pull you back down to earth. Your happiness and fulfilment triggers them to reflect on their misery and depression. This causes them to be possessive and controlling over you. They have to be around you all the time just in case you get too happy or fulfilled about something especially if it is an external source out of their control. They don't want to see you happy and enjoying your life because it triggers them to reflect on how they feel. So it creates this obsession, this addiction.   In the narcissist mind they are thinking, yes I can see that you are happy and fulfilled. I can see that you are having a good time and making the most out of your life but it's hurting me. Please stop hurting me. But they continue to come back and witness everything you are doing. But clearly their goal is not to partake on this journey with you. Their goal is to sabotage any potential happiness and fulfilment in your life. And this is why they become so possessive and controlling over you. They don't want you to be happy. They don't want you to have a life outside of them. They don't want you to have connections or external sources outside of their control because they are extremely envious and nothing they have will ever satisfy them.  This is why they become so possessive and controlling. This is why they become hyper vigilant and paranoid. Because any small amount of happiness and fulfilment in you triggers them to self reflect on their own misery and depression. Because they can never be satisfied with what they have. You can never win with the narcissist. You can be the perfect supply for them. Even then it is an impossible situation. You can agree with them on everything. Let them do what they want. Say yes to everything they desire from you. Yes, let them go first. Let them control your every move, emotion and thought.  They will still abuse and manipulate you. They need special treatment. They need constant attention, approval and validation. They need constant acknowledgement. They need to be connected to you 24-7 or they will feel lost like they don't even exist.  You always have to be there for them. Like a small child needs its parents constant attention and reassurance. They depend on your attention, approval and validation of them. Thank you for watching this video. Please like and subscribe. Share the video with anyone who you may believe might help and I will talk to you soon.


to stop placing expectations on men without communicating what those expectations are. So there was a woman that was complaining in one of my last live streams. She's like, oh yeah, like guys, everybody knows how they're supposed to be acting. You know, we're taught how to act and behave around each other when we're children and they know what they're supposed to be doing and dating and blah, blah, blah. That is not true, okay? We are in a society, especially in the West, where a lot of people are growing up without parents, with single parents, being raised by neighborhood kids, being raised by the computer, the internet, or television. And a lot of people have no idea how they should be behaving, they don't understand dating, they don't get love, they don't get relationships, they don't get any of that kind of stuff. And so everybody's kind of taught or they learn something different if they learn anything at all about dating, love, and relationships as a child. And so most men have no idea what your expectations are about what he should be doing in any kind of situation. Lots of guys don't know that they should be pursuing you. They don't know that they should be stepping up and behaving in a masculine fashion. There's a biological drive component to it. However, a lot of men have been shamed out of that and a lot of men don't know that they can do that, they think that it's offensive, they think that women hate it. There's all kinds of things that are going on with men that if you want him to act a certain way, one, you can either find a guy that does these things naturally and normally, which is kind of the ideal situation, or if you really like a guy and you want him to kind of do a lot of those things, you have to communicate to him what it is that those things are.


Hi everyone, I'm Eric Edmund and today for DMTV, we will be exploring one of the many campaigns that our movement is involved in. It's called Stop Trade with Illegal Settlements. For the past 50 years or so, Israel has systemically occupied and colonized Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem with something like 700,000 settlers currently living there. Just last month, in fact, the government of Israel has approved plans to build a further 4000 illegal settlements in the West Bank alone. Now, in the face of this seemingly unstoppable Israeli policy, the international community has repeatedly condemned the illegal settlements, but with little real effect on the ground in Palestine. In fact, Amnesty International joined other actors including DM25 in calling the Israeli state an apartheid state. So there is a shift in the rhetoric around the world, but little real effect in practice for the lives of Palestinians. On the other hand, the European Union does in theory oppose annexation of occupied land and the building of illegal settlements and considers that an obstacle to international peace and stability. As well, it should because indeed illegal settlements are according to international law a war crime. However, in practice, the EU does allow trade with illegal settlements, making the importing of goods and the exporting of goods to illegal settlements and services legal. Now, what this means is that essentially the annexation of land becomes economically profitable for aggressors and thus contributes to the expansion of illegal settlements, not just in occupied Palestine, but in many similar cases around the world, which brings us to the campaign that DM25 has joined together with dozens of other organizations from Europe and across the world. Stop trade with illegal settlements is a campaign that calls for an EU law created by the European Commission that will force the European Union to put its money where its mouth is by making trade with illegal settlements illegal. This law would apply