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Category: Analysis Assessment

  • MIL-Evening Report: Is Donald Trump a fascist? No – he’s a new brand of authoritarian

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff M Boucher, Associate Professor in Literary Studies, Deakin University

    Is Donald Trump a fascist? General Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, thinks so. Trump is “fascist to the core,” he warns.

    John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, agrees. So does Vice President Kamala Harris, his opponent in this year’s presidential election.

    But political commentators who have a grounding in history are not so sure. Writing in The Guardian, Sidney Blumenthal calls Trump “Hitlerian” and his rallies “Naziesque”, but stops short of calling him a fascist.

    Michael Tomasky of The New Republic understands the reservations, but he is tired spending time debating the difference between “fascistic” and just plain “fascist”. “He’s damn close enough,” Tomasky writes, “and we’d better fight”.

    I understand this logic. It’s the reason Harris uses the term “fascist” to describe Trump – to send “a 911 call to the American people”. But there’s a problem.

    I have spent the past six years researching right-wing, authoritarian political communication in America. I can say with confidence how these kinds of labels can misfire. They can very easily be made to look like liberal hysteria, playing straight into the hands of the far right.

    Here are the two reasons why it is crucial to call Trump exactly what he is.

    1. Calling Trump a fascist, and then instantly adding, “or close enough,” plays directly into the hands of the far right. “See?” they might say. “Anytime anyone steps outside the liberal consensus, they get labelled a fascist. This is how political correctness silences dissent.”

    2. Trump’s kind of authoritarianism thrives on ambiguity about what sort of right-wing populist figure he is. Its success depends on the fact that “fascist” is the only name we have right now for authoritarian politics.

    In my view, Trump is not a fascist. Rather, he is part of a “new authoritarianism” that subverts democracy from within and solidifies power through administrative, rather than paramilitary, means.

    Why the ‘fascism’ label is unhelpful

    This brand of new authoritarianism hides in plain sight because there is no name for it yet. It looks like something else – for example, right-wing populism that is anti-liberal, but not yet anti-democratic. And then suddenly, it shows itself as anti-democratic extremism, as Trump did in refusing to accept the 2020 election result and encouraging the storming of the Capitol.

    This moment starkly revealed Trump as a new authoritarian. Supplementary debate about whether Trump is like Adolf Hitler risks being pointless. But the problem is that fascism is the only name we have now for anti-democratic extremism.

    All fascists are authoritarians. But not all authoritarians are fascists. It’s crucial to understand there are other types of authoritarianism – and how they differ.

    This is not just important for preventing Trump from seeking to subvert American democracy. It is also vital for stopping Trump imitators, who will now spring forth in other democracies. If there is still no name for what they are other than “fascist,” then they, too, will thrive on ambiguity.

    What is ‘new authoritarianism’?

    I suggest we focus on what Trump actually is – an anti-democratic, “new authoritarian” – and understand what this means and how he is gaining wider support using right-wing populism.

    The new authoritarians don’t necessarily take a sledgehammer to a nation’s institutions, for example, by doing away with elections. Rather, they hollow out democracy from within, so it becomes a façade draped over a one-party state.

    We have many examples of this kind of ruler today: Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko, Tunisia’s Kais Saied and, of course, the poster-figure for the new authoritarians, Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

    Trump’s admiration for Putin is a matter of public record. For alt-right thinkers who are influential with Trump, such as Steve Bannon, Putin provides a blueprint for how new authoritarianism works.

    Authoritarians like Putin must govern through the state, not the people, because, as social psychologist Bob Altemeyer explains, they ultimately represent a tiny minority of the population.

    Military dictatorships rule through the armed forces. The fascist regimes of 20th century Europe were ultimately police states. They relied on converting paramilitary death squads into secret police (like the Gestapo) and state security (the SS in Nazi Germany).

    The new authoritarians, however, govern through the transformation of the civil service into their own personal political machines.

    That is why Trump is obsessed with the “deep state”, by which he means the way in which democratic institutions have built-in legal safeguards defended by civil servants, who can potentially frustrate executive orders. The new authoritarian strategy is to appoint a stratum of political loyalists to key positions in their administrations, who can circumvent institutional checks. But that is no easy matter.

    If Trump is elected, he has vowed to “crush the deep state”, for example, by purging thousands of nonpolitical civil service employees. As part of this, he has pledged to establish a “truth and reconciliation commission” oriented to punishing those he thinks opposed him the past.

    Trump has been following this new authoritarian playbook for nearly his entire political career. These are the three steps he is taking to lay the groundwork for authoritarian rule:

    1) Undermine electoral integrity

    The first key to new authoritarianism: subvert democracy by undermining electoral integrity. The acid test here? Authoritarians do not accept election results when the opposition has won. As Trump has very bluntly put it, “I am a very proud election denier”.

    Trump’s opening move in this regard was to take over the Republican Party. He used election denialism to do this, while also marginalising any moderates who opposed him.

    The Trump Republican Party is now a minority party, oriented to white grievance, resentment of immigrants and the anti-democratic idea that a country should be run like a company.

    Its only hope for winning government as a minority party is by trying to suppress the vote of its opponents. To do this, pro-Trump Republican states have passed a number of laws since 2020 to make voting more difficult.

    These states have also aggressively removed people from the voting rolls. Texas alone has stricken one million voters off its rolls since 2021, only 6,500 of whom were deemed non-citizens.

    If Trump wins, he will likely make it even harder for people to vote. Civil rights groups fear he may introduce a citizenship question to the census, use the Department of Justice to conduct a massive purge of voter rolls, and launch criminal investigations of electoral officials.

    As a backup, Trump will likely resurrect the “election integrity commission” he established in 2017 to justify his claims of alleged voter fraud in the 2016 election and support his election denialism narrative.

    2) Weaken the legislative and judicial branches

    The second key to new authoritarianism: circumventing the checks-and-balances function of the legislative branch of government. The goal here is to rule by executive fiat or govern through a stacked legislative majority.

    The new authoritarians often govern through executive orders, including the use of emergency powers. For instance, Trump has envisaged a scenario in which a Republican Congress could enact emergency powers to empower the president to overturn the authority of state governors to fire their prosecutors and use the National Guard for law enforcement.

    Such a development would depend on a number of factors, including the complicity of the judiciary. This is why new authoritarians also attempt to stack the judiciary with loyalists.

    In his first term, Trump not only appointed three Supreme Court justices, he also placed judges to the federal appeals courts, district courts and circuit courts.

    3) Attack their enemies

    This leads to the third pillar of new authoritarianism: decapitating the political opposition and suppressing dissent.

    Trump’s threats to investigate and prosecute his enemies, including leading figures in the Democratic Party, should be taken very seriously. His calls to target the “enemy from within” were pointedly directed at what he deemed “radical left lunatics”.

    Journalists and the news media would also likely be targeted. Trump’s statement that the broadcast licenses of national networks should be revoked, for example, needs to be understood in the context of his pledges to dismantle federal regulatory agencies if elected.

    That matters, because the next step for new authoritarians to solidify their power is through suppressing dissent. Trump has proposed using the military in civil contexts to target criminals and prevent illegal immigration. He has reportedly even questioned why the military couldn’t “just shoot” protesters.

    It is important to understand how this differs from fascism, because it is central to Trump’s ability to retain electoral support.

    Classical fascism under dictators like Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini was based on street-fighting, paramilitary movements, which used violence to intimidate and crush the opposition. The equivalents of this today are right-wing militias such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

    Trump keeps one foot on the edge of this camp. But alt-right figures like Bannon understand that swastika flags and paramilitary uniforms are a political liability. Their preference is for new authoritarianism, which is able to push
    a right-wing extremist agenda by reducing democracy to sham elections, rather than openly setting up a totalitarian regime.

    As such, Trump can dodge accusations of being a “fascist” by telling the Proud Boys to “stand by”, while throwing up a smokescreen of equivocations about the January 6 Capitol insurrection. He can distance himself from kind of paramilitary violence that is reminiscent of classical fascism.

    It is about time to call things by their true names. Trump has the anti-democratic tendencies of a new authoritarian – and, as his opponents point out, he seems likely to put his words into actions if elected a second time.

    Geoff M Boucher 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. Is Donald Trump a fascist? No – he’s a new brand of authoritarian – https://theconversation.com/is-donald-trump-a-fascist-no-hes-a-new-brand-of-authoritarian-241586

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Sydney’s beloved Footbridge Theatre launched some of our biggest stars. After nearly 20 years, it’s making a grand return

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Ginters, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Sydney

    The Footbridge Theatre in the 1960s, when it was known as the Union Theatre. University of Sydney Archives

    After nearly 20 years as a lecture theatre, the University of Sydney’s Footbridge Theatre is reopening as a live performance venue in the university’s arts precinct.

    The Footbridge is home to a long history of student theatre on campus. When it opened in 1961 as the 655-seat Union Theatre (replacing the old Union Hall) it was the first theatre to have been built in Sydney in more than 20 years.

    Hopes were high for the new venture to be shared by student theatre groups and Sydney’s first professional repertory company, the Union Repertory Theatre Company (not to be confused with the Melbourne Theatre Company’s original name, the Union Theatre Repertory Company).

    For decades, the Footbridge Theatre was host to both industry heavyweights and budding talent from across the arts sectors, before being converted to a lecture hall in 2006. Now, it’s back.

    Hitting the ground running

    The theatre opened with productions from the Sydney University Musical Society, including Claudio Monteverdi’s ballet Il Ballo Delle Ingrate and Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas.

    Also on show was the Sydney University Theatre Council’s Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance, starring John Bell in the title role. Ken Horler, with whom Bell founded the famous Nimrod Theatre a decade later, co-directed the play with May Hollinworth, who ran the university’s Dramatic Society in the 1920s and ’30s. The production also featured John Gaden, Bob Ellis, Bruce Beresford, Richard Brennan and Mungo MacCallum.

    The following year, Horler directed Coriolanus, with Bell in the title role and Gaden and Arthur Dignam in the cast.

    John Bell and Arthur Dignam in Coriolanus.
    University of Sydney

    Horler would go on to direct the first Australian production of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage in 1963. The cast included Germaine Greer as Mother Courage, Peter Carroll and Ron Blair.

    Bell also acted in and directed a number of shows in the following years. He returned again in the early 1990s to stage a series of productions with his fledgling Bell Shakespeare company.

    Peter Carroll, Germaine Greer, Maree D’Arcy, Ron Blair and Paul Thom in Mother Courage.
    University of Sydney

    A smidge of controversy

    The university students of the 1960s had been delighted to have their “own” venue after years of makeshift spaces. They produced some adventurous – as well as some scandalous – works.

    When the Dramatic Society staged its Revue of the Absurd in 1963, it included a controversial film by the then-nascent filmmakers Bruce Beresford and Albie Thoms. It Droppeth as the Gentle Rain depicted a cocktail party coming to a sticky end as shit rained down from the sky.

    The film was promptly banned. This ban was reinstated the following year when Beresford and Thoms sought to show it at a gala commemorating the Dramatic Society’s 75th birthday.

    Bruce Beresford and Albie Thoms’ film, It Droppeth as the Gentle Rain, was banned in 1963 – and again the following year.
    University of Sydney

    Student revues were a popular feature of the theatre in its early years. One of these was the 1964 revue called Jump, which starred Colin Anderson, Germaine Greer, John Gaden and Paul Thom.

    The revue Jump featured Paul Thom and John Gaden (left), as well as Colin Anderson and Germaine Greer (right).
    University of Sydney

    The Union Repertory Theatre Company was short-lived, collapsing within 12 months of its launch in 1961.

