 our panel will then move on to international legal affairs and the challenges to the rule of law. Now this was a long and quite complex project in which Maria Varaki, Francisco Lobo, Constance Wilhelm and Bed David Bicknell worked together on a series of strife blog posts investigating current challenges to the rule of law in international governments, governance sorry, the use of forced international criminal law and the tension between civil liberties and security of public health in a pandemic. Maria Varaki is Dr. Maria Varaki is a lecturer in international law in the war studies department with a current research focus on ethics and global justice challenges. She will be introducing the blog series and then hand over to Francisco Lobo who is a doctoral researcher in the Department of War Studies focusing on international law and military ethics and Constance Wilhelm. Constance is a doctoral researcher with the Department of War Studies as well at Kings College London. Her research interests include feminist security studies and socio-legal methodologies. Her research is on the return and prosecution of European women that joined the Islamic State. So I hope our audience agrees that we have a very illustrious set of budding experts and already existing experts and I will now no longer keep you on tenterhooks and hand over to Rana to introduce the findings of the round table and tell us a little bit more about how it started to come together and what she's trying to achieve. Rana over to you. Thank you Andrea for such a warm welcome and for leading our theme this year. It's a pleasure to be joining this panel for the Security Studies Conference and I'm eager to do the round table justice. So as Andrea said on April 29th of this year the theme held a round table on the United States underground and its uncomfortable truths and this effectively emerged out of a series of conversations that we held as a theme around this core issue of the U.S. facing considerable threats of isolated political violence based on election and COVID related disinformation and so taking that issue at hand we came together to craft a round table to bring together panelists who could speak to the various levels and layers of this issue both from the perspective of not just political justice but then also finding a way to bring in and weave together a narrative around kind of the political movement itself and how we can frame conspiracy theories in the context of the United States and so what I'll do now is just try to kind of recap a lot of the issues that were discussed there it was held under Chatham House rule and so I can't name any of our actual panelists and what they said specifically or directly attribute but what I can do is frame some of these themes and concepts so that when I'm joined in a moment by David Bicknell we can dive even deeper into some of these issues and so now I'm speaking on behalf of a collective of researchers which is an honor to do but so I'll be very careful and also kind of briefs that we can offer time for discussion around these issues so we started of course with the the issue of the diametric interpretations of what happened on January 6th 2021 in a speech before a joint session of Congress on April 28th 2021 President Biden described the insurrection on January 6th as an existential crisis in a test of whether or not the United States democracy could survive but a month prior to that former president Donald Trump told reporters that although they should not have done it right from the start the riot was quote zero threat and so it was clear to us in crafting this round table that we needed to take into account that not only is there now a groundswell of federal resources and global attention on what's happening in the United States but that sustainable solutions to conspiracy theories will be vital when taking into account the democratic judicial and sociocultural interests of the American society writ large however this isn't new and I think our panelists and our researchers in crafting the round table knew that this issue has been highlighted by various policymakers and experts who who cautioned against widespread mistrust disinformation and conspiracies stations in person but what we wanted to make sure to highlight and what I think will be fascinating in this panel is as well to highlight is that in recent years conspiracies have done so by targeting those that have historically bolstered bolstered civic strength this includes religious groups law enforcement and military veterans and so our unique approach was to do so by to address the issues of conspiracy theories and do so by looking also at issues of duty of duty held dear to the military veterans who have been vulnerable to believing conspiracy theories and then taking political action in pursuit of that or in their belief of the theories that are being spread online so what I'll do now briefly is just run through a few of the other themes that we discussed this includes the QAnon movement I'll talk a bit about disinformation free speech and touch on domestic terrorism but all of which is to say these were themes that were discussed at a round table and which are going to be I think pursued more deeply and more heavily in detail either in good research on the topic or even in our own Q&A today so just running through very quickly the QAnon movement for those who aren't aware is a movement that is spreading across the US and the world spreading the idea that there is an ongoing mythical battle for the survival of the white race it embodies a good deal of various conspiracy theories that by white supremacy and we'll get into that a little bit further in my conversation with with Dr. Bicknell but what was key in our round table was to understand how QAnon is a participatory movement it's dependent on real users spreading theories answering questions doing the research as is often spread as a rallying cry among conspiracy theorists and recruiting others and that's actually been key to the solutions based responses on behalf of certain social media organizations and law enforcement which we learned during our round table and which is continuing to emerge in the news and in the analysis post January 6th today but as you know you know as Americans are searching for answers there's also this new wave of different phenomenon that are coming out this notion of conspiracy convergence where conspiracies are cross pollinating and people are being indoctrinated by entering into certain conversation leaving with other conclusions and so what we also started to understand is that there is a notion of this where whereby conspiracies are targeting traditional and legitimate parts of society and that was really fascinating thread for us to follow because when city council school boards elected sheriffs and local law enforcement positions may or may not be held by those who espouse specific conspiracy theories or whether those are baseless being up to debate obviously but in the sense that there are you know insofar as people debate them in those contexts there's still something to be said for local sheriffs and police members to signal their support for QAnon with branded mugs or hand gestures. I'll run quickly through disinformation because I don't want to spend too much time on that and we didn't in the round table as much because it wasn't a panel focused entirely on disinformation as much as it was about the insurrection and the role that conspiracy theories played in the events of the January 6th and so I'll just say the following which is I think part of the key that will come up later in my conversation with Dr. Bicknell around fact checking is that those who often try to find solutions to conspiracy theories will often get stuck in a to catch 22 where solutions ignite even more conspiracy theories to fan the flames. So for example when leaders have stopped the steel movement where deplatformed this was seen by many as evidence of an even larger conspiracy theory to silence the movements leaders and so that can be a circular issue which results in users being entrenched even further on other platforms. So other platforms define their voice to continue to spread the information amongst themselves amongst other real users and to really kind of capitalize on that notion of recruitment. But I think that what we we didn't get too deep into which I will say for a bit later is the crucial role that fact checking plays in this but that in particular fact checking has to be effective and the ways that it can be effective and not are ones that we got into in the round table and so far as fact checking can often only touch certain members of the movement not all and what that means for its efficacy is something that I think we'll dive into a little bit deeper. Just very quickly on the issue of free speech during the round table and even in the lead up we thought a lot about this in the theme and and in the lead up to the to the round table is this idea of the protection that the First Amendment offers but that you know conspiracy theories when spread as questions can be interpreted as authentic speech and so there's a concern there that when legislating free speech is effectively led to regulators within social media companies what conflicts of interest may or may not exist but then also to what degree can that responsibility be laid bare on only those companies how can the federal