to occupied territories, of course, in occupied Palestine and the illegal Israeli settlements there, but indeed across the world and it would send a powerful signal across the whole planet that the European Union stands by its principles in practice, only in rhetoric and will make the annexation of lands by oppressors and aggressors economically less profitable. So, with us today to discuss this and this particular topic, we have firstly, Senator Francis Black from Ireland. She's a musician, a qualified addiction counselor and politician. She was the first independently elected woman to the Irish Senate, where she sits since 2016. And she's also the founder of Rise Foundation, an organization that sets up support for families who have loved ones struggling with alcohol, drug and gambling addiction. Hi Francis, welcome to the show. We can hear me. Sorry, I was just on mute there. Lovely to see you, Eric. How are you? Lovely to have you with us. And secondly, we have Omar Shakir. He is the Israel and Palestine director for Human Rights Watch. He has a long record of championing human rights across the world having worked on topics ranging from U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and the killing of prosecutors in Egypt to legal representation for Pakistan. And of course, human rights violations in West Bank and Gaza. Omar holds ABA international relations and a JD from Stanford University as well as an MA in Arab studies from Georgetown University. Hi Omar, welcome to the MTV. Thank you for having me. Great to you, Senator Black. No, it's honestly a pleasure to have you both with us. And let's get straight to it. So, also with you Francis, if that's all right. One of the reasons why you're here and we're going to have this conversation is because back in 2018, you tabled a private members bill from your position as Irish Senator, which sought to essentially prohibit the import and sales of goods and natural resources from illegal settlements in occupied territories. And this resulted in, among other things, also the summoning of the Irish Ambassador to Israel by Netanyahu, if I remember reading correctly. Why don't you tell us a bit more about this particular bill, how was received and what happened to it since then? Yeah, sure. Well, the occupied territories bill was introduced, as you said, to the Senate in early 2018. And I was one of the sponsors, obviously, along with my colleagues in the civil engagement group. I had four of us at the time, there was five. And we're all independent. And I suppose this bill was a result of a collaboration between my office, where I had Conor O'Neill working with me at the time, and Sadaka, which is the Ireland-Palestine alliance. And Jerry Liston was working with them at the time. And the bill, really, I suppose, was inspired by our strategic thinking about Western inaction on Israel's decades, long impunity in the face of international law. So like it continuously violates international law in so many ways, including its de facto annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories. It's a transfer of civilian population into occupied territories and countless other offences. So over half, as you well know, over half of all UN resolutions, condemning violations of international law by a member state concerned in Israel, and yet in practical terms, they suffered no consequences. So Ireland has been one of the most vocal, Western critics of Israeli human rights abuses. And the Irish people in particular are passionately supportive of Palestinian liberation because of our own history, I suppose, of anti-colonial resistance. But unfortunately, a success of Irish governments have failed to take concrete action. So our strategy was to disrupt the cycle of condemnation and inaction by presenting a proposal containing the minimum possible demand, which was barling goods originating in the settlements that are universally recognized as illegal. And it thought this could force the Irish government and perhaps other governments to turn their words into action, their words of condemnation into action. So this bill, it's not full BDS, which if it had been full BDS, it would have got voted down immediately. So like we believed that by making such a modest demand, the pressure on the government would be increased because they couldn't really articulate a plausible reason to say no. So just to give you, I suppose, a quick outline of what happened. The bill quickly passed all stages of the shannot. In the final stage of this process, I have to tell you, I was joined by two Palestinian farmers, Fayez and Runa al-Tanib, who traveled to Ireland to speak about the impact of Israeli colonization on their lives and to support the bill. I have to say their presence in the shannot chamber was so powerful and it was a powerful reminder of what we're fighting for. And then the bill was then introduced into the Dahl, which by Nile Collins of Fina Fall. So this is pre-election, pre-last election. And at that time Fina Fall were in opposition. It passed its first vote in the Dahl by a wide margin, supported by all political parties except for Fina Gale and some of the independent TDs who are supporting its minority government. And it also passed an important vote in the Foreign Affairs Committee before stalling in committee stage. So the bill passed seven out of ten stages required in the parliament before legislation is sent to the president to sign into law. It could be implemented rapidly if the political will was there, but unfortunately all progress was halted because of the current government. And obviously there was an election. And we do know that the law is in limbo. Well, it's back on the order paper. It's back on the order paper. It's still there. It's not gone. So I just need to say that, and I think that's very important. So there was an election called, unfortunately, it didn't make the last three stages. So unfortunately, but it is back on the order paper. And like we do know that the Occupy Territories Bill played a role in the negotiations for the formation of the government. Early drafts of the program for government included a bill with the question mark next to it. Ultimately, again, as I say, Fina Gay