    Also, ironically, the Footbridge was too expensive for students to hire often. Nonetheless, it was still a launching pad for those involved in student theatre, including Henry Szeps (who later acted in the 1984–94 series Mother and Son), Jack Thompson, who played Claudius in a production of Hamlet (1969), and Neil Armfield in Much Ado About Nothing (1974).

    Fellow student actor and director David Marr would later acknowledge Armfield’s genius as a director, while diplomatically adding “acting was not his strength”.

    A poster designed by Martin Sharp for the 1965 revue First, No Pinky.
    University of Sydney

    What’s in a name?

    The Union Theatre was a venue for hire throughout the 1970s, with student theatre, concerts, music theatre, French language theatre and other genres sporadically staged. In 1981, it was renamed the Footbridge Theatre (after a footbridge that was constructed over Parramatta Road in 1972).

    For two decades from the mid-1980s, the Gordon Frost Organisation leased the theatre to present a number of popular commercial productions.

    It also rented the theatre to other companies, including Bell Shakespeare, the Sydney Theatre Company, Ensemble Theatre and Sydney Festival, which programmed outstanding international works such as the Irish Druid Theatre’s 1998 production of The Leenane Trilogy.

    The 1990s also saw students back onstage in annual faculty revues.

    The next act begins

    A squeeze on space at the university led to Footbridge’s conversion to a lecture theatre in 2006. Following extensive renovations, the now 300-seat theatre is opening once again, with Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods.

    The university’s Dramatic Society first produced Into the Woods in the early 2000s (starring Virginia Gay). The Sydney University Musical Theatre Ensemble (MUSE) staged it again in 2011.

    This time around the production is showcasing the talents of the inaugural cohort of music theatre students from the university’s Conservatorium of Music.

    Just as it was for the “Johns” (Bell and Gaden) who, in the early 1960s, took their first steps as student actors into their future careers – and are still going strong six decades later – campus theatres remain vitally important for students finding their feet as the artists of the future.

    Now, in a new decade and with a new generation of students, it’s time to go into the woods again.

    Laura Ginters and Robyn Dalton co-authored a history of drama activities at the University of Sydney, The Ripples Before The New Wave 1957-1963 (2018). The authors interviewed many of the student actors mentioned here for that book.

    – ref. Sydney’s beloved Footbridge Theatre launched some of our biggest stars. After nearly 20 years, it’s making a grand return – https://theconversation.com/sydneys-beloved-footbridge-theatre-launched-some-of-our-biggest-stars-after-nearly-20-years-its-making-a-grand-return-241561

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: PM defends Fiji’s UN ‘ambush’ vote – challenged by human rights advocate

    Pacific Media Watch

    Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has “cleared the air” with the Fijian diaspora in Samoa over Fiji’s vote against the United Nations resolution on the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and People.

    He denied that Fiji — the only country to vote against the resolution — had “pressed the wrong button”.

    And he described last week’s vote as an “ambush resolution”, claiming it was not the one they had agreed on during the voting of the UN Special Committee of Decolonisation, reports The Fiji Times.

    However, a prominent Fiji civil society and human rights advocate condemned his statement and also Fiji’s UN voting.

    Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC) coordinator Shamima Ali said she was “ashamed” of Fiji’s stance over genocide in Palestine, its vote against ceasefire and “not wanting decolonisation”.

    In Apia, Rabuka, who leaves for Kanaky New Caledonia on Sunday to take part in the Pacific Islands Forum’s “Troika Plus” talks on the French Pacific’s territory amid indigenous demands for independence, told The Fiji Times:

    “We will not tell them we pressed the wrong button. We will tell them that the resolution was an ambush resolution, it is not something that we have been talking about.”

    ‘Serious student of colonisation’
    The Prime Minister said he had been a “serious student of colonisation and decolonisation”.

    Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka . . . “We will not tell them we pressed the wrong button.” Image: Fiji Times

    “They started with the C-12, but now it’s C-24 members of the [UN] committee that talks about decolonisation.

    “I was wondering if anyone would complain about my going [to Kanaky New Caledonia] next week because C-24 met last week and there was a vote on decolonisation.”

    According to an RNZ Pacific interview, Rabuka had told the Kanak independence movement:”Don’t slap the hand that has fed you.”

    Fiji was the only country that voted against the UN resolution while 99 voted for the resolution and 61 countries, including colonisers such as France, United Kingdom and the United States, abstained.

    Another coloniser, Indonesia (West Papua), voted for it.

    “I thought the [indigenous] people of the Kanaky of New Caledonia would object to my coming, so far we have not heard anything from them.

    “So, I am hoping that no one will bring that up, but if they do bring it up, we have a perfect answer.”

    Fiji human rights advocate Shamima Ali . . . “We are ashamed of having a government that supports an occupation.” Image: FWCC/FB

    Human rights advocate Shamima Ali said in a statement on social media it was “unbelievable” that Prime Minister Rabuka claimed to be “a serious student of colonisation and decolonisation” while leading a government that had been “blatantly complicit in the genocide of innocent Palestinians”.

    “No amount of public statements and explanations will save this Coalition government from the mess it has created on the international stage, especially at the United Nations.

    “We are ashamed of having a government that supports an occupation, votes against a ceasefire and does not want decolonisation in the world.

    “Trust between the Fijian people and their government is being eroded, especially on matters of global significance that reflect on the entire nation.”

    According to the government, Fiji is one of two Pacific countries which are members of the Special Committee on Decolonisation or C-24 and have been a consistent voice in addressing the issue of decolonisation.

    Through the C-24 and the Fourth Committee, Fiji aligns with the positions undertaken by the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), in its support for the annual resolution on decolonisation entitled “Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples”.

    Government reiterated its support of the regional position of the Forum, and the MSG on decolonisation and self-determination, as enshrined in the UN Charter.

    The Fiji Permanent Mission in New York, led by Filipo Tarakinikini, is working with the Forum Secretariat to clarify the matter within its process.

    Rabuka is currently in Samoa for the 2024 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), which is being held in the Pacific for the first time.

    The UN decolonisation declaration vote on 17 October 2024 . . . Fiji was the only country that voted against it. Image: UN

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Murdoch to Musk: how global media power has shifted from the moguls to the big tech bros

    ANALYSIS: By Matthew Ricketson, Deakin University and Andrew Dodd, The University of Melbourne

    Until recently, Elon Musk was just a wildly successful electric car tycoon and space pioneer. Sure, he was erratic and outspoken, but his global influence was contained and seemingly under control.

    But add the ownership of just one media platform, in the form of Twitter — now X — and the maverick has become a mogul, and the baton of the world’s biggest media bully has passed to a new player.

    What we can gauge from watching Musk’s stewardship of X is that he’s unlike former media moguls, making him potentially even more dangerous. He operates under his own rules, often beyond the reach of regulators. He has demonstrated he has no regard for those who try to rein him in.

    Under the old regime, press barons, from William Randolph Hearst to Rupert Murdoch, at least pretended they were committed to truth-telling journalism. Never mind that they were simultaneously deploying intimidation and bullying to achieve their commercial and political ends.

    Musk has no need, or desire, for such pretence because he’s not required to cloak anything he says in even a wafer-thin veil of journalism. Instead, his driving rationale is free speech, which is often code for don’t dare get in my way.

    This means we are in new territory, but it doesn’t mean what went before it is irrelevant.

    A big bucket of the proverbial
     If you want a comprehensive, up-to-date primer on the behaviour of media moguls over the past century-plus, Eric Beecher has just provided it in his book The Men Who Killed the News.

    Alongside accounts of people like Hearst in the United States and Lord Northcliffe in the United Kingdom, Beecher quotes the notorious example of what happened to John Major, the UK prime minister between 1990 and 1997, who baulked at following Murdoch’s resistance to strengthening ties with the European Union.

    In a conversation between Major and Kelvin MacKenzie, editor of Murdoch’s best-selling English tabloid newspaper, The Sun, the prime minister was bluntly told: “Well John, let me put it this way. I’ve got a large bucket of shit lying on my desk and tomorrow morning I’m going to pour it all over your head.”

    MacKenzie might have thought he was speaking truth to power, but in reality he was doing Murdoch’s bidding, and actually using his master’s voice, as Beecher confirms by recounting an anecdote from early in Murdoch’s career in Australia.

    In the 1960s, when Murdoch owned The Sunday Times in Perth, he met Lang Hancock (father of Gina Rinehart) to discuss potentially buying some mineral prospects together in Western Australia. The state government was opposed to the planned deal.

    Beecher cites Hancock’s biographer, Robert Duffield, who claimed Murdoch asked the mining magnate, “If I can get a certain politician to negotiate, will you sell me a piece of the cake?” Hancock said yes.

    Later that night, Murdoch called again to say the deal had been done. How, asked an incredulous Hancock. Murdoch replied: “Simple [. . . ] I told him: look you can have a headline a day or a bucket of shit every day. What’s it to be?”

    Between Murdoch in the 1960s and MacKenzie in the 1990s came Mario Puzo’s The Godfather with Don Corleone, aided by Luca Brasi holding a gun to a rival’s head, saying “either his brains or his signature would be on the contract”.

    Changing the rules of the game
     Media moguls use metaphorical bullets. Those relatively few people who do resist them, like Major, get the proverbial poured over their government. Headlines in The Sun following the Conservatives’ win in the 1992 election included: “Pigmy PM”, “Not up to the job” and “1001 reasons why you are such a plonker John”.

    If media moguls since Hearst and Northcliffe have tap-danced between producing journalism and pursuing their commercial and political aims, they have at least done the former, and some of it has been very good.

    The leaders of the social media behemoths, by contrast, don’t claim any Fourth Estate role. If anything, they seem to hold journalism with tongs as far from their face as possible.

    They do possess enormous wealth though. Apple, Microsoft, Google and Meta, formerly known as Facebook, are in the top 10 companies globally by market capitalisation. By comparison, News Corporation’s market capitalisation now ranks at 1173 in the world.

    Regulating the online environment may be difficult, as Australia discovered this year when it tried, and failed, to stop X hosting footage of the Wakeley Church stabbing attacks. But limiting transnational media platforms can be done, according to Robert Reich, a former Secretary of Labor in Bill Clinton’s government.

    Despite some early wins through Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, big tech companies habitually resist regulation. They have used their substantial influence to stymie it wherever and whenever nation-states have sought to introduce it.

    Meta’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has been known to go rogue, as he demonstrated in February 2021 when he protested against the bargaining code by unilaterally closing Facebook sites that carried news. Generally, though, his strategy has been to deploy standard public relations and lobbying methods.

    But his rival Musk uses his social media platform, X, like a wrecking ball.

    Musk is just about the first thing the average X user sees in their feed, whether they want to or not. He gives everyone the benefit of his thoughts, not to mention his thought bubbles. He proclaims himself a free-speech absolutist, but most of his pronouncements lean hard to the right, providing little space for alternative views.

    Some of his tweets have been inflammatory, such as him linking to an article promoting a conspiracy theory about the savage attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of the former US Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, or his tweet that “Civil war is inevitable” following riots that erupted recently in the UK.

    As the BBC reported, the riots occurred after the fatal stabbing of three girls in Southport. “The subsequent unrest in towns and cities across England and in parts of Northern Ireland has been fuelled by misinformation online, the far-right and anti-immigration sentiment”.

    Nor does Musk bother with niceties when people disagree with him. Late last year, advertisers considered boycotting X because they believed some of Musk’s posts were anti-Semitic. He told them during a live interview to “Go fuck yourself”.

    He has welcomed Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, back onto X after Trump’s account was frozen over his comments surrounding the January 6, 2021, attack on the capitol. Since then both men have floated the idea of governing together if Trump wins a second term.