government play a role how can state government play a role and how can local law enforcement play a role was something that we were able to discuss and and develop in in more detail but what we were able to identify which I think is crucial and might be one of the last few things I say before I wrap on time is that local law enforcement doesn't actually have the ability to monitor the threat intelligence that spreads through conspiracy theories through the Q and on movement and on the internet in particular because real users are spreading this information through their personal accounts and so that spreads an even deeper issue into kind of what is the local law enforcement capacity around this issue finally actually I I I will on a touch a bit on domestic terrorism just before I hand it over to Dr. Bicknell the Biden administration this happened I think this happened in tandem with with the development of this round table in the aftermath of January 6th we saw a massive federal response through a series of measures to to combat the perceived domestic terrorism and and and domestic white nationalism that was spreading in the aftermath of the January 6th insurrection and so the FBI the DOD the Department of Justice Homeland Security all announced programs and initiatives but what does that actually mean when allocating funds isn't met with the right measured reactions is something that we discussed and that I think we can get into further with David with Dr. Bicknell in just a moment kind of how can the actors responsible for disinformation and the spread of deeply rooted conspiracy theories actually be targeted properly by the federal government and are there existing tools for example the ones used around organized crime that we can kind of learn lessons from and implement in this context the last thing I'll say is that our round table and our research effort as a group within the theme was focused around this idea and this prevailing understanding that the conspiracy fueled violence is showing an extremely potential real world harm by way of politically motivated violence but that before any laws are able to be passed either them you know be them domestic terrorism laws or otherwise Americans have to face some uncomfortable truths hence the title of our round table but but more to the point certain groups are in organizations that profit off of disinformation are making inroads into the federal government and and Dr. Bicknell I will talk about that later but that issue is has yet to I think be widely acknowledged and until that's done I think we'll create more problems than we anticipate and so did the panelists at our round table and our attendees as well and so I will hand over now to Dr. Bicknell to take us even further into how some more objective analysis into what we discussed in the round table can potentially shed light on other through lines in other countries and other regions and even historically as well. Thank you Rana I feel a little bit of an interloper here because Rana arranged and hosted the round table and as you've just heard summed up really what was an hour and a half or more dense discussion in a few minutes my role has really been to be part discussant and part interviewer to try and bring out a few themes that Rana brought up there and to give an external view an external meaning I wasn't part of the round table though I managed to join it for part of it to viewers as everybody else could and then partly to take a perspective outside of the United States as you've heard it's very much focused on the United States what I was trying to do was bring together an idea which is probably very important to a lot of the audience who are PhD researchers is how do we transfer research from a very focused idea of the United States to a more broader context my particular area study has been the UK historically and as a matter of law and so I am not an expert on a lot of these things or any of the things that Rana is talking about so we divided the themes that I drew out of it into three one was baseless conspiracy theories second was white supremacy and the third if we have time for it was democratic representation I'm not sure we will so that we have enough time for questions from the audience and the first one which have termed baseless conspiracy theories which was a phrase that came up in the conference really had two strands one was that it had the idea that there were conspiracy theories such as pizza gate where Hillary Clinton was accused of being part of a paedophile ring operating out operating out of a pizza restaurant in New York or the Q and on type conspiracy theories that puts President Biden at about Catholic as some sort of Satanist and saying these are baseless in that you can fact check them and find they're not true but yet people are resistant to that so is this in some way a difference between misinformation getting the wrong story or disinformation where there's a deliberate intent to mislead and the second part of that is that we need to do something about it that the conspiracists who were at the Capitol on the 6th of January in what I'm going to call public disorder to avoid applying at this stage a label runner referred earlier to a riot and in the panel it was called insurrection and those will be accountable before the law when the investigations are complete for criminal offenses such as offences against the person and against property and that will take its course but beyond that criminal sanction there's really something that ought to be happening here so the first sort of question to try and bring those together was what if anything should be done about the conspiracy theories and the conspiracies below this level of criminality and I think it's one that we began to tease out it's a really good one around the difference between distorted facts and distorted beliefs and in particular this notion of distorted beliefs requiring more geographic political and strategic convert more of a convergence of those elements in order to manifest a belief system around a conspiracy theory rather than a singular fact being distorted and not being addressed but one issue or sorry one solution rather that was posed during our round table I should say was a vaccine for disinformation which is really a bit more of an interesting approach to kind of how do you get to the heart of the issue of baseless conspiracy theories as you so rightly pointed out David it's it's um it's for in this context about strengthening the fabric of the nation and the suggestion I believe was around a wide-ranging public service campaign where you know common values are pitted against a common enemy because it is getting circular the logic around solutions for baseless conspiracy theories because whether it's posed as a question or authentic speech or spread by real users there are various concerns here that local law enforcement and state and federal law enforcement are facing when trying to to get a handle on how to address it as you very rightly pointed out whatever it's called or however it's been referred to and it's been referred to by many many different terms and in all and all sorts of news agencies the the folks that need to be held accountable are being held accountable in so far as the FBI has been arresting the participants but to what degree can you actually address that root issue of baseless conspiracy theories we took a I think more of a wider look at it and tried to in the round table think of ways to get around some of the more I think limiting technological or bureaucratic limited you know aspects of it and think more clearly about how this could be an issue rooted in civic and public public service I think the this idea of what the lease you target and how you target them then sort of threaded into this idea of white supremacy which came up a few times in in the round table and almost perhaps interchangeably used with the word white nationalism and the phrase racism they have different conversations and I think perhaps a different transatlantic view and I was thinking whether from our perspective in the UK we tend not to talk about white supremacy we have racism and white nationalism certainly there's issues but we think we label it differently and I tried to look at that a bit more in particular the way that we deal with some of these sorts of issues that came up in the 6th of January disorder is what we do about these groups and under the UK regime then groups that have presented terrorist threat can be prescribed by the Home Secretary and currently there's a list of 77 groups which are prescribed and they're further 14 relating back to Northern Ireland and of those 77 for if you read the descriptions on the Home Office site relates to white supremacy two specifically referring back to the United States one British one which is described as neo-nazi and a fourth which is which is a splinter of that and the thing that comes up with those is partly antisemitism because they all have neo-nazi names but there's a slightly different connotation I think in Britain and to put this very broadly slavery was something that happened somewhere else in that slavery in Britain was commonly thought not to exist after something like the 12th century there are different views on this and different people take the view of how do you define slavery but you define it narrowly and legally then there's a famous case in the 1770s which said that there is no law of slavery it's unknown to the common law in Britain although at that stage it was apparently thought there were about 10 to 15,000 slaves in Britain who'd be brought here by their master's owners from abroad but slavery was something that happened in the colonies or in the United States and so I wondered whether there is a difference and we have a different perspective that for the United States white supremacy leads back to slavery and antisemitism or antisemitism in a way that's different from the European experience. It's a really fascinating question because in part of the prep that we did for the roundtable we looked into that great vibe of a question you laid out at the beginning the transferability of the research and what we found is not only that the QAnon movement is being espoused in other countries that's not news but also that various white nationalist organizations around the world were peddling more US focused conspiracy theories in order to kind of play up a version of white supremacy or white nationalism and I also looked into this too in the prep of kind of how do you distinguish the two. I kind of came to the conclusion that scholars seem to to separate them as you know white supremacy being the ideology in white nationalism being kind of the manifestation of that ideology around national interest but putting that all aside the movements either in Ukraine or around the world specifically we looked into the Ozab movement will use language and speak directly to an American audience and that's really fascinating right is how are they using elements of white supremacy in both their language and in their tactics that can speak to an American audience from many hundreds of miles away and I think that your question is an important one but also I think highlights how important it is to see the global impact of how QAnon's specific xenophobia anti-semitism Islamophobia and white supremacist ideologies seem to be whether or not they are resonating seem to be more easily utilized by other white nationalist organizations globally and why is that and it's one that it's a question that I've been thinking about but but it's it's kind of my answer is a bit evasive in the sense that you know as part of our discussion I can't necessarily speak to the roots of white supremacy in countries outside of the USA but I can say that there is a the question of its transferability and its global reach and whether or not there is something unique as you rightly point out is an interesting one but that perhaps the transferability in and of itself is going to be what manifests the most real world harm if you have American white nationalists being trained in other countries in order to more effectively ensue political violence it's a it's an interesting but also really troubling series of events it is are they saying matters of fashion and the like that's where America leads then others will surely follow so it is it is deeply troubling I think that and it lead led into it as you were speaking there about this idea of of pushing and pulling so is these the United States pulling this in from outside the Ukraine that you mentioned or is somehow it being pushed and that that was a theory or an idea in this point about democratic representation in that there there are now members of Congress who have espoused some of these conspiracy theories and it led to a question as to whether are they pulling on the threads of conspiracy so that they get the votes and they get the money money raising being a big American political activity that's more so than where it's controlled in European states more firmly or are they pushing are people who are conspiracies pushing to have political representation and I think that's important just to draw a brief UK analogy I was trying to think of where that would have mattered and perhaps I've been doing some reading research around the politician of Ireland in 1920 and the fact that the holster volunteer force an armed group resisting who would be committed to resisting the imposition of home rule at that time had very leading British politicians supporting them seemed to chair will definitely change the dynamic so is the dynamic in the United States changing or being changed on this pushing pull idea in the United States yeah I mean as you know and alluded to and as we discussed in the round table at length towards the end when we kind of started to really get at what's at stake when we say inroads into the American government we know that Marjorie Taylor Green won a house seat in Georgia and Lauren Boebert claimed a house seat in Colorado in November of 2020 both of whom have publicly espoused the QAnon movement but what what I looked into and the lead up to the round table in order kind of put it to our panelists was that Green and Boebert weren't alone and that they were among at least a dozen Republican candidates who had endorsed or at least given credence to QAnon's belief that former President Donald Trump was the last line of defense against a cabal of of Democrats who seek power and this idea that those who would espouse that belief would seek a seat in in Congress is is an interesting one because I think it gets at that whole factor that you mentioned whether or not a fringe political movement could even support a sitting president was an interesting one let alone then drive further politicians into office you know complicates the issue even further but that what's emerged is a political class that that understands that if they can tap into this very resonant belief system or series of conspiracy theories or movement whatever you want to call it that they can amass influence and money as you very rightly pointed out in United States politics the two go hand in hand but but I think your question around whether the movement is fueling political participation or political participation is fueling more of the the representation of the movement is a fascinating and complicating one and you and I spoken about this around whether or not the movement has a right to be represented right that that very core issue of if it represents the beliefs of elements of the American electorate then should it then in fact have a seat in the house and the word should here is irrelevant they do they have that it already does in the sense that they're they're being represented by the two people we've mentioned but but I think that time will tell whether or not the politicians who have played into elements of this movement whether it is you know completely or in part or even suggestively to say well I don't denounce it I don't I don't not believe it whether or not they fully will stand up for it into into the end kind of you know will it will it actually be something that they intend to see through is a fascinating one and one that usually comes up when votes are cast and the house itself you know once you get elected in the end you see what a politician stands for outside of the money and influence I mean both of which play a critical role but whether or not they'll actually cast the vote on certain legislation will be I think a key determining factor and whether or not there will be this push and this pull or at least that's what came up in our roundtable in the discussion around kind of how how these politicians may or may not find their footing around espousing them and and it's tough because you know we're recapping an event around conversations already been had but I'm you know doing my best to also just say that it seemed for me in leaving the roundtable that that's one of the doors that remains you know the most open in the sense that it's hardest to gauge the degree to which politicians will you know in fact espouse the QAnon movement when it matters the most for for them to gain more votes or whether they will find a way to pull back or water it down for example and that was I think a more fascinating element of our roundtable as well but I will stop right there and see perhaps we can I'm glad we got to the third part that we said we wouldn't so that means we're doing something right but also that we need to make way for Q&A I believe yes thank you very much that was an incredibly effective and very engaging summing up and and further development of key themes that came out of the roundtable so thank you to both of you um can I ask the audience please to pop their questions into the Q&A box um and I will then see that I can I can sum them up or if they're if they're plentiful plentiful or just read them out um if you while you're thinking and writing um if I could start off the the Q&A session by asking um Rana and David to maybe reflect on or one of you or both of you to tell us a little bit more maybe about why you think the Q&A on the way Q&A and similar um well Q&A in particular operate does that explain the reach because it's not just disseminating messages on social media there is there is more to it which is also part of what came out of the roundtable um is there anything specific about the way they operate which makes them so effective um in in spreading the message horizontally but also influencing um vertically I can um take that first and then David feel free to jump in afterwards I'll just say one thing that came up during the roundtable around the particular success of the Q&A movement is its basis and foundation uh in real users I think I said that a little bit earlier but what