were adamantly opposed to its inclusion and Fina fall in the Green Party support, which supported the bill previously gave into them. So we're still fighting for this bill, but ultimately it will almost certainly require a change of government to progress. Do you have any indication from the parties most likely to make government in Ireland? Well, according to the poll, it's looking like Sinn Fein are doing extremely well in the polls at the moment they're leading. So if I would imagine if Sinn Fein get elected, I think the bill will pass straight away. Thanks for that. We'll come back to this topic. But first, let's go to Omar. Now, Omar, like Francis basically said, it often feels like Israel is essentially unstoppable. No amount of international condemnation seems to really stall their expansion into the Occupy Territories. And in general, the brutal treatment of Palestinians. If I remember correctly, you were even expelled in 2018 from Israel because of your work and your political background. So with this in mind, what parts do we really have available similar to what Francis has described in what she did in Ireland in order to put real pressure on Israel, not simply in order to virtue signal, but really to effect change for what is happening in Israel and the Occupy Territories? I think banning the trade of selling the goods globally would have an incredible, you know, impact in terms of starting to move the ledger towards the start of human rights based measures in a situation of this gravity warrants. And let's be crystal clear, there is consensus across international lawyers that the transfer of one's civilian population to territory required by war that's verbatim on a fourth Geneva convention, you know, is a war crime. It's defined as such under the Rome Statute International Criminal Court. So when you're doing trade with settlements in Occupy Territory, you're helping to sustain these violations of international humanitarian law. Moreover, you're helping to sustain human rights abuse because settlements by their very nature rob indigenous communities of their land of their resources of their livelihoods. They're invariably universally linked to displacement and discrimination. So I think it's critically important globally that there is a ban on trade inner with settlements. And I think what we're seeing happening in Ukraine is we're seeing some countries defending this principle in terms of what it means to be under occupation what the human rights abuses, you know, are there and I think we need to sort of take the playbook from what we need and actually apply it much more global. Right. I mean, if you've seen the way the world is reacted, whether it is about accountability, the resources, the international criminal court has put in there.  The initiatives that have taken place to end complicity with Russia's aggression in Ukraine. If you look at the steps taken, you know, around similar initiatives you'll see quite a bit of momentum for those principles to be valid in Ukraine. They need to be valid everywhere where the similar principles are invoked. I think the European Citizens Initiative is exactly the sort of measure that brings to bear this type of human rights based toolkit. Palestine is a natural place where I would apply as you noted human rights watch and there's one of many organizations there's a consensus now in the global human rights movement that Israeli authorities are committing crime against humanity. There's the UN Special Rapporteur who endorsed this finding. It's gone beyond even civil society groups to the former UN Secretary General, foreign ministers of France and Luxembourg, nearly 400 European parliamentarians. And so there is quite a bit of consensus around that. And when you have a situation of that gravity, there needs to be efforts to end. Let's be in them. But this bill is not this initiative is not just unique.  It comes from settlements, a good percentage of that. But more than there, you can look at Western Sahara, you can look at even, you know, Iraq after the coalition invasion, oil exploitation. There are a number of other scenarios in which a similar legal framework could advance human rights protection. The last thing I'll just say is of course when we talk about Israel Palestine, I do think there's a there's a value in calling things by their need, recognizing reality for what it is. And apartheid is the reality for millions of Palestinians and calling it as such, I think is critical to getting to the point where we're taking human rights based measures such as targeted sanctions on those Israeli officials implicated criminal prosecutions and investigations and prosecutions, as well as evaluating all forms of bilateral engagement with Israel to ensure non complicity in these crimes. Thanks Omar. This is true in something that we've also identified with our own work. For example, we were very active in opposing the deal with Turkey for refugees between European states and the US and Turkey. And it's really, really saddening to put it mildly to see the difference in approach to refugees between the way Ukrainians have been accepted with open arms as well they should be fleeing war, and the way essentially every other people on earth are left to drown in the Mediterranean, based on fortress Europe and the sort of approach that Europe has taken to refugees. So there is this kind of semi duplicitous semi hypocritical approach that the European Union has taken and, as you say it's very important to, to take the positive example and use that as the foundation for how we should be treating this sort of thing, universally, as a block. Now, on this, actually, I'll leave this topic for later because I want to come back to you on this I'll go back to Francis. What do you describe with the law that you promoted and the work that you've done of course as an Irish senator is all Irish centric, and that is understandable that is indeed your work Irish decision making but, of course, to put pressure on a state such as Israel with the kind of powerful support that the state of Israel has requires more than bilateral relations is not just up to Ireland essentially to to fight this fight. And maybe Omar you can come back