    Is the world better off with tech bros like Musk who demand unlimited freedom and assert their influence brazenly, or old-style media moguls who spin fine-sounding rhetoric about freedom of the press and exert influence under the cover of journalism?

    That’s a question for our times that we should probably begin grappling with.

    Dr Matthew Ricketson is professor of communication, Deakin University and Dr Andrew Dodd is director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: RSF tackles Taiwan’s media freedom ‘Achilles heel’, boosts Asia Pacific monitoring action

    SPECIAL REPORT: By David Robie in Taipei

    It was a heady week for the Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) — celebration of seven years of its Taipei office, presenting a raft of proposals to the Taiwan government, and hosting its Asia-Pacific network of correspondents.

    Director general Thibaut Bruttin and the Taipei bureau chief Cedric Alviani primed the Taipei media scene before last week’s RSF initiatives with an op-ed in the Taiwan Times by acknowledging the country’s media freedom advances in the face of Chinese propaganda.

    Taiwan rose eight places to 27th in the RSF World Press Freedom Index this year — second only to Timor-Leste in the Asia-Pacific region.

    But the co-authors also warned over the credibility damage caused by media “too often neglect[ing] journalistic ethics for political or commercial reasons”.

    As a result, only three in 10 Taiwanese said they trusted the news media, according to a Reuters Institute survey conducted in 2022, one of the lowest percentages among democracies.

    “This climate of distrust gives disproportionate influence to platforms, in particular Facebook and Line, despite them being a major vector of false or biased information,” Bruttin and Alviani wrote.

    “This credibility deficit for traditional media, a real Achilles heel of Taiwanese democracy, puts it at risk of being exploited for malicious purposes, with potentially dramatic consequences.”

    Press freedom programme
    At a meeting with Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te and senior foreign affairs officials, Bruttin and his colleagues presented RSF’s innovative programme for improving press freedom, including the Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI), the first ISO-certified media quality standard; the Paris Charter on Artificial Intelligence and Journalism; and the Propaganda Monitor, a project aimed at combating propaganda and disinformation worldwide.

    RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin speaking at the reception celebrating seven years of Taipei’s Asia Pacific office. Image: Pacific Media Watch

    The week also highlighted concerns over the export of the China’s “New World Media Order”, which is making inroads in some parts of the Asia-Pacific region, including the Pacific.

    At the opening session of the Asia-Pacific correspondents’ seminar, delegates referenced the Chinese disinformation and assaults on media freedom strategies that have been characterised as the “great leap backwards for journalism” in China.

    “Disinformation — the deliberate spreading of false or biased news to manipulate minds — is gaining ground around the world,” Bruttin and Alviani warned in their article.

    “As China and Russia sink into authoritarianism and export their methods of censorship and media control, democracies find themselves overwhelmed by an incessant flow of propaganda that threatens the integrity of their institutions.”

    Both Bruttin and Alviani spoke of these issues too at the celebration of the seventh anniversary of the Asia-Pacific office in Taipei.

    Why Taipei? Hongkong had been an “likely choice, but not safe legally”, admitted Bruttin when they were choosing their location, so the RSF team are happy with the choice of Taiwan.

    Hub for human rights activists
    “I think we were among the first NGOs to have established a presence here. We kind of made a bet that Taipei would be a hub for human rights activists, and we were right.”

    About 200 journalists, media workers and press freedom and human rights advocates attended the birthday bash in the iconic Grand Hotel’s Yuanshan Club. So it wasn’t surprising that there was a lot of media coverage raising the issues.

    RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin (centre) with correspondents Dr David Robie and Dr Joseph Fernandez in Taipei. Image: Pacific Media Watch

    In an interview with Voice of America’s Joyce Huang, Bruttin was more specific about the “insane” political propaganda threats from China faced by Taiwan.

    However, Taiwan “has demonstrated resilience and has rich experience in resisting cyber information attacks, which can be used as a reference for the world”.

    Referencing China as the world’s “biggest jailer of journalists”, Bruttin said: “We’re very worried, obviously.” He added about some specific cases: “We’ve had very troublesome reports about the situation of Zhang Zhan, for example, who was the laureate of the RSF’s [2021 press freedom] awards [in the courage category] and had been just released from jail, now is sent back to jail.

    “We know the lack of treatment if you have a medical condition in the Chinese prisons.

    “Another example is Jimmy Lai, the Hongkong press freedom mogul, he’s very likely to die in jail if nothing happens. He’s over 70.

    “And there is very little reason to believe that, despite his dual citizenship, the British government will be able to get him a safe passage to Europe.”

    Problem for Chinese public
    Bruttin also expressed concern about the problem for the general public, especially in China where he said a lot of people had been deprived of the right to information “worthy of that name”.

    “And we’re talking about hundreds of millions of people. And it’s totally scandalous to see how bad information is treated in the People’s Republic of China.”

    Seventeen countries in the Asia-Pacific region were represented in the network seminar.

    Representatives of Australia, Cambodia, Hongkog, Indonesia, Japan, Myanmar, Mongolia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, South Korea, Tibet, Thailand and Vietnam were present. However, three correspondents (Malaysia, Singapore and Timor-Leste) were unable to be personally present.

    Discussion and workshop topics included the RSF Global Strategy; the Asia-Pacific network and the challenges being faced; best practice as correspondents; “innovative solutions” against disinformation; public advocacy (for authoritarian regimes; emerging democracies, and “leading” democracies); “psychological support” – one of the best sessions; and the RSF Crisis Response.

    RSF Oceania colleagues Dr David Robie (left) and Dr Joseph Fernandez . . . mounting challenges. Image: Pacific Media Watch

    What about Oceania (including Australia and New Zealand) and its issues? Fortunately, the countries being represented have correspondents who can speak our publicly, unlike some in the region facing authoritarian responses.

    Australia
    Australian correspondent Dr Joseph M Fernandez, visiting associate professor at Curtin University and author of the book Journalists and Confidential Sources: Colliding Public Interests in the Age of the Leak, notes that Australia sits at 39th in the RSF World Press Freedom Index — a drop of 12 places from the previous year.

    “While this puts Australia in the top one quarter globally, it does not reflect well on a country that supposedly espouses democratic values. It ranks behind New Zealand, Taiwan, Timor-Leste and Bhutan,” he says.

    “Australia’s press freedom challenges are manifold and include deep-seated factors, including the influence of oligarchs whose own interests often collide with that of citizens.

    “While in opposition the current Australian federal government promised reforms that would have improved the conditions for press freedom, but it has failed to deliver while in government.

    “Much needs to be done in clawing back the over-reach of national security laws, and in freeing up information flow, for example, through improved whistleblower law, FOI law, source protection law, and defamation law.”

    Dr Fernandez criticises the government’s continuing culture of secrecy and says there has been little progress towards improving transparency and accountability.

    “The media’s attacks upon itself are not helping either given the constant moves by some media and their backers to undermine the efforts of some journalists and some media organisations, directly or indirectly.”

    A proposal for a “journalist register” has also stirred controversy.

    Dr Fernandez also says the war on Gaza has “highlighted the near paralysis” of many governments of the so-called established democracies in “bringing the full weight of their influence to end the loss of lives and human suffering”.

    “They have also failed to demonstrate strong support for journalists’ ability to tell important stories.”


    An English-language version of this tribute to the late RSF director-general Christophe Deloire, who died from cancer on 8 June 2024, was screened at the RSF Taipei reception. He was 53. Video: RSF

    Aotearoa New Zealand
    In New Zealand (19th in the RSF Index), although journalists work in an environment free from violence and intimidation, they have increasingly faced online harassment. Working conditions became tougher in early 2022 when, during protests against covid-19 vaccinations and restrictions and a month-long “siege” of Parliament, journalists were subjected to violence, insults and death threats, which are otherwise extremely rare in the country.

    Research published in December 2023 revealed that high rates of abuse and threats directed at journalists put the country at risk of “mob censorship” – citizen vigilantism seeking to “discipline” journalism. Women journalists bore the brunt of the online abuse with one respondent describing her inbox as a “festering heap of toxicity”.

    While New Zealand society is wholeheartedly multicultural, with mutual recognition between the Māori and European populations enshrined in the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, this balance is under threat from a draft Treaty Principles Bill.

    The nation’s bicultural dimension is not entirely reflected in the media, still dominated by the English-language press. A rebalancing is taking place, as seen in the success of the Māori Television network and many Māori-language programmes in mass media, such as Te Karere, The Hui and Te Ao Māori News.

    Media plurality and democracy is under growing threat with massive media industry cuts this year.

    New Zealand media also play an important role as a regional communications centre for other South Pacific nations, via Tagata Pasifika, Pacific Media Network and others.

    Papua New Guinea’s Belinda Kora (left) with RSF colleagues . . . “collaborating in our Pacific efforts in seeking the truth”. Image: Belinda Kora

    Papua New Guinea
    The Papua New Guinea correspondent, Belinda Kora, who is secretary of the revised PNG Media Council and an ABC correspondent in Port Moresby, succeeded former South Pacific Post Ltd chief executive Bob Howarth, the indefatigable media freedom defender of both PNG and Timor-Leste.

    Currently PNG (91st in the RSF Index) is locked in a debate over a controversial draft government media policy – now in its fifth version – that critics regard as a potential tool to crack down on media freedom. But Kora is optimistic about RSF’s role.

    “I am excited about what RSF is able and willing to bring to a young Pacific region — full of challenges against the press,” she says.

    “But more importantly, I guess, is that the biggest threat in PNG would be itself, if it continues to go down the path of not being able to adhere to simple media ethics and guidelines.

    “It must hold itself accountable before it is able to hold others in the same way.

    “We have a small number of media houses in PNG but if we are able to stand together as one and speak with one voice against the threats of ownership and influence, we can achieve better things in future for this industry.

    “We need to protect our reporters if they are to speak for themselves and their experiences as well. We need to better provide for their everyday needs before we can write the stories that need to be told.

    “And this lies with each media house.

    The biggest threat for the Pacific as a whole? “I guess the most obvious one would be being able to remain self-regulated BUT not being accountable for breaching our individual code of ethics.

    “Building public trust remains vital if we are to move forward. The lack of media awareness also contributes to the lack of ensuring media is given the attention it deserves in performing its role — no matter how big or small our islands are,” Kora says.

    “The press should remain free from government influence, which is a huge challenge for many island industries, despite state ownership.

    Kora believes that although Pacific countries are “scattered in the region”, they are able to help each other more, to better enhance capacity building and learning from their mistakes with collaboration.

    “By collaborating in our efforts in seeking the truth behind many of our big stories that is affecting our people. This I believe will enable us to improve our performance and accountability.”

    Example to the region
    Meanwhile, back in Taiwan on the day that RSF’s Thibaut Bruttin flew out, he gave a final breakfast interview to China News Agency (CNA) reporter Teng Pei-ju who wrote about the country building up its free press model as an example to the region.

    “Taiwan really is one of the test cases for the robustness of journalism in the world,” added Bruttin, reflecting on the country’s transformation from an authoritarian regime that censored information into a vibrant democracy that fights disinformation.

    Dr David Robie, convenor of the Asia Pacific Media Network’s Pacific Media Watch project and author of several media and politics books, including Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific, has been an RSF correspondent since 1996.

    RSF Asia Pacific correspondents and staff pictured at the Grand Hotel’s Yuanshan Club. Image: RSF

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • 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-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-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 –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Prabowo takes power as Indonesian military set up new battalions – what now for West Papuans?