I'll say now too is that it comes up in um in in our discussion around social media companies in particular and their capacity to monitor this was a fascinating piece of the roundtable their capacity to monitor um the stop the steel movement and the degree to which it got away from them based on the fact that real users were espousing it through authentic speech and so to what degree can you shut down accounts when they're difficult to monitor and the degree to which they weren't just um you know one singular user recruiting others but that various real users were all individually recruiting others uh so there is a a bit of network analysis and analysis around kind of how these webs are formed like you're probably a critical role here in answering your question around how the movement in particular has been um uniquely successful but that's just one one of the many ways that it is and I think it's just that element of um adaptability you know the real users mean that if one account is taken down then there are many others that can continue to spread it in other chat rooms through that kind of cross pollinated conspiracy theories but but also through kind of information laundering and mainstream media uh a lot of different things came out in our roundtable and I think can can fuel even more research into how this movement in particular is uniquely successful David did you want to add something or I've got two questions sort of lining up um but please if you would like to add something then please do I saw you've got questions coming in I really have I'm a novice on Q&A and I have nothing to add that's all right then let's move over to the to the questions um you know we start at the top win um he's congratulating both of you two um on a great session um quick question David talked about labels how do or can academics ensure that they remain objective in analyzing these types of issues when many of the concepts used in the discussion and debate around them are essentially contestable thanks win um who would like to go first um Rana why don't you start off and then um I invite David I'll speak briefly since I took the last one and it seems better suited to uh to David anyway uh because he's the uh you know he's our our Dr. Bicknell whereas I am still first year potential maybe we'll see what happens uh potentially a doctor one day um academics ensuring objectivity is probably at the core of every academics I think uh hope for success in any good theoretical and issues based conversation but I think in the in the discussion and the debate around these issues in particular as you might have noticed even here right now it becomes an issue um because even the terminology is debatable um especially in online chat rooms it can get very very nuanced and very I think um difficult to to to monitor the use of your language while trying to remain objective but then also that language and those labels can be key in in signaling your support right and so there's there is I think for academics uh an important onus in ensuring objectivity but I think oftentimes it's tough to keep track of how constantly the movement is adapting with new language so how certain terms and certain labels will will signal um uh belief in one thing uh versus the other but I'll just say that and let David jump in on kind of the the the root of your question thank you uh I think the political aspect is certainly one in keeping a breath of that from a more academic level because I'm trained as a lawyer I was a lawyer for many years um I think the the key I've always thought is to try and define your terms and then to be to make sure that you stick within them and that requires constant care to go back to how you define them to use them correctly and to question yourself and to spend a lot of time thinking about how they're formulated and what they mean so as rather as they may be used in different ways but then you have to use them in your research so it's important to define them as closely as you can and then stick to that and try and recognize the differences where they arise so we talked about is there a difference between white supremacy white nationalism and perhaps there isn't perhaps there is but if you want to make the point then there may be and you just have to drive that distinction through your work so it's not there's no magic there's no magic to being a doctor either one day you are and the previous day you weren't so it doesn't bring it special insights or anything just just a nice title I think um so Andrea next question does that thank you very much um our next question is from and I'm taking a risk here with the pronunciation of your surname if I mangle it I do apologize I think it may be Simon Nodge but I'm not sure um the question is some Q and unbelief seem to reflect historic anti-Semitic tropes for example bloodline or global deep state conspiracy that were common to fascists on Nazi ideology of the 20th century could we view Q and on as descendant of these movements or is this something new now we've got three minutes to discuss this at the moment um so I'll hand over maybe to Rana first and then David can jump on the back of that sure I can take this from the political and judicial perspective very briefly but then I think David if you could talk on the the legal level that might be a good uh division of labor in the round table we discussed specifically this so yes and no so uh is is it a descendant absolutely there are clearly threads here that um our analysts laid out very well actually and and also being able to kind of highlight not only the elements of the movement that harken back to um you know Nazi ideology and fascism but also how the responses are also meeting the same issues in his in history is playing a key role in this in particular the way the federal government is able to adequately address paramilitary organizations or not is very much rooted in the history of the american law enforcement system generally speaking um so this is something new in the sense that the tools the tactics and the strategies I believe and and so did our analysts believe and and our panelists in the conversation at the round table believe that there is something new here because of the the spread not only online which is obviously I think more one of the more clear and and more obvious examples but but I think around this idea of a distortion of belief systems around american narratives in particular um if an american military veteran believes that in service of his or her country it is their oath and duty to protect the country by participating in the events of july 6th and that is I think it a thread and an element of it that is new that was worth um investigating and that I wish we could have done more of during the round table but that I think people will continue to do um when they look through um different polls that have come out of the military times and and and so forth that have in recent years that have highlighted how the the degree to which this has infiltrated elements of american society that have historically um supported civic identity religious groups law enforcement etc the way that they're being utilized uh to support the movement um david I think as you said that the history plays an important part um and it goes back to a distinction which I avoided at the beginning which is we make the distinction based on political um aspects so the defining characteristic of insurrection is that is political violence and terrorism is mostly similar and that political element makes it different I think um and so the theme that runs through this is it becomes much more difficult when you're looking at political views rather than other things that are not political in the same way. Andrea I think our time is up. Thank you very much you too have been model timekeepers you've made my my job extremely easy thank you very much for what was I thought an extremely interesting very enlightening session there's of course there are a million other questions that we could discuss and and threads that have that might run off it if the audience at the end um of the in the last sort of discussion period would like to bring in some of the reflections um from the from this discussion from from this part of the panel please do so we we are very happy to to to take questions on the whole range of issues that we have discussed um this morning but um it is now my pleasure to hand over to our strife team and um allow Maria to introduce um Dr Maria Maraki to introduce their huge effort in bringing together a wide wide variety of perspectives on the challenges to the rule of law Maria over to you. Thank you very much Andrea for introducing me I'm very happy that I'm part of this uh panel in this research conference I have to say that uh yes I was part of this uh effort for the special issue of the strife blog on current challenges to the rule of law in times of crisis but unfortunately why we were completing this process I got covid so I couldn't fully uh respond to my commitments and that's why I would say that my role apart from an initial organization component was quite limited having to say that I would like here to thank and acknowledge very much Dr David Bignell who stepped in and here all the introductory part of the special issue of the strife blog on the current challenges to the rule of law in times of crisis and also very much Francisco and Constance for contributing Francisco two pieces at Constance one piece and then David one more piece so for one more minute I would like a little bit to introduce you to the special issue and to tell you that I saw one of the questions uh before about contestable terms and I would say that actually the special issue of strife deals with extremely elusive and debatable terms such as the rule of law and also the term crisis which has become extremely fashionable especially within international legal scholars is it during the last years so do we experience the backlash the crisis of the liberal legal order or of the rules-based order as we know it and that's David summarizing his introductory piece what do we mean about rule of law rule of law is really one of the most elusive concepts is it rule of law only does it focus only on the domestic level can we talk about rule of law in the international legal arena is it feasible many many uh philosophers legal theories moral philosophers political theories how they have written about the importance of rule of law the difference between the rule of law and rule by law uh others and I can mention here Joseph Ratz, Donald Dworkin, Ronald Dworkin others have been more critical about the instrumentalization of rule of law such as um sclar on uh as a as a as a tool of the liberal of a particular understanding of the liberal legal order and more recently we start talking about what extent we can talk about the thick version or a thin version of rule of law so is rule of law only limited to legality to procedural legality or should rule of law and dress also issues of thick justice of substantial of of distributive justice so these are things that we cannot make just like we cannot do justice within uh within a very limited issue but I want to say that the four pieces on the strive plug they do deal both with the content but also with the application of the rule of law but they focus mainly on the international legal um arena so we have two pieces written by Francisco uh one about uh the alleged uh not alleged these days uh about a report regarding the Australian forces and their involvement in commission of war crime uh in Afghanistan uh we have another uh paper by David about the new challenges before the international criminal court with regard to the to the British uh to the investigation of alleged war crimes by UK forces in Iraq and the challenges of the new prosecutor who is actually British and he's going to take over very soon uh we have another piece by Francisco who deals on the decision who deals with the decision of of our president Biden uh to uh to strike Syria very very recently and the argumentation uh the US used for the particular strike and a very interesting piece by Constance where he addresses the challenges the limits of of the pandemic and the new measures of public health with regard to the risks that that raises for civil liberty and I would say that all these pieces have a common thread a thread that goes beyond um a legalistic legal analysis if I can use this term and they touch upon issues of of they touch upon moral issues ethical issues political and sociological issues having said that I would like now give the floor to Constance and Francisco we have decided that the four pieces actually can be teamed in the sense that two pieces address what we tend where we have described like the bending of the norms of the rule of law and the two other pieces will address the breaching of the norms of the rule of law so Constance will have uh address will address first the bending and then Francisco will take over with the breaching thank you very much all guys you have the floor thank you thank you I am I'm not sure if my video is working uh oh yes all right here we go all right hi everyone um so thank you very much Maria so um here I'm going to discuss briefly the the two strife articles that we had but uh as Maria mentioned uh touch upon the bending of of this rule space during national order so uh both articles were published as long as the rest of the strife series at the last week of May and the first article is America strikes again some thoughts on Biden's first military airstrike in Syria in which Francisco Lobo analyzes the normative factors surrounding the February 2021 airstrike on Syrian territory authorized by the Biden administration drawing on both legal considerations and the wider ethical framework of you said and then in my article piece in the time of pandemic to a clash of rights and security uh consider the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic undercompany state securitization on the state of human rights and social cohesion and resilience and so in Francisco's article he uses an analysis of the legality and moral dimensions of U.S. airstrikes in Syria to consider the normative framework of you said and then or adjust to force so whereas the Trump administration justified their airstrikes in Syria in 2017 and 2018 on humanitarian grounds the Biden administration's February 2021 airstrikes were justified under self-defense under the UN Charter and the and the U.S. Constitution however while plausibly justified in their U.S. domestic law the legality of the self-defense argument is questionable under international law as experts argue that the February airstrike rather seemed to be an active armed reprisal as it was used with no international mandate to deter future threats but when moving from legal to normative frameworks here Francisco argues that the moral dimension of the airstrikes should not be ignored while the U.S. is not formally at war with Syria so traditional just war theory does not strictly apply an extension of it which is Walter's proposed idea just uh you said you consider the grounds in which the use of force short of war may be justified and where international law may be extended to allow for this just use of force and set precedence in customary law to mirror the evolution of our shared ethical judgments so under you said vim the U.S. is responding to aggression and is justified to its right to self-defense as long as this defense meets the use of valium criteria which is the use of force proportion and proportional use of force forces last resort authorized by legitimate authority and carried out with their right intent and that it will reduce the probability of escalation into full-scale war however Francisco argues that the airstrikes do not necessarily meet that the escalation criteria because they run the risk of escalating hostilities in Syria and creating at minimum a proxy war between the U.S. Russia and their allies as Francisco eloquently argues by using the legal view as a departure point for further moral discussion the interplay between all these standards offers the potential to strengthen our convictions and hone our judgments about the use of force and war moving on to my article and I use as a basis the well-established tension between a foundational protection for human rights versus security priorities that are the center of the social contract between states citizen the pandemic has had from profound impact on societies by intensifying this class of rights and securities states of emergency or some kind of measures affecting the exercise of fundamental human rights including freedom of movement assembly expression privacy or increased militarization and policing have been applied at a global level well of course the pandemic requires that some restrictions be enacted to protect human health and security manage public health resources and capacity and mitigate the overall risk and potential damage of this pandemic many states have taken this much farther raising a significant risk but states might permanently adopt these emergency powers and increase increased securitization as they offer states with tempting shortcuts and may lead to a pandemic of human rights abuses according to Antonio details already the pandemic has had a great impact on gender equality and with women leaving the workforce in droves relative to men due to lack of support for childcare as well as well as increased domestic violence against women and girls an extreme impact on income inequality and poverty with fewer resources and economic opportunities available within living rising rising living costs and with a very small number of countries monopolizing nearly all vaccines in turn can prolong both the pandemic and economic recovery in addition the pandemic has been used to crush dissent to criminalize freedoms and silence reporting and to detain and prosecute any individuals that may criticize government responses to the pandemic and in turn there's been a striking rise in resistance movements across the world during this period including protests around key fundamental political and social issues that are erupting within the context of restriction of rights including the Black Lives Matter movement in the US pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, farmer protests in India protests against violence against women and sexual assault in Spain, Chile and the UK Lebanon's protests responding to compounding crisis the popular struggle against the military coup in Myanmar and protests against political instability in Peru to name with you across the world these have a key characteristic in common which is resistance against violence abuse of power and suppression of freedom if a more rights based balance is not struck in such clashes of rights and security the foundations of our societies are at risk as populists and others as Rana and David pointed out can capitalize on the social fragmentation resulting from sociopolitical issues and inequalities so in the face of the next expected global economic downturn and the real possibility of new and deadlier pandemics ahead if a global environmental and economic factors are not addressed there can be an aggravation of the factors that were feeding discontents before the pandemic risking both continued repression and resistance i argue that we should perhaps prepare for renegotiation of our state society relations and reconsider how citizens relate to each other in order to not cause lasting damage to the foundations of our societies or cause a slide back to greater repression in places where any gains and rights have been fraughts and hard ones right thank you very much that's my presentation and there's handing off yeah i'm just waiting for the video to start i'm not sure it's working i think the host needs to turn it on my video feed start my video okay okay hello thank you uh thank you Constance that was a very very generous preview i think uh as as usual the preview or the trailer is even better than the movie so uh but do go and read the all the all the pieces of course i suggest that and yes um i will be very brief right now because i think we're all eager to going back to the q&a and the discussion so um uh after Constance referred to bending the rules and what happens with uh bending human rights standards and uh maybe the standards on the use of force uh in international relations i will refer to what happens when we break the rules when there is a breach of the rules specifically the rules governing the conduction of hostilities during armed conflict uh those breaches are referred to as war crimes uh in in international law and um the last two pieces of our series referred to war crimes uh the first one uh focuses on the breton report this report that was published last year in australia uh concerning uh very disturbing and shocking allegations of war crimes committed by australian special special forces in afghanistan um australia has appointed a special prosecutor to deal with this matter internally domestically back there in under under australian law but um what what struck me as uh very interesting the report when i was reading it and what inspired me to put pen to paper on this subject was that the report is adamant that uh in that uh there will be no need whatsoever for the international criminal court to intervene uh it even states that the court lacks jurisdiction which is technically not true um uh australia is supported to the rome statute same as afghanistan and if the according to the principle of complementarity that uh states that if a state fails to prosecute a crime uh that that uh is is uh criminalizing the in the rome statute uh because it's either unwilling or unable to prosecute the crime then the international criminal court must step in uh according to an admissibility examination of course but um the possibility is still there and i i think that the burton report is is a little defensive uh in that regard and um we will have to wait and see how the the australian judiciary behaves and addresses this issue and then we'll see if the principle of complementarity operates or not and if the icc has to intervene or step in or not but that's not a matter for australians uh alone to decide because uh the thrust of my argument is that they were in afghanistan in the first place on our behalf on behalf of the of the international community uh fulfilling a mandate by the un security council so it's not only an internal affair it's it's an international issue so uh we will have to to keep an eye on that and and then we move on to to david bignell's uh opinion on on the icc more generally or more more in the abstract but uh with very practical applications because uh his column is is titled prosecuting war crimes some thoughts for the new prosecutor of the icc as maria said the new prosecutor carin can will begin his term next week uh and and david bignell has some thoughts for him uh to to maybe uh help him do his job a little better hopefully uh and basically what david bignell thinks uh is that um after some very controversial decisions recent decisions uh at the icc the the well the prosecutor's decision not to investigate further um war crime allegations by british forces in afghanistan first i'm sorry in iraq first uh and secondly the the pretrial chamber decisions to um authorize an investigation into alleged war crimes in the palestinian territories that was this year after those controversial decisions uh david bignell believes that uh some clarification concerning the work of the office of the prosecutor is needed uh specifically regarding some conceptual uh gaps or or uncertainties that that are present in the rom statutes so i don't want to get overly technical because we don't we don't have enough time but um basically the threshold for the international criminal court to intervene to prosecute war crimes is uh rather high uh the the crimes must be a part of a plan or policy or large large scale pattern um but but that's not uh sufficiently defined at the at the level of the rom statute and the on the office of the prosecutor usually ignores that that requirement so that is something that needs more clarification on the one hand and the second issue that david addresses is well uh the the investigation is actually a three-stage process uh first there is a preliminary examination by the prosecutor then we move on to the an investigation uh and finally we can charge someone with a with a crime uh before the court so uh for the first stage there is a standard of that there is the belief that there is a reasonable basis to lead to an investigation then when we move to the second stage of the investigation the standard changes and then we're talking about a realistic prospect of conviction and finally we can move to the to the third stage of charging someone with a crime um and david believes that uh all these standards are also kind of blurry and uh the we need more more clarity around these these concepts for the prosecutor to do a better job more coherent uh consistent job uh uh vis-a-vis all these atrocities that that can be prosecuted by the by the international criminal court when when the rules not only are are bent but are also breached and that is the the core of the argument of david's opinion so i'll just leave it there uh back to you maria and i'm looking forward to the to the q and a thanks excellent thank you very much both of you for summarizing so meticulously uh the four articles and i want to congratulate all of you including david of course who is with us uh for contributing these four pieces and for david once more you know for contributed also the introductory uh piece i i i don't think i have anything else to say i give the floor back to andrea for uh for to continue you know the the moderation of this panel thank you all very very much thank you very much for your very succinct summarizing of um of of the strife blog series and thank you maria for introducing it so um expertly um we already have questions um one is is sort of going back to q anon i will i will raise that that question later but the the one the second one um speaks particularly to constancy's paper um it's an anonymous attendee who asked it it's one matter for states to institute lockdowns quite another to institute curfews as in holland and france which is very concerning far worse are prosecutions by the indian government for any criticism of covid policy which which is unconscionable surely should be criticized by world health assembly now there are a whole host of issues in this um sort of all wrapped up together constance would you like to start unraveling them and if anyone else on the panel would like to all for that matter um david or rana would like to also speak to this please do um constance you go ahead please certainly so that that's a these are very good examples um of what we're talking about uh here what what what i what i argue in the paper um the curfews for example there is no evidence as far as we know that the curfews in particular uh work uh as opposed to to lockdown which i agree is a different question um and indeed uh uh there there are numerous examples of then these kind of repressive measures including um the the detainments uh and uh and prosecution of anyone from activists to to even medical professionals um that have been criticizing in any way uh government policies and and approaches to covid responses to covid um uh uh uh yeah there are instances of this in uh in many places and this should be alarming and i guess this speaks to to the question that i i would have for myself uh which is you know what what is the correct balance to strike i can't pretend to have all the answers here but um uh upon some reflection uh on my side i think that um there are three factors uh that that play with these issues that play on these issues um uh that are intentionality timing and permissiveness um intentionality it's that states need to ensure that any restrictions that they create any any measures that they enact have to have a reason they have to have a clear justification um as a clear response to the conditions to to um uh to the uh the risks to human health and security that are and and public health capacity that are raised by the by the pandemic um so they need a clear justification in in terms of timing also and that's been a great problem because we haven't had a very clear view um uh and consistent understanding what exactly the pandemic is and you know what's contagious so what's what exactly the real threats are and what the clear information is um but a kind of consequence of that is that um uh there's been no ends date often you have had these measures put in place and there's no there's no clear communication as to when they're going to end um which then goes into the you know these these this question of um of the risk of these becoming permanent states of emergency uh as if i can extrapolate a little bit as we have seen uh with uh with the war on terror in uh in certain countries where you know it has become an infinite war and um yeah and then i guess in in my permissiveness points i think states have a responsibility because you have so much resistance um in terms of political and social movements at this point that are raising very real very important issues for societies um it is the responsibility of the state to also find a way to allow this protest to happen in safe ways and we know that there are ways that protests can be handled uh carried out with uh with you know degrees of social distancing and organization um but still be still be visible um that's my that's my answer uh i hope that that helps or that's clear sorry um i thought i had unmuted myself um thank you very much Constance yes that that that has answered a lot of the questions um just one so small footnote observation on the side um it's quite interesting to see different countries even just in europe not even globally um the institute or put in place different sunset clauses um for different types of of emergency legislation um in other words when do these these um make new measures or the temporary measures need to be reviewed um and and reviewed for further approval and some countries um have have introduced different gradations of which measures need sooner to be reviewed most more quickly and more frequently than other measures and other countries have just given where the governments have given themselves quite a lot of scope for for extended powers for quite a long period of time as well so so there is a lot to probe as to the democratic culture um above ground to reference um runners roundtable and and then that might play into the um resistance movements um that that you talked about Constance as well as as as with regard to their empowerment or not and and may fuel if there are you know few sunset clauses or the reviews are not scaring that well then um it might fuel resistance movement but i see Maria's hand is up in um so i will hand over to Maria yes thank you for that i i saw also that there are some questions for Anna but later i don't know andre i don't want to step in you know is it okay no no it's fine it's fine absolutely okay so i it's a question but it is actually addressed to all of you to Constance Francisco and David about your pieces in the blog and from what i realize reading your your your pieces there is as i say a common thread where all of you acknowledge the limits of the rules based internationally galore or maybe i'm wrong you know you you can you can totally contest me about that because you all bring another element apart from the law whether it's the socio-political context or the ethical very strong ethical moral context especially in francisco pieces the socio-political in Constance the social contract idea you know but also David's piece where he needs you know we talk about further clarification about criteria further clarification of prosecutorial policies so i was wondering you know how do you think about these limits you know of this of course we all totally talk we already talk about bending and breaking you know but i was wondering you know how you you deal with that in your own pieces in your own research thank you may i go okay um yes with the the piece about uh the use of force in syrian territory the first drone strike by biden uh i i thought well it's it's it's almost a pattern by now the u.s uh strikes a country or uses force it's considered illegal by the international community and by uh international lawyers in particular they publish their pieces and then and then that's that and then the the cycle continues and and usually my my colleagues in the legal profession and and international scholars international legal scholars they they are satisfied with that analysis and and they keep saying the u.s is breaching the rules breaching the rules and uh there's state responsibility associated with that and that's that but they don't usually go beyond the the legal analysis and they don't engage with other disciplines uh uh and i'm talking about similar disciplines like ethics morals the just war tradition so i i think it's uh and this this goes back to the to some of the one of the questions to to david and rana what can scholars do what can the primal works do to address all these issues i think we need to engage with more disciplines i think we we need to to take a multidisciplinary approach to to these issues is not enough to say that the rules are being breached and and that's too bad and and there need to be legal consequences of course i believe in that but there's uh so much more to say about uh breaking the rules why are they being break broken and why why i issues of legitimacy underlying the rules are also at stake here and that goes back to to the first part of this panel uh there is a crisis of legitimacy uh back there in the u.s and that's that has been projected into the into the whole rules based order that the us has championed in the past seven decades so we need to engage more with other disciplines i think uh and that goes for everyone uh lawyers need to talk more to political scientists and international relations experts uh and etc thank you very much i have we have a whole host of questions now i will take them in slightly reverse order um because the last one is i think best addressed by francesco so i'm sorry for stressing you out francesco i'm going to fire another question at you so i mean notch has has popped up again um i'm glad to say he has a very sort of participant he enjoys the panels um and asks the question regarding australia and the icc um they ask australia seems determined to shirk responsibility for breaches of international norms especially regarding the treatment of the pain of refugees what can be done about this francesco over to you okay so yeah this is this is a different this is i hate to to get all lawyerly with with with the the person who asked this but this this isn't an issue necessarily regarding international criminal law so it's not within the the purview of the icc uh it doesn't have to do with war crimes uh because we're talking about refugee uh conventions and of course australia has international obligations in that field but um but yeah but you can you can address those breaches you can make effective state responsibility for breaching the rules before other fora and for instance if you have a treaty and australia is breaching the treaty you can then bring australia before the international court of justice which is an altogether different uh tribunal uh to to the icc so but these are different they're connected granted uh the the whole world is in turmoil of course but uh there's a different different legal fields uh war crimes on the one hand and international criminal law and refugee law on the other one thank you very much maria your hand is up is it still up or is it a new up it's a new story to say uh to interrupt briefly about that it's very interesting this question that although it doesn't have to do with war crimes i mean there are many many international legal scholars now that they push the criminalization you know of migration policies so there are attempts before the international criminal court on the crimes against humanity from regarding migration policies and it's something you know uh that we have seen that for australia but also for mediterranean countries so maybe in the future there will be some interesting developments on this front so i stop here thank you thank uh francesca go ahead just to add something very quickly of course it could be framed under the the concept of crimes against humanity but you would have to to prove that there is a general attack against the civilian population a general or systematic attack against the civilian population so the threshold is rather high to get to bring this to the icc we mustn't forget that thank you very much i'm going to bundle the next questions they they are somewhat linked and also build a nice bridge from constance to rana and maybe david if he if he wants to speak to that as well so we have one question asking is it not vital that world health as they've worked out the WHO or some agencies prescribe deliberate sorry deliberate medical falsehoods started by boston arrow in in brazil lucaschenko in bielaruz tanzania's ex-president or modian india talking of herbal essences curing lives these lies lies have cost lives how can this be stopped now the lies the falsehoods the um um you know it's not it it's also in the u.s. we had president trump suggesting that um that drinking bleach might might somehow disinfect people internally um which was taken so seriously by bleach manufacturers that they issued health warnings and and and dependencies so um clearly this is not just um and and a non um available north um issue this links to another question um the falsehoods and the conspiracy theories etc um which we had which is a hangover from the from the first session which came in later after we've already had moved on whether there any studies that have been done who joins um who these q and on believers are whether they come from certain groups are they disgruntled ill educated persons or are they in fact um reasonably well off people who have um i would add this um are they reasonably well off people who feel that they have been forgotten by um the waves of globalization feel disenfranchised and that then finally links to a question that's come in via youtube um the person is interested to know i don't know who asked the question um why people think trump represented a true white supremacist trend in politics this idea of him as the leader of this ideational trend seems peculiar so Constance would you like to start off certainly and i i do actually i completely agree with you Andrea that the the links to uh to to run as work is uh are very clear here um because what what we're ultimately talking about um is how do you how do you stop the spread of of misinformation uh whether that misinformation has to do with uh with health uh with the pandemic um or with uh with you know any of the beliefs in the q and on supporters um for me there there are two elements here um and and rana will speak probably i hope i'm not putting her on the spot but um more uh more eloquently to to the second one um but the first is that you know um uh there has been a very clear lack of consistency and coherent information that's been coming from uh from both uh international and domestic health agencies because there we haven't known what this is um where hasn't been very clear what the pandemic was right from the start um and that has led to a great deal of um kind of undermining trust um in in these health agencies where there is an expectation that um there they should have known and they should have been able to tell us right from the start um and unfortunately that's that's you know not how science works um as much as we would like as much as we would like it to be and it rarely does become a policy issue afterwards because um you you do have this this moment of uh how do you maintain public trust when you've been giving um kind of uh uh different information so it is hard then to also counter some of these outlandish claims coming from uh from these countries that you've listed and others about what it is because there has been this lack of consistency but um i think that the second point is um is also how do you stop this via social media uh because social media has been a huge uh source of of spreading these falsehoods and this misinformation um and it's unchecked and unfortunately people to everybody checks social media more than they check you know the latest announcement from the from the WHO so um that's uh that's one of the big policy challenges i would say of our time um and so i'll i'll hand off to to Rana here if i could just while Rana is unmuting herself jump in briefly it's also a matter of looking at what the WHO's remit is and how they work and one of the key working principles that may need to be challenged now is of of the WHO is and the IAE the International Atomic Energy Agency has a similar approach is not to hang any country out to dry they are dependent on countries cooperating with them therefore the idea that the WHO would um to put it colloquially dish dirt on any of its members um they're underfunded anyway they have trouble getting everyone really together and and responding in a timely and and sufficiently at scale manner they're unlikely to to to be too super critical so that there is that underlying tension which may actually require review particularly if we're facing a greater range of pandemics but that is a serious consideration which which curbs their ability to to intervene but i do apologize Rana i'm sure you are now totally unmuted i will now mute myself um thank you yes i think that uh the the issue around uh COVID related disinformation and conspiracy theories certainly converges in a really i think um seriously damaging way to the health of of Americans into the detriment to of American public health institutions but at the same time um what came up in our round table was this issue of conspiracy convergence where you go looking for information about one thing and find um conspiracy related information on another and that's how you kind of get pulled down these various rabbit holes um or at least that's what far better experts around issues of of conspiracy theories have highlighted as some of these um pathways to conspiracy theories for users um who seek to find them so there's a fascinating um exploration by uh by various organizations and think tanks into kind of how these networks collide um and particularly around uh disinformation or misinformation related to to public health but in particular with regards to this this disinformation that purposefully misleads people you'll enter a chat room to to find information about say for example the election or um or the the stop the steal movement but instead find information about COVID and the vaccine and perhaps those those those um threads come together or there's a an opportunity there for those um conspiracies to converge which is a fascinating development within kind of this understanding that we're slowly I think starting to not only develop but then also crystallize and so far as it feeds into solutions based approaches into how to mitigate the threat uh but it's a very big question um and and one that we certainly don't have the answers to yet but that will I think prove crucial to not only the success of of combating COVID but also ensuring that um Americans are able to engage in a dialogue on public health without feeling as though they have to entrench themselves into some sort of uh political ideology to do so. Thank you Rana would you like to take up the um the other question about why so questioner asks why do people think Trump represented a true white supremacist trend in politics um this idea of him as the leader of this ideational trend seems peculiar would you like to sort of engage with that briefly we are rapidly running out of time so you have about a happy I think that in the absence of of a one true leader I think you often look to the most visible but I think that it's peculiar because the questioner points out the very right issue and and very accurate dichotomy here between the most visible and the longevity of these issues so whether or not the visibility of Trump is a more recent manifestation the longevity of white supremacy and the ravages that it's had on the American political system long predate him and and the the manifestations of political violence are rooted in American history in a way that is not in any way a stand-in for that but um but I would only say that it's uh it's less about kind of I think finding a leader but also being able to to address the issue we raised earlier that if real users are believing this spreading this and recruiting others um trying to attribute Trump as a leader if that's being interpreted in any capacity is also I think trying to pull people off the scent which is uh you know important uh it's important to acknowledge you know the degree to which it's it's disparate and yet unified and so in any way to kind of attribute it to one singular political leader would I think be uh misleading not only for the law enforcement officials who are seeking to bring people to justice but also the Americans who are seeking to understand how this is uh salient and and translating across regions across states um and into the very fabric of of local county sheriff's offices and and community organizations there is no singular leader but uh to say so is also to kind of I think avoid and ignore the the root of the issue. Thank you very much Rona um there was a question earlier about research on QAnon but I am aware of the for example the Pew Research Center having done some research into into the role of QAnon and how it's perceived and received and and who who joins in unfortunately we are now super out of time we are we at 11 30 this is the end of our session we haven't been able to answer all the questions if our panelists are so inclined and can still see the questions after the session has been completed um then please do engage um that's some interesting further questions that that we are unfortunately unable to address so I just would like to thank both our audience for asking super questions and really developing some of the themes that that we addressed and our panel addressed um further um and then to finally thank our panel members um everyone for their sterling work for this entire year and pulling it all together and really doing themselves I think great justice in presenting the the the major team effort and individual efforts that you've made in the course of this year so thank you very much I think you can all be proud of yourself and now go into the sort of slightly sort of more calmer period of life with a high degree of satisfaction thank you very much and take good care and the same of course goes to the audience take very good care of yourselves