to this with maybe examples from other countries who have done similar moves to try and pressure Israel other positive examples that you might have from other countries. But Francis what I want to get to is, in terms of what you're doing with this bill that you promoted, what role does the global the European the international dimension take and how essentially does an Irish senator think act locally but think globally. Well, I suppose, and Ireland is a is a very small island on the far Western edge. And one can often feel insignificant when confronting the immense scale and bureaucratic complexity of European and international institutions, particularly when you're just, you know, an independent senator, and you don't have that big full party behind you. But for me, it's absolutely vital to not feel discouraged. And I suppose I take my inspiration from, you know, well, first of all, the international movement against apartheid say in South Africa is obviously a touchstone for solidarity for Palestinian solidarity activism. And that movement, which saw small local campaigns boycotting South African goods and grow grow into a massive social movement that got huge companies and state concerns to die best from apartheid and convinced a broad range of states to apply economic sanctions that precipitated the collapse of the apartheid regime. So in Ireland, it was the actions of a few shop workers led by an amazing inspiring woman called Mary Manning, who went on strike for for several years, refusing to handle South African produce. And that's all the Irish state ban imports of South African food products in 1986. And that was one of the most radical steps taken by a Western country at that point and proved to be extremely influential. So, like, I mean, ideas can spread far and wide. And in a negative sense, we've seen how the pro-Israel lobby has been successful in spreading repressive legislation limiting Palestinians, Palestine, the solidarity activism across the US and in certain parts of Europe. And I hope that the movement for justice in Palestine can counteract that by sharing strategies and legislative frameworks. I'm very heartened by the international interest in my bill. And I've spoken about it at the UN and lawmakers in Belgium and Chile are currently working on legislation inspired by it. I hope that it can provide a framework for activists hoping to make their government's commit to taking concrete action against the settlements. Like, I mean, in recent decades, Ireland has sub-fuelled much of its foreign policy initiative to the EU. And it has muted its criticism of human rights abuses across the world as it seeks to align itself with Western diplomatic and military priorities. And I hope that Ireland can reverse this trend and regain its voice and its sense of independence. As a tribute for nations and people resisting, you know, repression, colonialism and violence around the world. And I think the occupied territories will be a useful tool in achieving this same. I look forward to the day when we see it enacted and the Irish state begins to live up to its promise. As do I and I'm sure all of us involved in this campaign and not only. However, and this maybe is also a question for Omar, I know how much of your work revolves around European legislation, because one of the tools used for the campaign of stop trade with illegal settlements is an ECI. And for our viewers, that is a European Citizens Initiative, essentially a tool of the European Union, essentially of the European Commission to allow European citizens to collect signatures around a particular topic that they wish to see enacted into law. So drafted by the European Commission and then presented to the European Parliament. Now, this is something of, for some of us at least, considered a bit of a democratic pariah because although it exists and it is on the surface, a democratic tool that allows its direct influence over decision making. It has been quite inefficient and unsuccessful in creating any kind of change all ECIs that have been pursued by European citizens have for one reason or another essentially failed. So it'd be interesting to hear from both of you if you consider ECIs really a powerful tool for creating this kind of change or whether it is only a sort of an additional tool as part of a broader campaign. And also bringing you back Omar to this question of whether there are any other interesting initiatives on the same topic, are the pieces of the puzzle such as the one that Francis is offering from Ireland. Yeah, so let me start by saying I'm not an expert on European policymaking, but I am an expert on international law and what it requires Iran is repulsed. The European Commission should be regulating this on their own. I mean, Europe has European Union EU member states have a clear position on the illegality of settlements. They have a clear position on abuses that stem from settlements, but frankly they have failed to put their money where their mouth is. It's shameful that, you know, according to Recessima, $300 million of trade between settlements and Israel proper. And I think this is easy to regulate. That's what, you know, I think the EU was created precisely to do the kind of work of regulating, you know, goods that are the product of violations of international law and human rights should not be traded on the European market. That's just a very bedrock principle. Since the EU and the European Commission aren't doing this, then I support all initiatives that allow citizens to take their fate in their own hand and to try and sort of force the hand. I like this ECI is trying to do it was ultimately they're acting, given the failure of the European Commission that by the way, even if they get a million signatures and human rights watchers proudly one of the nearly 100 plus organizations that have endorsed the ECI even if it gets a million signatures. All they're compelling the Commission to do is to take this question up. It doesn't necessarily dictate, you know, an outcome but in terms of what else is happening out there, I think, you know, Senator Black mentioned Belgium, not only a bill like this at Belgium has also passed a clear government policy around differentiation, or in essence distinguishing between goods that come from Israel proper versus those in illegal settlements in the occupied, you know, territory there's a similar initiative that experts think is likely to do. Experts think is likely to pass in Chile. I think those are two really, really good examples. But beyond that, I think you're seeing that there are now some important initiatives in international fora. So the International Criminal Court has a formal investigation into serious crimes committed in Palestine. There have been a number of states that have taken stands in support of the court's independence amid attacks, you know, by numerous led by the US under Trump that they continued that have sought to, you know, block the court from exercising its mandate, which is precisely to have a forum to hold perpetrators of serious crimes to account where there is no other domestic remedy for these crimes. There's also a commission of inquiry that the United Nations established last year to look into not only the events of last year but also the root causes of the recurring conflict that commission has just released its first report that will be debated at the UN Human Rights Council. There will be further reports. It has a standing mandate to look at uses on both sides of the green line. We saw so much of the world after the killing of Shireen Ablaqla offer independent investigations and accountability and even highlighting the larger context. And we have now a UN mechanism. It was a shame that European states that were on the Human Rights Council either abstained or voted against the creation of that commission. It's critical that they support its work. European states have supported such initiatives every other time they've come up to the Human Rights Council unanimously voted in favor of them. So why is there a double standard on Israel-Palestine? And the last thing I'll say is in terms of apartheid, we now have a situation where the entire African group led by South Africa and Namibia, Ivory Coast, African Union heads of state, all of whom have now used apartheid in terms of their classification of the reality on the ground. The organization of Islamic conference has done the same as has the Arab group. There's some overlap between those bodies, obviously, but we're talking between them of maybe close to 100 states. So I think we have states that are now willing to make this classification. Most of those states obviously aren't selling arms to Israel. They're not complicit in other abuses linked to the apartheid reality. But I think other states need to take the cue, you know, and they need the first step, Eric, to solving a problem is to diagnose it correctly. The wrong diagnosis leads to the wrong conclusion. So we need European states to recognize the reality for what it is. Again, we have some models with statements by former European leaders, by parliamentarians, and even now, the foreign ministers of Luxembourg and France have acknowledged public statements or referenced apartheid. We need that to happen. And then we need the steps to be taken that are commiserate with a crime of that gravity. Remember, crimes against humanity are crimes against me. They're crimes against you. They're crimes against all of us. Thanks, Omar. Absolutely. I mean, you really beat me to one of my follow up questions, which was essentially in general this track record of the European Union when it comes to human rights, especially in Israel. Across the board, really, because it is one of these medals of honor that the EU wears on his chest when it goes to the negotiating table anywhere that it is one of his core principles and the rest of it. But then, of course, when it comes to practice all these big interests that essentially many of the governments and indeed as a block the European Union serve, complicate matters and makes the reality quite different to the rhetoric, as we see in the of Israel, but not only. Francis, would you like to also come in with any comment on this? Yeah, I'm not I'm not an expert either by any means on on anything. To be honest with you.  There's no doubt about it. And that we don't see, you know, I suppose proper and you know, what Omar said earlier about what's going on, what's happening with Ukraine and the fact that, you know, there's obviously, you know, banning goods from Russia and the hypocrisy really for me can be so destroying, I suppose. But in saying all of that, and we must. And I think this is for me when the first time that I sat in on a meeting and I met with, you know, some Palestinian people. They came to Lester House. And I heard the story and they were going through and I just felt the hopelessness just I almost was overpowering until one woman said we must never ever ever give up hope. We must keep going. And I really believe that would be for me the most important message out of today. You know, it's the people can make change. And I think it's so important that people feel empowered to take action for justice in Palestine. And I think, you know, the best antidote to that feeling of despair that we all feel from time to time is activity. And I would ask the people who are watching this today to, you know, please come on board with us get involved being involved in activist work with like minded people for good cause can be totally transformative.  And I also think again, and I'm only talking here from my own experience of when we were, you know, trying to get support from from the government back in 2018 from the from the opposition parties not from the government from the opposition parties. And, you know, we had we had public meetings all around Ireland, and we were amazed at the amount of interest and passion that Irish people had for the situation in Palestine. And what we did was we got people to lobby their their elected representative on this issue. And it really worked. It really, really paid off. I mean, too often, you know, politicians and political parties believe that voters are not motivated by issues of foreign policy. And this means they can take disruptive or or negligent positions and believe they won't experience a political cost. But persistent activism and lobbying on the issue of Palestine makes it harder for politicians to ignore, which is crucial. I can't tell you how how important that is. You know, and it's the voice of the people that they listen to. And that's why we must never ever ever give up. You know, and I also think, can I just say as well, another great way of taking action is is by Simon did the European Citizens Initiative to ban trade with illegal settlements. You know, this initiative is a process that compels the European Commission to consider, you know, initial initiating legislation if it supported the set the signatures of one million EU citizens of the course of a year. Could you imagine the power of that? I mean, it's it's just phenomenal. And you know that like this campaign demands that the EU adopts a ban on the importance of goods produced in the EU, you know, are in the illegal settlements, sorry, in occupied territory. So it's like it's it's really, really powerful. I mean, you know, it's vitally important because the EU recognizes the inequality of these settlements. And yet, again, here I am saying it again, it's taken no action to limit trade with them. It's it's it's shocking really. And it's not only negligent, it's essentially, it actually essentially rewards Israel for its crimes by buying goods produced on stolen land. The EU is Israel's biggest trade partner, which of that trade is agricultural products produced in the in the occupied West Bank. So, look, if the if the EU respects the principle of international law and the rights of Palestine, it will act. If the EU sees trades with settlements, it would undermine their economic viability and put massive financial and diplomatic pressures on Israel to comply with international law. This represents one of the most viable ways of halting the expansion of settlements across the West Bank. And I and I really would urge anybody who is watching this today to, you know, to get involved, sign up for the European Citizens Initiative. Please share with your family, friends, other like minded people. We really need to get this over the line to force the European Commission to confront the glaring inconsistencies between EU policies and condemn settlements in occupied territory while continuing to trade with them. So, I mean, I would just say, we must never give up. And, you know, certainly here in Ireland, we're embarking on, you know, start not just like what happened back in the 80s to start up the campaign on apartheid. And, you know, I have no doubt we're going to be meeting with a lot of the unions next week and with a lot of the NGOs and the people of Ireland are just waiting. They're waiting to see what can we do. And so we would hope that that would kind of spread throughout other countries. So I hope that answers your question. Oh, absolutely. And then some it is, it's true that essentially pessimism and hopelessness are the biggest enemies of change. And often they are barriers that we put in front of our own minds. They might not even reflect reality, but they reflect the kind of constructed reality created by the people who oppose that change. And as you've said, once we can overcome the kind of mental block, a lot of things that seemed impossible are always on very possible indeed. So completely agree with that. And even if the CIA does not lead and it's indeed sad, the day is sad when an ECI is needed to persuade the European Commission to do its job. But here we are. But even if it doesn't lead to the European Commission doing its job, it can still lead to the elevation of this particular topic in the minds and in the minds of Europeans in the common discourse of Europe in general, which is a victory in and of itself, because that is the foundation on which governments are elected members of parliament are elected and change can happen. So still very important. Omar, we spoke about the ECI. We spoke about decision making. Do you have any final parting words, anything else that people who might be watching us could do in order to stand in solidarity with people in Palestine, people suffering from illegal settlements and occupation around the world? Well, listening to your exchange reminds me that in a quote of Nelson Mandela, I believe from his book, it always seems impossible until it's done. And actually, I know many of us followed with horror the killing of the journalist Shireen Abouakla several weeks ago and actually, you know, rightfully the international media focused on the brutal way in which Israeli authorities beat the those that went to a funeral procession. But actually for many Palestinians, it was one of those moments of triumph because despite the brutality, despite Israel's sweeping movement restrictions were like two million Palestinians and Gaza that are basically caged in an open air prison, 40 by 11 kilometers. You have the West Bank Palestinians that can enter occupied East Jerusalem that are hard to get permit. You have the millions of refugees that can return to their homes. You still have this massive demonstration in the heart of Jerusalem where people raised Palestinian flags and felt that they have this moment of triumph and that it was Shireen even in her death that, you know, brought together Palestinian. So it was one of those moments that showed the fragility of Israel's repression and showed that sometimes, you know, you keep pushing, you keep pushing and sometimes these things shift. So I think when it comes to European citizen signing the ECI is it's not even about solidarity policies, it's the lowest common It's about your own complicity.  You're talking about that providing money that goes to businesses that further entrench, you know, settlements that go to a two tiered labor system. You're talking about businesses and settlements. You have Israelis, even when they're Palestinian workers who work there in large part because, you know, occupation has eliminated so much of the viable economic opportunities. There's subjects different bodies of loss right Israelis governed under Israeli civil law and Palestinians that are governed under harsh military draconian military rules. So, you know, that's what we're talking about here so I don't even see signing the ECI as a terribly, you know, brave stand it's just it's about actually being not linked to one perspective or the other. Now for those that want to do more than the sort of baseline I think there are a number of things you can do. You know, I think pushing your own look the reality is there are many people in the European Parliament, there are many people in domestic in parliaments, like Senator black that wants to take action on Palestine but you are afraid of the domestic political repercussions it's important they hear from their constituents that these issues matter to them. It's important they hear your voices and also when it comes to select the apartheid discussion, we're at the stage right now where we're, you know, it is increasingly a matter of consensus among the human rights movement and beyond but we need other voices we want, you know, everyday people to use the term to push their churches their labor unions their professors their representatives to use the term because when you use the term, invariably, it leads to greater recognition and it goes to the heart of the problem. In Europe, people still think of Israel Palestine as, you know, to warring, you know, states and that there's a peace process and only they could sit around the table. This could be resolved. But you know, a 55 year occupation is not temporary. Right. You know, ruling over millions of people denied their basic rights is not democracy. So depriving millions of people their basic rights because of who they are isn't just a matter of an abusive conflict, a state that's engaging in daily structural violence and refreshing against millions of Palestinians is not a conflict between two equal sides. So we need to understand the reality for what it is. It's a situation of grave human rights abuse, and we need the right set of tools to deal with that. And I think everyday citizens, you might not be able to change government policy you may not be able to change stop and Israeli bulldozer demolishing a Palestinian home or an Israeli soldier who blocks a Palestinian child from getting to their school but you can, you know, play a role in, you know, normalizing the accurate description of this situation and then in pushing your representatives to take the sorts of measures that international law sets out for a situation. You know, it's absolutely true and at the end of the day one of the quotes that we use a lot in the end comes from your neighbouring Britain actually Francis from an MP Tony Ben, who said that there's no final victory and there's no final defeat. And that is the kind of concept that really should be underlying this entire human experience so you can never stop. You can't allow yourself to stop. And at the very least, to be on the right side of history, not to be complicit with crimes, let alone empowering them or, you know, enabling them is incredibly important. And that can start with signing an ECI and you can end with your presence in the street with reaching out to your representative with taking the kind of measures and steps in your own life to ensure that you have a life that doesn't have a negative impact on these people who suffer and being aware that is really the first step and then the rest follows from that. Any final remarks from you, Francis, before I wrap up? Yeah, I mean, I just really want to kind of, I suppose, reiterate what Omar said there. I mean, we had Michael Link over who was the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Palestine. He was over here but in Ireland about five or six weeks ago. And he'd been meeting with different groups in the Eroctus, you know, in our parliament, urging them to take action on a national and international level to deal with Israel's breaches of international law. And, you know, as Omar said, and I just want to highlight, I want to really finish on this. The key feature of the Special Rapporteur's final report is that it affirms the recent findings from Amnesty International Human Rights Watch that Israel is practicing the crime of apartheid. Like in international law, apartheid is defined as a systematic racial oppression and discrimination, including inhuman acts such as torture, a population transfer that facilitates one group's dominance over another. So the wrong consensus is that Israel is inflicting apartheid on the Palestinians. And it has the potential, I believe, to shift the global discourse on Israel Palestine from the dead consensus of the two state solution, and the peace process to to a real interrogation of the two state solution and the peace process. It's our job, I believe, as people in solidarity with Palestine to hold the government to account to make sure that their speeches about peace and human rights are backed up by tangible actions to tackle Israel's human rights abuses. And to that end, I suppose I will say that I think the Occupied Territories Bill is a useful tool in that struggle, is a very useful tool in that struggle. And I do look forward to the day when we see it enacted and that the Irish state begins to live up to its promise to stand up for justice, self-determination and the rights of small nations. But I suppose that's our, that's, I think, going forward. It's, it's apartheid. What's happening now is it's an apartheid situation. And enough is enough. And we must never, ever, ever give up. I would hate to water that down with anything I could say. I would never say it as well. So, all I'm going to say at this stage is Senator Francis Black, Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch Director for Israel and Palestine. Thank you so much both for being here with us and discussing this important topic. We are very much looking forward to the work we'll be doing together on this and hopefully much else besides. To all of those who, to all those of you who watched us, please visit stopsettlements.org, sign the ECI if you're a European Union citizen, and take the other steps on the website to see how you can be involved, visit the M25, visit Human Rights Watch, follow the work of Francis and others, and see how we can all be part of this solution and stand in solidarity with Palestinians and people of occupied lands everywhere in the world. Thank you very much for watching and see you next time. Thank you.


Hi, I'm Dr. Andy Judge, an adjunct professor and guest lecturer at Fairfield University and an engineering manager at ASML. ASML is the most important tech company you've probably never heard of. All of the world's top chip makers are our customers. We make the big machines that make small chips, providing all the hardware, software, and services to mass produce patterns on silicon. The work ASML does, it's a key ingredient to making chips more powerful, cheaper, more energy efficient, and more ubiquitous. Over the past seven years, I've been working with student teams at Fairfield University on projects ranging from supporting good applications to green energy to real-world engineering applications tied to technical challenges at ASML, which has led to hiring numerous students to ASML as a direct result of their project work at Fairfield. The need for this project arose from a few of my colleagues, including Vahini Ganesan, Low Baker, and Jose Carballo, working on passive damping systems. ASML has always pushed into boundaries of technology in many areas, including advanced dynamics and methods to reduce disturbances, such as vibration. One method of reducing the effect of such noise is through the use of eddy currents. You may be familiar with eddy currents if you're ever gone rock climbing and use it in audible air, which slows down your drop, allowing you to safely return to the ground from large heights or catch you if you fall. These devices use permanent magnets coupled with a conductor. When the conductor moves through the magnetic field or the magnets move past the conductor, it creates what is called eddy currents, which converts the kinetic energy ultimately into heat. For our machines, as opposed to preventing the fall of a climber, we need to mitigate the effect of vibration on our systems, which needs to be accurate in some aspects to the fractions of an atom. One of the challenges in our applications is the vibrations we have are very small, less distance than the size of standard magnets, making eddy current damping not feasible in this case. However, if we can multiply that distance to provide a larger travel range enough that the conductor can pass by multiple magnets, it becomes possible. My name is John Callanen, and I'm a senior at Fairfield University. I'm studying mechanical engineering with a minor in math. For this project, my team members, including Emma Godfrey, Turitana Takata, and Rob Gunn-Fientini, developed a proof of concept system to study the effectiveness of travel multipliers coupled with eddy current dampers. This involved gathering the specifications and requirements of the system, starting with the cost and safety, which is a part of any engineering effort, as well as specifics to the application, such as the volume, the amount of damping required, ASML's unique clean room requirements, and many others. From there, we brainstormed on potential architectures that might work. Using engineering tools such as a design decision matrix, we determined which concepts would be down selected for future work. For example, an early idea for a gear-based system was disqualified due to its technical concerns with the large effect friction would play into the system, as well as challenges reducing the concept to practice. After reviewing the design choices with ASML and our instructor, the team decided to pursue a test device on a linear track to study the basics of eddy currents and passive damping, as well as a lever-based system as a potential proof of concept for the specific application. The team started first with the first-order equations, which were performed to help us predict the effectiveness of the system and to provide input for important factors in the design. We also performed finite element analysis to study effects difficult to quantify with standard equations, such as the magnetic flux density and the magnetic field throughout the system. Concurrently with the analysis phases, we used computer-aided design to develop our test systems, and from there we started the build process, including 3D printing key components for the assembly. We also completed a robust test plan, ensuring the objectives of the test were clearly understood and that the test could be repeated by anyone skilled in the art that would have an interest in continuing our research. In the spring term, we ran into challenges, of course, given some current world events, but continued working remotely with students in various locations, providing key deliverables and overcoming the obstacles that they faced. At the completion of this project, we will have shown the potential for eddy current damping and small travel distances, as well as delivered test devices to prove the concept's feasibility. So John, why this project? This project specifically was an opportunity to get applicable experience with the engineering design process and the ability to work on a real project for an industry leader in the area, which is, of course, ASML. So what did you learn, you know, both technically and in terms of working with teams? I was able to learn a lot about the engineering process and kind of the what it takes to go from an initial concept to physically building hardware. Of course, we learned about the specific technical areas of the project, including magnetics, computer design, finite element analysis, and other tools like that. We were able also to work in teams, which is an important part of the experience, and about how project scheduling, teamwork, communication, leadership, and other important qualities are necessary to make sure that you bring out the best and you get the most out of all the resources you have available to you. So your team went virtual during the second term. Describe the challenges you faced and how you overcame them. Yeah, I mean, of course, there were challenges in communication. We were stable, still able to meet online and follow up with each team member regularly to ensure that they were meeting some of the expectations that we were setting. And it was a good experience to learn how to manage teams that can't always meet in person, which I'm sure you face at a large global company like ASML, of course. So, John, what does a drink bird mean to your application? How'd that fit with your project? Yeah, so the drink bird was kind of the initial model that we decided looked like our project. So our project is a lever arm, one side shorter and one side longer, that is able to take small movements at the short end and transfer them into larger movements at the end of the lever. That allows us to multiply the distance of a vibration. So instead of a very small distance up to a millimeter, we would be able to magnify that in order to more effectively enact eddy current damping on the ends of it. We decided that it looked like a drink bird. So our prototype is affectionately known as the drink bird model. So your second prototype was much improved from your first one. What did you, what were some of the issues with your first prototype? What did you learn? How did you develop a better product for your second time around? Yeah, our first prototype was in practice what we were looking for. But after printing it out and figuring out the elements of it that didn't perform as we needed them to, it was interesting to then go into the second design iteration with ideas for shortcomings that might have been present in our first project that we needed to correct. For example, the distance between the conductors and the magnets is a very important factor to control for in eddy current damping. And our initial design had increased distance and a variable distance in between the magnets and the conductors. Our second iteration design we were able to get rid of that variable distance and prevent anything from coming in between the two surfaces, which we think will greatly increase our effectiveness. So John, one final question. How did this project tie to the Jesuit mission at Fairfield University? Throughout this project we learned how engineering can positively impact the world in terms of improving existent technology and creating new ones. It also spoke to the importance for engineers to be able to master more than just the technical skills of the trade. Especially as we move virtually, the ability to communicate and coordinate became much easier based on the skills that Jesuit education would provide. Hey John, sounds like you learned a lot. Thanks to you and your team for a great project and awesome job. Thank you very much, Professor. Thank you again.