    ANALYSIS: By Ali Mirin

    In the lead up to the inauguration of President Prabowo Subianto last Sunday, Indonesia established five “Vulnerable Area Buffer Infantry Battalions” in key regions across West Papua — a move described by Indonesian Army Chief-of-Staff Maruli Simanjuntak as a “strategic initiative” by the new leader.

    The battalions are based in the Keerom, Sarmi, Boven Digoel, Merauke and Sorong regencies, and their aim is to “enhance security” in Papua, and also to strengthen Indonesia’s military presence in response to long-standing unrest and conflict, partly related to independence movements and local resistance.

    According to Armed Forces chief General Agus Subiyanto, “the main goal of the new battalions is to assist the government in accelerating development and improving the prosperity of the Papuan people”.

    However, this raises concerns about further militarisation and repression of a region already plagued by long-running violence and human rights abuses in the context of the movement for a free and independent West Papua.

    Thousands of Indonesian soldiers have been stationed in areas impacted by violence, including Star Mountain, Nduga, Yahukimo, Maybrat, Intan Jaya, Puncak and Puncak Jaya.

    As a result, the situation in West Papua is becoming increasingly difficult for indigenous people.

    Extrajudicial killings in Papua go unreported or are only vaguely known about internationally. Those who are aware of these either disregard them or accept them as an “unavoidable consequence” of civil unrest in what Indonesia refers to as its most eastern provinces — the “troubled regions”.

    Why do the United Nations, Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and the international community stay silent?

    While the Indonesian government frames this move as a strategy to enhance security and promote development, it risks exacerbating long-standing tensions in a region with deep-seated conflicts over autonomy and independence and the impacts of extractive industries and agribusiness on West Papuan people and their environment.

    Exploitative land theft
    The Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice, in collaboration with various international and Indonesian human and environmental rights organisations, presented testimony at the public hearings of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) at Queen Mary University of London, in June.

    The tribunal heard testimonies relating to a range of violations by Indonesia. A key issue, highlighted was the theft of indigenous Papuan land by the Indonesian government and foreign corporations in connection to extractive industries such as mining, logging and palm oil plantations.

    The appropriation of traditional lands without the consent of the Papuan people violates their right to land and self-determination, leading to environmental degradation, loss of livelihood, and displacement of Indigenous communities.

    The tribunal’s judgment underscores how the influx of non-Papuan settlers and the Indonesian government’s policies have led to the marginalisation of Papuan culture and identity. The demographic shift due to transmigration programmes has significantly reduced the proportion of Indigenous Papuans in their own land.

    Moreover, a rise in militarisation in West Papua has often led to heightened repression, with potential human rights violations, forced displacement and further marginalisation of the indigenous communities.

    The decision to station additional military forces in West Papua, especially in conflict-prone areas like Nduga, Yahukimo and Intan Jaya, reflects a continuation of Indonesia’s militarised approach to governance in the region.

    Indonesian security forces . . . “the main goal of the new battalions is to assist the government in accelerating development and improving the prosperity of the Papuan people,” says Armed Forces chief General Agus Subiyanto. Image: Antara

    Security pact
    The Indonesia-Papua New Guinea Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) was signed by the two countries in 2010 but only came into effect this year after the PNG Parliament ratified it in late February.

    Indonesia ratified the pact in 2012.

    As reported by Asia Pacific Report, PNG’s Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko and Indonesia’s ambassador to PNG, Andriana Supandy, said the DCA enabled an enhancement of military operations between the two countries, with a specific focus on strengthening patrols along the PNG-West Papua border.

    This will have a significant impact on civilian communities in the areas of conflict and along the border. Indigenous people in particular, are facing the threat of military takeovers of their lands and traditional border lines.

    Under the DCA, the joint militaries plan to employ technology, including military drones, to monitor and manage local residents’ every move along the border.

    Human rights
    Prabowo, Defence Minister prior to being elected President, has a controversial track record on human rights — especially in the 1990s, during Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor.

    His involvement in military operations in West Papua adds to fears that the new battalions may be used for oppressive measures, including crackdowns on dissent and pro-independence movements.

    As indigenous communities continue to be marginalised, their calls for self-determination and independence may grow louder, risking further conflict in the region.

    Without substantial changes in the Indonesian government’s approach to West Papua, including addressing human rights abuses and engaging in meaningful dialogue with indigenous leaders, the future of West Papuans remains uncertain and fraught with challenges.

    With ongoing military operations often accused of targeting indigenous populations, the likelihood of further human rights violations, such as extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, and forced displacement, remains high.

    Displacement
    Military operations in West Papua frequently result in the displacement of indigenous Papuans, as they flee conflict zones.

    The presence of more battalions could drive more communities from their homes, deepening the humanitarian crisis in the region. Indigenous peoples, who rely on their land for survival, face disruption of their traditional livelihoods and rising poverty.

    The Indonesian government launched the Damai Cartenz military operation on April 5, 2018, and it is still in place in the conflict zones of Yahukimo, Pegunungan Bintang, Nduga and Intan Jaya.

    Since then, according to a September 24 Human Rights Monitor update, more than 79,867 West Papuans remain internally displaced.

    The displacement, killings, shootings, abuses, tortures and deaths are merely the tip of the iceberg of what truly occurs within the tightly-controlled military operational zones across West Papua, according to Benny Wenda, a UK-based leader of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP).

    The international community, particularly the United Nations and the Pacific Islands Forum have been criticised for remaining largely silent on the matter. Responding to the August 31 PIF communique reaffirming its 2019 call for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visit to West Papua, Wenda said:

    “[N]ow is the time for Indonesia to finally let the world see what is happening in our land. They cannot hide their dirty secret any longer.”

    Increased global attention and intervention is crucial in addressing the humanitarian crisis, preventing further escalations and supporting the rights and well-being of the West Papuans.

    Without meaningful dialogue, the long-term consequences for the indigenous population may be severe, risking further violence and unrest in the region.

    As Prabowo was sworn in, Wenda restated the ULMWP’s demand for an internationally-mediated referendum on independence, saying: “The continued violation of our self-determination is the root cause of the West Papua conflict.”

    Ali Mirin is a West Papuan academic from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands bordering the Star Mountain region of Papua New Guinea. He is a contributor to Asia Pacific Report and Green Left in Australia.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Chaotic scenes at Travis Scott’s Melbourne concert: what is the role of artists in crowd behaviour?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milad Haghani, Senior Lecturer of Urban Analytics & Resilience, UNSW Sydney

    Travis Scott’s Melbourne concert on October 22 lived up to his reputation for chaotic performances. Fans, eager for a high-energy show, were met with unruly scenes both inside and outside the venue.

    Reports described concertgoers clashing, throwing plastic bottles and dismantling barricades.

    As some fans attempted to breach security barriers to enter the mosh pit, physical altercations with security guards erupted. One fan reportedly suffered a seizure after trying to bypass barricades.

    These occurrences, at times, were reminiscent of the dangerous atmosphere at Scott’s past concerts, including the fatal 2021 crowd crush at Astroworld Festival in Houston.

    Modern crowd psychology shows us collective behaviour is shaped by perceived group norms, and these norms can either foster safety or encourage chaos. This performance – contrasted with other recent big concerts in Australia – highlights the urgent need to rethink the roles of performers in crowd management.

    Defiance is normalised

    While performing, Scott often urges fans to lose control and embrace the chaos. This induces behaviours such as mosh pits, crowd surfing, and even at times, ignoring fans in distress.

    Scott’s performances are characterised by his desire to have his energy reciprocated by the audience, which creates an environment where defiance is normalised.

    Statements such as “forget security, this is for y’all” push fans toward risky behaviours, making these concerts highly charged and, at times, uncontrollable.

    While this may foster excitement and adrenaline, it also sets the stage for unsafe crowd dynamics.

    The 2021 Astroworld tragedy, in which ten people died and thousands were injured in a crowd surge, should have served as a wake-up call about the elevated risks at Scott’s performances.

    Despite signs of crowd distress, Scott continued performing for nearly 40 minutes after Houston officials started responding to the mass casualty event. Despite visible signs of crowd distress, the show continued.

    More than 300 injury lawsuits were settled between festivalgoers and Scott and concert promoter Live Nation. Plaintiffs argued the concert’s organisers failed to act swiftly to prevent the disaster once the crowd surge became life-threatening.

    Though the Melbourne concert didn’t reach the same tragic levels, the chaotic scenes were reminders of the ongoing risks at Scott’s performances.

    Incidents like the one in Melbourne – with security struggles, fan injuries and disorder – should serve as near-miss warnings. The same volatile energy persists in Travis’ concerts and could amount to risky behaviour, luckily not of catastrophic consequences in this case.

    Different artists set different safety cultures

    While Scott’s concerts are known for their chaotic energy, artists such as Taylor Swift present a stark contrast in terms of crowd dynamics and audience behaviour.

    Swift’s recent Australian shows, which hosted record-breaking attendance numbers, ran smoothly.

    The difference in audience behaviour isn’t just about the genre of music and the energy and culture that comes with it. It’s also about how the artist interacts with the crowd. Swift creates an atmosphere of excitement while maintaining a sense of order, often engaging the audience in a way that fosters respect for boundaries and safety.

    Swift has a strong track record of prioritising audience safety and wellbeing during her concerts.

    In many shows, she stopped to address issues such as heat exhaustion or crowd distress, by encouraging fans to stay hydrated and to look out for each other.

    At her Edinburgh show in June 2024, she paused the concert three separate times to assist fans who were struggling in the crowd.

    ‘Perceived contextual norms’ are at play

    Crowd psychology emphasises how individuals in large gatherings adjust behaviour based on the perceived norms of the group.

    The Social Identity Theory of crowds explains that people align their behaviour with the crowd’s collective identity.

    A shared social identity within a crowd increases the likelihood of people adopting collective norms – even if those norms encourage risk-taking. Perceived group norms can override personal caution in favour of behaviour that is seen as accepted or approved by the group.

    Based on these theories, leaders influence group behaviour by reinforcing collective identity and norms.

    In the case of music performers, artists can guide actions that align with the group’s sense of “us”. This can ultimately lead to shifts in behaviour towards safety or risk-taking.

    What now?

    The contrasting experiences between Scott’s and Swift’s concerts offers a crucial lesson in crowd management: the role of leadership and the norms set by performers.

    We need to rethink the roles of performers in crowd management. Artists such as Scott wield immense influence over crowd dynamics, and this power should be harnessed more consciously.

    The chaotic, high-energy nature of Scott’s performances is part of his identity. Fans attend his shows expecting that intensity.

    The key difference lies in how the artist can create a high-energy environment without compromising fan safety. Encouraging fans to disregard security is an example of where defiance can stretch too far. The line between excitement and chaos becomes blurred. The messaging needs to shift to maintaining intensity but within boundaries that safeguard the audience.

    Awareness around how crowd behaviour is influenced by artists and the group norms that they set can help walk the line between excitement and chaos.

    Milad Haghani 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. Chaotic scenes at Travis Scott’s Melbourne concert: what is the role of artists in crowd behaviour? – https://theconversation.com/chaotic-scenes-at-travis-scotts-melbourne-concert-what-is-the-role-of-artists-in-crowd-behaviour-242115

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: ‘We’ll be talking about the future of negotiations’, says Rabuka on New Caledonia mission

    By Susana Suisuiki, RNZ Pacific journalist in Apia

    Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka says he will take a back seat in the upcoming Pacific leaders’ fact-finding mission to New Caledonia, which was postponed from earlier in the year.

    Leaders from the Cook Islands, Tonga, and Solomon Islands make up a group called the Pacific Islands Forum troika, comprising past, present and future hosts of the annual PIF leaders’ meeting.

    The call for a PIF fact-finding mission was made while Fiji was still part of the troika.

    Rabuka spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron the week before the mission was originally scheduled to take place.

    When asked by RNZ Pacific why the trip had been postponed, Rabuka replied: “I do not know. I’m just the troika-plus.”

    Rabuka, who is currently in Apia for the 27th Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), was bestowed with a Samoan matai title of Tagaloa by the village of Leauva’a yesterday.

    He confirmed to RNZ Pacific that he would be in Nouméa on Sunday.

    “We will be talking about the future of negotiations and the relationship between New Caledonia and the people and France,” he said.

    PIF Secretary-General Baron Waqa told RNZ Pacific that supporting peace and harmony in New Caledonia was top of the agenda for the leaders’ mission.

    Waqa, who is also attending CHOGM, said an advance team was in Nouméa making preparations for the visit.

    Violence and destruction has been ongoing in New Caledonia for much of the past five months in protest over French plans for the territory.

    The death toll stands at 13.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Grattan on Friday: a possible Trump victory is making the Albanese government cagey about its 2035 climate target

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

    If Donald Trump wins the US presidency on November 5, his victory will have profound implications for other countries on many fronts. Not least of them will be climate change policy.

    Perhaps the uncertainty now hanging over US politics was on the mind of Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who shilly-shallied this week over when he’ll announce Australia’s 2035 emissions reduction target under the Paris climate agreement.

    Bowen refused to be pinned down at the Australian Financial Review’s energy and climate summit on whether the target would be public before next year’s election. Neither his office nor that of the prime minister would be more specific later.

    Australia, like other countries, is required under the Paris agreement to put forward its target in February. But, also like other countries, Australia is focused on what’s happening in the US.

    Trump wants to take the US out of the Paris agreement for the second time. The first exit took effect immediately after his 2020 defeat and incoming President Joe Biden was able to reverse it at once. This time, there’d be no such quick turnaround.

    The Biden administration has been strongly committed on climate issues. If the US exited, the Paris agreement would likely be transformed.

    There may be other reasons why Bowen is being cagey about the 2035 target. Climate change and energy will be harder issues for Labor in this election, as it struggles with the realities of the transition, than in the 2022 one.

    In the run-up to that election, a desperate Scott Morrison pulled out all stops to win support within the Coalition to sign up to the 2050 net-zero emissions target.

    Labor was on the front foot, with a policy for a 43% reduction in emissions (on 2005 levels) by 2030, underpinned by a target of 82% renewable electricity by then. The election promise for consumers was a $275 cut in household power bills by 2025.

    Crafting a policy is often easier than implementing it. The journey to a clean energy economy is arduous.

    The $275 promise was quickly seen as unrealisable. The government has had to provide rebates to keep prices in check. The rollout of renewables is complicated by local resistance to some projects, including wind farms and transmission lines. At present, more than 40% of electricity comes from renewables.

    The cost-of-living crisis has increasingly dominated everything. Climate change remains a significant issue with people, but over time it tends to go up and down their scale of concerns, depending on changing circumstances.

    The Ipsos Climate Change Report, done annually, found in 2024 “strong notional support for the energy transition”, but low understanding of what progress had been made.

    Concerns about the negative impacts of the transition on cost of living and energy reliability have increased, particularly in the current high inflation environment. The perceived economic benefits of the transition are less clear, with many unsure about the impact on jobs and the broader economy.

    The emphasis on cost of living is influencing priorities for the energy transition, with Australians wanting to see energy prices and reliability prioritised. There is a growing sentiment that Australia should only take action if other countries are also contributing fairly to climate change efforts.

    Of course a summer of bad bushfires can change people’s priorities suddenly. Barring that, Labor is looking at a 2025 election in which it will be more on the defensive than the offensive on climate and energy issues.

    The opposition has already acted to sharpen the difference with Labor over the medium term targets. Peter Dutton will have no 2035 target before the election, and has questioned the 2030 target to which Australia is signed up, although he says a Coalition government would not leave the Paris agreement. He is also running hard on his controversial policy for nuclear energy.

    While Bowen is not clarifying whether he’ll announce the government’s target ahead of the election, it would be awkward for Australia not to meet the February deadline.

    There would not be a penalty, but it would be a bad look, especially given we are vying with Turkey to host, together with Pacific countries, COP31 in 2026. One unknown, incidentally, is whether a Coalition government would continue this bid, which the opposition has describes as a “vanity project”.

    If the government does announce the 2035 target before the election, the big question is how ambitious it will make it.

    Bowen will receive advice on this from the Climate Change Authority, to which the government has appointed, as head, former New South Wales Liberal Treasurer Matt Kean.

    In an earlier discussion paper, the authority said the evidence suggests

    A 2035 target in the range of 65-75% […] could be achievable and sustainable if additional action is taken by governments, business, investors and households […]. However, attempting to go much faster could risk significant levels of economic and social disruption and put progress at risk.

    A bold target would make the government more vulnerable, just when Labor would want the attention on the Coalition’s problematic nuclear policy. On the other hand, if the target were modest, that would be exploited by the Greens.

    Next month, Bowen will attend COP29 in Azerbaijan, where the central issue will be a financial goal, replacing the 2015 goal, for developed and major economies to help fund developing countries’ emission reduction efforts. Bowen, with Egyptian Environment Minister Yasmine Fouad, is leading the consultations on this, and so has a significant role at the conference.

    At the COP meeting, Bowen will get a better idea of where other countries are on their expected 2035 targets. He indicated this week he has already started taking soundings. “Obviously […] of course you think about international context.”

    By the time of COP, which runs November 11-22, America will have chosen its next president. The COP meeting will either be business-as-usual, looking to an incoming Kamala Harris presidency, or trying to anticipate the implications of a Trump administration that could be a major disruptor of international climate policy.

    Michelle Grattan 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. Grattan on Friday: a possible Trump victory is making the Albanese government cagey about its 2035 climate target – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-a-possible-trump-victory-is-making-the-albanese-government-cagey-about-its-2035-climate-target-242107

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Caitlin Johnstone: Israel continues its war on journalism

    Report by Dr David Robie – Café Pacific. –

    COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone

    An Israeli airstrike destroyed the press office of the Lebanese news broadcaster Al Mayadeen on Wednesday night, continuing Israel’s historically unprecedented military assault on the press.

    Also in continuation of Israel’s war on journalism, the IDF has published the names of six Al Jazeera reporters who it claims are actually members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, citing as evidence documents which it claims Israeli forces found in Gaza.

    These allegations would mark these journalists as legitimate military targets.

    Al Jazeera has denounced these claims as unfounded, saying in a statement: “The Network views these fabricated accusations as a blatant attempt to silence the few remaining journalists in the region, thereby obscuring the harsh realities of the war from audiences worldwide.”

    There is of course no reason to ever believe any claim Israel makes about anything whatsoever absent mountains of independently verifiable evidence, after the mountains of lies it has churned out over the last year.

    The fact that Western news outlets are treating these allegations as plausible is evidence of their propagandistic nature.

    Israel claims everyone it wants to kill is Hamas. The journalists are Hamas, the hospitals are Hamas, the UN is Hamas, the aid trucks are Hamas, the schools are Hamas, the mosques are Hamas, the water infrastructure is Hamas, the civilian homes are all Hamas, and Hamas is hiding behind every woman and child in Gaza.

    The only exception to this rule is in Lebanon, in which case everyone Israel wants to kill is Hezbollah.


    “Israel hates truth” . . . Gaza: The Al Jazeera investigation into Israeli war crimes.

    Why journalists are killed
    Israel hates truth, which is why it kills journalists at every opportunity and blocks them from entering Gaza. This is because truth tends to have a marked anti-Israel bias.

    We saw this illustrated recently when Israel announced that there is a secret Hezbollah bunker underneath a hospital in Beirut, so the press simply sent a bunch of reporters to go and investigate because Israel can’t block the press from entering Lebanon like it can in Gaza.

    Even Western outlets like the BBC and Sky News entered the hospital and interviewed medical staff, reporting that they found no trace of evidence supporting Israel’s claims and that the hospital staff all denied the existence of any Hezbollah bunker on the premises.

    And you may be sure those outlets would have eagerly reported any sign of Hezbollah if they were given the opportunity.

    Criminal institutions need to function in the dark. They cannot function in the light of visibility and critical journalism and inconvenient video footage.

    That’s why the mafia murders witnesses. That’s why the inner workings of the US war machine are shrouded in government secrecy. That’s why Julian Assange spent five years in a maximum security prison.

    And that’s why Israel does everything it can to kill and obstruct journalists who tell the truth about its crimes.

    Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

    This article was first published on Café Pacific.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Want to build healthier cities? Make room for bird and tree diversity

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Buxton, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, Carleton University

    More than five million Canadians — approximately one in eight of us — are living with a mood, anxiety or substance use disorder. The prevalence of mental disorders is on the rise, with a third of those with a disorder reporting unmet or partially met needs for mental health-care services.

    The stresses of the city, where more than 70 per cent of Canadians now live, can increase the risk of poor mental health even further.

    When most people think about caring for their mental health, they may think about getting more exercise, getting more sleep and making sure they’re eating healthy. Increasingly, research is showing that spending time in nature surrounded by plants and wildlife can also contribute to preventing and treating mental illness.

    Our research focuses on the importance of birds and trees in urban neighbourhoods in promoting mental well-being. In our study, we combined more than a decade of health and ecological data across 36 Canadian cities and found a positive association between greater bird and tree diversity and self-rated mental health.

    The well-being benefits of healthy ecosystems will probably not come as a great surprise to urban dwellers who relish days out in the park or hiking in a nearby nature reserve. Still, the findings of our study speak to the potential of a nature-based urbanism that promotes the health of its citizens.



    Read more:
    How the health of honeybee hives can inform environmental policies in Canadian cities

    Birds, trees and human connection

    Across cultures and societies, people have strong connections with birds. The beauty of their bright song and colour have inspired art, music and poetry. Their contemporary cultural relevance has even earned them an affectionate, absurdist internet nickname: “birbs”.

    There’s something magical about catching a glimpse of a bird and hearing birdsong. For many urbanites, birds are our daily connection to wildlife and a gateway to nature. In fact, even if we don’t realize it, humans and birds are intertwined. Birds provide us with many essential services — controlling insects, dispersing seeds and pollinating our crops.

    People have similarly intimate connections with trees. The terms tree of life, family trees, even tree-hugger all demonstrate the central cultural importance trees have in many communities around the world. In cities, trees are a staple of efforts to bring beauty and tranquility.

    When the Australian city of Melbourne gave urban trees email addresses for people to report problems, residents responded by writing thousands of love letters to their favourite trees. Forest bathing, a practice of being calm and quiet among trees, is a growing wellness trend.

    Birds and trees as promoters of urban wellness

    Contact with nature and greenspace have a suite of mental health benefits.

    Natural spaces reduce stress and offer places for recreation and relaxation for urban dwellers, but natural diversity is key. A growing amount of research shows that the extent of these benefits may be related to the diversity of different natural features.

    For example, in the United States, higher bird diversity is associated with lower hospitalizations for mood and anxiety disorders and longer life expectancy. In a European study, researchers found that bird diversity was as important for life satisfaction as income.

    People’s connection to a greater diversity of birds and trees could be because we evolved to recognize that the presence of more species indicates a safer environment — one with more things to eat and more shelter. Biodiverse environments are also less work for the brain to interpret, allowing restoration of cognitive resources.

    To explore the relationship between biodiversity and mental health in urban Canada, we brought together unique datasets. First, we collected bird data sourced from community scientists, where people logged their bird sightings on an app. We then compared this data with tree diversity data from national forest inventories.

    Finally, we compared both of these data sets to a long-standing health survey that has interviewed approximately 65,000 Canadians each year for over two decades.

    We found that living in a neighbourhood with higher than average bird diversity increased reporting of good mental health by about seven per cent. While living in a neighbourhood with higher than average tree diversity increased good mental health by about five per cent.

    Importance of urban birds and trees

    The results of our study, and those of others, show a connection between urban bird and tree diversity, healthy ecosystems and people’s mental well-being. This underscores the importance of urban biodiversity conservation as part of healthy living promotion.

    Protecting wild areas in parks, planting pollinator gardens and reducing pesticide use could all be key strategies to protect urban wildlife and promote people’s well-being. Urban planners should take note.



    Read more:
    Eco-anxiety: climate change affects our mental health – here’s how to cope

    We’re at a critical juncture: just as we are beginning to understand the well-being benefits of birds and trees, we’re losing species at a faster rate than ever before. It’s estimated that there are three billion fewer birds in North America compared to the 1970s and invasive pests will kill 1.4 million street trees over the next 30 years.

    By promoting urban biodiversity, we can ensure a sustainable and healthy future for all species, including ourselves.

    Rachel Buxton receives funding from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, National Institutes of Health, and Environment and Climate Change Canada.

    Emma J. Hudgins received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Nature et Technologies for this work. She currently receives funding from Plant Health Australia.

    Stephanie Prince Ware has received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

    – ref. Want to build healthier cities? Make room for bird and tree diversity – https://theconversation.com/want-to-build-healthier-cities-make-room-for-bird-and-tree-diversity-235379

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: King Charles arrives in Samoa for ‘resilient environment’ CHOGM

    By Susana Suisuiki, RNZ Pacific journalist in Apia

    King Charles III and his wife Queen Camilla have landed in Apia, Samoa.

    The monarch has been greeted by a guard of honour at the airport before being escorted to his accommodation in Siumu.

    Local villagers have lined the roadsides with lanterns to welcome His Royal Highness.

    King Charles will deliver an address to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) on Friday.

    The royal office said as well as attending CHOGM, the King’s programme in Samoa would be supportive of one of the meeting’s key themes, “a resilient environment”, and the meeting’s focus on oceans.

    The King and Queen were to be formally welcomed by an ‘Ava Fa’atupu ceremony before meeting people at an engagement to highlight aspects of Samoan traditions and culture.

    Charles will also attend the CHOGM Business Forum to hear about progress on sustainable urbanisation and investment in solutions to tackle climate change.

    He will visit a mangrove forest, a National Park, and Samoa’s Botanical Garden, where he will plant a tree marking the opening of a new area within the site, which will be called ‘The King’s Garden’.

    Queen Camilla’s engagements include visiting an aoga faifeau to see first-hand how pupils are taught to read and write, and will visiting the Samoa Victim Support Group, an organisation which assists survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse.

    Since 1969, King Charles III has visited 44 of 53 Commonwealth countries, many of them on several occasions.

    His visits to the Pacific — before he was King — included representing his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, at Fiji’s independence celebrations in 1970; and visiting Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand as part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012.

    Queen Elizabeth II visited the Pacific multiple times during her reign.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Want to built healthier cities? Make room for bird and tree diversity

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Buxton, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, Carleton University

    More than five million Canadians — approximately one in eight of us — are living with a mood, anxiety or substance use disorder. The prevalence of mental disorders is on the rise, with a third of those with a disorder reporting unmet or partially met needs for mental health-care services.

    The stresses of the city, where more than 70 per cent of Canadians now live, can increase the risk of poor mental health even further.

    When most people think about caring for their mental health, they may think about getting more exercise, getting more sleep and making sure they’re eating healthy. Increasingly, research is showing that spending time in nature surrounded by plants and wildlife can also contribute to preventing and treating mental illness.

    Our research focuses on the importance of birds and trees in urban neighbourhoods in promoting mental well-being. In our study, we combined more than a decade of health and ecological data across 36 Canadian cities and found a positive association between greater bird and tree diversity and self-rated mental health.

    The well-being benefits of healthy ecosystems will probably not come as a great surprise to urban dwellers who relish days out in the park or hiking in a nearby nature reserve. Still, the findings of our study speak to the potential of a nature-based urbanism that promotes the health of its citizens.



    Read more:
    How the health of honeybee hives can inform environmental policies in Canadian cities

    Birds, trees and human connection

    Across cultures and societies, people have strong connections with birds. The beauty of their bright song and colour have inspired art, music and poetry. Their contemporary cultural relevance has even earned them an affectionate, absurdist internet nickname: “birbs”.

    There’s something magical about catching a glimpse of a bird and hearing birdsong. For many urbanites, birds are our daily connection to wildlife and a gateway to nature. In fact, even if we don’t realize it, humans and birds are intertwined. Birds provide us with many essential services — controlling insects, dispersing seeds and pollinating our crops.

    People have similarly intimate connections with trees. The terms tree of life, family trees, even tree-hugger all demonstrate the central cultural importance trees have in many communities around the world. In cities, trees are a staple of efforts to bring beauty and tranquility.

    When the Australian city of Melbourne gave urban trees email addresses for people to report problems, residents responded by writing thousands of love letters to their favourite trees. Forest bathing, a practice of being calm and quiet among trees, is a growing wellness trend.

    Birds and trees as promoters of urban wellness

    Contact with nature and greenspace have a suite of mental health benefits.

    Natural spaces reduce stress and offer places for recreation and relaxation for urban dwellers, but natural diversity is key. A growing amount of research shows that the extent of these benefits may be related to the diversity of different natural features.

    For example, in the United States, higher bird diversity is associated with lower hospitalizations for mood and anxiety disorders and longer life expectancy. In a European study, researchers found that bird diversity was as important for life satisfaction as income.

    People’s connection to a greater diversity of birds and trees could be because we evolved to recognize that the presence of more species indicates a safer environment — one with more things to eat and more shelter. Biodiverse environments are also less work for the brain to interpret, allowing restoration of cognitive resources.

    To explore the relationship between biodiversity and mental health in urban Canada, we brought together unique datasets. First, we collected bird data sourced from community scientists, where people logged their bird sightings on an app. We then compared this data with tree diversity data from national forest inventories.

    Finally, we compared both of these data sets to a long-standing health survey that has interviewed approximately 65,000 Canadians each year for over two decades.

    We found that living in a neighbourhood with higher than average bird diversity increased reporting of good mental health by about seven per cent. While living in a neighbourhood with higher than average tree diversity increased good mental health by about five per cent.

    Importance of urban birds and trees

    The results of our study, and those of others, show a connection between urban bird and tree diversity, healthy ecosystems and people’s mental well-being. This underscores the importance of urban biodiversity conservation as part of healthy living promotion.

    Protecting wild areas in parks, planting pollinator gardens and reducing pesticide use could all be key strategies to protect urban wildlife and promote people’s well-being. Urban planners should take note.



    Read more:
    Eco-anxiety: climate change affects our mental health – here’s how to cope

    We’re at a critical juncture: just as we are beginning to understand the well-being benefits of birds and trees, we’re losing species at a faster rate than ever before. It’s estimated that there are three billion fewer birds in North America compared to the 1970s and invasive pests will kill 1.4 million street trees over the next 30 years.

    By promoting urban biodiversity, we can ensure a sustainable and healthy future for all species, including ourselves.

    Rachel Buxton receives funding from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, National Institutes of Health, and Environment and Climate Change Canada.

    Emma J. Hudgins received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Nature et Technologies for this work. She currently receives funding from Plant Health Australia.

    Stephanie Prince Ware has received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

    – ref. Want to built healthier cities? Make room for bird and tree diversity – https://theconversation.com/want-to-built-healthier-cities-make-room-for-bird-and-tree-diversity-235379

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: How do genes shape the structures in our brains? We studied 70,000 people and found new links to ADHD and Parkinson’s

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luis M. García Marín, Postdoctoral Researcher, Brain & Mental Health Program, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute

    SeanidStudio/Shutterstock

    The human brain is a marvel of complexity. It contains specialised and interconnected structures controlling our thoughts, personality and behaviour.

    The size and shape of our brains also play a crucial role in cognitive functions and mental health. For example, a slightly smaller hippocampus, the structure responsible for regulation of memory and emotion, is commonly seen in depression. In dementia, atrophy of the hippocampus is correlated with memory loss and cognitive decline.

    Despite these insights, we have only scratched the surface of understanding the brain and its connection to mental health.

    In collaboration with scientists around the world, we have conducted the world’s largest genetic study of the volume of regional structures of the brain. This study is now published in Nature Genetics.

    We discovered hundreds of genetic variants that influence the size of structures such as the amygdala (the “processing centre” for emotions), the hippocampus and the thalamus (involved in movement and sensory signals).

    We uncovered their potential overlap with genes known to influence the risk of certain developmental, psychiatric and neurological disorders.

    More than 70,000 brains

    To understand how the brain connects to mental health, scientists like ourselves engage in large-scale scientific studies that span the globe.

    These studies, which involve thousands of volunteers, are the bedrock of modern biomedical research. They help us discover genes associated with brain size and mental health conditions. In turn, this can improve diagnostic precision and even pave the way for personalised medicine, which uses a person’s genetic test results to tailor treatments.

    We screened the DNA and closely examined magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans from more than 70,000 people across 19 countries. We wanted to find out if there are specific genetic variants influencing differences in brain size between individuals.

    What we found was stunning. Some of these genes seem to act early in life, and many genes also increase the risk for conditions like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and Parkinson’s disease.

    What did we find out?

    Brain-related disorders are common, with an estimated 40% of Australians experiencing a mental health disorder in their lifetime.

    Our genetic findings reveal that larger regional brain volumes (the size of specific parts of the brain) are associated with a higher risk of Parkinson’s disease. In comparison, smaller regional brain volumes are statistically linked with a higher risk of ADHD.

    These insights suggest that genetic influences on brain size are fundamental to understanding the origins of mental health disorders. And understanding these genetic links is crucial. It shows how our genes can influence brain development and the risk of mental health conditions.

    By investigating shared genetic causes, we could one day develop treatments that address multiple conditions simultaneously, providing more effective support for individuals with various conditions. This is especially important in mental health, where it is common for someone to experience more than one disorder at the same time.

    Our study also revealed that genetic effects on brain structure are consistent across people from both European and non-European ancestry. This suggests that certain genetic factors have stuck around throughout human evolution.

    Bridging the gaps

    Our research also lays the groundwork for using genetic data to develop statistical models that predict disease risk based on a person’s genetic profile.

    These advancements could lead to population screening, identifying those at higher risk for specific mental health disorders. Early intervention could then help prevent or delay the onset of these conditions.

    In the future, our goal is to bridge the gaps between genetics, neuroscience, and medicine. This integration will help scientists answer critical questions about how genetic influences on brain structure affect behaviour and disease outcomes.

    Understanding the genetics of brain structure and mental health susceptibility can help us better prevent, diagnose and treat these conditions.

    The concept of the “human brain” first appeared in ancient Greece around 335 BCE. The philosopher Aristotle described it as a radiator that prevented the heart from overheating. While we now know Aristotle was wrong, the complexities of the brain and its links to mental health remain largely mysterious even today.

    As we continue to unlock the genetic secrets of the brain, we move closer to unravelling these mysteries. This type of research has the potential to transform our understanding and treatment of mental health.

    Luis M. García Marín receives funding from The University of Queensland (UQ).

    Miguel E. Rentería receives funding from the Rebecca L Cooper Medical Research Foundation, the Shake It Up Australia Foundation, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research & the Medical Research Future Fund.

    – ref. How do genes shape the structures in our brains? We studied 70,000 people and found new links to ADHD and Parkinson’s – https://theconversation.com/how-do-genes-shape-the-structures-in-our-brains-we-studied-70-000-people-and-found-new-links-to-adhd-and-parkinsons-231824

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Indonesia to offer ‘amnesty’ for West Papuans contesting Jakarta’s rule

    The National, PNG

    Indonesia will offer amnesty to West Papuans who have contested Jakarta’s sovereignty over the Melanesian region resulting in conflicts and clashes with law enforcement agencies, says Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape.

    He arrived in Port Moresby on Monday night from Indonesia where he attended the inauguration of President Prabowo Subianto last Sunday.

    During his bilateral discussions with the Indonesian President, Marape said Prabowo was “quite frank and open” about the West Papua independence issue.

    “This is the first time for me to see openness on West Papua and while it is an Indonesian sovereignty matter, my advice was to give respect to land and their [West Papuans] cultural heritage.

    “I commend the offer on amnesty and Papua New Guinea will continue to respect Indonesia’s sovereignty,” Marape said.

    “The President also offered a pledge for higher autonomy and a commitment to keep on working on the need for more economic activities and development that the former president [Joko Widodo] has started for West Papua.”

    While emphasising that Papua New Guinea had no right to debate Indonesia’s internal sovereignty issues, Marape welcomed that country’s recognition of the West Papuan people, their culture and heritage.

    Expanding trade, investment
    Marape also reaffirmed his intention to work with Prabowo in expanding trade and investment, especially in business-to-business and people-to-people relations with Indonesia.

    The exponential growth of Indonesia’s economy currently sits at nearly US$1.5 trillion (about K5 trillion), with the country aggressively pushing toward First World nation status by 2045.

    Papua New Guinea was among nations allocated time for a bilateral meeting with President Subianto after the inauguration.

    Republished from The National with permission.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: We tried a different preschool curriculum to prevent youth crime. Checking in 20 years later, it worked

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacqueline Allen, Senior Lecturer, Griffith University

    Shutterstock

    There’s been an increased political and media focus recently on so-called youth crime waves, particularly in Queensland and the Northern Territory.

    This has unfortunately led to crackdowns from governments and police. Young people in Alice Springs have been subject to curfews.

    Queensland Opposition Leader David Crisafulli (who’s ahead in the polls ahead of this weekend’s election) has suggested young people found guilty of some crimes should be sentenced as adults.

    But punitive youth crime policies violate children’s human rights and are an expensive way of making the community less safe. It’s much better to stop youth crime before it starts by supporting children’s positive development in early childhood.

    In a new evaluation published today, we found a preschool program reduced the amount of young people before the courts by more than 50%. When the right family support was provided too, the chances of the children committing crimes were even lower.

    Our original study

    Early community-based crime prevention strategies have been greatly neglected in Australia. This is despite international evidence and the recommendations of a widely circulated 1999 Commonwealth government report.

    Scientific evidence has been accumulating for more than 50 years that shows the root causes of serious youth crime can be addressed in early childhood through prevention initiatives. The most famous example is the Perry Preschool Project, implemented in a disadvantaged area of Michigan in the early 1960s.

    In Australia, the Pathways to Prevention Project operated in a disadvantaged, multicultural region of Brisbane from 2002 to 2011.

    It was a collaboration between Griffith University, the Queensland Department of Education, and national community agency Mission Australia.

    The children in the study learned communication skills through reading and games.
    Shutterstock

    The project aimed to improve child and youth outcomes by partnering with local preschools, schools, families and community organisations.

    In 2002 and 2003, 214 four-year-old children attending two local preschools received an enhanced program focused on communication skills. This is called an “enriched preschool program”.

    It was integrated into the standard curriculum and delivered by specialist teachers working with the children’s classroom teachers and their parents.

    Evidence at the time showed communication skills were directly linked to success at school. They were also linked to to success in life through improved behaviour and enhanced social skills.

    The communication program brought children together in small groups with similar levels of language competence. The groups were balanced in terms of gender and cultural background. They completed carefully curated activities including games, bookmaking and reading.

    Reading was a large part of the enriched preschool curriculum.
    Shutterstock

    These provided children with the opportunity to extend and practice oral language skills in ways that were personally meaningful. These activities were led by the specialist teachers who had postgraduate qualifications in communication and oral language development.

    The specialist teachers engaged parents and children in joint activities, and actively supported reading and language activities at home. By year one, children who received the communication curriculum had better language proficiency, social skills, classroom behaviour and academic achievement than children in the other preschools.

    The children’s families could also access practical support from community workers from their own cultural background. This included parenting education, advocacy with government agencies and counselling. This continued until 2011.

    What’s new?

    Earlier evaluations showed the enhanced curriculum helped improve children’s readiness for school, among a range of other benefits. Now we’ve evaluated the success of the program over the long term.

    Using anonymised data-linkage procedures, we followed up the students who received the enhanced curriculum back in 2002 to see what’s happened since.

    Children who received the enhanced curriculum had improved classroom behaviour throughout primary school. They were also 56% less likely to be involved in serious youth crime by age 17.



    Read more:
    Is Australia in the grips of a youth crime crisis? This is what the data says

    Remarkably, our evaluation found none of the children whose families also received support in the preschool years went on to offend.

    The full Pathways Program was implemented widely in the community over a ten-year period, so we thought it might have had an impact more broadly.

    We looked at the rate of youth offending in the region in the years 2008–16, when members of the 2002–03 preschool cohort were between 10 and 17 years old. It was 20% lower in this region than in other Queensland regions at the same low socioeconomic level.

    How does this lead to less youth crime?

    Programs like this work by levelling the playing field and improving the lives of children early in their developmental pathways. Developmental pathways are events and experiences that follow on from each other, or cascade, across the course of life.

    For instance, a difficult transition to school increases the likelihood of poor engagement and academic problems. These are well-known risk factors for antisocial behaviour.

    The long-term impact of Pathways to Prevention on youth offending means it could be a model for similar programs across Australia.

    This is especially the case given our nation’s chronic under-investment in community-based developmental crime prevention. We need more programs in disadvantaged communities that are open to everyone and don’t stigmatise people.

    Overwhelmingly, efforts across the country are devoted to early intervention with children identified as “at risk” in some way (such as showing disruptive behaviour), or to the treatment of young people who become enmeshed in the youth justice system.

    In Queensland, there is an over-reliance on youth detention, which is often very harmful for children and of no preventative value.

    Using Pathways as a model for other communities doesn’t necessarily mean exactly replicating what we did (though this is also important). Any early prevention initiative will have the best chance of success if it includes evidence-based strategies that improve children’s life chances.

    These can be implemented cost-effectively through existing systems including preschools, schools and primary care. Ideally, they should operate through local partnerships involved at all stages of planning, data collection, implementation and evaluation.

    Jacqueline Allen received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Institute of Criminology Research Grants.

    Kate Freiberg holds an unpaid position at RealWell and received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Institute of Criminology Research Grants.

    Emeritus Professor Ross Homel received funding from the Australian Research Council, Australian Institute of Criminology Research Grants, the Queensland Government and the John Barnes Foundation. He is affiliated with the Justice Reform Initiative as a Queensland Patron and provides honorary research support to RealWell Pty Ltd.

    – ref. We tried a different preschool curriculum to prevent youth crime. Checking in 20 years later, it worked – https://theconversation.com/we-tried-a-different-preschool-curriculum-to-prevent-youth-crime-checking-in-20-years-later-it-worked-235888

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Lee Miller helped shape our understanding of war. Her life as a photojournalist echo in those working today

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Jean Baker, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Monash University

    STUDIOCANAL

    This story contains spoilers.

    Lee, the feature film debut from director Ellen Kuras, explores the rawness of authentic image making and the impact of gender in war reporting.

    Kate Winslet stars as the world weary photojournalist Elizabeth “Lee” Miller – better known for featuring in an iconic photograph, rather than taking one.

    The same day Adolf Hitler committed suicide at his Berlin bunker in 1945, photojournalist David E. Scherman took a photograph of Miller sitting in the bath in Hitler’s Munich apartment.

    But Miller was also a trailblazing, feminist photojournalist who managed to shift Vogue magazine from beauty and aesthetics to capturing the reality of the second world war. She gave us images of the frontline, fearful women and children, concentration camps, and the aftermath of war.

    Here’s what you should know about the real woman behind the film – and what we can learn about war correspondents today through her story.

    In front of and behind the camera

    Miller was born in New York in 1907, and began her bohemian life as a model for Vogue before the war, and as a muse to her surrealist mentor Man Ray.

    The film follows Miller from her work as a fashion photographer pre-war, through to her photographing the second world war and then the liberation of Paris in 1945.

    Lee explores tensions with other renowned photographers at the time, such as Cecil Beaton (Samuel Barnett); her relationship with the second husband, English artist, historian and poet, Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård); and her connections to the French resistance.

    Female photojournalists of the time were usually assigned to taking portraits or working in fashion.

    Miller, second from right, with other female war correspondents who covered the U.S. Army, photographed in 1943.
    U.S. Army Official Photograph/Wikimedia Commons

    When Miller was in her 30s, her photographs for Vogue leaned towards the surreal. This was also seen in her Blitz images, where two staff from the magazine wearing creatively designed gas masks about to enter a bomb shelter was published in the London edition.

    When the war broke out, Miller was accredited as one of four American female photojournalists. Like fellow American Margaret Bourke-White, Miller was known for the horrific images of Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps in Germany, reinforcing the fact that photojournalism tells a story that is more powerful than any other form of journalism.

    Ethics and photojournalism

    A 2019 study examined how professional photojournalists apply ethics to their work.

    Photojournalists believe photographs should be published alongside news, that photographers are key in supporting the public’s “right to know”, and they must balance “their obligation to the truth, while minimising harm”.

    You can see these ethical frameworks all at play in Miller’s work, especially in her images of Dachau just after the war.

    Lee faced similar issues around ethics that photojournalists face today.
    STUDIOCANAL

    The editor of British Vogue, Audrey Withers (played in the film by Andrea Riseborough), refused to publish the photos. But American Vogue published them in June 1945, with the headline “Believe it”, as a modern memorial to the war.

    But photojournalists also take actions that prioritise themselves. Sherman’s image of Miller sitting in Hitler’s bath, though a visual metaphor for the end of the war, has been criticised as a “look at me” moment.

    In 2006, the New York Times described the photograph as “a woman caught between horror and beauty, between being seen and being the seer”.

    The place of the woman photographer

    Contemporary research suggests female photojournalists are more empathetic and have better access to vulnerable subjects than their male counterparts.

    In the film, Miller’s gentle photo of a French woman publicly accused of being an informant to the Germans illustrates empathy, while masking the hidden contradictions of war.

    Befriending a frightened girl in a bomb shelter, Miller has flashbacks of her youth as a victim-survivor of sexual violence. “There are different kinds of wounds, not just the ones you see,” she says in the film.

    A survey in 2019 of 545 female photojournalists from 71 countries found women faced more obstacles than their male counterparts, are still considered subordinate in the profession and subject to sexism.

    During the war, Miller used the gender-neutral Lee as her first name, instead of Elizabeth, fearing press accreditation on the frontline would not be approved if she was a woman.

    The National Press Photographers Association say gender bias and assumptions still continue to hinder female photojournalists. These commonly held assumptions include women are weaker, less skilled and will eventually leave the profession to raise a child.

    Living through her archive

    Lee begins and ends with the 70-year-old Miller reflecting on her career to a young male journalist, while continuously gulping down alcohol, perhaps illustrating undiagnosed post traumatic stress syndrome, all too common among news photographers.

    Returning to London after the war, Miller gave up photojournalism.

    After her death in 1977, more than 60,000 negatives of her work were discovered in her attic at home. These images of surrealist photography, Vogue editorials, second world war photojournalism and portraits of important 20th century figures formed the basis of her 1985 biography, The lives of Lee Miller, written by her son Antony Penrose.

    Lee is a visually, brave story about a female photojournalist whose images alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at – and what we have a right to observe.

    Andrea Jean Baker 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. Lee Miller helped shape our understanding of war. Her life as a photojournalist echo in those working today – https://theconversation.com/lee-miller-helped-shape-our-understanding-of-war-her-life-as-a-photojournalist-echo-in-those-working-today-236878

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: With 7 states deciding everything, can Trump and Harris reach the remaining swing voters – without alienating others?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

    Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina.

    In a repetitive, anxiety-inducing mantra, media coverage of the US presidential election between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris recites these seven states over and over again.

    The winner will almost certainly be decided by these states – perhaps a few of them, or maybe just one.

    Depending on your particular interpretation of the electoral map, the mantra might just be Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. Or could it be Wisconsin, Wisconsin, Wisconsin? Or perhaps it’s Georgia, Georgia, Georgia.

    Some analysts argue that to win, Harris needs to hold on to the “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, three predominantly white states with large numbers of working-class voters. In 2016, Democrats were devastated by Trump’s sundering of this wall – he narrowly won all three.

    The Democratic victor in 2020, Joe Biden, rebuilt the wall with three wins in these states. (In fact, Biden won six of the seven battleground states in 2020, losing only North Carolina.)

    In this year’s campaign, Harris needs to keep it standing, while the Trump campaign is hoping to break it down again.

    But it’s also possible for some cracks to appear in the “blue wall” – if Harris can hold on in Pennsylvania, there is a path to victory for the Democrats through the remaining battleground states.

    The Trump campaign is, meanwhile, hoping it can repeat 2016 and break down the blue wall, particularly by winning the iconic rust-belt state of Michigan.

    An outsize focus on ‘swing voters’

    The critical role these seven states will play of course means they are the overwhelming focus of both campaigns and the media that covers them. Trump and Harris and their running mates have visited Pennsylvania and Michigan dozens of times, while residents of these states are being subjected to wall-to-wall television advertising.

    The other states are, effectively, stitched up for one side or the other.

    There’s no real possibility of Trump winning solidly Democratic New York or California. And no chance Harris will could win deep-red Wyoming or Tennessee.

    In the American democratic system, presidential elections are decided not via a national popular vote but the enslavement-era Electoral College (alongside widespread voter suppression). As a result, vast swathes of the American electorate are effectively disenfranchised.

    In the states that are in play, the polling margins are razor-thin, just as they have been in most elections this century.

    In 2020, for example, Biden won the popular vote by a four-point margin – seven million votes. But in the Electoral College, which is what actually decides the winner, Biden won by around 45,000 votes: 10,457 in Arizona, 11,779 in Georgia, and 20,682 in Wisconsin.

    While polls are only one indicator – and they aren’t always that reliable – they do suggest the result in the seven battleground states in 2024 may be that close again.

    That’s why both Harris and Trump have been spending so much time in those states. And it’s why their campaigns – as well as the media’s attention – are focused on finding as many voters in those places as they can.

    And because of the way the American electoral system works, this focus is disproportionately placed on certain types of voters – or “swing voters”.

    Both campaigns are chasing voters who may have gone for Trump in 2016 and then Biden four years later. They’re chasing “shy” Republicans or Democrats – voters who may be generally inclined to vote for one party or the other, but for whatever reason (usually, the particular candidate) are quiet about their choices.

    Since the role of the “blue wall” in both electoral politics and the American imagination is so pronounced, this means there’s an inordinate focus (often unconsciously) on white swing voters, in particular.

    Chasing the swing voters

    These voters may indeed turn out to be the critical deciding factor.

    But in American politics, it’s rarely one single thing that decides the outcome.

    In a system that does not have compulsory voting, in which small numbers of voters in a small number of states can change the result, voter turnout is the main game. This election cycle, it could matter a great deal.

    And that is why there is a hidden tension in both campaigns.

    In Trump land, there has been consistent pressure (and unsolicited advice) on Trump to “moderate” his stances on particular issues in order to appeal to those “shy” or swing voters.

    This is particularly the case with reproductive rights. It’s led to contradictory messaging from Trump – he’s taken full, individual credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade while simultaneously insisting he is not supportive of extreme, right-wing positions on abortion bans.

    Trump’s pick of JD Vance as his vice presidential running mate suggests his campaign decided not to focus mostly on swing or shy voters, but on mobilising and expanding their core voter base of white men. That is reflected in much of Trump’s media strategy and his consistent presence on right-wing podcasts.

    But that is contradicted occasionally, and quite deliberately, by high-profile surrogates, including his wife.

    The Harris campaign, on the other hand, seems to be attempting to divide its focus more evenly. Harris is chasing swing voters by going on Fox News and sharing a stage with former Representative and harsh Trump critic Liz Cheney. She also appeared with 100 Republicans at an event in Pennsylvania this month.

    At the same time, the campaign is also attempting to drive turnout in key demographics for Democrats. Harris is targeting young women, particularly in the South, by going on popular podcasts like Call Her Daddy. Similarly, she is reaching out to Black men by appearing on platforms like Charlamagne tha God’s podcast in a live event in Detroit.

    Does the strategy work?

    The question for both campaigns is: does one of these tactics undermine the other?

    Might the alliance between Democrats and the Cheney family’s deeply conservative stances on foreign policy, for example, further undermine or depress turnout in a state like Michigan, where outrage and betrayal over Democratic support for Israel may well be a deciding factor?

    Alternatively, will Harris’ more hardline message on immigration depress enthusiasm amongst Black and Latino voters?

    Similarly, might the Republican Party’s position on reproductive rights, and the consequences of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, mean Trump continues to lose support with women, which might not be countered by a sizeable boost in men’s turnout?

    The answer is: we don’t know. And if the margins are indeed as close as the polling suggests, we may not know for some time after election day.

    Until then, the mantra keeps repeating:

    Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina.

    Emma Shortis is senior researcher in international and security affairs at The Australia Institute, an independent think tank.

    – ref. With 7 states deciding everything, can Trump and Harris reach the remaining swing voters – without alienating others? – https://theconversation.com/with-7-states-deciding-everything-can-trump-and-harris-reach-the-remaining-swing-voters-without-alienating-others-240670

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: ‘We will not allow others to determine our fate’: Pacific nations dial up pressure on Australia’s fossil fuel exports

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liam Moore, Lecturer in International Politics and Policy, James Cook University

    Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Feleti Teo took to a stage in Apia, Samoa, on Thursday morning to say something pointed. Planned fossil fuel expansions in nations such as Australia represented, for his nation, a “death sentence”. The phrase “death sentence”, Teo said, had not been chosen lightly. He followed up with this: “We will not sit quietly and allow others to determine our fate.”

    Teo chose the moment for this broadside well – on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), attended by both King Charles and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. The speech came at the launch of a new report on moves by the “big three” Commonwealth states – the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia – to expand fossil fuel exports.

    These three states make up just 6% of the population of the Commonwealth’s 56 nations, but account for over 60% of the carbon emissions generated through extraction since 1990, the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative report shows.

    Canada and the UK are no climate angels, given their respective exports of highly polluting oil from oil sands and North Sea oil and gas. But Teo and others in the movement to stop proliferation of fossil fuels have reserved special criticism for Australia. That’s because Australia is now second only to Russia based on emissions from its fossil fuel exports and has the largest pipeline of coal export projects in the world – 61% of the world’s total.

    The elephant in the room

    Tuvalu, like many other small Pacific nations, is laser-focused on the threat of climate change. Across the Pacific, rising sea levels and saltwater intrusion are already pushing people to consider migration or retreat.

    Australia has long been influential in the Pacific, even more so as Western states try to outcompete Chinese funds and influence in the region. But fossil fuel exports are a very large elephant in the room.

    As Tuvalu’s leader points out, Australia is:

    morally obliged to ensure that whatever action it does [take] will not compromise the commitment it has provided in terms of climate impact.

    Teo pointed out the “obvious” inconsistency between Australia’s commitment to net zero by 2050 and ramping up fossil fuel exports.

    This year, Australia and Tuvalu’s groundbreaking Falepili Union treaty came into force. The treaty includes some migration rights for Tuvaluans as well as a controversial security agreement. But Teo has now flagged using this as leverage to “put pressure on Australia to align its activities in terms of fossil fuels”.

    Tuvalu’s diplomatic pressure is a small part of broader efforts by island states facing escalating climate damage to be seen not as passive victims but to emphasise, as Teo said, they are also “at the forefront of climate action”.

    Echoing these sentiments was Vanuatu’s climate envoy, Ralph Regenvanu. He called on Commonwealth nations to “not sacrifice the future of vulnerable nations for short-term gains”, and “to stop the expansion of fossil fuels in order to protect what we love and hold dear here in the Pacific”.

    Vanuatu and Tuvalu have led the campaign for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, committing signatories to ending expansion of fossil fuels. So far, 12 other nations have joined, including Fiji, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Republic of Marshall Islands, Colombia and the CHOGM host, Samoa.

    Australia all alone?

    It’s not surprising to see Australia facing these calls for action. The meeting is being held in Samoa, the first time a Pacific Island state has hosted Commonwealth leaders.

    Leaders of other large Commonwealth states have skipped the meeting. Notable by their absence were Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

    Climate action is one of several background issues in Apia. One of the more significant is the call for reparations for slavery from former British colonies – calls UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is keen to put to the side. But reports on the ground suggest the issues of reparations, monarchy and the future relevance of the Commonwealth are all in the shadow of the main concern – climate change.

    The meeting also serves as a precursor to November’s United Nations climate talks, the COP29 conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. Pacific nations are focused on building consensus on climate finance.

    Australia has its own concerns. The host of the 2026 COP31 conference will be announced in Baku, with a joint Australia-Pacific bid in competition with Türkiye. Observers suggest Australia is in the box seat, but it has faced consistent pressure from Pacific states to reconcile its actions with its climate rhetoric.

    There are domestic implications too. As the next federal election looms, the lure of a potential A$200 million windfall for the COP host city would be more than welcome.

    Securing an Australia-Pacific COP could also boost the government’s environmental credentials as it comes under sustained attack from the Greens over fossil fuels and the Coalition over energy security and nuclear power.

    In Apia, Pacific efforts to convince leaders of the need for greater climate action are reported to include a walk through a mangrove reserve for King Charles, guided by Samoan chief and parliamentarian Lenatai Vicor Tamapua. Tamapua told the ABC he showed leaders how king tides today were “about twice what it was 20, 30 years ago”, which he says is forcing people to “move inwards, inland now”.

    For Australia, difficult questions remain. How will it balance regional demands to phase out coal and gas exports with domestic pressures to maintain jobs, public funds and economic growth? Can it walk the tightrope and be the partner of choice in the Pacific while continuing to explore for, extract and export coal and gas?

    These questions will not be resolved in Apia. They might not even be resolved by the next federal government, or by the time COP31 arrives. But they will not go away.

    The way Australia and other exporters resolve these tensions will, as Teo says, decide whether Tuvalu stays liveable – or goes under.

    Liam Moore 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. ‘We will not allow others to determine our fate’: Pacific nations dial up pressure on Australia’s fossil fuel exports – https://theconversation.com/we-will-not-allow-others-to-determine-our-fate-pacific-nations-dial-up-pressure-on-australias-fossil-fuel-exports-242103

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –