NewzIntel.com

Category: Academic Analysis

  • MIL-OSI Global: In her first budget, the chancellor faces a minefield of risks

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Steve Schifferes, Honorary Research Fellow, City Political Economy Research Centre, City St George’s, University of London

    Ahead of the new government’s first budget on October 30, chancellor Rachel Reeves has revealed her determination to change borrowing rules that will allow her to boost investment spending.

    The overriding goal of the government is to promote economic growth, after more than a decade of stagnation in living standards. In the long run, boosting growth will produce more money for the government to improve public services. But while Reeves has given a strong steer as to how she will fund the public investment needed to grow the economy in the long term, she will also have to find money for urgent improvements to struggling public services like the NHS, a key election pledge.

    There are three ways that the government can raise the funds it needs to boost investment and improve key public services. It can raise taxes, increase borrowing, or make cuts to spending. Given the scale of the challenge faced by the chancellor, all three are likely.

    The government had made a rod for its own back with two of its key election pledges: not to raise the main taxes (income tax, national insurance, and VAT) on “working people”, while sticking to a set of fiscal rules that set strict limits on government borrowing. These pledges were designed to appeal to voters hit by the cost of living, while demonstrating to financial markets that Labour would be cautious with public money. Government borrowing reached nearly £80 billion in last six months, the third highest sum on record.

    With the so-called financial “black hole” now estimated at £40 billion, not the £22 billion announced in July, the Treasury will need major tax rises that go well beyond the modest proposals from the election campaign. Although Labour may make some limited increases in other taxes on wealth, such as capital gains tax, this alone will not close the revenue gap.

    The most likely candidate to bridge the gap is an increase in employer national insurance (NI) contributions, for example by making employers pay NI on their pension contributions. This could raise more than £15 billion per year. Reeves and prime minister Keir Starmer argue that this would not breach their manifesto commitments – but it will be politically controversial. Observers, including the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and the Institute for Fiscal Studies, argue that such taxes are eventually felt by workers through either lower wages or staff cuts.

    Further spending cuts are also on the cards. In July the chancellor announced a series of cuts, cancelling planned spending on the reform of social care, withdrawing the winter fuel payment to most pensioners, and ordering departments to make efficiency savings to help fund pay awards.



    Read more:
    The boomer generation hit the economic jackpot. Young people will inherit their massive debts

    Other than for the NHS, Reeves is expected to squeeze spending in “unprotected” departments (prisons and local government, for example). On welfare spending, the Treasury has the rising bill for disability and incapacity benefits in its sights.

    But even these decisions leave the government with a major funding dilemma. How will it pay for capital spending, everything from new hospitals and schools to roads, bridges and other infrastructure? All are key to boosting long-term growth.

    While one of Reeves’ fiscal rules aims to ensure that day-to-day spending must be balanced by tax receipts (leading to the need for tax increases), borrowing for long-term public investment is not part of that calculation. But any increased borrowing for investment appears to be sharply curtailed by another fiscal rule, which says that total government debt (including that incurred by borrowing to invest) as a percentage of GDP must be falling within five years.

    New government, new rules?

    Despite Labour’s embrace of both these tight fiscal rules during the election campaign, the chancellor has now confirmed that she wants to modify this debt rule to allow herself to borrow more.

    She plans to change how overall government debt is measured, effectively redefining it by including more government assets to set against the amount being borrowed. The likely new measure, known as “public sector net financial assets”, would include assets like funded local government pension schemes and student loans income, as well as government-owned companies like Great British Energy.

    This could give the chancellor up to £50 billion in extra borrowing power for public investment. Her argument is that borrowing to build infrastructure gives the government a tangible asset that will pay for itself in the long term by boosting growth and tax receipts.

    None of the choices facing Rachel Reeves will be easy.

    The government’s spending watchdog, the OBR, agrees that in the long term, well-planned public sector investment could benefit the economy, although it says it would take a long time to materialise. Many observers, including the former head of the civil service, Gus O’Donnell, and Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, strongly support increased public investment as a way to boost lagging productivity.

    But there are risks in this strategy if it unsettles financial markets. Total government debt on the current measure now stands at £2.6 trillion, nearly the same size as the whole UK economy. It is costing the Treasury around £74 billion a year in interest payments, almost the size of the education budget.

    If the bond markets (which buy government debt) take fright, they could force up the cost of borrowing further, which could raise interest rates on mortgages and other consumer borrowing. And news of the chancellor’s plan to change to the fiscal rule did cause bond yields to rise slightly. This suggests if government debt rises too rapidly, even within the new rules, this could have a destabilising effect. So the chancellor will have to judge carefully how much of the extra headroom she should use.

    Like all Labour chancellors, Reeves faces the task of keeping both voters and the financial markets happy at the same time. Her strategy could end up alienating rather than pleasing both sides.

    Given the scale of Labour’s ambitions, balanced against her limited resources, she may have little choice but to take such a bold approach. But her path between alienating business and disillusioning the public is a narrow one. And the longer it takes for her strategy to bear fruit in terms of a better standard of living and improved public services, the more difficult things will become politically.

    Steve Schifferes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. In her first budget, the chancellor faces a minefield of risks – https://theconversation.com/in-her-first-budget-the-chancellor-faces-a-minefield-of-risks-241939

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Horror movies are as much a mainstay of Halloween as trick or treat − but why are they so bloody?

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By James Francis, Jr., Instructional Associate Professor, Texas A&M University

    Horror movies are plentiful in 2024, and plenty bloody. The year has seen the release of films awash in blood, such as “Immaculate,” “The First Omen” and “The Strangers.” With Halloween on the way, bloody offerings are streaming, in theaters and running in marathons on cable.

    Watch them, and you’ll likely notice that as the decades pass, the directors, writers and studio executives of these films seem to produce more and more on-screen blood, violence and gore. But why?

    As a professor of horror studies, I explore the depths of the genre with my students – and for us to understand the evolution of blood in horror cinema, we first consider how films reflect their times.

    Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell created proto-slashers with “Psycho” and “Peeping Tom,” respectively. Both films were released in 1960 about four months apart, both feature serial killers, and both operate on a “tell, don’t show” visual aesthetic. Rather than show the blood to the audience, the films provide narrative cues to only suggest the blood.

    Janet Leigh’s shower scene in ‘Psycho’ is one of the most memorable moments in movie history.
    Bettmann via Getty Images

    Guts, gore and so much more

    In “Psycho,” Marion Crane, played by Janet Leigh, is stabbed to death in the famous shower scene. But the quick-cut editing gives only the illusion of her nude body being slashed as a small amount of blood washes down the drain in black-and-white tones. By not shooting “Psycho” in color, and avoiding the image of bright red blood in the bathtub – Hitchcock’s choice – the film doesn’t seem as violent.

    By the late 1960s, the restrictive Hays Code, which prohibited overt on-screen violence and the use of fake blood, was replaced by the less stringent Motion Picture Association of America film ratings system. Filmmakers could latch onto new freedoms to express fear, anxiety and dread in more visceral depictions. One way to do that – more blood.

    In “Night of the Living Dead,” George A. Romero’s 1968 seminal zombie flick, the walking dead consume the flesh of the living. Even though the movie is in black and white, the monochromatic presentation does not dull the display of the undead gobbling guts and licking up blood.

    The film’s release came six months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and a clear connection between Romero’s film and the Civil Rights Movement then taking place is apparent. The movie’s heightened gore correlates to the movement’s all-too-bloody violent struggle, as Ben, played by Duane Jones, the sole person of color among the living, hides from the ghouls in an abandoned farmhouse with a group of six white people.

    Ben works to keep the group safe but faces ongoing pushback from the white male characters. At the end of the film, a group of vigilantes, believing Ben is a zombie, guns him down before tossing his body into a fire.

    The symbolism as a reflection of the times is hard to miss. Romero and John Russo, who co-wrote the screenplay, didn’t initially intend to make a statement on civil rights; but later, during postproduction, Romero realized the assassination of King turned his movie into a “Black film.”

    Bloody metaphors

    Then came the 1970s, when blood was sprayed all over the screen. But Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (1974), William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” (1974) and Ridley Scott’s “Alien” (1979) have something else in common: They feature women protagonists who survive the unthinkable.

    Once again, blood is a common denominator. Sally’s body is covered in it after escaping Leatherface; Regan’s body, along with the blood, spews green vomit; and Ripley sees an alien burst out of a crew member’s chest. But the films weren’t just gory – they were metaphors for the uphill battle for women’s rights in the 1970s.

    The original “Halloween” (1978) also fits here, but with a twist. The character of Laurie Strode, perhaps an early prototype of women protagonists in horror films, connects back to a “tell, don’t show” sensibility while simultaneously embracing changing times. While the first kill shows Michael Myers stabbing his older sister, the audience views the death from the partially veiled perspective of Myers behind his Halloween mask. You see little until her body hits the floor to reveal the blood.

    ‘Halloween’ was a huge hit and has thus far spawned six direct sequels, one offshoot, a two-part remake and one reboot trilogy over 46 years.
    Universal History Archive via Getty Images

    Nightmares and reality

    In the 1980s, the slasher subgenre dominated horror – and the bloodier, the better: These movies focus on the number of kills and the creative ways the victims are dispatched.

    Each sequel in these horror franchises needed to up the kills, if for no other reason than to outdo its predecessors and competitors. Audiences began rooting for villains like Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, all of whom had their own theme music, and in Freddy’s case, trademark one-liners. Many of the villains had more character development than their victims, who seemed interchangeable and little more than fodder for the slasher machine.

    The 1990s had bigger-budgeted, more innovative films, such as Wes Craven’s “New Nightmare” (1994) and “Scream” (1996). Here the attacks are more personal; the stabbings are close-up. CGI, or computer-generated imagery, used in abundance in the “Nightmare” series, allowed for more creative and bloody kills.

    Scarier times mean bloodier movies

    Since 9/11, horror films have existed in a place where there’s no apparent motive other than violence and bloodshed. In “The Strangers” (2008), the villains tie up, torment and savagely maim their victims. In the 2009 remake of “The Last House on the Left,” it’s the villains who meet a bloody end. Contemporary horror understands how senseless killings on screen are effective, because the removal of emotion from the violence parallels real-world incidents.

    ‘Ghostface’ is the villain in the popular ‘Scream’ series.
    James Gourley/Getty Images Entertainment via Getty Images

    By the late 2010s, horror films link to the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, most notably in the “Halloween” reboot trilogy, as Laurie Strode once again confronts Michael Myers and the trauma he inflicted 40 years prior.

    The kills in the new “Halloween” trilogy are extremely bloody and violent. They also mirror the sexual and societal exploitation of women and their bodies. Ultimately, the series allows the protagonist, and the traumatized town of Haddonfield, to acknowledge the evil, confront it and try to finally put an end to it, once and for all.

    The evolution in the horror genre’s presentation of blood and gore doesn’t necessarily make for scarier movies, but they often point to the scarier times in which we live. Earlier horror films, comparatively tamer and with less blood, were often box-office successes. But today’s audiences probably appreciate them more for their artistic merits than the fear they induce.

    The preferences of horror audiences change over time, much like the ebb and flow of the blood depicted in these movies. The original “Halloween” has hardly a drop; the recent reboots are over the top – but still nowhere close to the mayhem depicted in the just-released “Terrifier 3.”

    What the future holds is anyone’s guess. But check out the world around you, and you’ll certainly get a bloody good hint of what’s to come.

    James Francis, Jr. does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Horror movies are as much a mainstay of Halloween as trick or treat − but why are they so bloody? – https://theconversation.com/horror-movies-are-as-much-a-mainstay-of-halloween-as-trick-or-treat-but-why-are-they-so-bloody-241214

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Florida’s new condo laws recognize the total price of living on the beach

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Bill Hughes, Research Director, Kelley A. Bergstrom Real Estate Center, University of Florida

    Repairing high-rise condos like this one in Miami Beach can cost millions. Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    Nearly a million Florida condo owners face an important deadline at the end of the year. That’s when a law passed in 2022 requires most Florida condo associations to submit inspection reports for their buildings and to collect money from owners to pay for any needed repairs.

    Condo owners are reporting that new condominium rules are driving up fees and inducing outrageous assessments.

    The media has picked up on the outrage. News articles about condo owners “facing financial turmoil as a result of new building safety regulations” and how “bills are crippling homeowners” lead readers to believe that Florida lawmakers have imposed an egregious tax on the elderly and those on fixed incomes.

    This is misleading at best.

    As the research director at the University of Florida’s Bergstrom Real Estate Center, I suggest it is important to set emotions aside and see what these laws attempt to accomplish.

    Safety inspections

    The 2022 state condo law, known as SB-4D, and its 2023 follow-up, SB-154, establish three primary requirements: licensed inspections, reporting and disclosures, and reserve funds.

    Importantly, these laws are not tax legislation that directly increases housing costs on condo owners.

    But by requiring more inspections, transparency and funding to cover repairs, many owners will face costs much greater than the amounts paid in the past. These new expenses simply reflect more of the true cost of living in a condo near the ocean.

    Under the laws, all buildings occupied before 1992 must complete a milestone inspection by Dec. 31, 2024. This is an examination of the building’s structural integrity by an architect or engineer.

    The requirement also applies to buildings at least 25 years old that are within 3 miles of the coast.

    If the milestone inspection finds a potential structural problem, testing is required to determine if structural repairs are needed. If they are, owners must fund these repairs without an option to waive by vote.

    If no damage is identified, then the association must report and post the results, and that concludes the requirement.

    Prior to SB-4D, milestone inspections were not required outside of Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Now, they are required statewide and must be reported to local authorities, all unit owners and the public for buyer information.

    Adequate savings for repairs

    The new regulations also require building associations to budget and collect sufficient reserves to cover the cost of maintaining and replacing parts of their buildings subject to regular wear and tear, such as roofs, elevators and balconies.

    History suggests that most homeowners associations struggle to adequately save for repairs and maintenance to keep their properties safe and in top condition.

    “Florida has … more associations that are considered weak [in terms of funded reserves] than any other state,” Will Simons, the head of Florida and Southeast Operations at Association Reserves, which conducts reserve studies for condo and community associations, told a colleague as part of a research article.

    The Champlain Towers South condominium that collapsed in the Miami suburb of Surfside in June 2021, killing 98 people, is just one example. Simons’ company completed a reserve study of the condo just months prior to the collapse and found its association was significantly underfunded.

    The association held approximately US$706,000 in reserves as of January 2021. Association Reserves recommended the association stockpile nearly $10.3 million to account for necessary repairs. That means the Surfside condo’s homeowners association had just 6.9% of the money it needed on hand.

    True costs of living by the ocean

    More than 16,000 condominium associations representing over 900,000 of Florida’s 1.5 million condominium units are currently affected by the new laws because these units are already more than 30 years old.

    Properties that have been sufficiently maintained and hold adequate reserves for future structural repairs will face nothing but an increased disclosure of inspection reports and continued reserve funding.

    Many residents, especially retired seniors, are struggling to adapt to the funding requirement. In response, Gov. Ron DeSantis is indicating some form of relief for owners facing financial hardship over these regulations.

    Frustration is understandable, as current residents are asked to simultaneously fund 30 years of past deterioration and also set aside savings for the next 30 years. However, policymakers are simply setting guidelines that condo owners should have established for themselves. Properties that face significant financial shocks from SB-4D are, by definition, undermaintained or underfunded.

    It is important to separate the intent of these laws from possible overreaction or fraud from condo associations, which is an existing concern. House Bill 1021, signed into law in June 2024, focuses on association governance to manage oversight of this type.

    Oceanside concrete structures, roofs, windows and elevators have limited lifespans. These items need to be repaired or replaced to protect residents’ safety. The new regulations are making the true condo costs transparent to unit owners and buyers.

    Bill Hughes is affiliated with National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF), Pension Real Estate Association (PREA), Counselors of Real Estate (CRE), and CFA Institute.

    – ref. Florida’s new condo laws recognize the total price of living on the beach – https://theconversation.com/floridas-new-condo-laws-recognize-the-total-price-of-living-on-the-beach-239163

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Student-athletes find more power in the changing legal landscape of college sports

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Joshua Lens, Associate Professor of Instruction of Sport & Recreation Management, University of Iowa

    Money disputes abound between players and universities. Aksonov/E+ via Getty Images

    Ever since the NCAA permitted college athletes to get paid by companies that use their names, images and likenesses, athletes have tested the limits of their increasing power.

    One of the latest examples is Matthew Sluka, the starting quarterback for UNLV’s first three games of the 2024 season. After helping lead UNLV to three wins and potential contention for a prestigious College Football Playoff bid, Sluka announced on Sept. 24, 2024, he would sit out the rest of the season. His decision is the result of a dispute over compensation for use of his name, image and likeness, commonly referred to as NIL.

    While the decision sent shock waves through college athletics, it also shines light on the changing balance of power that favors athletes over their coaches and universities.

    As a former lawyer and college athletics compliance administrator – and also as a current university faculty member who has authored several law review articles on legal issues related to NIL – I suggest that Sluka’s situation exemplifies how collegiate athletes can use recent NCAA rules changes to improve their financial situation in the NIL era of college athletics.

    Promises and denials

    Sluka’s NIL agent claims a UNLV assistant coach failed to fulfill a promise he made Sluka during the recruiting process. That promise, according to Sluka’s agent, was that Sluka would receive US$100,000 of NIL compensation from an NIL collective should he attend UNLV. NIL collectives are generally formed to pool individuals’ and businesses’ funds to provide NIL opportunities and compensation for athletes.

    Any such promise by a UNLV assistant coach would violate current NCAA policy. That’s because NCAA policy prohibits coaches from making NIL compensation offers contingent on whether a student enrolls. NIL collectives, on the other hand, may negotiate with athletes during the recruiting process as the result of a U.S. District Court ruling. That ruling prohibits the NCAA from penalizing collectives that negotiate NIL compensation with athletes during the recruiting process.

    In a forthcoming BYU Law Review article, however, I suggest that a university whose star athlete transfers because another school’s collective recruited the athlete possesses a viable legal claim against the collective. That claim would be for inducing the athlete to transfer and violate their athletics scholarship agreement.

    UNLV denies Sluka’s version of events. The university asserts that Sluka’s representative demanded more compensation from UNLV and its NIL collective in order for Sluka to continue playing. UNLV says it then refused, as such a “pay-for-play” agreement violates NCAA policy, which states that athletes may not accept NIL compensation based on “play” or on-field results.

    Perceptions and ‘pay-to-play’

    In Sluka’s case, further complicating things is the issue of whether Sluka’s NIL representative is properly registered with the state as an agent, as required by Nevada law. The state may be interested in pursuing enforcement, given the Nevada secretary of state’s relationship with UNLV’s NIL collective. More specifically, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco V. Aguilar co-founded Blueprint Sports, which operates the collective.

    NCAA rules allow a football player to retain a year of eligibility if they play in four or fewer games in a season. Sluka exercised this ability by leaving his team. There is little that UNLV can do about it beyond taking away Sluka’s athletic scholarship for leaving the team.

    Universities, however, must be increasingly sensitive to providing the necessary procedures, such as hearings and appeal opportunities, before disciplining athletes in the NIL era. As I explain in a forthcoming SMU Law Review article, a recent U.S. District Court decision involving then-University of Illinois men’s basketball player Terrence Shannon Jr. precluded the university from enforcing its suspension of Shannon without providing appropriate processes, lest he lose out on NIL compensation, which the court classified as a constitutionally protected interest.

    Issues of fairness linger in the era of NIL deals for college athletes.
    David Madison via Getty Images

    A slew of lawsuits

    Before it granted college athletes the ability to get paid through NIL deals, the NCAA faced long-standing criticism that its policies were unfair to athletes. The argument was that athletes benefited relatively little compared with the NCAA, conferences and universities, even though it was the athletes who provided the product. Along those lines, former college football stars Terrelle Pryor, Reggie Bush and Denard Robinson all recently filed separate lawsuits against the NCAA over denied NIL compensation opportunities.

    Some college football luminaries are now questioning whether the pendulum of power has swung too far in favor of athletes in the NIL era. Examples include former Alabama head coach Nick Saban and former Ohio State quarterback and longtime ESPN commentator Kirk Herbstreit. Saban has openly wondered whether the current college football model is sustainable. Herbstreit has lamented “the players having all the control” without any accountability to their coaches and universities.

    High-profile college football players, such as quarterbacks Kelly Bryant and D’Eriq King and receiver Gary Bryant Jr., previously exploited NCAA rules permitting them to play in four games and then transfer to another university without sacrificing a season of competition eligibility.

    At least publicly, their decisions were due to on-field considerations such as playing time. Sluka’s decision to forgo playing the rest of the season and transfer was different. It is the first time – but likely not the last – a college athlete has publicly based their decision to leave their team mid-season on an NIL dispute.

    Sluka’s departure from UNLV makes clear that collegiate athletes’ power to move freely between universities in pursuit of their best financial situation has greatly increased. Meanwhile, their coaches’ and universities’ power to keep them on the team and participating has significantly decreased.

    While my full-time employment is as a faculty member at the University of Iowa, I provide consulting services on a contractual basis on the side for universities and athletics conferences. However, I have never performed consulting services for UNLV or any of the individuals mentioned in this piece and do not believe my consulting conflicts in any way with publishing this piece.

    – ref. Student-athletes find more power in the changing legal landscape of college sports – https://theconversation.com/student-athletes-find-more-power-in-the-changing-legal-landscape-of-college-sports-240433

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Debates about Columbus’ Spanish Jewish ancestry are not new − the claim was once a bid for social acceptance

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Devin Naar, Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies and Chair of the Sephardic Studies Program, University of Washington

    ‘Landing of Columbus,’ by John Vanderlyn. Architect of the Capitol via Wikimedia Commons

    In connection to Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples Day, media from the BBC and Fox to Reuters and Haaretz reported on new DNA evidence about the holiday’s original namesake. According to research revealed in a recent Spanish documentary, Christopher Columbus was not Italian, as widely assumed, but Sephardic: of Spanish Jewish lineage.

    About 1 in 5 people in Spain and Portugal today may indeed be of “converso” origin: descendants of Jews or Muslims who converted to Catholicism, often under threat of death or expulsion. Regardless of whether Columbus was genealogically Jewish, though, there is scant evidence that he considered himself to be Jewish in any meaningful way. After all, he wrote approvingly of the Spanish king and queen’s decision to expel Jews from Spain in 1492.

    The claim that Columbus may have been of Spanish Jewish descent is by no means certain; the “new” research has not yet been published in any academic journals. What’s more, it’s far from new.

    The debate over the origins of the New World’s “discoverer” stretch back more than a century, to a time when Columbus was more routinely hailed as a hero – whereas today, he is remembered as the man who initiated European settler colonialism in the Americas and the genocide of Indigenous peoples. For decades, some Spanish and American Jewish activists claimed that Columbus was a Sephardic Jew.

    One of their own

    At the turn of the 20th century, new immigrant groups in the U.S. were seeking acceptance as part of dominant white American society. Spaniards, Jews, Italians and Greeks seized claims that Columbus was one of their own, hoping to combat prejudice that they faced. By linking themselves to the progenitor of white “civilization” in the Americas, they sought to secure their own position on the white side of the color line, with the privileges and protections that status bestowed.

    A poster for the Italian-American Exposition of 1892 in Genoa, Italy – often thought to be Columbus’ birthplace.
    Twice25 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

    U.S. President Benjamin Harrison instituted Columbus Day in 1892, initially as a one-time holiday. The event was meant to celebrate Italian American contributions to society – partly as an apology, following the lynching of 11 Italian immigrants in New Orleans. Decades later, in 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt rendered Columbus Day a federal holiday, even as the U.S. government continued to impose a quota on Italian immigration.

    Early claims about Columbus or members of his entourage being Sephardic Jews also emerged in 1892 – the 400th anniversary of the conquerer’s arrival. Oscar Straus, a Jewish American diplomat, commissioned Meyer Kayserling, a rabbi and scholar, to research Jews’ role in the age of conquest. While Kayserling’s book did not say Columbus himself was of Jewish origin, it claimed that many people connected to his voyages were, including an interpreter named Luis de Torres and funder Luis de Santagel. Straus hoped that highlighting Jewish contributions to American society would curtail rising antisemitism in the United States.

    Spanish strategy

    In contrast, Spanish claims about Columbus as a Sephardic Jew sought to elevate Spain’s own international image. After its 1898 defeat in the Spanish-American War, Spain lost its possessions in the Western Hemisphere and ceased to be a major European colonial power. A cohort of Spanish writers and artists, known loosely as the Generation of ’98, produced an outpouring of cultural creativity grappling with Spain’s new position.

    Some politicians and intellectuals drew on economic and cultural arguments to court descendants of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, whom they viewed as having preserved the Spanish language, and thus providing a new source of influence in the Mediterranean region. Ultimately, the Spanish government issued a decree in 1924 that rendered these descendants eligible for citizenship – an offer it renewed from 2015-2021.

    Raquel Venitura and Moise Cohen were wed in Madrid in 1930, the first Hebrew marriage ceremony in Spain since the Inquisition.
    Bettmann via Getty Images

    Spanish intellectuals became the first to claim that Columbus was a Sephardic Jew, hoping to further elevate Spain’s status, in the wake of the losses of 1898, as the trailblazer of European civilization in the Americas. By World War I, scholar Celso Garcia de la Riega published a theory that not only some of Columbus’ crew had Spanish Jewish origins, but Columbus himself. Nobel Prize nominee Salvador de Madariaga endorsed the theory of Columbus’ Jewish origins in his 1940 book on Don Cristobal Colón.

    Crucial moment

    The rise of Nazism heightened discussion among American Jews about Columbus and brought Sephardic Jews themselves into the debate – hoping that a connection to the explorer would temper rising antisemitism.

    Sephardic Jews also hoped that if Columbus were recognized as one of their own, Ashkenazi Jews, the dominant Jewish group in the United States, would be more likely to treat them with respect. Sephardic Jews coming from the Ottoman Empire – one of the primary places their ancestors sought refuge after Spain – were often maligned as “uncivilized” and “uncultured” due to their associations with the Muslim world.

    As Spanish and Portuguese Jews were the first practicing Jews to come to the Americas, Sephardic Jews arriving from the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the 20th century hoped to hitch their story to the grandeur of the country’s first Jewish communities.

    In 1933, American Jewish writer Maurice David purported to offer Spanish archival evidence to demonstrate Columbus’ Spanish Jewish bona fides. While David was not Sephardic himself, the Sephardic Jewish community in New York advertised his book’s “sensational” claims in La Vara, a newspaper written in Ladino, the main Sephardic language, also called Judeo-Spanish.

    Sephardic men in Seattle, around 1918.
    University of Washington via Wikimedia Commons

    The most prominent Sephardic exponent of the theory was the former editor of La Amerika, the first Ladino newspaper published in the U.S. During the Second World War, Moise Gadol published a booklet in English called “Christopher Columbus was a Spanish-Jew.”

    Gadol sought to elevate the status of his own community of Jews from the Ottoman Empire. By demonstrating links to Columbus, he hoped that all Sephardic Jews – not only those early Spanish and Portuguese Jews who came to the Americas during the colonial period – would be associated with Europe rather than the “Orient,” and with being “white” rather than “brown.”

    Gadol also sought to exert pressure on the American public and government to loosen the quotas preventing Jews fleeing Nazi persecution from entering the United States. Two years before, in 1939, the government had rejected all 900 passengers aboard the SS St. Louis, who were forced to return to Europe – an infamous manifestation of the policy.

    Gadol’s dubious claims about Columbus, however, did not produce the desired results. Sephardic Jews continued to be marginalized within the broader American Jewish community. Meanwhile, immigration quotas based on nationality – in effect until 1965 – continued to prevent Jewish refugees from finding safe haven in the U.S.

    Then … and now

    A century ago, embracing Columbus – and the sweeping colonization he represents – was a way for marginalized immigrant groups to claim a sense of belonging as part of the dominant white caste in American society.

    Today, it provokes uncomfortable questions. especially claims about Columbus as a Jew. Fixating on his ancestry reinforces the racial blood logic of the Spanish Inquisition, according to which a person was considered Jewish or Muslim based on descent alone – to say nothing of the racial logic of Nazi Germany or the Jim Crow South.

    What’s more, the emphasis on Columbus’ personal genealogy distracts from the actual geopolitical forces at play, such as empire building and resource extraction, that propelled Europe’s conquest and mass violence.

    As discussions about antisemitism intensify in the U.S. and across the world, perhaps the idea that Columbus was “Jewish” – a conquistador who initiated the destruction of Indigenous peoples – only aggravates the problem.

    Devin Naar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Debates about Columbus’ Spanish Jewish ancestry are not new − the claim was once a bid for social acceptance – https://theconversation.com/debates-about-columbus-spanish-jewish-ancestry-are-not-new-the-claim-was-once-a-bid-for-social-acceptance-242003

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Doctors are preoccupied with threats of criminal charges in states with abortion bans, putting patients’ lives at risk

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Sophie Bjork-James, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University

    The study took place in Tennessee, a state that has had a near-total ban on abortions since 2022. Anchiy/E+ via Getty Images

    Abortion bans are intended to reduce elective abortions, but they are also affecting the way physicians practice medicine.

    That is the key finding from our recently published article in the journal Social Science & Medicine.

    Medical providers practicing in states that implemented abortion bans in the wake of the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Supreme Court decision are forced to balance the needs of their pregnant patients against the risk that the providers could be prosecuted for treating these patients. This dilemma has serious and far-reaching consequences.

    We interviewed 22 medical providers working in reproductive health care across Tennessee in the six months following the implementation of the state’s total abortion ban in 2022.

    Providers spoke with our team about the need to protect themselves from criminal liability and told us that they were increasingly hesitant to provide care that their patients needed.

    Why it matters

    A 2024 ProPublica investigation found that at least two women have died in Georgia as a result of being denied medical care stemming from the implementation of these abortion bans. Nearly all of our interviewees spoke about their fear that these kinds of deaths would happen.

    Providers told us that patients often believe that these bans include exceptions when the health of the pregnant person is at risk, but that is not always true in practice.

    In states with abortion bans, providers grapple with ensuring the health and autonomy of their patients while facing the looming threat of medical malpractice lawsuits and criminal liability.

    The Tennessee abortion ban allows for an “exception for situations where the abortion is necessary to prevent the death of a pregnant woman or prevent serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of major bodily function.”

    The problem is that such cases are rarely clear-cut. And the stakes for health care providers are very high. In certain states, including Tennessee, if they are found to have provided an abortion in a case where the mother’s life or health was not imminently at risk, they can face felony charges, which could include multiple years in prison.

    In interviews, providers described many cases where terminating a pregnancy is medically necessary for the pregnant person. Take cases of preterm premature membrane rupture, a condition where a pregnant person’s water breaks before 37 weeks of pregnancy. Serious complications can follow a premature membrane rupture, particularly in cases that do not result in the beginning of labor.

    The standard treatment for this condition is to induce labor in an effort to prevent such potential medical complications. However, if it is early on in a pregnancy and the fetus would likely not survive outside the womb, this treatment is now discouraged, as the law does not sufficiently clarify what interventions are allowed to protect the pregnant person.

    In many cases, the physical harm the pregnant person is experiencing correlates with the level of legal protection a medical provider receives.

    Although doctors are trained to follow best practices around health care treatment, fear of malpractice accusations leads to the widely documented practice of defensive medicine, cases where providers either over-administer testing or avoid risks in an effort to prevent malpractice lawsuits.

    Abortion bans make this dynamic far worse because they often involve the threat of criminal prosecution, which is not covered by malpractice insurance. This exposes providers to a new form of risk, one that is shaping how providers interact with patients and provide care.

    Our team calls this new form of defensive medicine “hesitant medicine.” Providers are forced to prioritize their own criminal legal protection over the well-being of their patients, so they hesitate to provide treatment that patients need. Hesitancy is exacerbated by bans that are ambiguous about when a provider can intervene during a pregnancy complication.

    What’s next

    It will take years before researchers have data showing the full picture of how abortion bans are affecting women’s reproductive health. However, our interviews show that these bans are already shaping how providers are treating pregnant people.

    A majority of our interviewees had considered moving to a state without an abortion ban to practice medicine with far less stress around the threat of criminal prosecution, a trend that is already occurring. Over time, this exodus of providers could exacerbate the problem of health care deserts in the United States.

    To mitigate some of this harm, more effort is needed from medical associations, employers and legislatures to clarify or revise the Tennessee “Human Life Protection Act” in a way that better protects women’s health.

    Sophie Bjork-James receives funding from the National Science Foundation.

    Anna-Grace Lilly and Isabelle Perry Newman do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Doctors are preoccupied with threats of criminal charges in states with abortion bans, putting patients’ lives at risk – https://theconversation.com/doctors-are-preoccupied-with-threats-of-criminal-charges-in-states-with-abortion-bans-putting-patients-lives-at-risk-240524

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why returning the name Kuwohi to the Great Smoky Mountains matters

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Seth T. Kannarr, PhD Student in Geography, University of Tennessee

    View from the overlook on Kuwohi of the mountain peaks and ridges of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

    Getty Images

    It’s not every day that the name of a mountain is restored to the one used by Indigenous peoples for centuries.

    But after nearly two years of trying, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians finally convinced the U.S. Board on Geographic Names on Sept. 18, 2024, to formally agree to rename the highest point in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park of Tennessee to Kuwohi (koo-whoa-hee).

    The mountain, known as “Clingmans Dome” since 1859, has been a sacred place for the Cherokee people, serving as a place of prayer, reflection and gathering of mulberries for medicine. In fact, the name Kuwohi translates to “the mulberry place” in Tsalagi, the Cherokee language.

    Though known as Kuwohi by the Cherokee people for hundreds of years, explorer Arnold Guyot effectively ignored that history after he surveyed the mountain range in 1859. Guyot named the peak “Clingmans Dome” after his friend Thomas Lanier Clingman, a North Carolina U.S. senator and a Confederate brigadier general during the Civil War. Clingman never set foot on this mountain, but his name remained there for 165 years until now.

    What is place name repatriation?

    The government’s renaming of the mountain to Kuwohi is a significant example of place name repatriation, or the return of an original, Indigenous name to a particular place or landscape.

    Sometimes the primary motivation for place renaming is to remove an offensive or irrelevant place name from the landscape, such as the renaming of Squaw Peak in Arizona to Piostewa Peak in 2008.

    In other cases, such as the renaming of Mount McKinley in Alaska to Denali in 2016, the motivation was to create a more authentic and historically accurate name for a particular place.

    In the case of Kuwohi, the return to its original name was a mixture of both. The government’s decision recognized the original Indigenous name and removed the name of a white man who defended the enslavement of African people. It is also about restoring a larger sense of respect and recognition of Indigenous identity across the landscape.

    Just as important is the fact that it was individuals from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians who put forward this proposal and remained the lead throughout the process.

    Place naming is only truly reparative if these processes truly reflect the agency and intent of these historically oppressed groups. Otherwise, it contributes to the long history of dismissing Indigenous claims to land and culture by not involving them.

    View of observation tower on Kuwohi in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
    Joshua Moore/Getty Images

    Why does place naming matter?

    A name is one of the most fundamental ways to identify and give meaning to places. In other words, the name of the place makes a big difference in how people perceive it.

    There is growing public recognition that place names can transmit harmful messages that misrepresent the history and identity of minority communities. Place names also can demonstrate how those in power have used them to disrespect and misrepresent ethnic and racial groups that have been historically discriminated against.

    For those groups, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names found in 2022 that derogatory place names are a source of recurring trauma.

    If place naming did not matter, disputes over name changes would not occur. Some critics find place renaming to be an example of unnecessary political correctness, while others see it as a meaningful solution that will leave a lasting positive impact.

    The elimination of names of Confederate generals from some U.S. military bases provides another example. Former President Donald Trump has pledged to restore the name “Fort Bragg” to the North Carolina Army base that’s known today as Fort Liberty if reelected. Originally named after Braxton Bragg, a slave-owning Confederate general, the fort was one of nine U.S. installations that the Defense Department ordered in 2023 to have their names changed to among 3,700 recommendations.

    Trump’s stance exemplifies the wave of backlash that has occurred against local and state school officials across the country that have removed the names of Confederate generals and others from public buildings.

    Lavita Hill (L) and Mary Crowe in 2022.
    Cherokee One Feather

    Despite such backlash, efforts by Indigenous people and civil rights advocates slowly move forward and are seen across the U.S. in places like streets, neighborhoods, college campuses and beyond.

    For Lavita Hill and Mary Crowe, the two members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians who took the lead on submitting the proposal, the renaming of Kuwohi was a moment of success. Their campaign was heavily inspired by the renaming of Mount Doane to First Peoples Mountain in Yellowstone National Park in 2022.

    Crowe told reporters that she saw friends and relatives shed tears when they learned of the name change. “It was humbling,” she said. “It was beautiful.”

    What comes next?

    The success of the effort to restore the name Kuwohi may help other communities in their ongoing place renaming efforts.

    One such proposal involves a 100-year-old fight to rename Mount Rainier in Washington state to “Tacoma,” the original name given to it by the Salish people of the Pacific Northwest.

    View of the Great Smoky Mountains at sunset from Kuwohi.
    Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket/Getty Images

    This movement began in 1924 among the Salish and other groups because its namesake, Peter Rainier, was a British naval officer who was known as being “anti-American.”

    Another example is a push by 20 different Indigenous tribes, including the Lakota Nation and the Oglala Sioux Tribe, to rename Devils Tower in Wyoming to Bear Lodge. The current name of this butte resulted from a poor English translation of the original Indigenous name of “bear lodge” to “bad god’s tower.” Over time, the name was simplified to “Devils Tower.”

    As geographers who have studied the significance of place renaming, we have learned that it is important to engage the folks that these movements will benefit most in all conversations and decisions.

    What is at stake is not just removing insulting names, but also ensuring that the process of changing place names is collaborative of all Americans, especially historically oppressed communities, to truly be restorative and meaningful for society.

    Seth T. Kannarr is affiliated with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park as an Education Branch VIP (Volunteer-In-Parks) part-time.

    Derek H. Alderman once served on the Federal Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names, U.S. Department of Interior.

    – ref. Why returning the name Kuwohi to the Great Smoky Mountains matters – https://theconversation.com/why-returning-the-name-kuwohi-to-the-great-smoky-mountains-matters-240644

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Foreign countries are helping autocracies repress exiled dissidents in return for economic gain

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Rebecca Cordell, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh

    Governments, even democratic ones, are willing to aid autocracies in silencing exiled dissidents if the host nation thinks it’s in its economic interest.

    That is what we found when looking into cases of transnational repression – the act of governments reaching across their national border to repress diasporas and exiles – from 2014 to 2020.

    Since 2014, international watchdog Freedom House recorded 1,034 cases of governments reaching across borders to illegally deport, abduct, intimidate or assassinate their citizens.

    The most frequent offenders were autocratic countries such as China (213 cases), Turkey (111), Egypt (42), Tajikistan (38), Russia (32) and Uzbekistan (29).

    These governments have extended their reach into over 100 foreign countries to silence critics abroad. While autocracies sometimes act alone or collaborate with nongovernment actors, the most common form of transnational repression involves the governments of countries to which targeted people have fled. This includes democracies working closely with autocratic regimes to arrest, detain and deport people who face the risk of persecution and repression in the home country.

    Our analysis of Freedom House data found that cooperation in transnational repression is most common among trade partners and when foreign countries wish to maintain or improve their economic relationship with autocratic governments.

    Meanwhile, autocratic countries were most successful in securing cooperation among foreign countries with a weak rule of law.

    For example, Turkey has successfully secured cooperation from multiple countries with a weak rule of law, such as Lebanon, in its efforts to silence Turkish journalists and overseas citizens linked to the opposition Gülen movement. Meanwhile, China has used its economic leverage to compel foreign governments to cooperate, with Cambodia deporting 20 Uyghur asylum-seekers to China after signing 14 trade deals with the country. Similarly, Thailand forcibly returned numerous dissident journalists to China, its largest trade partner.

    Our analysis looked specifically at countries hosting refugees and asylum-seekers, since having diaspora populations is necessary for transnational repression to occur. For example, we included Poland, which hosts many Russian refugees, but excluded Belize, which has none.

    Using Freedom House’s database, we tracked 608 cases of direct government cooperation in transnational repression. We focused specifically on detentions, renditions without legal representation, and unlawful deportations, but we excluded cases such as assassinations where host countries weren’t directly involved.

    Then, using statistical models, we analyzed IMF data on annual trade flows and World Bank assessments of a country’s rule of law.

    We found strong quantitative evidence that international cooperation on transnational repression relies on a country’s economic ties to the origin country and the quality of the country’s rule of law.

    Why it matters

    Our findings suggest that many countries are willing to sacrifice the civil liberties of foreign dissidents for economic opportunities with authoritarian governments. Autocracies also appear to be strategically targeting vulnerable states with weak rule of law institutions, such as the police, courts or immigration authorities.

    Foreign countries that are less concerned about the consequences of breaking the rule of law are easier to co-opt and coerce, especially when they’re more financially dependent on the autocratic partner.

    This provides autocracies with both the opportunity to repress and the leverage to elicit cooperation in violation of the “non-refoulement” rule – which, under international law, protects migrants from being returned to a country where they are at risk of torture.

    What still isn’t known

    It is difficult to know the full scale of transnational repression. Data measuring transnational repression is able to capture only the “tip of the iceberg,” as Freedom House has put it.

    Many instances likely go unobserved due to the secret nature of human rights violations and governmental attempts to cover up, censor and deny abuses. We also know less about what causes autocracies to carry out transnational repression through collaborations with nonstate actors – including political parties, educational and religious groups, businesses and criminal gangs – rather than governments.

    More research is needed to establish what prompts autocracies to engage in different types of tactics, from nonphysical instances of transnational repression – harassment, intimidation and threats – to physical forms, such as detention, abduction and physical violence.

    The decision to engage in one tactic over another may be driven by different strategic benefits and costs.

    The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Foreign countries are helping autocracies repress exiled dissidents in return for economic gain – https://theconversation.com/foreign-countries-are-helping-autocracies-repress-exiled-dissidents-in-return-for-economic-gain-240069

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Threatening ‘the enemy within’ with force: Military ethicists explain the danger to important American traditions

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Marcus Hedahl, Professor of Philosophy, United States Naval Academy

    Members of the Utah National Guard were deployed to Washington in June 2020 in response to public protests and demonstrations. AP Photo/Alex Brandon

    On the campaign trail, former President Donald Trump has declared there are serious threats to the United States. First, he said, there is “the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous,” as he told Fox News in an Oct. 13, 2024, interview.

    He went on to say that “the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think. And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military.”

    Donald Trump discusses ‘the enemy within’ the United States.

    When asked on CNN about Trump’s remarks about using the military on U.S. soil, Mark Esper, one of five people who led the Defense Department during Trump’s presidency, said Americans “should take those words seriously,” most especially because Trump had already tried to do so when he was president.

    As professors of military ethics, we worry that Trump’s actions while president, and his comments about his plans for a potential second term, may put the military in a tough position. The July 1, 2024, Supreme Court ruling giving the president immunity for official acts – potentially including as commander in chief of the military – would make that tough position even more difficult.

    Donald Trump says armed forces should take on ‘the enemy from within’ the U.S.

    Response to demonstrations

    In the summer of 2020, protests, including some violent ones, arose in cities around the U.S. in the wake of the May 25 murder of George Floyd. Then-President Trump announced he was considering sending the U.S. military into the streets of several American cities. He had already deployed some National Guard members in Washington in an effort to control the demonstrations there.

    At the time, the two of us considered the possibility of dissent within the military hierarchy, saying that resistance would be most effective “if it were to come from those at the top.”

    Indeed, many of the highest-ranking generals, admirals and Cabinet-level advisers resisted Trump’s requests to send the military to “beat the f— out” of protesters and “crack their skulls” – or even “just shoot them.”

    Though Trump reportedly wanted to bring as many as 10,000 soldiers to Washington, fewer troops were deployed in the nation’s capital. No federal military personnel were used against public demonstrations in the U.S. that summer. Some National Guard troops were called up by state governors, not federal orders.

    The reasons for civilian control

    For his potential second term, Trump says he wants to hire Cabinet and other government officials who will follow his orders without question, rather than people who might try to prevent his worst inclinations from being enacted.

    Questions about dissent and disobedience will therefore likely fall on those at more junior levels of military service in a second Trump administration than they did in the first.

    The U.S. military has long been dedicated to the principle of civilian control. To minimize the chance of the kind of military occupation they suffered during the Revolutionary War, the country’s founders wrote the Constitution requiring that the president, an elected civilian, would be the commander in chief of the military. In the wake of World War II, Congress went even further, restructuring the military and requiring that the secretary of defense be a civilian as well.

    For that reason, in a time of increasing political polarization, military educational institutions are focusing even more explicitly on the oath military members take to the Constitution, rather than to a person or an office.

    As the Joint Chiefs of Staff reminded the military after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, and just before the inauguration of Joe Biden as president, military personnel serve the nation’s interests, not those of a politician or a political party.

    Nonpartisanship could become partisan

    When faced with a potential order to deploy the U.S. military within the nation’s borders, however, service members may find themselves in a situation where upholding the military’s tradition of staying out of politics could itself appear partisan.

    Military members have a duty to obey orders from superior officers. But as military ethicists, we recognize that the content of an order is not the only factor that determines whether it is a moral one.

    The political motivation for an order may be equally important. That’s because the military’s obligation to stay out of politics is deeply intertwined with the mutual obligation of civilian officials not to use the military for partisan reasons.

    If an elected official were to attempt to use the military for obviously partisan ends, the decisions of military personnel to either follow the order or resist it would open them up to accusations of partisanship – even if their actions were attempts to protect the military’s strict partisan neutrality.

    At the nation’s founding, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson worried about a military that would be loyal to a particular leader rather than to a form of government. James Madison was concerned that soldiers might be used by those in power as instruments of oppression against the citizenry.

    Trump has said the National Guard or the military could “easily handle” political protesters. He has recommended one “really rough, nasty” hour of police violence to curb criminal activity. He has expressed a desire for military officers to be obedient to him and not the Constitution.

    It’s not clear that military members could follow those kinds of orders and remain nonpartisan. By refusing to follow orders about military deployment to U.S. cities for political ends, members of the armed forces could actually be respecting, rather than undermining, the principle of civilian control. After all, the framers always intended it to be the people’s military – not the president’s.

    In 2020, military personnel clear protesters from a park in Washington.
    Drew Angerer/Getty Images

    Risks for military members

    There is a long line of military heroes who had the moral courage not to follow immoral orders. In fact, it was a junior officer who first exposed the widespread use of torture in the global war on terror.

    That particular example may be useful to consider in the weeks and months ahead, given the significant effort at the time to argue that some of those immoral orders could nonetheless be legal.

    Recently, some of Trump’s former military advisers have raised concerns about the the potential use of U.S. troops in American cities. But several of his civilian advisers have already recommended being less reticent about finding legal means to deploy the military within the country. And a July 1, 2024, Supreme Court ruling gave the president criminal immunity for official acts – which almost certainly include giving orders to the military.

    Regardless of who wins the 2024 presidential election, there will likely be significant protests over policy – perhaps even over the results themselves. If the military is ever called in because of those actions, military members would have to consider whether they could ethically follow the orders to do so. To be ready to answer these important questions, they have to consider them now.

    We often ask our students to imagine themselves in numerous different ethical situations, both real and hypothetical. In the present circumstance, we believe one set of ethical questions could quickly become very concrete for those serving:

    “Would you obey an order from a president – a particular president giving an order for a particular reason – to deploy to a U.S. city? What might it mean for the nation if you did? And what might it mean for American democracy if, in some circumstances, you were brave enough not to?”

    Many Americans claim to venerate military men and women, thanking them for their service and standing to celebrate them at sporting events. They may need much more support than that from the American people, and soon.

    The academic views expressed in this article are the views of the authors alone and should not be read as endorsing any candidate for office. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Naval Academy, the Naval Postgraduate School, the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense or any other entity within the U.S. government; the authors are not authorized to provide any official position of these entities.

    This article contains some material previously published on June 11, 2020.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Threatening ‘the enemy within’ with force: Military ethicists explain the danger to important American traditions – https://theconversation.com/threatening-the-enemy-within-with-force-military-ethicists-explain-the-danger-to-important-american-traditions-241964

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The best horror movie you’ve never seen

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Scott Malia, Associate Professor of Theatre, College of the Holy Cross

    In ‘Trick ‛r Treat,’ Sam wreaks havoc on characters who betray Halloween traditions. Legendary

    It’s scary movie season, a time when many people watch films about zombies, serial killers, werewolves, magic and mysterious monsters who are impossible to kill.

    However, as far as I know, there’s only one film that features all of those elements – and you’ve probably never seen it.

    Made in 2007, “Trick ‛r Treat” consists of four interconnected horror stories, each about 15 to 20 minutes long, that all take place on a single Halloween night.

    While characters from one story sometimes appear in other segments, the unifying force in the film is Sam, a mysterious creature wearing a burlap mask. He takes umbrage whenever a character disrespects a Halloween tradition, whether it’s by scaring away trick-or-treaters or blowing out a jack-o’-lantern before Halloween is over. Each meets a gruesome end.

    Horror buffs eventually discovered the film. Today, it’s hailed as a modern classic.

    ‘Trick ‛r Treat’ ended up forgoing a theatrical run.

    What went wrong?

    “Trick ‛r Treat” was produced by a major studio, Warner Bros. It featured A-list stars, such as Brian Cox and Oscar-winner Anna Paquin. It was produced by Bryan Singer, who was known for churning out hits such as “X-Men” and “The Usual Suspects.” And though its director, Mike Dougherty, was making his directorial debut, he had worked as a screenwriter on films such as “X2: X-Men United” and “Superman Returns.”

    Despite all of these credentials, the film’s theatrical release was delayed from fall 2007 to 2008. Then a theater run was canceled altogether, with Warner Bros. finally releasing it on video in 2009.

    The studio never gave an official reason for pulling the theatrical release; however, some critics have speculated that the box office success of the “Saw” franchise and Rob Zombie’s “Halloween” remake were factors.

    Other reports suggest that the film’s anthology format, its mixture of horror and comedy, and a plot featuring murdered children made it too hard a sell.

    Given the cost of marketing and promoting “Trick ‛r Treat” to a nationwide audience, perhaps the risk wasn’t worth it for a film with a relatively small US$5 million budget. Dougherty himself said these hang-ups constituted a “perfect storm”, suggesting that no one development sealed the film’s fate.

    Michael Dougherty’s film included a number of elements that became mainstays of the genre – he was just a bit early to the game.
    Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

    Bypassing the box office

    As recently as a decade ago, films released directly to DVD were viewed as flops or cash grabs. In fact, there’s an entire subgenre called “mockbusters” – low-budget rip-offs of studio films, such as “Transmorphers,” which tried to piggyback the success of the “Transformers” franchise, and “Atlantic Rim,” which attempted to do the same for the 2013 blockbuster “Pacific Rim.”

    Then there are direct-to-video sequels meant to capitalize off hits. Disney made a lot of money in the late 1990s and early 2000s producing widely panned, direct-to-video animated features such as “The Return of Jafar” and “Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World.”

    But second lives for films that were initially snubbed or ignored are nothing new.

    “The Boondock Saints” was briefly screened in a handful of theaters for a single week in 1999 before being dumped into the video market. Only then did viewers find it, and it became a cult favorite that eventually begat a sequel.

    The stigma of direct-to-video release has diminished over the past decade thanks to the rise of streaming, in which content made directly for home viewing can receive critical acclaim and attract subscribers.

    Actor Nicolas Cage has made a cottage industry of this format. While some have attributed his massive output in the past decade to his financial difficulties, Cage’s films “Joe” (2013), “Mandy” (2018) and “Pig” (2021) have all received critical acclaim, despite sometimes only running in a handful of theaters for a week before their release into streaming markets and video on demand.

    It’s this sort of tradition that led to the rediscovery of “Trick ‛r Treat.”

    Nicolas Cage attends the special screening of ‘Mandy’ in 2018.
    Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic via Getty Images.

    Hipster horror

    The appeal of “Trick ‛r Treat” is rooted in its subversion of horror tropes.

    For example, women and children, who’ve historically served as victims in the genre, have a lot more agency in Dougherty’s Halloween tale. In fact, the mysterious Sam was played by Quinn Lord, who was only 8 years old when the film was shot. In the film, the character’s origin, age and gender remain undefined since Sam is masked or covered in prosthetics for the entire film, blurring the line between human and monster.

    In addition, the film’s complex structure, which some speculated might have hurt its chances for commercial success, helped fuel the film’s critical praise. Dougherty called it “‘Pulp Fiction’ meets ‘Halloween,’” a nod to the interlocking structure of Quentin Tarantino’s breakout film and the setting of John Carpenter’s horror staple, which also unfolds over one Halloween night.

    It has become somewhat of a cliché to say that esteemed art, initially overlooked, was “ahead of its time.”

    Still, it would be fair to say that “Trick ‘r Treat” arrived on the cusp of what has been called a “horror renaissance” in the past 15 years. Directors like Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, Robert Eggers and Mike Flanagan have found critical and commercial success by branding themselves as horror auteurs.

    In addition, Peele and directors like Nia Dacosta, who helmed 2021’s “Candyman,” have opened up a brand of horror that deals with social issues and identity. Dougherty’s film also anticipated a trend of horror films with a darkly humorous streak, including Peele’s “Get Out” and David Gordon Green’s reimagined “Halloween” sequels.

    Despite the film’s rocky beginnings, “Trick ‛r Treat” received a belated theatrical release in 2022, which has spurred talk of a potential sequel.

    Dougherty even acknowledges that the film may owe its current popularity to its botched release. While some mainstream films disappear quickly, “Trick ‛r Treat” – currently streaming on Max – reappears every Halloween. Just like Sam.

    Scott Malia does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. The best horror movie you’ve never seen – https://theconversation.com/the-best-horror-movie-youve-never-seen-241528

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations blend Indigenous customs and European thinking in surprising ways

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ezekiel Stear, Assistant Professor of Spanish World Languages, Literatures & Cultures, Auburn University

    In Mexico City, parades on Day of the Dead feature people in colorful costumes. FG Trade Latin/Collection E+ via Getty Images

    Every year, five hours west of Mexico City on Lake Pátzcuaro in Michoacán, residents flock to the island of Janitzio to visit the graves of their departed relatives.

    On the evening of Nov. 1, the Noche de animas, or Night of the Souls in Purgatory, families will bring a meal to share with their ancestors. They will also use the time to clean the graves and decorate them with elaborate displays of candles and marigolds. Some will spend the night sleeping among the tombstones.

    In Mexico City, parades will feature people in colorful customs with large skull masks while skull-shaped floats move through the streets to the rhythm of Aztec drums. Marigolds, skull-painted faces and swishing skirts will fill the downtown from the main square of the Zócalo to Bellas Artes, the Palace of Fine Arts.

    This vibrant scene reflects the blending of Indigenous, European and specifically Mexican customs that define Day of the Dead celebrations today.

    As a scholar of colonial Mexico, I study how Indigenous people have maintained their traditions despite the Spanish invasion. Whereas scholars once thought that these cultures simply blended – a phenomenon called syncretism – researchers today understand more about how Indigenous people intentionally deliberated about which of their own traditions to continue, and how.

    Celebrations for the dead had an important place in Indigenous cultures before the Spanish came. But, as historian James Lockhart explained, the Spanish, in their attempts to impose their religion and customs, often did not recognize what was most important to local cultures. As long as Indigenous celebrations for the dead did not contradict Spanish preaching, they could go unnoticed.

    Indigenous choices

    The immediate effects of the Spanish invasion brought hard choices for Indigenous people. Most of the Indigenous deaths of the conquest came not by the sword, but by epidemic diseases such as smallpox and salmonella, for which the native population had no natural immunity. In the 16th century, whole towns depopulated, and people needed to decide where they would go to find the best opportunities.

    After the Spanish came, around Lake Pátzcuaro, displaced families suffering the effects of European illnesses and the deaths of family members moved to cities and towns. On the shores of the lake and on the island of Janitzio, they continued their customs of sharing harvest produce with the dead.

    Setting aside time to care for the tombs of the dead became a yearly observance during the colonial period. After independence from Spain in 1821, a series of state decrees in Michoacán even encouraged residents to honor the war heroes buried on Janitzio.

    Since the island had already been sacred for hundreds of years, it was a logical site for the veneration of the new heroes of Mexican independence. So, patriotism strengthened the Indigenous tradition of honoring the dead, which was already underway.

    How Indigenous practices survived

    In Mexico City, colonial policies also ironically allowed Indigenous practices to survive. Before the Spanish came, the Aztecs displayed thousands of skulls of sacrificial victims on a skull rack, called the tzompantli.

    In their view, the vital energy released from sacrificed bodies fed the Sun and ensured that the universe continued.

    Aztec ritual human sacrifice.
    Via Wikimedia Commons

    The Aztecs honored many of their sacrificial victims before these rituals with days of feasting, fine clothes, luxury lodging and other pleasures. Each year, during the festival of Miccailhuitontli, the “little feast of the dead” in the ninth month of the Aztec calendar, children were ritually killed. In the tenth month, it was the adults who were sacrificed during the festival of Huey Miccailhuitl, “great feast of the dead.”

    Although Spanish military invaders suppressed these celebrations, they also unintentionally gave the newly colonized Aztecs ways to combine their beliefs with Christian celebrations.

    Franciscans and other religious orders who followed brought the medieval rituals of religious theater and processions as part of their efforts to convert the local people. Both of these highly public medieval practices gathered large numbers of spectators, as Aztec rituals had done before the invasion.

    The Indigenous actors in these plays, themselves recent converts, portrayed pageants during Christmas, Holy Week and other observances.

    While the friars did not plan to draw on Indigenous beliefs, these religious plays had parallels with the preconquest Aztec practice of deity impersonation. For example, before the Spanish came, in the festival of Toxcatl the Aztecs would dress up a specially chosen prisoner as their deity of divination Tezcatlipoca. The impersonator danced and paraded through the city on his way to be sacrificed atop the main temple.

    When Catholic religious theater came to the city, local actors continued to take on the persona they represented to such a degree that one local actor even hanged himself after portraying Judas in a Passion play.

    During the long colonial period, from the 16th to the 18th century, religious processions became a mainstay in the city. Historian Susan Schroeder recounts the chronicles of the Indigenous writer Domingo Chimalpahin about multiple processions as a source of Indigenous communities’ civic pride.

    Over time, taking cues from the “mascaradas” – the large, papier-mâché heads of Spanish processions and festivals – Day of the Dead began featuring enormous, colorful skulls parading through the streets, just feet away from where the Aztecs once displayed human skulls.

    Beyond graves

    Besides the usually cited All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day on Nov. 1 and 2, more covert European elements have influenced Day of the Dead practices. One of these is the belief in the soul and an afterlife. Historian Jill McKeever Furst explains that in the Aztec view, only death in battle or during childbirth earned immortality.

    Most people went to Mictlan, the Land of the Dead, releasing their vital energy into the universe and ceasing to exist as individuals. Today, depictions of the living interacting with the dead, singing to or talking with them, such as in the movie “Coco,” likely reflect adapted ideas about the afterlife from Christianity, as cultural critic Anise Strong has noted.

    European influences have also shaped home altars with their seven or nine levels, representing layers of underworld, Earth and paradise. Research has revealed that many Indigenous communities in what is now Mexico viewed the universe as flat and placed Mictlan far away from the living, rather than below the Earth.

    Historians Jesper Nielsen and Toke Reunert have noted that it is likely that Indigenous images of the universe as made of three realms, with a reward in the sky, Earth in the middle, and the world of the dead below, come from Dante’s “Divine Comedy”. Dante’s literature depicts the universe in a vertical fashion – from the heights of heaven, through purgatory, Earth and with abysmal hell at the bottom.

    As local people converted, they left horizontal views of the universe and moved toward a positive up and a negative down. The vertical cosmos contrasts with ancestral Indigenous views of the universe as a plane where humans and supernatural beings interacted.

    People gather on the island of Janitzio, Mexico, to clean the graves of their deceased loved ones, decorate them with marigolds and bring baskets with offerings for the Day of the Dead in Mexico.
    Gerardo Vieyra/NurPhoto via Getty Images

    Celebrations continue

    The island of Janitzio on Lake Pátzcuaro and Mexico City show how Indigenous choices helped their traditions survive despite Spanish influence. In the city of Pátzcuaro, sharing food with the dead during harvests continued alongside All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. Meanwhile, in Mexico City, the history of public ritual sacrifice gave way to the religious pageantry of Spain’s Renaissance.

    Today, individuals and groups continue to decide how to celebrate the Day of the Dead. Whether it’s about communicating with the dead, letting go, or believing they remain among the living, the holiday’s strength lies in its ability to hold many meanings.

    As long as Indigenous, Spanish and modern Mexican customs continue in home rituals and public celebrations of past lives, current lives and cultural heritage, the Day of the Dead will be alive and well.

    Ezekiel Stear does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations blend Indigenous customs and European thinking in surprising ways – https://theconversation.com/mexicos-day-of-the-dead-celebrations-blend-indigenous-customs-and-european-thinking-in-surprising-ways-240619

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: From Confederate general to Cherokee heritage: Why returning the name Kuwohi to the Great Smoky Mountains matters

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Seth T. Kannarr, PhD Student in Geography, University of Tennessee

    View from the overlook on Kuwohi of the mountain peaks and ridges of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

    Getty Images

    It’s not every day that the name of a mountain is restored to the one used by Indigenous peoples for centuries.

    But after nearly two years of trying, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians finally convinced the U.S. Board on Geographic Names on Sept. 18, 2024, to formally agree to rename the highest point in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park of Tennessee to Kuwohi (koo-whoa-hee).

    The mountain, known as “Clingmans Dome” since 1859, has been a sacred place for the Cherokee people, serving as a place of prayer, reflection and gathering of mulberries for medicine. In fact, the name Kuwohi translates to “the mulberry place” in Tsalagi, the Cherokee language.

    Though known as Kuwohi by the Cherokee people for hundreds of years, explorer Arnold Guyot effectively ignored that history after he surveyed the mountain range in 1859. Guyot named the peak “Clingmans Dome” after his friend Thomas Lanier Clingman, a North Carolina U.S. senator and a Confederate brigadier general during the Civil War. Clingman never set foot on this mountain, but his name remained there for 165 years until now.

    What is place name repatriation?

    The government’s renaming of the mountain to Kuwohi is a significant example of place name repatriation, or the return of an original, Indigenous name to a particular place or landscape.

    Sometimes the primary motivation for place renaming is to remove an offensive or irrelevant place name from the landscape, such as the renaming of Squaw Peak in Arizona to Piostewa Peak in 2008.

    In other cases, such as the renaming of Mount McKinley in Alaska to Denali in 2016, the motivation was to create a more authentic and historically accurate name for a particular place.

    In the case of Kuwohi, the return to its original name was a mixture of both. The government’s decision recognized the original Indigenous name and removed the name of a white man who defended the enslavement of African people. It is also about restoring a larger sense of respect and recognition of Indigenous identity across the landscape.

    Just as important is the fact that it was individuals from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians who put forward this proposal and remained the lead throughout the process.

    Place naming is only truly reparative if these processes truly reflect the agency and intent of these historically oppressed groups. Otherwise, it contributes to the long history of dismissing Indigenous claims to land and culture by not involving them.

    View of observation tower on Kuwohi in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
    Joshua Moore/Getty Images

    Why does place naming matter?

    A name is one of the most fundamental ways to identify and give meaning to places. In other words, the name of the place makes a big difference in how people perceive it.

    There is growing public recognition that place names can transmit harmful messages that misrepresent the history and identity of minority communities. Place names also can demonstrate how those in power have used them to disrespect and misrepresent ethnic and racial groups that have been historically discriminated against.

    For those groups, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names found in 2022 that derogatory place names are a source of recurring trauma.

    If place naming did not matter, disputes over name changes would not occur. Some critics find place renaming to be an example of unnecessary political correctness, while others see it as a meaningful solution that will leave a lasting positive impact.

    The elimination of names of Confederate generals from some U.S. military bases provides another example. Former President Donald Trump has pledged to restore the name “Fort Bragg” to the North Carolina Army base that’s known today as Fort Liberty if reelected. Originally named after Braxton Bragg, a slave-owning Confederate general, the fort was one of nine U.S. installations that the Defense Department ordered in 2023 to have their names changed to among 3,700 recommendations.

    Trump’s stance exemplifies the wave of backlash that has occurred against local and state school officials across the country that have removed the names of Confederate generals and others from public buildings.

    Lavita Hill (L) and Mary Crowe in 2022.
    Cherokee One Feather

    Despite such backlash, efforts by Indigenous people and civil rights advocates slowly move forward and are seen across the U.S. in places like streets, neighborhoods, college campuses and beyond.

    For Lavita Hill and Mary Crowe, the two members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians who took the lead on submitting the proposal, the renaming of Kuwohi was a moment of success. Their campaign was heavily inspired by the renaming of Mount Doane to First Peoples Mountain in Yellowstone National Park in 2022.

    Crowe told reporters that she saw friends and relatives shed tears when they learned of the name change. “It was humbling,” she said. “It was beautiful.”

    What comes next?

    The success of the effort to restore the name Kuwohi may help other communities in their ongoing place renaming efforts.

    One such proposal involves a 100-year-old fight to rename Mount Rainier in Washington state to “Tacoma,” the original name given to it by the Salish people of the Pacific Northwest.

    View of the Great Smoky Mountains at sunset from Kuwohi.
    Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket/Getty Images

    This movement began in 1924 among the Salish and other groups because its namesake, Peter Rainier, was a British naval officer who was known as being “anti-American.”

    Another example is a push by 20 different Indigenous tribes, including the Lakota Nation and the Oglala Sioux Tribe, to rename Devils Tower in Wyoming to Bear Lodge. The current name of this butte resulted from a poor English translation of the original Indigenous name of “bear lodge” to “bad god’s tower.” Over time, the name was simplified to “Devils Tower.”

    As geographers who have studied the significance of place renaming, we have learned that it is important to engage the folks that these movements will benefit most in all conversations and decisions.

    What is at stake is not just removing insulting names, but also ensuring that the process of changing place names is collaborative of all Americans, especially historically oppressed communities, to truly be restorative and meaningful for society.

    Seth T. Kannarr is affiliated with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park as an Education Branch VIP (Volunteer-In-Parks) part-time.

    Derek H. Alderman once served on the Federal Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names, U.S. Department of Interior.

    – ref. From Confederate general to Cherokee heritage: Why returning the name Kuwohi to the Great Smoky Mountains matters – https://theconversation.com/from-confederate-general-to-cherokee-heritage-why-returning-the-name-kuwohi-to-the-great-smoky-mountains-matters-240644

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Russia’s Brics summit shows determination for a new world order – but internal rifts will buy the west some time

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

    The recent Brics summit in the Russian city of Kazan was less notable for what happened at the meeting than for what happened before, on the margins, or not at all. Among the notable things that did not happen was another expansion of the organisation.

    Since the addition of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at the 2023 Brics summit in Johannesburg, which almost doubled the number of member countries from the original five (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), further enlargement has stalled.

    Argentina, which was also invited in 2023, declined to join. Saudi Arabia, another 2023 invitee, has not acted on the offer to become a member either. Its de-facto ruler, crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, was among the notable absentees in Kazan.

    And Kazakhstan, Russia’s largest neighbour in Central Asia, decided not to join shortly before the summit. This drew Russia’s ire, resulting in a prompt ban on imports of a range of agricultural products from Kazakhstan in retaliation.

    While invitees have declined the opportunity to join Brics, a long list of applicants have not been offered membership. According to a statement by Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, at a meeting of senior Brics security officials in September, 34 countries have expressed an interest in closer relations with Brics in some form.

    This appears to be a substantial increase in interest in Brics membership compared to a year ago, when South Africa’s foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, listed 23 applicants ahead of the 2023 summit.

    But the fact that, since then, only six invitations have been extended – and four accepted – indicates that formal enlargement of the organisation, at least for now, has been stymied by the inability of current members to forge consensus over the next round of expansion and the reluctance on the part of some invitees to be associated with the organisation.

    Meetings on the margins

    The summit declaration may offer little of substance. But there were a number of bilateral meetings before and in the margins of the gathering that are more indicative of the direction of Brics. Perhaps most importantly, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, and China’s president, Xi Jinping, held their first face-to-face discussion in five years.

    This is a remarkable change from just a few months ago, when tensions between New Delhi and Beijing were intense enough for Modi to cancel his participation in the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Astana, Kazakhstan. Yet, with a deal now reached over their countries’ longstanding border dispute, the two most populous and, in terms of GDP, economically most powerful members of Brics have an opportunity to rebuild their fraught relations.

    A warming of relations between China and India could generate more momentum for Brics to deliver on its ambitious agenda to develop, and ultimately implement, a vision for a new global order. Implicit in this would be a shift of leadership in Brics from China and Russia to China and India, and with it, potentially a change from an anti-western to a non-western agenda.

    This is, of course, something that exercises Putin. He acknowledged as much when he referred to the global south and global east in his remarks at the summit’s opening meeting. He also emphasised that it was important “to maintain balance and ensure that the effectiveness of Brics mechanisms is not diminished”.

    In his own bilateral meetings before and during the summit, Putin drove home the point that, despite western efforts, Russia was far from isolated on the world stage. One-to-one meetings with Xi, Modi, South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, and the president of the UAE, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, gave Putin the chance to push his own vision of Brics as a counterpoint to the US-led west.

    This may be a view shared in the global east – Russia, China and Iran, as well as non-Brics members North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela. But many in the global south – particularly India and Brazil – are unlikely to go all in with this agenda. They will focus on benefiting from their Brics membership as much as possible while maintaining close ties with the west.

    Lacking a coherent agenda

    India is the most significant player in Brics when it comes to balancing between east and west. Nato member Turkey is the equivalent on the outside. The country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, travelled to Kazan and did not shy away from an hour-long meeting with his “dear friend” Putin.

    The relationship between Moscow and Ankara is fractious and complex across a wide range of crises from the South Caucasus, to Syria, Libya and Sudan. Yet, on perhaps the most divisive issue of all, Russian aggression towards Ukraine, Turkey has consistently maintained opened channels of communication with Russia and remains the only Nato power able to do so.



    Read more:
    Turkey attempts to broker power between east and west as it bids to join Brics

    The fact that there has been relatively little public pressure from official sources in the west on Erdoğan to stop is probably a reflection that such communication channels are still valued in the west. This, and Nato’s continued cooperation with India, point to a hedging strategy by the west. India cooperates with the US, Australia and Japan – the so-called Quad group of nations – on security in the Indo-Pacific, and it has maintained political dialogue with Nato since 2019.

    Turkey and India may not see eye-to-eye with the west on all issues. But neither do they with the global east camp inside Brics, and especially not with Russia. If nothing else, this limits the ability of Brics to forge a coherent agenda, deepen integration and ultimately mount a credible challenge to the existing order.

    Relying on India and Turkey to do the west’s bidding in undermining Brics, however, is not a credible long-term strategy. Brics may have achieved little as an organisation, but the Kazan summit declaration indicates that its key players continue to harbour aspirations for more.

    However, as the flailing expansion drive of the organisation indicates, there is also an internal battle in Brics over its future direction. This, in turn, creates space and time for the west to exercise more positive and constructive influence in the ongoing process of reshaping the international order.

    The global east may be beyond redemption, but there is still a massive opportunity to reengage with the global south.

    Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.

    – ref. Russia’s Brics summit shows determination for a new world order – but internal rifts will buy the west some time – https://theconversation.com/russias-brics-summit-shows-determination-for-a-new-world-order-but-internal-rifts-will-buy-the-west-some-time-241610

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why Donald Trump’s accusations of election interference are a lose-lose situation for Keir Starmer

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Christopher Featherstone, Associate Lecturer, Department of Politics, University of York

    With less than two weeks to go until the US presidential election, another surprise twist has emerged. Donald Trump has accused the “far-left” Labour party in the UK of election interference by sending volunteers to help the Kamala Harris campaign. This news must have come as a surprise to prime minister Keir Starmer.

    The core of the accusations made by Trump and his team is that Labour was offering financial support to volunteers and helping them arrange accommodation for their trips to the US – and that this amounted to “illegal foreign national contributions” to the Harris campaign.

    And at the centre of those accusations appears to be a now-deleted LinkedIn post from a Labour official saying she had “10 spots available” to campaign in North Carolina. Labour insists this did not mean any financial support was being offered. Labour figures have suggested the campaigning was being done by private citizens.

    Trump’s lawyers filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) against both the Labour party and the Harris campaign on October 22 claiming otherwise. And the finance point is key, since – under the rules of the FEC – foreign volunteers can assist a campaign, but only if they are unpaid. 10 Downing Street insists the campaigners associated with Labour were not being paid.

    Want more politics coverage from academic experts? Every week, we bring you informed analysis of developments in government and fact check the claims being made.

    Sign up for our weekly politics newsletter, delivered every Friday.

    While there are important questions that need to be answered as to whether the Labour party did break US election rules, the questions about the implications of Trump’s accusations for US-UK relations are likely to be of even greater significance.

    Regardless of whether Trump’s accusations are sustained by the FEC, they are likely to frame his perception of the Starmer government should he win the presidency in less than two weeks’ time. Labour has made improving relations with politicians on both sides of the aisle in Washington a priority. These efforts appear to have been undermined overnight with Trump’s accusations.

    These accusations will likely be investigated after the election has been held. If Trump wins the presidency, he will have enormous influence over this investigation and the surrounding media coverage, which would be an unwelcome situation for Starmer to find himself in.

    Starmer visits Joe Biden at the White House in September 2024.
    Flickr/Number 10, CC BY-NC-ND

    Potentially even more serious is the fact that if Trump loses, this could be the story that he focuses on to explain why he lost. It may seem trivial but triviality has not stopped Trump before. The suggestion that Labour helped Harris could prove just as useful to Trump as the unfounded claims of widespread “voter fraud” in 2020 that helped him seed an insurrection on January 6.

    Whether the FEC finds that the role of Labour activists in the Harris campaign constitutes foreign interference or not, entanglement in this story is unlikely to help relations with either a Trump or a Harris White House.

    UK invovlement in US elections

    Foreign activists have long been involved in US election campaigning – and they do so on both sides.

    The current UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, campaigned for Barack Obama in 2012. In 2017, the Australian Labor party was fined by the FEC for paying for their volunteer’s flights to the US to campaign for Bernie Sanders in Democratic primaries.



    Read more:
    What US election interference law actually says about Labour volunteers

    Indeed, the Trump campaign has used foreign activists and campaigners in the past. Before he decided to run for the seat of Clacton-on-Sea in July 2024, Nigel Farage claimed that he was going to devote his time to campaigning for Trump. Farage has repeatedly been on stage with Trump at his rallies. Former UK prime minister Liz Truss also attended the Republican National Convention in 2024, supporting Trump and calling Joe Biden, then the Democratic Party’s nominee, “weak”.

    What is rare, however, is FEC scrutiny on all this campaigning. While the involvement of foreign volunteers is legal and normal in the US, the rules are rarely debated or tested by a legal probe. These accusations may initiate renewed attention to the issue, and potentially a change in these rules in future elections.

    Importantly, while the coverage of Trump’s accusations against Labour and the Harris campaign have received huge coverage in the UK, attention in the US is limited. Much of the US media coverage has focused on allegations from John Kelly against Trump. Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, has accused Trump of being a fascist and of having said that he wished he had generals like “Hitler’s generals”. Trump’s claims about the UK have therefore received far less attention in the US than might have been anticipated. This will have diminished the impact of Trump’s claims with US voters, good news for the future. But Starmer should still be concerned about the impact on diplomatic relations.

    As with many of Donald Trump’s accusations and more controversial comments, there are a lot of moving parts. Trump showed how important his own personal attitudes were in US diplomacy during his previous administration. He is unlikely to forget about these accusations anytime soon, whether he wins or loses.

    Christopher Featherstone does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Why Donald Trump’s accusations of election interference are a lose-lose situation for Keir Starmer – https://theconversation.com/why-donald-trumps-accusations-of-election-interference-are-a-lose-lose-situation-for-keir-starmer-242063

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why billionaire philanthropy might not be as generous as you think

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tobias Jung, Professor of Management, University of St Andrews

    Walmart heiress Alice Walton is one of the richest people in the world and a celebrated philanthropist, whose lifetime giving total recently hit an estimated US$1.5 billion (£1.2 billion). Her largest gift to date, US$390 million in the year to September 2023, included US$249 million for the Alice L Walton School of Medicine in her family’s hometown in Arkansas, US.

    Walton’s other major philanthropic activities include founding the Alice L. Walton Foundation, to increase access to the arts, improve education, enhance health and advance economic opportunities. She also established the Art Bridges Foundation to expand access to American art across the nation. So it seems unsurprising that Forbes magazine ranks Walton as one of the 30 biggest lifetime givers in the US.

    Her philanthropic efforts have also been recognised with accolades and awards: from being named one of the world’s most influential people by Time magazine, to receiving the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art Medal and the Getty Medal for contributions to the arts and humanities.

    But before joining the celebrations, it is important to reflect on billionaire philanthropy for a moment.

    From almost a decade of research at the Centre for the Study of Philanthropy & Public Good, it is clear that any billionaire philanthropy comes with questions about the societal costs underpinning it. In the case of huge businesses such as Walmart (a retail chain of hypermarkets, discounters and grocery shops), the sort of areas that come in for scrutiny are labour practices and the treatment of workers, the impact on communities and the environment, as well as tax practices and the cost to the taxpayer.

    Such concerns are not new, of course. They are continuations of debates that go back to at least the beginning of the 20th century and the potential tensions between the business practices and philanthropic activities of major industrialists – from Andrew Carnegie, JP Morgan and John D. Rockefeller back then to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg or the Sackler family, founders of Purdue Pharma, nowadays.

    There are also questions about the extent to which billionaire philanthropy is actually generous. While US$1.5 billion might sound impressive, it seems a bit like small change when examined more closely.

    The size of the sacrifice

    With an estimated net worth of US$91.3 billion, Walton has given away around 1.64% of her wealth. According to Forbes’ ranking of billionaires’ philanthropy, this puts her in the second lowest category of philanthropists: those who have given away between 1% and 4.99% of their wealth.

    It makes her more generous than her older brother Rob Walton, who is classified as having given away less than 1% of his wealth, but her US$1.5 billion is dwarfed by the philanthropic efforts of some of her contemporaries, such as novelist and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott or investor Warren Buffett.

    Scott, with an estimated net worth of US$35.3 billion, has already given away more than US$17 billion, or almost half of her wealth. Buffett, who has given around US$60 billion to date, has promised to give away 99% of his wealth, currently sitting at US$146.4 billion, during his lifetime or at death.

    But do these philanthropic efforts actually present personal sacrifices?

    It is difficult to get access to billionaires’ income data, but we can assume that a balanced portfolio for a wealthy investor can currently provide an annual return of around 5-8%. In the case of the US$91.3 billion fortune that Walton holds, this could mean an annual return of up to US$7.3 billion per year, acknowledging that depending on investment strategies and successes this might be lower or substantially higher. Compared to this, US$1.5 billion appears, once again, to be quite small.

    Whether they present major or meaningful contributions for the billionaire themselves is outlined by Warren Buffett.

    “I am giving up nothing that has utility to me”.

    Buffett is a signatory of the Giving Pledge, a campaign he launched in 2010 with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Gates’ then-wife Melinda French Gates as an invitation to billionaires to commit the majority of their wealth to philanthropy.

    In his pledge, Buffett highlights that although he will give away 99% of his wealth, in fulfilling this pledge neither he nor his family will give up anything they will ever need or want. The remaining 1% of their wealth is sufficient – he has highlighted that “this pledge will leave my lifestyle untouched and that of my children as well”.

    So it seems that while billionaire philanthropy might be impressive in absolute terms, and offers significant opportunities for addressing urgent social, cultural, economic, political and environmental challenges, in relative terms its actual contribution might be quite negligible.

    This is particularly the case when you compare the societal costs associated with amassing billionaire fortunes with the societal contributions their philanthropy makes, and taking into account the wider damage that extraordinary economic inequality brings about.

    So while the major sums involved in billionaire philanthropy can offer unrivalled potential for change, it is still necessary and important to ask questions about the actual significance, scale and sacrifices for all of the parties involved.

    Tobias Jung does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Why billionaire philanthropy might not be as generous as you think – https://theconversation.com/why-billionaire-philanthropy-might-not-be-as-generous-as-you-think-241862

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: From fish to clean water, the ocean matters and here’s how to quantify the benefits

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stefanie Broszeit, Senior Scientist, Marine Ecosystem Services, Plymouth Marine Laboratory

    Drake’s Island in Plymouth Sound, Devon, is part of the UK’s first national marine park. Artur Niedzwiedz/Shutterstock

    Nature protection, conservation and restoration is “not a trivial matter but key to human survival,” according to scientists quoted in a 2005 UN report. To demonstrate this, they developed the concept of “ecosystem services” – the benefits that people derive from nature. Over the next 20 years, this concept has been in constant development to reflect our growing understanding of how ecosystems work and how we benefit from them.

    For many people, it feels wrong to take a human-centred view on nature. But for governments and conservation organisations, this concept is a useful tool. It helps us quantify the value of nature and make sure certain aspects are conserved and protected.

    My team and I provide other scientists with information about how coastal areas help to regulate the climate and reduce water pollution. In part, we work with marine conservation experts who restore ecosystems that have been depleted, such as seagrass or oyster beds. This can help choose the best approaches to restoring coastal areas to healthy habitats while providing other benefits, such as shelter for young fish or food for seabirds. Another group of scientists use our data to assess the value of these habitats, now and in the future once they have been restored to good health.

    In my work as a marine ecologist, I split ecosystem services into three different groups. First, provisioning services include the provision of food or timber along many other material gains we get from nature. For marine ecosystem services ,this includes fish and chemicals used for research and medicines. Second, regulating services support our planet and human wellbeing. Mussels clean water by filtering it and seagrass takes up and stores carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, thereby helping to regulate the climate. Third, cultural services include leisure and recreation such as sea swimming or fishing.

    Diving deeper

    A baby crab on seagrass growing at Kingsand, Plymouth Sound.
    Stefanie Broszeit, CC BY-NC-ND

    To better understand these marine ecosystem services and how to use them sustainably, my research delves into some of the more complicated processes that regulate ecosystem services. In terms of the ocean’s role in regulating climate, it’s not just about seagrass.

    Seaweeds such as kelp take up carbon too, but cannot bury it in the soil beneath them due to holding onto rocks rather than having roots. They store carbon by getting buried in the deep sea when they are whipped off the rocks during winter storms and transported by currents into deeper waters. There, worms and crabs can feed on this important food source, drawing the carbon deeper into the sediment.

    Another step is to measure the benefits of particular ecosystem services. Food provision can be relatively easily measured by data collected by harbours to quantify how much fish is being landed and sold. So we can estimate the volume of harvested fish and calculate their market value. Some cultural services, such as measuring the wellbeing benefits people receive from interacting with coastal environments, can be more difficult to measure.

    Plymouth Sound is a great place to assess both benefits to human wellbeing and marine ecology, because not only is this city a hotspot for marine biology research with three internationally recognised marine institutes, it’s also the UK’s first national marine park. Here, I can engage not only with the ecological sciences and datasets but also with environmental psychologists who study how nature affects us and how we affect nature. My team and I have created the marine, social and natural capital laboratory to explore this more.

    Plymouth Sound provides a multitude of ecosystem services.
    Robert Harding Video/Shutterstock

    Because of so many complex variables, it’s important that scientists like me choose the appropriate indicators to estimate the value of contributions from different ecosystem services. Then, we can assess whether interventions such as restoring seagrass or building a port might help or hinder the marine environment.

    Often, different ecosystem services might interact or conflict with each other. Fishing in the northeast Atlantic might, for example, negatively affect marine mammals such as seal if the fish they rely on as food are also being eaten by humans. So we need to look at the bigger picture to assess all of the ecosystem services provided by a particular area of ocean. And as our understanding of ecosystem services develops, we can refine efforts to give nature a helping hand.

    Swimming, sailing, even just building a sandcastle – the ocean benefits our physical and mental wellbeing. Curious about how a strong coastal connection helps drive marine conservation, scientists are diving in to investigate the power of blue health.

    This article is part of a series, Vitamin Sea, exploring how the ocean can be enhanced by our interaction with it.

    Stefanie Broszeit receives funding from the United Kingdom Research and Innovation and from Horizon Europe, funding European research through the European Commission.

    – ref. From fish to clean water, the ocean matters and here’s how to quantify the benefits – https://theconversation.com/from-fish-to-clean-water-the-ocean-matters-and-heres-how-to-quantify-the-benefits-241625

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The US is now at risk of losing to China in the race to send people back to the Moon’s surface

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jacco van Loon, Reader in Astrophysics, Keele University

    Who will be first to return humans to the lunar surface? Merlin74 / Shutterstock

    Will the next human to walk on the Moon speak English or Mandarin? In all, 12 Americans landed on the lunar surface between 1969 and 1972. Now, both the US and China are preparing to send humans back there this decade.

    However, the US lunar programme is delayed, in part because the spacesuits and lunar-landing vehicle are not ready. Meanwhile, China has pledged to put astronauts on the Moon by 2030 – and it has a habit of sticking to timelines.

    Just a few years ago, such a scenario would have seemed unlikely. But there now appears to be a realistic possibility that China could beat the US in a race that America, arguably, has defined. So who will return there first, and does it really matter?

    Nasa’s Moon programme is called Artemis. The US has involved international and commercial partners to spread the cost. Nasa set out a plan to get American boots back on lunar soil over the course of three missions. In November 2022, Nasa launched its Orion spacecraft on a loop around the Moon without humans aboard. This was the Artemis I mission.

    Artemis II, scheduled for late 2025, is similar to Artemis I, but this time Orion will carry four astronauts. They will not land; this will be left for Artemis III. For this third mission, Nasa will send a man and the first woman to the lunar surface. Though as yet unnamed, one of them will be the first person of colour on the Moon.

    Artemis III astronauts are set to use SpaceX’s Starship vehicle to land on the Moon.
    Nasa

    Artemis III was scheduled to launch this year, but the timescale has slipped several times. A review in December 2023 gave a one in three chance that Artemis III would not have launched by February 2028. The mission is currently slated to happen no earlier than September 2026.

    Meanwhile, China’s space programme seems to be moving at speed, without significant failures or delays. In April 2024, Chinese space officials announced that the country was on track to put its astronauts on the Moon by 2030.

    It’s an extraordinary trajectory for a country that launched its first astronaut in 2003. China has been operating space stations since 2011 and has been ticking off important, challenging firsts through its Chang’e lunar exploration programme.



    Read more:
    Nations realise they need to take risks or lose the race to the Moon

    These robotic missions returned samples from the surface, including from the lunar far side. They have tested technology that could be crucial for landing humans. The next mission will touch down at the lunar south pole, a region that attracts intense interest because of the presence of water ice in shadowed craters there.

    This water could be used for life support by a lunar base and turned into rocket propellant. Making rocket propellant on the Moon would be cheaper than bringing it from Earth, making lunar exploration more affordable. It is for these reasons that Artemis III will land at the south pole. It’s also the planned location for US and Chinese-led bases.

    On September 28 2024, China showed off a spacesuit, to be worn by its Moon walkers, or “selenauts”. The suit is designed to protect the wearer against extreme temperature variations and unfiltered solar radiation. It is lightweight and flexible. Is it a sign of China already overtaking the US in one aspect of the Moon race? The company manufacturing the Artemis Moon suit, Axiom Space, is currently having to modify several aspects of the reference design given to them by Nasa.

    The lander that will carry US astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface is also delayed. In 2021, Elon Musk’s SpaceX was given the contract to build this vehicle. It is based on SpaceX’s Starship, which consists of a 50m-long spacecraft that launches on the most powerful rocket ever built.

    On October 13 2024, Starship scored a successful fifth test flight. But several challenging steps are required before the Starship Human Landing System can carry astronauts down to the lunar surface. Starship cannot fly directly to the Moon. It must refuel in Earth orbit first (using other Starships that act as propellant “tankers”). SpaceX needs to demonstrate refuelling and conduct a test landing on the Moon without crew before Artemis III can proceed.

    In addition, during Artemis I, Orion’s heat shield suffered considerable damage as the spacecraft made the high-temperature return through Earth’s atmosphere. Nasa engineers have been working to find a remedy before the Artemis II mission.

    Too complicated?

    Some critics argue that Artemis is too complex, referring to the intricate way in which astronauts and Moon lander are brought together in lunar orbit, the large number of independently operating commercial partners and the number of Starship launches required. Depending who you ask, between four and 15 Starship flights are needed to complete the refuelling for Artemis III.

    Former Nasa administrator Michael Griffin has advocated a simpler strategy, broadly along the lines of how China expects to accomplish its lunar landing. His vision sees Nasa relying on traditional commercial partners such as Boeing, rather than relative “newbies” such as SpaceX.

    However, simple is not necessarily better or cheaper. The Apollo programme was simpler, but at almost three times the cost of Artemis. SpaceX has been more successful, and economical, than Boeing in sending crews to the International Space Station.

    The Artemis I mission was broadly successful, but Orion’s heat shield suffered damage.
    Nasa

    New technology is not developed through simple, tried approaches but in bold endeavours that push boundaries. The James Webb Space Telescope is highly complex, with its folded mirror and distant position in space, but it allows astronomers to peer into the depths of the universe as no other telescope can. Innovation is especially crucial bearing in mind future ambitions such as asteroid mining and a settlement on Mars.

    Does it matter whether the first 21st-century selenauts are Chinese or American? This is largely a question about the relationship between governments and their citizens, and between nations.

    Democratic governments depend on public support to safeguard funding for expensive, long-term ventures – and prestige is an important selling point. But prestige in a 21st-century Moon race will be earned by doing it well, not sooner. Rushing back to the Moon could be costly, both financially and in the risk to human life.

    Governments must set an example of responsible behaviour. Peace, inclusivity and sustainability should be guiding principles. Going back to the Moon must not be about dominion or superiority. It should be a chance to show that we can improve on how we have previously behaved on Earth.

    Jacco van Loon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. The US is now at risk of losing to China in the race to send people back to the Moon’s surface – https://theconversation.com/the-us-is-now-at-risk-of-losing-to-china-in-the-race-to-send-people-back-to-the-moons-surface-241716

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Why do kids cheat? Is it normal, or should I be worried?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Penny Van Bergen, Head of School of Education and Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Wollongong

    Basilco Stock Studio/ Shutterstock

    Everyone knows a kid who cheats at Monopoly or backyard cricket. Perhaps they have even cheated on a test at school.

    If your notice your own child is doing this, you may worry they are headed for a life of crime.

    But in developmental terms, cheating is not usually a cause for concern for kids.

    What is cheating?

    Cheating occurs when a child behaves dishonestly to gain an unfair advantage. They might pretend to roll a six, peek at others’ cards, score a sports game incorrectly, or use video game modifications to skip levels.

    Despite parents’ and teachers’ best efforts, cheating is remarkably common. In one experiment, five-year-olds were asked not to peek inside a box while the experimenter left the room. Almost all peeked and most then denied having done so.

    A sign of development

    The capacity to deceive can signal the emergence of new skills, including an understanding of others peoples’ minds.

    To cheat effectively, we have to think about what someone else is thinking. We then need to trick them into believing a different reality. These cognitive skills only emerge in preschool, and it is not until the primary years that children can successfully maintain a false story over time.

    Research shows it is very common for children to cheat.
    spass/Shutterstock

    Cheating at school

    As children get older, they can get more cautious about cheating in general, but also start cheating at school.

    In a US study, more than three in four high school students reported cheating at school at least once over the past year.

    Common techniques included sharing their work with others, getting test answers ahead of time, plagiarising from the internet, and collaborating when they weren’t supposed to.

    Students were more likely to see cheating as acceptable when helping a peer, or when they could rationalise the behaviour in a pro-social way (for example, they ran out of time and needed to cheat because they were caring for a family member).

    Temptation matters

    Like adults, children are more likely to cheat when the temptation is greater. In one study, children aged seven to ten were more likely to cheat at a die-rolling game if they could win a bigger prize.

    Children and adolescents also report being more likely to cheat to avoid negative consequences. As far back as 1932, US school principal M.A. Steiner wrote how too much work encourages students to cheat. In a 2008 study, students themselves reported cheating at school because they were uninterested in the material or under pressure to perform.

    While temptation encourages cheating, the risk of being caught can encourage honesty. Children must weigh up the benefits of cheating against the risks of being caught.

    As they get older, children may also consider how cheating impacts their sense of self. For example, “being a good person is important to me – so I won’t cheat”.

    Do boys cheat more than girls?

    Some children are more likely to cheat than others. For example, in a 2019 study in which children’s rolls of six dice could win them prizes, boys cheated more than girls. Boys and girls also approached cheating differently: girls were more likely to cheat to avoid losses, while boys were equally motivated by losses and gains.

    Social skills also make a difference. A 2003 US study showed second grade children who have been rejected by their peers are more likely to cheat at board games – even when playing with new children they have never met before. It is possible such children are not as good at regulating their emotions and behaviours.

    Adolescents with lower self-restraint and greater tolerance for breaking rules are more likely to accept academic cheating, as are those who misbehave in class.

    On study suggested boys are more likely to cheat than girls.
    Jacob Lund/Shutterstock

    How can adults discourage cheating?

    Although cheating is common, it can pose increasing problems for children and teens as the stakes become higher. Research with Chinese students in the eighth grade showed those who cheated when scoring their own test were less likely to have learned the correct answer later on.

    Here are four things parents and teachers can do to help discourage cheating.

    1. Have open conversations: talk openly and compassionately about why cheating is not a good idea (for example, “it ruins the fun for your friends”). Research shows children and adolescents who made a promise to experimenters not to cheat at a game were less likely to do so. But children who fear getting in trouble are less likely to tell the truth.

    2. Don’t put too much pressure on results: when talking about school, use language related to learning rather than performance (“just try your best, that’s all you can do”). Studies show highly competitive academic environments make cheating more likely, because the benefits of success and risks of failure are heightened.

    3. Be positive about your child’s character: in one study, preschoolers were allocated to one of two groups. In the “good reputation” group, children were told “I know kids in your class and they told me you were a good kid”. In another group, children were not told anything. All children were then asked not to peek at a tempting toy while the experimenter left the room. Those in the good reputation group were less likely to cheat (60%) than those in other group (90%).

    4. Show kids how it’s done: if adults are being honest and open, children are more likely to do the same. In one study, children were told there was a big bowl of candy in the next room. When this turned out to be a lie, children themselves were more likely to cheat in a game and to lie about it.

    Penny Van Bergen receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the NSW Department of Education.

    – ref. Why do kids cheat? Is it normal, or should I be worried? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-kids-cheat-is-it-normal-or-should-i-be-worried-242022

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Want genuine progress towards restoring nature? Follow these 4 steps

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yi Fei Chung, PhD candidate in Environmental Policy, The University of Queensland

    Black Dingo/Shutterstock

    “Nature positive” is seemingly everywhere. Two weeks ago, Australia hosted the first Global Nature Positive Summit. This week, nations are meeting in Colombia for a global biodiversity summit to discuss progress on nature positive commitments.

    Nature positive has a simple meaning: ensuring more nature in future than there is now. Making it a reality is the hard part.

    It’s necessary because nature is in trouble. Once common species are becoming threatened and threatened species are going extinct. Humans, too, will be severely impacted. When ecosystems are healthy, they provide vital benefits. Insects pollinate crops, trees slow floodwaters, earthworms, fungi and soil critters make healthy soil and natural vistas improve our mental wellbeing.

    While Australia’s government is working to embed nature positive ideas in environmental reform efforts, we may see lip service rather than real change. The government’s Nature Positive Plan faces opposition from businesses and politicians ahead of a looming election. And the plan itself doesn’t fully align with true nature positive outcomes.

    In our article published today in Science, we lay out four vital steps to ensure nature positive policies are actually positive for nature.

    Step 1: Ensure biodiversity increases are absolute

    At present, Australia’s planned nature positive reforms would only require developers removing habitat to achieve a relative net gain for nature compared to business as usual.

    We have argued this approach won’t work – it should be an absolute net gain.

    It might sound abstract – but it makes all the difference. For instance, consider a population of endangered koalas living on the site of a new mine. Any negative impact to koalas would have to be offset with a benefit to the species elsewhere, usually on a separate site.

    If Australia had absolute net gain in effect, the company would have to ensure there are more koalas overall. If the mine site and an offset site had a combined population of 100 koalas before the development, this combined population would need to be more than 100 koalas after the development – even though some will be lost.

    But let’s say these 100 koalas over two sites were expected to fall to 80, even if the mine didn’t happen. In this case, a relative net gain could be achieved if the mine and offset site had 90 koalas. The population fell, but less than it would have otherwise.

    Most state and national conservation laws use relative net gain in their biodiversity offsets. It slows the biodiversity decline – but it’s still a decline.

    By contrast, England brought in a net gain approach in February of this year, with developers now required to provide a 10% net gain in biodiversity.

    Importantly, the vast majority of developments affecting threatened species habitat never require any offset at all. Plugging this major gap is also key.



    Read more:
    Developers in England will be forced to create habitats for wildlife – here’s how it works

    For nature positive to work properly, any damage done to a species by a development has to be offset by net gain. Pictured: Peak Hill gold mine in NSW.
    Phillip Wittke/Shutterstock

    Step 2: Avoid conservation payments in risky situations

    The Australian government plans to introduce conservation payments, where developers can pay into a government-managed fund rather than providing direct offsets.

    If developers were to cut down trees used by the critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum, for example, they could choose either to improve habitat elsewhere to offset the damage – or they could pay into the fund instead.

    This is a risky plan. For one, it’s often almost impossible or extremely expensive to find suitable habitat for critically endangered species because they have very little habitat remaining.

    It’s far better to avoid all further habitat removal. For developers, this would mean avoiding damage to rare habitat in the first place.

    Even where offsetting is possible, payments are often inadequate to cover the cost of purchasing and managing an offset site.



    Read more:
    Developers aren’t paying enough to offset impacts on koalas and other endangered species

    Then there’s the time lag. The fund might take years to buy or restore habitat sites, adding to already-long delays between damage and any benefit. And worse, under the government’s proposal, the money could be used for different, potentially less threatened species.

    Under Queensland’s scheme, most developers choose to pay into a fund rather than create their own offset sites. Very little of these offset funds have been spent.

    Meanwhile, the latest independent assessment of the New South Wales biodiversity offset payment scheme recommended the fund be completely phased out.

    Step 3: Go beyond compensation

    Compensating for new damage is important. But it’s not nearly enough. Over the last century, we have done huge damage to the natural world. Australia’s southern seas were once ringed with oyster reefs, for instance, but these were nearly all fished out.

    We need to begin to recover what was lost by restoring ecosystems, managing weeds and reducing risk of diseases.

    Nature-positive laws should include funding and actions designed to produce absolute gains in biodiversity over and above any required compensation.

    The world has long seriously underfunded conservation, including threatened species recovery, ecosystem restoration and protected area management. Australia alone needs a roughly 20-fold increase in funding to actually bring back threatened species.

    While this sounds large, it’s off an extraordinarily low base – just A$122 million in 2019. By contrast, we spend over $100 billion on human health each year.

    Two years ago, the government passed the first of its nature-positive reforms to create a nature repair market aimed at drawing more funds into nature restoration. But as the market will rely on voluntary private sector investment, we don’t know how much funding will flow or whether it will focus on threatened species recovery.

    Step 4: Effectively implement nature positive laws

    Ensuring compliance with new nature-positive laws requires transparent and effective enforcement, such as through the independent national environment protection authority with extra powers proposed in Australia.

    Its independence and powers may be less than required, due to proposed call-in powers allowing the minister to overrule decisions. True independence and adequate resources are crucial.

    If governments do pass environmental reforms, we need to collect adequate and robust data on species to know if they are actually working to boost nature recovery. At present, many Australian threatened species remain unmonitored.

    Is nature positive within reach?

    It’s not easy to create a future with more nature than we have now. Australia’s current government took office vowing to embrace nature positive. To date, their reforms are not yet likely to make that a reality.



    Read more:
    Australia desperately needs a strong federal environmental protection agency. Our chances aren’t looking good

    But the task will only get more urgent. Meaningful nature-positive policy means ensuring targets of absolute net gain for threatened species, ensuring strict compensation for any nature loss, independently resourcing and financing other recovery efforts and implementing these laws effectively.

    With a course correction, Australia can still act as a leading example for other nations as they reform their own policies to meet nature-positive ambitions. Now is the time for real and decisive action.

    We acknowledge our research coauthors, Brooke Williams (Queensland University of Technology), Martine Maron (University of Queensland), Jonathan Rhodes (Queensland University of Technology), Jeremy Simmonds (2rog), and Michelle Ward (Griffith University).

    Yi Fei Chung has received funding from UQ Research Training Scholarship. He is also involving in a Australian Research Council Linkage Project with financial and in-kind support from the NSW Department of Planning and Environment, the Biodiversity Conservation Trust, Tweed Shire Council, and the NSW Koala Strategy.

    Hannah Thomas has received funding from WWF-Australia and an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. She is an early-career leader with the Biodiversity Council.

    – ref. Want genuine progress towards restoring nature? Follow these 4 steps – https://theconversation.com/want-genuine-progress-towards-restoring-nature-follow-these-4-steps-240569

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: For type 2 diabetes, focusing on when you eat – not what – can help control blood sugar

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evelyn Parr, Research Fellow in Exercise Metabolism and Nutrition, Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research, Australian Catholic University

    Lizardflms/Shutterstock

    Type 2 diabetes affects 1.2 million Australians and accounts for 85-90% of all diabetes cases. This chronic condition is characterised by high blood glucose (sugar) levels, which carry serious health risks. Complications include heart disease, kidney failure and vision problems.

    Diet is an important way people living with type 2 diabetes manage blood glucose, alongside exercise and medication. But while we know individualised, professional dietary advice improves blood glucose, it can be complex and is not always accessible.

    Our new study looked at the impact of time-restricted eating – focusing on when you eat, rather than what or how much – on blood glucose levels.

    We found it had similar results to individualised advice from an accredited practising dietitian. But there were added benefits, because it was simple, achievable, easy to stick to – and motivated people to make other positive changes.

    What is time-restricted eating?

    Time-restricted eating, also known as the 16:8 diet, became popular for weight loss around 2015. Studies have since shown it is also an effective way for people with type 2 diabetes to manage blood glucose.

    Time-restricted eating involves limiting when you eat each day, rather than focusing on what you eat. You restrict eating to a window during daylight hours, for example between 11am and 7pm, and then fast for the remaining hours. This can sometimes naturally lead to also eating less.

    Participants in our study could still share meals with family, as long as it was within a nine-hour window finishing at 7pm.
    Kitreel/Shutterstock

    Giving your body a break from constantly digesting food in this way helps align eating with natural circadian rhythms. This can help regulate metabolism and improve overall health.

    For people with type 2 diabetes, there may be specific benefits. They often have their highest blood glucose reading in the morning. Delaying breakfast to mid-morning means there is time for physical activity to occur to help reduce glucose levels and prepare the body for the first meal.

    How we got here

    We ran an initial study in 2018 to see whether following time-restricted eating was achievable for people with type 2 diabetes. We found participants could easily stick to this eating pattern over four weeks, for an average of five days a week.

    Importantly, they also had improvements in blood glucose, spending less time with high levels. Our previous research suggests the reduced time between meals may play a role in how the hormone insulin is able to reduce glucose concentrations.

    Other studies have confirmed these findings, which have also shown notable improvements in HbA1c. This is a marker in the blood that represents concentrations of blood glucose over an average of three months. It is the primary clinical tool used for diabetes.

    However, these studies provided intensive support to participants through weekly or fortnightly meetings with researchers.

    While we know this level of support increases how likely people are to stick to the plan and improves outcomes, it is not readily available to everyday Australians living with type 2 diabetes.

    What we did

    In our new study, we compared time-restricted eating directly with advice from an accredited practising dietitian, to test whether results were similar across six months.

    We recruited 52 people with type 2 diabetes who were currently managing their diabetes with up to two oral medications. There were 22 women and 30 men, aged between 35 and 65.

    Participants were randomly divided into two groups: diet and time-restricted eating. In both groups, participants received four consultations across the first four months. During the next two months they managed diet alone, without consultation, and we continued to measure the impact on blood glucose.

    In the diet group, consultations focused on changing their diet to control blood glucose, including improving diet quality (for example, eating more vegetables and limiting alcohol).

    In the time-restricted eating group, advice focused on how to limit eating to a nine-hour window between 10am and 7pm.

    Over six months, we measured each participant’s blood glucose levels every two months using the HbA1c test. Each fortnight, we also asked participants about their experience of making dietary changes (to what or when they ate).

    Continuous glucose monitoring measures the levels of glucose in the blood.
    Halfpoint/Shutterstock

    What we found

    We found time-restricted eating was as effective as the diet intervention.

    Both groups had reduced blood glucose levels, with the greatest improvements occurring after the first two months. Although it wasn’t an objective of the study, some participants in each group also lost weight (5-10kg).

    When surveyed, participants in the time-restricted eating group said they had adjusted well and were able to follow the restricted eating window. Many told us they had family support and enjoyed earlier mealtimes together. Some also found they slept better.

    After two months, people in the time-restricted group were looking for more dietary advice to further improve their health.

    Those in the diet group were less likely to stick to their plan. Despite similar health outcomes, time-restricted eating seems to be a simpler initial approach than making complex dietary changes.

    Is time-restricted eating achievable?

    The main barriers to following time-restricted eating are social occasions, caring for others and work schedules. These factors may prevent people eating within the window.

    However, there are many benefits. The message is simple, focusing on when to eat as the main diet change. This may make time-restricted eating more translatable to people from a wider variety of socio-cultural backgrounds, as the types of foods they eat don’t need to change, just the timing.

    Many people don’t have access to more individualised support from a dietitian, and receive nutrition advice from their GP. This makes time-restricted eating an alternative – and equally effective – strategy for people with type 2 diabetes.

    People should still try to stick to dietary guidelines and prioritise vegetables, fruit, wholegrains, lean meat and healthy fats.

    But our study showed time-restricted eating may also serve as stepping stone for people with type 2 diabetes to take control of their health, as people became more interested in making diet and other positive changes.

    Time-restricted eating might not be appropriate for everyone, especially people on medications which don’t recommend fasting. Before trying this dietary change, it’s best speak to the healthcare professional who helps you manage diabetes.

    Evelyn Parr receives funding from Diabetes Australia and Australian Catholic University.

    Brooke Devlin received funding from Diabetes Australia.

    – ref. For type 2 diabetes, focusing on when you eat – not what – can help control blood sugar – https://theconversation.com/for-type-2-diabetes-focusing-on-when-you-eat-not-what-can-help-control-blood-sugar-241472

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: What is stereotactic radiation therapy for prostate cancer? How does it compare to other treatments?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sathana Dushyanthen, Academic Specialist & Senior Lecturer in Cancer Sciences & Digital Health| Superstar of STEM| Science Communicator, The University of Melbourne

    Nenad Cavoski/Shutterstock

    Prostate cancer is Australia’s most commonly diagnosed cancer. One in six men will be diagnosed by the time they turn 85.

    Cancers are abnormal groups of cells that grow uncontrollably and start invading neighbouring sites. They can also spread to other organs in the body. This is known as metastases.

    Treatment of early disease, when cancer is confined to the original site, is focused on that single area, most often with surgery or radiation therapy. Treatment of advanced disease, when it has spread, often relies on treatments that can travel all around the body such as chemotherapy or immunotherapy.

    A more advanced form of radiation therapy, called stereotactic ablative radiotherapy, may be able to treat both early and advanced cancers. So how does it work? And how does it compare to existing therapies?

    It delivers a higher dose to a smaller target

    Stereotactic radiotherapy uses high doses of radiation to target and kill cancer cells. It uses newer machines that can deliver very focused radiation beams. Combined with advances in imaging and radiation planning software this allows clinicians to “track” and target cancers.

    This results in such high precision – with a targeting accuracy less than 1mm – that cancers can be safely treated with minimal risk of damaging surrounding healthy organs.

    Having a higher dose means radiotherapy can be delivered in fewer treatments (one to five sessions over one to two weeks) where it previously would have been divided into many small doses (20 to 40), delivered over weeks or even months.

    Stereotactic radiotherapy has increasingly been used to treat cancer in the brain and lungs. But new data has shown it can also effectively treat prostate cancer.

    What did the new study find?

    A study published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine compared two groups of patients with early prostate cancer with a median age of 69.8 years. Half (433 participants) received five sessions of stereotactic radiation therapy, the other half (431 participants) received standard radiation therapy consisting of at least 20 sessions.

    The researchers found no long-term difference in outcomes between the groups, with 95% of patients showing no evidence of disease five years after treatment. These cure rates are equivalent to patients who had their prostates surgically removed.

    Early evidence suggests that stereotactic radiation therapy appears to be as effective, less onerous and less invasive than currently available treatment options.

    The new therapy appears as effective as standard therapy but with fewer side effects.
    PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

    Prostate cancer that has spread beyond its original site is, unfortunately, incurable in most circumstances. Treatments for this stage of disease are aimed at suppressing or controlling the cancer for as long as possible.

    However, studies have shown stereotactic radiation therapy can be used to target disease that has spread to distant sites in patients who have advanced prostate cancer.
    Researchers found stereotactic radiation therapy could render patients free of clinically evident disease for eight to 13 months, delaying the need for hormone therapy or chemotherapy.

    How do the side effects compare to other cancer treatments?

    Stereotactic radiation therapy is delivered daily, with painless radiation beams. In the weeks following delivery it is common to notice soreness and/or inflammation at the treated site. This reaches a level requiring medication in one-third of cases.

    Erectile function is frequently impacted during prostate cancer treatment, as the nerves and blood vessels responsible for erections are often damaged.

    Another recent study comparing stereotactic radiation therapy to surgery found 48% of patients treated with stereotactic radiation therapy had difficulties with their sexual function two years after treatment compared to 75% of patients who had surgery.

    Comparison of differences between traditional radiotherapy and stereotactic radiotherapy.
    Precision Radiation Oncology

    What are the costs? And who can access it?

    Newer and more advanced radiation treatment machines can deliver more precise treatments, but these are much more expensive than standard machines. They also have more complex maintenance and operational requirements.

    However, traditional radiotherapy machines can also be upgraded to provide stereotactic precision.

    While the initial investment costs can be high, cost-benefit analyses show stereotactic radiation therapy for lung cancer costs the health system less than other cancer treatments and conventional radiotherapy. This is in part because treatment is completed far more quickly. Formal cost-benefit analyses have not been completed for prostate cancer but are likely to be similar.

    Stereotactic radiation therapy is now widely available at most major Australian public hospitals for many cancer types, including selected lung cancers, kidney cancers, advanced brain cancers and bone cancers. This has no out-of-pocket costs for patients. It is also provided in many private centres.

    However, even when a centre can deliver stereotactic radiation therapy, there is still significant variation in the devices used to deliver the therapy.

    In addition, the actual planning and delivery of radiation therapy is a complex skill. Studies have shown that patients treated by clinicians with higher caseloads have better outcomes, due to their greater familiarity with these specialised techniques.

    Radiotherapy departments throughout the world have rapidly upgraded their capability over the past few years to provide stereotactic radiotherapy. After the recent clinical trial findings, it’s likely prostate cancer will be added to the list of cancers treated this way.

    David Kok has a clinical appointment at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre which provides prostate cancer treatments including stereotactic radiotherapy, conventional radiotherapy and surgery.

    Sathana Dushyanthen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. What is stereotactic radiation therapy for prostate cancer? How does it compare to other treatments? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-stereotactic-radiation-therapy-for-prostate-cancer-how-does-it-compare-to-other-treatments-241467

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Most Republican states have made voting harder since 2020. Our research shows how successful they’ve been

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathryn Schumaker, Senior Lecturer in American Studies, University of Sydney

    In late September, the governor of the state of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, boasted that election officials had removed 453,000 people from the state’s voter rolls since 2021. In a state with only 2.3 million registered voters, it appears that roughly one in six registered voters had been purged.

    While some of these people were dead or disfranchised owing to felony convictions, nearly 200,000 of them were removed for being “inactive voters”. This means they likely failed to respond to a postcard sent to their mailing address.

    Voters can re-register if they were incorrectly removed, but this “voter list maintenance” process still creates a barrier to democratic participation.

    Unsurprisingly, Oklahoma historically has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the United States.

    This bucks the national trend. Overall, across the United States, electoral turnout has increased in presidential and midterm elections since 2018. Americans feel, now more than ever, that elections have high stakes.

    And some states have made it easier to vote. Minnesota, for example, allows voters to register online or at the polls on Election Day.

    In states like Oklahoma, however, voters are discouraged or demoralised by policies and laws meant to make voting difficult and time consuming. Legislatures in these states have been emboldened over the past decade by a series of Supreme Court rulings voiding key parts of the Voting Rights Act.

    These states are now the new fronts in the unfinished battle to secure one of the fundamental elements of democracy – the right to vote. We’ve analysed data on voter turnout and voting accessibility across the US and found states restricting access the most are overwhelmingly led by Republican legislatures.

    A long history of voter disenfranchisement

    US elections have always been the domain of the states. And state legislatures have long wielded this power to discriminate against marginalised groups.

    Prior to the Civil War, most states restricted the right to vote to white men. Then, in 1870, the 15th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, which forbade states from restricting the right to vote on the basis of “race, color or previous condition of servitude”

    In practice, however, this didn’t change things in all states. In the South, where Jim Crow laws maintained segregation in many facets of public life, lawmakers found other ways to disenfranchise Black voters.

    These methods included poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses. In some Southern states, Democrats also held all-white primaries to prohibit Black voters from participating. They claimed that political parties were private organisations and not subject to the 15th Amendment.

    When other methods failed, white people used violence and intimidation to discourage Black voters from showing up at the polls.

    Women made gains state by state in the decades following the Civil War, though Black women in the South were disenfranchised alongside Black men. This made white women the primary beneficiaries of the 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920. This dictated that states could not withhold voting rights “on account of sex”.

    It was not until the ratification of the 24th Amendment in 1964, which prohibited the use of the poll tax, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which outlawed the literacy tests, that American democracy could begin to live up to its name.

    How states are erecting more barriers

    However, even these landmark developments have not ensured that voting is easy or universally accessible to all Americans.

    In fact, many states have accelerated efforts to police voting rolls and enact hurdles to civic engagement in the wake of then-President Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Republican-dominated states like Oklahoma have been particularly keen to adopt restrictive policies.

    According to the Center for Public Integrity, 26 states have made voting less accessible since 2020. These barriers include many tactics:

    Partisan redistricting also discourages members of minority parties from turning out on Election Day. By drawing district lines that clearly favour one party over another, such practices can make people feel it is pointless to vote.

    What our research found

    According to our calculations, out of the states that have made voting less accessible since 2020, most are located in the South (43%) or Midwest (31%). The data reveal the most significant losses in voting access have occurred in southern states with large populations of Black voters.

    And the most restrictive lawmaking has been spearheaded by Republican-dominated state legislatures, with 86% of such states passing inequitable voting barriers. In contrast, only 5% of Democratic-led states have made voting harder.

    In addition, according to our research, high barriers to voting are directly related to lower voter turnout rates.

    When all states are analysed, “high barrier” states had an average turnout rate of 45.8% compared to 49% for “low barrier” states in the 2022 election, a statistically significant difference. The average turnout rate across all US states in 2022 was 46.2%.

    In the South, most states (11 of 16) made voting more difficult after the 2020 election – and nearly all had voter turnout rates well below the national average in 2022. (Mississippi was the lowest at 32.5%.)

    High-barrier southern states with Republican-led legislatures had an average turnout rate of 40.6%, compared to 46.2% in high-barrier, Republican-led states in other regions.

    Three states in low-barrier states, meanwhile, had turnout rates above 60% – Oregon, Maine and Minnesota. All had Democratic-majority legislatures, or in the case of Minnesota, a divided legislature and Democratic governor.

    States should motivate voters, not demoralise them

    These policies to restrict voting accessibility, draped in the cloak of “election security”, will no doubt affect turnout in certain states in the upcoming November elections, as well.

    Research shows Americans choose to vote because they think it is their civic duty or they believe the outcome of an election matters for their community, nation or self.

    Yet, staying home on Election Day is also a rational behaviour since the chances of being the pivotal voter that decides an election is estimated at one in one million in a battleground state and much less in a noncompetitive state.

    With national voter turnout already low compared to other democracies, state legislatures should be doing what they can to motivate voters and make it easier for them to cast a ballot – not making it more difficult for them to do so.

    Kathryn Schumaker has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

    Allyson Shortle is affiliated with the Public Religion Research Institute.

    – ref. Most Republican states have made voting harder since 2020. Our research shows how successful they’ve been – https://theconversation.com/most-republican-states-have-made-voting-harder-since-2020-our-research-shows-how-successful-theyve-been-240667

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Astronomers just found complex carbon molecules in space – a step closer to deciphering the origins of life

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria Cunningham, Honorary Senior Lecturer, School of Physics, UNSW Sydney

    Part of the Taurus molecular cloud. ESA, CC BY-SA

    A team led by researchers at MIT in the United States has discovered large molecules containing carbon in a distant interstellar cloud of gas and dust.

    This is exciting for those of us who keep lists of known interstellar molecules in the hope that we might work out how life arose in the universe.

    But it’s more than just another molecule for the collection. The result, reported today in the journal Science, shows that complex organic molecules (with carbon and hydrogen) likely existed in the cold, dark gas cloud that gave rise to our Solar System.

    Furthermore, the molecules held together until after the formation of Earth. This is important for our understanding of the early origins of life on our planet.

    Difficult to destroy, hard to detect

    The molecule in question is called pyrene, a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon or PAH for short. The complicated-sounding name tells us these molecules are made of rings of carbon atoms.

    Carbon chemistry is the backbone of life on Earth. PAHs have long been known to be abundant in the interstellar medium, so they feature prominently in theories of how carbon-based life on Earth came to be.

    A pyrene molecule, consisting of carbon atoms (black) and hydrogen atoms (white).
    Jynto/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

    We know there are many large PAHs in space because astrophysicists have detected signs of them in visible and infrared light. But we didn’t know which PAHs they might be in particular.

    Pyrene is now the largest PAH detected in space, although it’s what is known as a “small” or simple PAH, with 26 atoms. It was long thought such molecules could not survive the harsh environment of star formation when everything is bathed in radiation from the newborn suns, destroying complex molecules.

    In fact, it was once thought molecules of more than two atoms could not exist in space for this reason, until they were actually found.
    Also, chemical models show pyrene is very difficult to destroy once formed.

    Last year, scientists reported they found large amounts of pyrene in samples from the asteroid Ryugu in our own Solar System. They argued at least some of it must have come from the cold interstellar cloud that predated our Solar System.

    So why not look at another cold interstellar cloud to find some? The problem for astrophysicists is that we don’t have the tools to detect pyrene directly – it’s invisible to radio telescopes.

    Using a tracer

    The molecule the team has detected is called 1-cyanopyrene, what we call a “tracer” for pyrene. It is formed from pyrene interacting with cyanide, which is common in interstellar space.

    The researchers used the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to look at the Taurus molecular cloud or TMC-1, in the Taurus constellation. Unlike pyrene itself, 1-cyanopyrene can be detected by radio telescopes. This is because 1-cyanopyrene molecules act as small radio-wave emitters – tiny versions of earthly radio stations.

    As scientists know the proportions of 1-cyanopyrene compared to pyrene, they can then estimate the amount of pyrene in the interstellar cloud.

    The amount of pyrene they found was significant. Importantly, this discovery in the Taurus molecular cloud suggests a lot of pyrene exists in the cold, dark molecular clouds that go on to form stars and solar systems.

    A wide-field view of part of the Taurus molecular cloud ~450 light-years from Earth. Its relative closeness makes it an ideal place to study the formation of stars. Many dark clouds of obscuring dust are clearly visible against the background stars.
    ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin.

    The complex birth of life

    We are gradually building a picture of how life on Earth evolved. This picture tells us that life came from space – well, at least the complex organic, pre-biological molecules needed to form life did.

    That pyrene survives the harsh conditions associated with the birth of stars, as shown by the findings from Ryugu, is an important part of this story.

    Simple life – consisting of a single cell – appeared in Earth’s fossil record almost immediately (in geological and astronomical terms) after the planet’s surface had cooled enough to not vaporise complex molecules. This happened more than 3.7 billion years ago in Earth’s approximately 4.5 billion history.

    For simple organisms to then appear so quickly in the fossil record, there’s just not enough time for chemistry to start with mere simple molecules of two or three atoms.

    The new discovery of 1-cyanopyrene in the Taurus molecular cloud shows complex molecules could indeed survive the harsh conditions of our Solar System’s formation. As a result, pyrene was available to form the backbone of carbon-based life when it emerged on the early Earth some 3.7 billion years ago.

    This discovery also links to another important finding of the last decade – the first chiral molecule in the interstellar medium, propylene oxide. We need chiral molecules to make the evolution of simple lifeforms work on the surface of the early Earth.

    So far, our theories that molecules for early life on Earth came from space are looking good.

    Maria Cunningham has received funding from The Australian Research Council. In the past she has collaborated with Anthony Remijan, one of the co-authors on the Science paper discussed in this publication. Their last co-authored paper was in 2015.

    – ref. Astronomers just found complex carbon molecules in space – a step closer to deciphering the origins of life – https://theconversation.com/astronomers-just-found-complex-carbon-molecules-in-space-a-step-closer-to-deciphering-the-origins-of-life-241889

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Stoneflies change colour in response to deforestation, suggesting humans can alter evolution – new research

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Waters, Professor of Zoology, University of Otago

    Author provided, CC BY-SA

    As we continue to change the planet, scientists are worried we might also be altering the evolutionary trajectories of the species that live alongside us, perhaps even including some irreversible shifts.

    Certainly, the evidence for change is everywhere. As the planet warms, species’ ranges are shifting and their life cycles are changing. As we harvest the largest fish in the ocean, the species affected are now maturing at smaller sizes.

    But are these shifts we observe in wild populations underpinned by genetic changes (mutations in the DNA) or are they simply flexible responses to environmental change? If the changes are genetic, how are they happening?

    So far, researchers have observed fewer clear-cut examples of human-induced evolution in the wild than one might imagine. But our new study may provide a new “textbook” case of human-driven evolution in wild insects.

    Our findings are centred on an intriguing case of “mimicry” from New Zealand, in which a harmless insect has evolved to mimic the warning colours of a highly toxic species.

    Forest removal drives colour shift

    Convincingly demonstrating “evolution in action” involves finding the agents of natural selection (environmental factors driving the change) and discovering the genetic mechanism.

    Until now, the peppered moth was the “classic” example of human-driven evolution. Dark-coloured specimens of the moth suddenly appeared during the 19th century. It was a likely response to industrial pollution which meant light-coloured individuals were no longer blending in to the increasingly sooty British environment. Despite its broad appeal, some aspects of even this famous case have been criticised as unclear and anecdotal.

    We worked on stoneflies and the impact of deforestation.

    The black stonefly Austroperla lives in forests. It produces cyanide to deter potential predators, and to advertise its toxicity this species has high-contrast black, white and yellow markings, reminiscent of wasp colouration.

    The non-toxic Zelandoperla stonefly has evolved astonishingly similar warning colouration, apparently to trick predators (forest birds) into assuming that it, too, is toxic. The intricate and unique ecological interactions between these insects and their predators have apparently evolved together over millions of years.

    Dark coloured Zelandoperla stoneflies (middle) mimic the poisonous Austroperla (top), which are abundant in forests. Recent forest clearance has eliminated Austroperla from many regions of New Zealand. In response, Zelandoperla populations have quickly evolved lighter colouration (bottom).
    Graham McCulloch, Jon Waters, CC BY-SA

    Where do humans come into this story? Aotearoa New Zealand was the last major landmass to be colonised by people. In many places the human impacts on its ecosystems have been devastating.

    In addition to species extinctions, New Zealand has lost much of its original native forest cover in just a few centuries. This deforestation has wiped out countless populations of forest birds, along with the poisonous, forest-dependent Austroperla.

    Our study reveals this widespread deforestation has also proven a game changer for the stonefly “mimic”. As its predators and the poisonous species it mimics have vanished from many regions, there is no longer much point in displaying warning colouration.

    In an astonishing about-turn, Zelandoperla populations from deforested habitats have quickly lost their spectacular “mimic” colouration. It turns out that the production of this intricate colouration was costly, and when no longer essential, evolution rapidly removed it – in a case of “use it or lose it”.

    Human-driven deforestation in New Zealand has altered species interactions in a mimicry system, leading to rapid evolution of insect colour.
    Graham McCulloch, Jon Waters, CC BY-SA

    Genetic change

    In our study, we compared insect populations across several parts of the South Island. We found a remarkably consistent picture. The removal of forest has driven similar colour shifts across different deforested regions.

    The finding that evolutionary change can be “predictable” offers hope that scientists can use evolutionary theory to predict future biodiversity shifts.

    Stonefly models helped to reveal the role of birds.
    Author provided, CC BY-SA

    How do we know birds have played a key role in this rapid colour change? By placing stonefly models of different colours in a variety of habitats, we were able to demonstrate that birds only avoid attacking stoneflies with the “warning” colouration when they are in forests.

    Another challenge was to show that this colour change represents evolution at the DNA level rather than a flexible response to environmental change. We looked at genetic variation across the Zelandoperla genome and found that just a single gene – ebony – is almost completely responsible for this colour evolution.

    Our study also reveals the pace of evolutionary change. By comparing regions deforested soon after human arrival (for example Central Otago, which was deforested around 600 to 700 years ago) with those cleared much more recently (Otago Peninsula, 150 years ago), we show that evolution has proceeded steadily yet inexorably over this human timeframe.

    On the positive side, the finding that at least some of our native species can adapt in the face of rapid environmental change suggests ongoing resilience of our native biodiversity. However, our results also highlight how quickly the intricate interactions that have evolved among native species over millennia can be lost from disturbed ecosystems.

    These new findings raise tantalising questions about the potential to reverse the negative impacts of deforestation on our native biodiversity. In particular, our increasing focus on reforestation and ecological restoration provides hope for restoring the complex ecosystems we have inherited.

    Jonathan Waters receives funding from the RSNZ Marsden Fund.

    Graham McCulloch receives funding from the RSNZ Marsden Fund

    – ref. Stoneflies change colour in response to deforestation, suggesting humans can alter evolution – new research – https://theconversation.com/stoneflies-change-colour-in-response-to-deforestation-suggesting-humans-can-alter-evolution-new-research-242008

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Queensland election signals both major parties accept pumped hydro and the renewable energy transition as inevitable

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jamie Pittock, Professor, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University

    Sirbatch/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

    Solar and wind have won the global energy race. They accounted for 80% of new global power capacity installed in 2023. In Australia, 99% of new capacity is wind or solar.

    The Queensland election campaign suggests both sides of politics have embraced the renewable energy transition. But solar and wind are variable and need energy storage. That is where pumped hydro energy storage and batteries come in.

    Both are off-the-shelf technologies. And both are already being used on a vast scale.

    Having promised 80% renewable energy by 2035, the incumbent Labor government is committed to large pumped hydro systems at Borumba, on the Sunshine Coast, and Pioneer-Burdekin, near Mackay. The A$14.2 billion Borumba project appears to have support from both major parties. However, the Liberal National Party (LNP) says it will scrap the $12 billion Pioneer Burdekin project and the renewables target if elected.

    While Pioneer-Burdekin is a very good site, there are good alternatives. The LNP says it “will investigate opportunities for smaller, more manageable pumped hydro projects”. Regardless, in supporting more pumped hydro storage and rejecting the federal Coalition’s nuclear power plans, the state LNP is accepting the renewable energy transformation as inevitable.

    What is pumped hydro energy storage?

    Pumped hydro systems store surplus electricity from solar and wind on sunny and windy days. The electricity is used to pump water from a lower reservoir to an upper reservoir. This water can later be released downhill though turbines to generate power when it’s needed.


    ARENA, CC BY

    This proven technology has been used for over a century. It accounts for about 90% of global energy storage. Australia has three pumped hydro systems (Tumut 3, Kangaroo Valley, Wivenhoe) and two under construction (Snowy 2.0 and Kidston).

    Snowy 2.0 will last for at least 100 years. Its capacity (350 gigawatt-hours, GWh) is equivalent to 6 million electric vehicle batteries. It’s enough to power 3 million homes for a week.

    Due to start operating in 2028, Snowy 2.0 will cost about $12 billion. That’s roughly equivalent to $2,000 for a 100-year-lifetime EV battery. Pumped hydro energy storage is cheap!

    ANU’s RE100 Group has published global atlases of about 800,000 potential pumped hydro sites. None require new dams on rivers. Some are new sites (greenfield). Others would use existing reservoirs (bluefield) or old mines (brownfield).

    What about batteries?

    Batteries are best for short-term storage (a few hours). Pumped hydro is better for overnight or several days – Snowy 2.0 will provide 150 hours of storage.

    A combination of these storage systems is better than either alone.

    As with any major infrastructure, pumped hydro development has costs and risks. It has high upfront capital costs but very low operating costs.

    What are Queensland’s options?

    In Queensland, solar and wind electricity rose from 2% to 26% of total generation over the past decade. It’s heading for about 75% in 2030 as part of Australia’s 82% renewables target.

    Queensland needs roughly 150 GWh of extra storage for full decarbonisation. After accounting for Borumba (50 GWh), batteries and other storage, Pioneer-Burdekin (120 GWh) would meet that need.

    A similarly sized system or several smaller systems would also suffice. The latter approach has advantages of decentralisation but would cost more and have environmental impacts in more places.

    The state has thousands of potential sites that are “off-river” (do not require new dams on rivers). The table below shows 15 premium sites, most with capacities of 50–150 GWh. Some larger sizes are included for interest – 5,000 GWh would store enough energy for 100 million people.

    The key technical parameters are:

    • head: the altitude difference between the two reservoirs – bigger is better
    • slope: the ratio of the head to the distance between the reservoirs – larger slope means shorter tunnel
    • W/R: the volume of stored water (W) divided by the volume of rock (R) needed for the reservoir walls. Large W/R means low-cost reservoirs.

    Clicking on each name takes you to a view of the site with more details.

    Site Size (GWh) Type Head (m) Slope (%) W/R
    Mackay 50 Green 800 13 8
    Townsville 50 Green 490 8 19
    Pentland 50 Green 340 6 10
    Boyne 50 Green 390 8 14
    Beechmont 50 Blue 427 6 8
    Tully 50 Blue 726 10 9
    Tully 150 Blue 726 11 5
    Townsville 150 Green 440 8 14
    Mackay 150 Green 412 6 17
    Mackay 150 Green 680 9 7
    Yeppoon 150 Green 390 8 17
    Proserpine 500 Green 600 12 7
    Townsville 500 Green 490 18 6
    Ingham 1,500 Green 650 6 8
    Ingham 5,000 Green 650 7 3

    Pumped storage in far north Queensland is valuable because it can absorb solar and wind energy from the Copperstring transmission extension to Mt Isa. It can then send it down the transmission line to Brisbane at off-peak times. This will ensure the line mostly operates close to full capacity.

    Two potential premium 150 GWh bluefield pumped hydro energy storage systems near Tully.
    Author provided/RE100

    What about the rest of Australia?

    Pumped storage and batteries keep the lights on during solar and wind energy droughts that occasionally occur in winter in southern Australia. They also meet evening peak demand.

    The fossil fuel lobby argues gas is needed in the energy transition. But pumped hydro and battery storage eliminate the need for gas generators and their greenhouse gas emissions.

    In the past decade, solar and wind generation in Australia’s National Electricity Market increased from 6% to 35%. Gas fell from 12% to 5%.

    Most pumped hydro projects can be built off rivers. The same water is repeatedly transferred between the reservoirs. This means the system keeps running during droughts and avoids the impacts of new dams blocking rivers and flooding valleys.

    The environmental and social impacts of off-river pumped hydro projects are much lower than for conventional hydropower or fossil fuel projects.

    The system uses very common materials, primarily water, rock, concrete and steel. Very little land is flooded for off-river pumped hydro to support a 100% renewable energy system: about 3 square metres per person. Only about 3 litres of water per person per day is needed for the initial fill and to replace evaporation.

    Sometimes, safely disposing of tunnel spoil is a challenge – as with mining (including for coal and battery metals). Any major new generation facility and its transmission lines may involve clearing and disturbing bushland. Local communities sometimes oppose pumped hydro developments.

    In Australia, ANU identified 5,500 potential sites. Only one to two dozen are needed to enable the nation to be fully powered by renewables.

    About a dozen pumped hydro projects are in detailed planning. Hydro Tasmania’s Battery of the Nation is proposed for Cethana. Other prominent projects include Oven Mountain, Central West, Upper Hunter Hydro and Burragorang in New South Wales.

    You can expect to see more pumped hydro systems in a state near you.

    Jamie Pittock receives funding from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to provide technical assistance for the development of pumped storage hydropower to aid the transition to renewable energy for governments and others in Asia. He holds governance and advisory roles with a number of non-government environmental organisations.

    Andrew Blakers receives funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

    – ref. Queensland election signals both major parties accept pumped hydro and the renewable energy transition as inevitable – https://theconversation.com/queensland-election-signals-both-major-parties-accept-pumped-hydro-and-the-renewable-energy-transition-as-inevitable-229611

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Why do I get so anxious after drinking? Here’s the science behind ‘hangxiety’

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Blair Aitken, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Psychopharmacology, Swinburne University of Technology

    You had a great night out, but the next morning, anxiety hits: your heart races, and you replay every conversation from the night before in your head. This feeling, known as hangover anxiety or “hangxiety”, affects around 22% of social drinkers.

    While for some people, it’s mild nerves, for others, it’s a wave of anxiety that feels impossible to ride out. The “Sunday scaries” may make you feel panicked, filled with dread and unable to relax.

    Hangover anxiety can make even simple tasks feel overwhelming. Here’s why it happens, and what you can do about it.

    What does alcohol do to our brains?

    A hangover is the body’s way of recovering after drinking alcohol, bringing with it a range of symptoms.

    Dehydration and disrupted sleep play a large part in the pounding headaches and nausea many of us know too well after a big night out. But hangovers aren’t just physical – there’s a strong mental side too.

    Alcohol is a nervous system depressant, meaning it alters how certain chemical messengers (or neurotransmitters) behave in the brain. Alcohol relaxes you by increasing gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), the neurotransmitter that makes you feel calm and lowers inhibitions. It decreases glutamate and this also slows down your thoughts and helps ease you into a more relaxed state.

    Together, this interaction affects your mood, emotions and alertness. This is why when we drink, we often feel more sociable, carefree and willing to let our guard down.

    As the effects of the alcohol wear off, your brain works to rebalance these chemicals by reducing GABA and increasing glutamate. This shift has the opposite effect of the night before, causing your brain to become more excitable and overstimulated, which can lead to feelings of anxiety.

    So why do some people get hangxiety, while others don’t? There isn’t one clear answer to this question, as several factors can play a role in whether someone experiences hangover-related anxiety.

    Genes play a role

    For some, a hangover is simply a matter of how much they drank or how hydrated they are. But genetics may also play a significant role. Research shows your genes can explain almost half the reason why you wake up feeling hungover, while your friend might not.

    Because genes influence how your body processes alcohol, some people may experience more intense hangover symptoms, such as headaches or dehydration. These stronger physical effects can, in turn, trigger anxiety during a hangover, making you more susceptible to “hangxiety.”

    Do you remember what you said last night?

    But one of the most common culprits for feeling anxious the next day is often what you do while drinking.

    Let’s say you’ve had a big night out and you can’t quite recall a conversation you had or something you did. Maybe you acted in ways that you now regret or feel embarrassed about. You might fixate on these thoughts and get trapped in a cycle of worrying and rumination. This cycle can be hard to break and can make you feel more anxious.

    Research suggests people who already struggle with feelings of anxiety in their day-to-day lives are especially vulnerable to hangxiety.

    Some people drink alcohol to unwind after a stressful day or to make themselves feel more comfortable at social events. This often leads to heavier consumption, which can make hangover symptoms more severe. It can also begin a cycle of drinking to feel better, making hangxiety even harder to escape.

    Preventing hangover anxiety

    The best way to prevent hangxiety is to limit your alcohol consumption. The Australian guidelines recommend having no more than ten standard drinks per week and no more than four standard drinks on any one day.

    Generally, the more you drink, the more intense your hangover symptoms might be, and the worse you are likely to feel.

    Some people may drink more alcohol to feel more comfortable in social situations.
    LADO/Shutterstock

    Mixing other drugs with alcohol can also increase the risk of hangxiety. This is especially true for party drugs, such as ecstasy or MDMA, that give you a temporary high but can lead to anxiety as they wear off and you are coming down.

    If you do wake up feeling anxious:

    • focus on the physical recovery to help ease the mental strain

    • drink plenty of water, eat a light meal and allow yourself time to rest

    • try mindfulness meditation or deep breathing exercises, especially if anxiety keeps you awake or your mind races

    • consider journalling. This can help re-frame anxious thoughts, put your feelings into perspective and encourage self-compassion

    • talk to a close friend. This can provide a safe space to express concerns and feel less isolated.

    Hangxiety is an unwelcome guest after a night out. Understanding why hangxiety happens – and how you can manage it – can make the morning after a little less daunting, and help keep those anxious thoughts at bay.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Why do I get so anxious after drinking? Here’s the science behind ‘hangxiety’ – https://theconversation.com/why-do-i-get-so-anxious-after-drinking-heres-the-science-behind-hangxiety-240991

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: MAiD and marginalized people: Coroner’s reports shed light on assisted death in Ontario

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Karandeep Sonu Gaind, Professor of Psychiatry, University of Toronto

    People who chose medically assisted death when they were not terminally ill were more likely to be marginalized than those who chose MAiD when death was already imminent. (Shutterstock)

    Earlier this month, the Office of the Chief Coroner for Ontario released new reports highlighting some of the reasons some Canadians have chosen medical assistance in dying (MAiD, which in Canada involves euthanasia — meaning medically-administered injection rather than self-administered — over 99.9 per cent of the time).

    The reports have received international attention for what they highlight, including patients being euthanized despite untreated mental illness and addictions, unclear medical diagnoses and suffering fuelled by housing insecurity, poverty and social marginalization.

    Some are shocked by what these reports reveal, but none should be surprised. This is what happens when you let the foxes run the henhouse, as Canada has arguably done by allowing right-to-die advocacy to shape policy and replace evidence.

    Canada’s medical assistance in dying (MAiD) laws, introduced for those in terminal situations, were expanded by the Trudeau government in 2021 to allow death by MAiD via “Track 2” to Canadians struggling with disabilities who were not dying. In 2023, Track 2 represented 2.6 per cent of the 4,644 MAiD deaths in Ontario, or 116 people.

    I am not a conscientious objector. I am a psychiatrist and previously chaired my former hospital’s MAiD team. However, I believe we’ve experienced a bait and switch: laws initially intended to compassionately help Canadians avoid suffering a painful death have metastasized into policies facilitating suicides of other Canadians seeking death to escape a painful life.

    The coroner’s reports show how far over the cliff we’ve fallen with Track 2 MAiD.

    Marginalization and MAiD

    Many have warned for years that when facilitated suicide is expanded to those with disabilities who have decades left to live, it is impossible to filter out suffering due to poverty, loneliness and other marginalization fueling MAiD requests. The medical disability becomes the foot in the door to open eligibility for MAiD, but social suffering pushes the marginalized through that door to seek state-sponsored death for their life struggles.

    The coroner’s report uses a marginalization index based on area of residence (similar to the way impacts on marginalized populations were identified during COVID-19) to divide the population into five levels, each representing 20 per cent of the population. The data shows a much higher proportion of Track 2 MAiD recipients come from highly marginalized categories than Track 1 MAiD recipients, or the general population.

    People in the lowest “material resource” category (i.e. poverty) represent 20 per cent of the general population, but they make up 28.4 per cent of Track 2 MAiD recipients, compared to 21.5 per cent of Track 1 recipients.

    People in the lowest 20 per cent of the population with the worst housing instability made up 48.3 per cent of Track 2 MAiD recipients, compared to 34.3 per cent of Track 1 recipients. Track 2 recipients were also far more likely to come from the most vulnerable 20 per cent of the population in terms of age and labour force participation, with 56.9 per cent of Track 2 MAiD recipients coming from this category compared to 41.8 per cent of Track 1 MAiD recipients.

    Gender gaps of more women than men receiving Track 2 MAiD are also emerging.

    Additionally the report shed light on specific cases of concern, including people receiving Track 2 MAiD for social and housing vulnerability, and for unclear reasons while still suffering from inadequately treated mental illness and addictions.

    This includes a man with a history of suicidal ideation and untreated addictions whose psychiatrist asked during a session whether he was aware of MAiD. After being approved, he was “personally transported (by the MAiD provider) in their vehicle to an external location for the provision of MAiD”.

    Denialism

    Policy mistakes can occur, but these marginalized deaths result from wilful avoidance and denial of evidence-based cautions. I have previously written of the lack of safeguards and absence of evidence informing MAiD expansion.

    Beyond the evidence in the coroner’s report, there are clear signs of this denial:

    “It doesn’t concern me, in the sense that I don’t think anybody knows what it means. We can make all sorts of hypotheses about what it might mean, but nobody really knows. What I would caution you about is drawing inferences, like the one in your question with respect to male-to-female suicide ratios, because we don’t know what it means.” (It should be noted that there is longstanding evidence of a 2:1 gender gap of more women than men attempting suicide when mentally ill, most of whom do not die by suicide and do not try again.)

    These repeated refusals to have our MAiD expansion be informed by evidence have led to a MAiD house of cards wilfully blind to suicide risks.

    Denialism of all sorts is dangerous. Canada’s expanded MAiD policies have fallen prey to a new form of it: suicide denialism. What else can it be called when expansion ideologues repeatedly ignore and deny the fact that some Canadians are getting Track 2 MAiD fuelled not by illness suffering, but by known suicide risk factors of social deprivation?

    ‘Social murder’

    People in the lowest ‘material resource’ category represent 20 per cent of the general population, but they make up 28.4 per cent of Track 2 MAiD recipients, compared to 21.5 per cent of Track 1 recipients.
    (Shutterstock)

    Some expansion advocates have already creatively dismissed concerns about the coroner reports. The head-scratching argument is that since marginalization leads to higher death rates of the marginalized anyway (gently referred to as “decedents”), the fact that Track 2 MAiD is provided to marginalized people at the same or slightly lower rates than their usual high “decedent” rates means MAiD is not a risk to the marginalized. There is even the bold suggestion that “MAiD narrows the gap between privileged and deprived.”

    The remarkable blind spot of this privileged perspective is obvious: none of the marginalized receiving Track 2 MAiD would have died if they had not gotten MAiD; even their own MAiD assessors predicted they would have over another decade of life to live (otherwise they would have been Track 1).

    Arguing that a higher proportion of marginalized people dying from Track 2 MAiD is acceptable because they die at similar rates anyway is disturbing and revealing. Most people in Canada are aware of the issue of Indigenous youth disenfranchisement and suicide. Consider the natural implications of this dangerous argument. Death rates for First Nations youth under 20 are three to five times higher than youth death rates for non-Indigenous populations, driven by suicide and unintentional injuries. Does MAiD expansionist logic suggest that it would be acceptable to provide high levels of Track 2 MAiD to First Nations 19-year-olds since their social disenfranchisement puts them at higher risk of death anyway?

    Claiming that state-facilitated death fuelled by social deprivation is acceptable since more marginalized people die from social deprivation and structural inequities anyway is indistinguishable from eugenics.

    During COVID-19, some suggested our social policies linked to marginalized deaths were enabling “social murder,” a term coined by Friedrich Engels in the 19th century describing working conditions causing premature deaths of English workers. How should we describe Canadian policy providing state facilitated deaths to non-dying marginalized individuals fuelled by social suffering?

    I previously wrote about how our MAiD expansion is setting the stage for a future prime minister issuing a national apology. Beyond apologies, tobacco companies recently were held accountable for a $32.5 billion settlement resulting from claims they “knew their product was causing cancer and failed to warn consumers adequately.”

    No medication comes to market without evidence of safety, yet policymakers have ignored known evidence and have instead expanded MAiD while failing to warn Canadians adequately of the risks of premature death posed by Track 2 MAiD to those suffering from social marginalization.

    Social murder is a jarring term. If we don’t want to be charged with providing it, it’s time policymakers honestly acknowledged the suffering for which some marginalized Canadians are receiving state sponsored MAiD, rather than taking refuge behind “small numbers” justifications and suicide denial.

    Karandeep Sonu Gaind is affiliated with the Ontario District Branch of the American Psychiatric Association (president).

    – ref. MAiD and marginalized people: Coroner’s reports shed light on assisted death in Ontario – https://theconversation.com/maid-and-marginalized-people-coroners-reports-shed-light-on-assisted-death-in-ontario-241661

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: At $300m, Jules Verne-inspired Nautilus is the most expensive Australian-made show. But Disney+ was right to dump it

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

    Stan

    Investing in film and TV productions is a risky venture. Even the best directors and producers are just a flop away from ruining their careers.

    So if a company owns the intellectual property to a popular material, or if that material enters the public domain, these companies – risk-averse entities, to be sure – will hastily retread their tyres for another lap of the track. This is partly why you’ll see well-worn stories from your childhood told over and over onscreen, even now.

    But if the new version is too similar to the old, people will cynically roll their eyes. Enter Disney, which has perfected the strategy over the past few decades of retelling the same stories from different characters’ perspectives – a gambit that seems to strike people as inherently interesting.

    Maleficent, for example, is Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of the evil queen. Although this kind of fairytale revisionism goes back to Angela Carter’s best-selling feminist fiction, Disney has, more than any other corporation, become an expert at co-opting social movements in pursuit of profits.

    The latest revisionist work set to be distributed by Disney+ was Nautilus. The series filters the story of Jules Verne’s inimitable maritime adventure novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea through the lens of Captain Nemo, framed as a prequel to the original.

    The fact that Disney+ dropped Nautilus before its release (it has been picked up by Prime in the UK and Ireland and Stan in Australia) immediately stoked my interest. This is particularly notable because, with a budget of A$300 million, it’s the most expensive series ever made in Australia (filmed mainly on the Gold Coast).

    Alas, after restlessly sitting through all ten episodes, I understand Disney’s decision.

    Diluting a powerful message

    Where Verne’s novel (and to a lesser extent, the 1954 Disney live action film) effortlessly creates an authentic world, which is absolutely critical to the effectiveness of any fantasy work, Nautilus seems painfully contrived from its opening.

    It’s the kind of show where all the British soldiers and East India Company men speak in toffee accents and spout horrifically ruthless commands between sips of tea.

    The show is a $300 million wreck.
    Stan

    The Nautilus’ crew is made up of a miscellany of virtuous victims of the company (and thus of the British empire): a wealthy British woman being forced into an arranged marriage, an old Chinese worker, a Māori cook, a trader from Zanzibar and ex‑slave Indians.

    The characters frequently pontificate about the value of freedom, the evils of slavery and the glory of the environment. In one particularly ludicrous scene early on, Nemo jumps onto a whale’s back to remove a harpoon.

    In the novel, Nemo’s romantic alienation perfectly complements his maniacal drive, interspersed with Verne’s faux-scientific descriptions of the submarine, giant squid and other objects.

    Similarly, here, Nemo is presented as being far from mercenary; hounded to the north seas by the British, he’s seeking treasure in order to bring the company down. But lead Shazad Latif’s delivery is monotonous and strained, as though even he doesn’t buy it.

    British actor Shazad Latif’s performance as Captain Nemo is far from convincing.
    Stan

    The idea that this is some kind of “fresh” (read “politically correct”) re‑imagining of the world of the novel is strange in the first place, given the original story (although narrated by Professor Aronnax) is already closely anchored to Nemo’s point of view.

    Verne clearly presents Nemo as a kind of eco-warrior responding to the brutalities of colonialism. If anything, the original message is diluted in this adaptation as it implies Nemo’s quest is mainly personal – that he simply wants vengeance for what the company did to his family – rather than political.

    At the same time, I sense the creators are going for some kind of psychological realism by painfully spelling out that Nemo had bad things done to him by the British. But this didacticism causes the spirit of adventure to suffer, so we’re left with something both silly and not particularly exciting.

    The British soldiers and company men speak in ridiculous accents.
    Stan

    A big fish isn’t always a good fish

    The show’s production design and cinematography (some of the most important components in this kind of adventure epic) seem flat, too. The sets, though colourful, look decidedly artificial. The synthesis of CGI elements with filmed footage is far from smooth.

    And the odd colour grade makes the characters’ skin look hyper-artificial. This was surely the intention, but why? It is distracting in every closeup.

    Not to single out any particular department, every aspect of the production seems dialled in, including the score, which sounds like something hastily composed using AI software.

    Of course, one could talk about the production’s benefits to the Australian industry, but this seems like a hapless argument if the work is no good. How many low-budget films could have been made with $300 million? 100? 150? Those would have also invested money in the industry, while developing local talent.

    The impact of a big-budget production on local industries isn’t clear when the production in question isn’t very compelling.
    Stan

    Not camp enough, yet not careful enough

    If it were camper, Nautilus could have acquired the cult value of a great cinematic fiasco such as Renny Harlin’s 1995 film Cutthroat Island. All the actors seem to be trying hard, and the writers clearly laboured away at the story.

    Perhaps this is the problem. Like so many new commercial works, Nautilus tries so hard to please everyone it ends up pleasing no one. The wider the appeal, the greater the risk mitigation, apparently.

    But given it actually tries to embed the story in a sense of history, its sins seem greater than mere televisual boredom for the viewer. The series presents a monolithic and simplistic image of the way colonialism and capitalism are intertwined.

    At best, this is naïve – one could argue, “who cares, it’s just a silly fantasy series”. At worst, however, it is actively destructive of historical consciousness. And that’s not smooth sailing.

    Ari Mattes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. At $300m, Jules Verne-inspired Nautilus is the most expensive Australian-made show. But Disney+ was right to dump it – https://theconversation.com/at-300m-jules-verne-inspired-nautilus-is-the-most-expensive-australian-made-show-but-disney-was-right-to-dump-it-241583

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: South Africa amended its research guidelines to allow for heritable human genome editing

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Françoise Baylis, Distinguished Research Professor, Emerita, Dalhousie University

    New genome editing technologies mean that the genetic modification of embryos is a scientific possibility, and laws governing its practice require extensive public consultation. (Shutterstock)

    A little-noticed change to South Africa’s national health research guidelines, published in May of this year, has put the country on an ethical precipice. The newly added language appears to position the country as the first to explicitly permit the use of genome editing to create genetically modified children.

    Heritable human genome editing has long been hotly contested, in large part because of its societal and eugenic implications. As experts on the global policy landscape who have observed the high stakes and ongoing controversies over this technology — one from an academic standpoint (Françoise Baylis) and one from public interest advocacy (Katie Hasson) — we find it surprising that South Africa plans to facilitate this type of research.

    In November 2018, the media reported on a Chinese scientist who had created the world’s first gene-edited babies using CRISPR technology. He said his goal was to provide children with resistance to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. When his experiment became public knowledge, twin girls had already been born and a third child was born the following year.

    The fate of these three children, and whether they have experienced any negative long-term consequences from the embryonic genome editing, remains a closely guarded secret.

    Controversial research

    Considerable criticism followed the original birth announcement. Some argued that genetically modifying embryos to alter the traits of future children and generations should never be done.

    Genetically modifying embryos to alter the traits of future children and generations has immense societal impacts.
    (Shutterstock)

    Many pointed out that the rationale in this case was medically unconvincing – and indeed that safe reproductive procedures to avoid transmitting genetic diseases are already in widespread use, belying the justification typically given for heritable human genome editing. Others condemned his secretive approach, as well as the absence of any robust public consultation, considered a prerequisite for embarking on such a socially consequential path.

    In the immediate aftermath of the 2018 revelation, the organizing committee of the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing joined the global uproar with a statement condemning this research.

    At the same time, however, the committee called for a “responsible translational pathway” toward clinical research. Safety thresholds and “additional criteria” would have to be met, including: “independent oversight, a compelling medical need, an absence of reasonable alternatives, a plan for long-term follow-up, and attention to societal effects.”

    Notably, the additional criteria no longer included the earlier standard of “broad societal consensus.”

    Nobel laureate David Baltimore, chair of the organizing committee for the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, talks about the importance of public global dialogue on gene editing.

    New criteria

    Now, it appears that South Africa has amended its Ethics in Health Research Guidelines to explicitly envisage research that would result in the birth of gene-edited babies.

    Section 4.3.2 of the guidelines on “Heritable Human Genome Editing” includes a few brief and rather vague paragraphs enumerating the following criteria: (a) scientific and medical justification; (b) transparency and informed consent; (c) stringent ethical oversight; (d) ongoing ethical evaluation and adaptation; (e) safety and efficacy; (f) long-term monitoring; and (g) legal compliance.

    While these criteria seem to be in line with those laid out in the 2018 summit statement, they are far less stringent than the frameworks put forth in subsequent reports. This includes, for example, the World Health Organization’s report Human Genome Editing: Framework for Governance (co-authored by Françoise Baylis).

    Alignment with the law

    Further, there is a significant problem with the seemingly permissive stance on heritable human genome editing entrenched in these research guidelines. The guidelines clearly require the research to comply with all laws governing heritable human genome research. Yet, the law and the research guidelines in South Africa are not aligned, which entails a significant inhibition on any possible research.

    This is because of a stipulation in section 57(1) of the South African National Health Act 2004 on the “Prohibition of reproductive cloning of human beings.” This stipulates that a “person may not manipulate any genetic material, including genetic material of human gametes, zygotes, or embryos… for the purpose of the reproductive cloning of a human being.”

    When this act came into force in 2004, it was not yet possible to genetically modify human embryos and so it’s not surprising there’s no specific reference to this technology. Yet the statutory language is clearly wide enough to encompass it. The objection to the manipulation of human genetic material is therefore clear, and imports a prohibition on heritable human genome editing.

    Ethical concerns

    The question that concerns us is: why are South Africa’s ethical guidelines on research apparently pushing the envelope with heritable human genome editing?

    In 2020, we published alongside our colleagues a global review of policies on research involving heritable human genome editing. At the time, we identified policy documents — legislation, regulations, guidelines, codes and international treaties — prohibiting heritable genome editing in more than 70 countries. We found no policy documents that explicitly permitted heritable human genome editing.

    It’s easy to understand why some of South Africa’s ethicists might be disposed to clear the way for somatic human genome editing research. Recently, an effective treatment for sickle cell disease has been developed using genome editing technology. Many children die of this disease before the age of five and somatic genome editing — which does not involve the genetic modification of embryos — promises a cure.

    Somatic genome editing may provide a cure for sickle cell disease.
    (Shutterstock)

    Implications on future research

    But that’s not what this is about. So, what is the interest in forging a path for research on heritable human genome editing, which involves the genetic modification of embryos and has implications for subsequent generations? And why the seemingly quiet modification of the guidelines?

    How many people in South Africa are aware that they’ve just become the only country in the world with research guidelines that envisage accommodating a highly contested technology? Has careful attention been given to the myriad potential harms associated with this use of CRISPR technology, including harms to women, prospective parents, children, society and the gene pool?

    Is it plausible that scientists from other countries, who are interested in this area of research, are patiently waiting in the wings to see whether the law in South Africa prohibiting the manipulation of human genetic material will be an insufficient impediment to creating genetically modified children? Should the research guidelines be amended to accord with the 2004 statutory prohibition?

    Or if, instead, the law is brought into line with the guidelines, would the result be a wave of scientific tourism with labs moving to South Africa to take advantage of permissive research guidelines and laws?

    We hope the questions we ask are alarmist, as now is the time to ask and answer these questions.

    Katie Hasson, Associate Director at the Center for Genetics and Society, co-authored this article.

    Françoise Baylis is affiliated with the International Science Council, the UNESCO World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) and the Royal Society of Canada.

    – ref. South Africa amended its research guidelines to allow for heritable human genome editing – https://theconversation.com/south-africa-amended-its-research-guidelines-to-allow-for-heritable-human-genome-editing-241136

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Wrongly convicted of a crime? Your ability to clear your name can come down to your postcode

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Lingard, Senior lecturer, University of Wollongong

    Shutterstock

    If you’re found guilty of a crime, it’s a basic principle of Australian law that you have a right to appeal.

    But having a right and being able to exercise it are two different things, especially when it comes to fresh evidence casting doubt on your conviction.

    In Australia, your ability to challenge a conviction with fresh evidence depends on where you live, because each state and territory has different rules. Too often, it also depends on the resources someone can access, including money and knowledge of the legal system.

    Everyone should have the same opportunities to clear their name, so how can we make accessing appeals more equitable?

    State by state

    Direct pathways to appeal differ between the states and territories.

    In all postcodes, it’s difficult to get appeal courts to consider fresh evidence in the first instance.

    South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, Queensland and the ACT allow multiple appeal applications if “fresh and compelling” evidence emerges after your first appeal. Since 2013, six convictions have been quashed this way, including Henry Keogh’s in SA after the state coroner recanted trial evidence.

    Tasmania and WA allow subsequent appeals only for serious offences, while SA has no such restriction.

    New South Wales and the Northern Territory don’t allow subsequent appeals, so people there have less direct access to the courts if wrongly convicted.

    There are, however, indirect ways people can seek an appeal with fresh evidence.

    In all states, you can ask the government to refer your case back to an appeal court. For example, the Victorian Attorney-General referred Faruk Orman’s case after evidence emerged about his lawyer’s misconduct. Referral decisions are made in secret and not reviewable.

    In the ACT, you can ask the Supreme Court for a judicial inquiry into your conviction. If you get an inquiry, the inquiry officer can refer your case back to the appeal court if they find reasonable doubt. This led to David Eastman’s conviction being quashed.

    These inquiries are only available if the issue can’t be properly addressed in an appeal, for example because the time for filing an appeal has lapsed. But, the ACT introduced subsequent appeals in 2024 which have no time limit, so it is unclear whether this pathway is still usable.

    In NSW, you can ask the government for an inquiry, but decisions are made in secret and open to political and media influence. This pathway led to Kathleen Folbigg’s acquittal.

    You can also ask the NSW Supreme Court for an inquiry or direct referral of your case back to the appeal court. This path is available for all offences and sentences and decisions are public. Since 2014, 59 conviction review applications to the NSW Supreme Court have resulted in one inquiry order and six referrals, with three successful appeals.

    The inquiry (currently underway) involves the Croatian Six, convicted in 1981 for conspiracy to bomb sites in Sydney. After many failed attempts, they finally secured an inquiry with fresh evidence casting doubt on police and witnesses’ trial evidence.

    These different pathways across the country create an uneven playing field, where some wrongfully convicted people may have more opportunities to clear their name than others.

    The right resources

    Access to appeals doesn’t just depend on location. It’s also about resources.

    To succeed in getting an appeal via any of the above pathways, you need the power to obtain documents and the resources to gather other evidence. You also need the ability to prepare a strong case. That’s before you even get to court.

    Judicial inquiries have investigatory powers and resources, but are expensive. For example, the Eastman inquiry cost the ACT government $12 million.

    The United Kingdom and New Zealand have independent bodies called Criminal Cases Review Commissions. Scotland has its own version.



    Read more:
    Kathleen Folbigg pardon shows Australia needs a dedicated body to investigate wrongful convictions

    These commissions have the power to compel evidence and resources to investigate claims of wrongful conviction at no cost to applicants. They also have the power to refer cases back to the courts. While these commissions don’t refer many cases overall, about 70% of of cases referred in the UK are successful on appeal.

    But, even for commissions, a strong initial application is important. In the UK, the Cardiff University Innocence Project engages law students to investigate claims of innocence and prepare applications for claims with merit.

    Canada and the United States don’t have criminal case review commissions. Innocence Projects there review claims of innocence and help prepare applications for government or court review.

    This is similar to the work of the few innocence clinics in Australia, such as those at RMIT and Griffith universities.

    Innocence initiatives around the world work with limited investigatory resources and powers compared with those of a review commission. In the absence of a such a commission in Australia, second appeals are useful, but they are expensive to run, hard to access and don’t address the resource issue.

    The free NSW Supreme Court pathway doesn’t address the resource issue either. But it can lead to an inquiry or referral, is open and accountable, and comes with guiding criteria and discretion to make short shrift of baseless applications.

    My research suggests free pathways to appeal are important justice mechanisms for the wrongly convicted, but they work best when applicants have legal help to prepare a clear and concise application. Involving law students to help edit applications could make it easier for decision-makers to review cases and help applicants without lawyers get a fairer chance to be heard.

    Kylie Lingard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Wrongly convicted of a crime? Your ability to clear your name can come down to your postcode – https://theconversation.com/wrongly-convicted-of-a-crime-your-ability-to-clear-your-name-can-come-down-to-your-postcode-240310

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –