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Category: Analysis

  • MIL-OSI Global: Violent extremists like the Minnesota shooter are not lone wolves

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Alex Hinton, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology; Director, Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers University – Newark

    A memorial for Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, is seen at the Minnesota State Capitol building on June 16, 2025, in St. Paul, Minn. Steven Garcia/Getty Images

    After a two-day manhunt, Minnesota authorities arrested and charged 57-year-old Vance Boelter on June 15, 2025, after he allegedly shot and killed Minnesota House Democratic leader Melissa Hortman and her husband in their home and seriously injured another state senator and his wife.

    Boelter, disguised as a police officer, went to other Minnesota politicians’ homes late in the evening on June 13. In his parked car he left behind a list of names and addresses of other Minnesota state and federal elected officials, as well as community leaders and Planned Parenthood locations.

    This incident is the latest to demonstrate how political and often hate-based violence is becoming a more common part of American politics.

    “Let me be absolutely clear: this was an act of targeted political violence, and it was an attack on everything we stand for as a democracy,” U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said in a June 14 statement.

    The threat of domestic violence and terrorism is high in the United States – especially the danger posed by white power extremists, many of whom believe white people are being “replaced” by people of color.

    I am a scholar of political violence and extremism and wrote about these beliefs in a 2021 book, “It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US.” I think it’s important to understand the lessons that can be learned from events such as the recent Minnesota shootings.

    After decades of research on numerous attacks that have left scores dead, we have learned that extremists are almost always part of a pack, not lone wolves. But the myth of the lone wolf shooter remains tenacious, reappearing in media coverage after almost every mass shooting or act of far-right extremist violence. Because this myth misdirects people from the actual causes of extremist violence, it impedes society’s ability to prevent attacks.

    Vance Boelter is seen in his booking photo on June 16, 2025, in Green Isle, Minn.
    Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office via Getty Images

    The lone wolf extremist myth is dangerous

    FBI Director Christopher Wray said in August 2022 that the nation’s top threat comes from far-right extremist “lone actors” – who, he explained, work alone, instead of “as part of a large group.”

    Wray is wrong, and the myth of the lone wolf extremist – the mistaken idea that violent extremists largely act alone – continues to directly inform research, law enforcement and the popular imagination.

    I think that Wray’s focus on extremism is much needed and long overdue. However, his line of thinking is dangerous and misleading. By focusing on individuals or small groups, it overlooks broader networks and long-term dangers and so can impede efforts to combat far-right extremist violence – which Wray has singled out as the country’s most lethal domestic threat.

    Not a new trend

    Far-right extremists may physically carry out an attack alone or as part of a small group of people, but they are almost always networked and identify with larger groups and causes.

    This was true long before the social media age. Take Timothy McVeigh. He is often depicted as the archetypal lone wolf madman who blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995.

    In fact, McVeigh was part of a pack. He had accomplices and was connected across the far-right extremist landscape.

    The same is true of Payton Gendron, who shot and killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store in 2022, and Patrick Crusius, who killed 23 people in a racist attack targeting Latino shoppers at a Walmart in Texas in 2019.

    These two shooters were also characterized in media coverage as lone wolves following their deadly attacks.

    “He talked about how he didn’t like school because he didn’t have friends. He would say he was lonely,” a classmate of Gendron said shortly after Gendron carried out the mass shooting.

    Both were active on far-right extremist social media platforms and posted manifestos before their attacks. Gendron’s manifesto discusses how he was radicalized on the dark web and inspired to attack after watching videos of Brenton Tarrant’s 2019 massacre of 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

    Almost a quarter of Gendron’s manifesto is directly taken from Tarrant’s, which was titled “The Great Replacement.” This fear of white replacement, centered around perceived white demographic decline, was also a motive for Crusius. His manifesto pays homage to Tarrant, before explaining his attack was “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

    The lone wolf myth also suggests that extremists are abnormal deviants with anti-social personalities.

    After Gendron’s rampage, for example, New York Attorney General Letitia James called him a “sick, demented individual.” Crusius, in turn, was described by the White House and news articles as “evil,” “psychotic” and an “anti-social loner.”

    The vast majority of far-right extremists are, in fact, otherwise ordinary men and women. They live in rural areas, suburbs and cities. They are students and working professionals. And they believe their extremist cause is justified. This point was illustrated by the spectrum of participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.

    Boelter is a father of five who has worked various jobs in the food industry and with funeral service companies and a security service. While Boelter’s exact motivation and political affiliation are not clear, friends describe him as very religious and conservative. Boelter reportedly told a roommate and friend that he strongly opposes abortion. He has also criticized gay and transgender people during sermons he delivered at a church in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

    People hug at a memorial outside the Walmart in El Paso, Texas, where a shooter killed 23 people in 2019.
    Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images

    Tracing the lone wolf mythology

    How did the lone-wolf metaphor come to misinform the public’s view of extremists, and why is it so tenacious?

    Part of the answer is linked to white supremacist Louis Beam, who wrote the essay “Leaderless Resistance” in 1983. In it, he called for far-right extremists to act individually or in small groups that couldn’t be traced up a chain of command. According to his lawyer, McVeigh was one of those influenced by Beam’s call.

    After Beam formulated this idea, both far-right extremists and law enforcement increasingly used the lone wolf term. In 1998, the FBI even mounted an “Operation Lone Wolf” to investigate a West Coast white supremacist cell.

    The 9/11 terrorist attacks further turned U.S. attention to Islamic militant “lone wolves.” A decade later, the term became mainstream.

    And so it was not a surprise when, after the Buffalo shooting, New York State Senator James Sanders said, “Although this is probably a lone-wolf incident, this is not the first mass shooting we have seen, and sadly it will not be the last.”

    The tenacity of the lone wolf myth has several sources. It’s convenient – evocative and powerful enough to draw and keep people’s attention.

    By using this term, which individualizes extremism, law enforcement officials may also depoliticize their work. Instead of focusing on movements like white nationalism that have sympathizers in the various levels of government, from sheriffs to senators, they focus on individuals.

    The lone wolf extremist myth diverts from what should be the focus of deterrence efforts: understanding how far-right extremists network, organize and, as the Jan. 6 insurrection showed, build coalitions across diverse groups, especially through the use of social media.

    Such understanding provides a basis for developing long-term strategies to prevent extremists like Boelter from carrying out more violent attacks.

    This is an updated version of an article originally published on Feb. 23, 2023.

    Alex Hinton receives funding from the Rutgers-Newark Sheila Y. Oliver Center for Politics and Race in America, Rutgers Research Council, and Henry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.

    – ref. Violent extremists like the Minnesota shooter are not lone wolves – https://theconversation.com/violent-extremists-like-the-minnesota-shooter-are-not-lone-wolves-259225

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Along with the ideals it expresses, the Declaration of Independence mourns for something people lost in 1776 − and now, too

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Maurizio Valsania, Professor of American History, Università di Torino

    The committee assigned to draft the Declaration of Independence, from left: Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston and John Adams. Currier & Ives image, photo by MPI/Getty Images

    Right around the Fourth of July, Americans pay renewed attention to the country’s crucial founding document, the Declaration of Independence. Whether Republican or Democrat or independent, some will say – with reverence – that adherence to the values expressed in the declaration is what makes them American.

    President Barack Obama, in his second inaugural address, gave voice to this very conviction.

    “What binds this nation together,” he stated, “is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names.” What truly makes Americans American, he resolved, “is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago.”

    The declaration still stands today as a manifesto. There are its lofty, “self-evident” principles, of course: that “all men are created equal” and that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” such as “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

    But I’m a historian of the early republic, and I wish to remind you that the declaration doesn’t just go all pie in the sky. And it’s more than an academic paper waxing on and on about the fashionable philosophical doctrines of the 18th century – freedom and equality – or the coolest philosopher ever, John Locke.

    The declaration provides a realistic depiction of a wounded society, one shivering with fears and teetering on the brink of disaster.

    The declaration has been central to American identity; here, a 1942 poster, printed during World War II, reminds Americans of its history.
    Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

    Repeated injuries and usurpations

    On June 11, 1776, the Continental Congress asked five of its members to prepare a text that would notify the British king and his Parliament of America’s firm intention to get a divorce.

    The drafting committee comprised Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, John Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert R. Livingston of New York, and a man who had a stellar reputation as a gifted writer, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia.

    Jefferson didn’t waste time. He locked himself up in a rented room near the State House in Philadelphia, and within a couple of days he was ready to submit a draft to his four teammates for revision.

    The committee was smitten by the clarity and effectiveness of the document. Other than suggesting a few corrections, Jefferson’s colleagues were elated by the text.

    The Continental Congress promptly received the document, discussed it, made a handful of alterations, and in the late morning of July 4, 1776, adopted it.

    Late that night, Philadelphia printer John Dunlap was given the historic task of issuing the first copies of the final Declaration of Independence.

    In retrospect, all of this may sound like a tale of fearless heroes eager to break the chains of oppression and single-handedly affirm their boundless love of freedom.

    However, when Thomas Jefferson took the pen in his hand, he didn’t think of himself as a hero. Rather, looking ahead at the immediate future and the drama that would inexorably unfold, he felt overwhelmed. A war, pitting brethren against brethren, the Colonists against their mother country, had already started.

    The situation was tense and painful, because 18th-century Americans didn’t quite see themselves as Americans. They trusted they were active members of a powerful, expanding British Empire.

    What had begun as yet another crisis over Parliament’s right to tax its overseas possessions had quickly transformed into a turning point over whether the Colonies should become independent.

    As a consequence, readers of the declaration cannot escape the impression that this document carries a sense of reluctance, betrayal, fear and even sadness.

    We Colonists thought we were free, the logic of the declaration goes, but now we are waking up to the dismal realization that the king and the Parliament treat us like their personal slaves.

    Jefferson’s words appear to longingly express how wonderful it would be for “one people” not to be put in the condition to “dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.” How desirable it would have been if a way to renew “the ties of our common kindred” could be found.

    Unfortunately, what Jefferson calls “repeated injuries and usurpations” have created enemies out of a common ancestry, thus stifling the “voice of justice and of consanguinity.”

    How not to grieve at these “injuries”? The king is guilty for “abolishing our most valuable Laws”; he has “excited domestic insurrections amongst us”; he has sent “Officers to harass our people”; he has obstructed “the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners”; and he has “made Judges dependent on his Will alone.”

    Americans didn’t seek a revolution, the declaration concludes, but Colonists must accept “the necessity” of a separation: “Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”

    Painter N.C.Wyeth’s depiction of Thomas Jefferson writing the text of the Declaration of Independence.
    Bettman/Getty Images

    ‘Forget our former love for them’

    Americans today may believe that the Declaration of Independence belongs to them – which it does. The declaration is an American document.

    But to an even larger extent, it belongs to Thomas Jefferson. It’s a Jeffersonian document.

    One of the most consequential American philosophers, the author of the declaration poured into the text his theories of society and of human nature.

    For him, human beings should not live as isolated atoms in constant competition against each other. Jefferson was a communitarian, which means that he believed that the very happiness voiced in the declaration could occur only when individuals regard themselves as functional parts of a larger whole made of other human beings.

    The declaration was built upon the tenet that, as Jefferson would explain many years later, “Nature hath implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succour their distresses.”

    As a moral philosopher, Jefferson wasn’t perfect, obviously – and his views on race and slavery prove that. But the declaration puts forth the argument that the British king and the Parliament are also to blame for having transformed a united people, a people who used to love each other, into a mass of foreigners suspicious of each other.

    In Jefferson’s account, this king has carried out the supreme betrayal – like tyrannical powers often do. He has stabbed the Americans as well as the British. He has split them into antagonistic parties. And we Americans, as Jefferson wrote in a telling passage of the declaration that didn’t survive revisions, “must endeavor to forget our former love for them.”

    The American nation was born of the traumatic experience of an amputation. It’s a residual half of a former whole that one way or another managed to learn to become a whole again.

    But after 250 years, America appears once more a people who seem to have lost what binds them together. Those “political bands which have connected them with another” are being tested; “the ties of … common kindred” are frayed.

    Such words describe a time, centuries ago, of great uncertainty, fear and sadness. It seems America has arrived yet again at such a time.

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

    – ref. Along with the ideals it expresses, the Declaration of Independence mourns for something people lost in 1776 − and now, too – https://theconversation.com/along-with-the-ideals-it-expresses-the-declaration-of-independence-mourns-for-something-people-lost-in-1776-and-now-too-258529

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: The Weimar triangle: how Germany’s new government could reinvigorate an important European security alliance

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rachel Herring, PhD candidate, Department of Politics, History and International Relations, Aston University

    Decisions made by German chancellor Friedrich Merz when he came to power in May indicate that a somewhat dormant regional partnership is about to take on new significance in Europe. Merz immediately travelled to Paris and Warsaw to meet Emmanuel Macron and Donald Tusk, suggesting the so-called Weimar triangle is a top priority for his government.

    Following Merz’s visit to Poland, Polish prime minister Tusk declared “a new beginning, perhaps the most important in the history of the last dozen or so years, in Polish-German relations”.

    If Tusk is right, the Weimar triangle – an alliance between France, Germany and Poland – will have a key role to play. The Weimar triangle was established in 1991 as a forum for the three countries to work together in the interest of European security. This involved integrating Poland into the EU, as well as providing another channel for Germany to pursue friendship and reconciliation with its neighbours.

    The Franco-German “special relationship” was already established, along with their shared reputation as Europe’s “motor”. But Poland’s inclusion was crucial. As a large, influential country in Central Europe, it was well placed to become a pillar of European security and a partner in European expansion following the collapse of Communist regimes.

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    As well as being a smaller security forum in which Germany, France and Poland can find common ground on EU security and foreign policy, the Weimar triangle has at times taken on an active international role. During the 2014 Ukraine crisis, ministers from the three Weimar triangle countries took the lead and negotiated on behalf of the EU.

    However, the importance and effectiveness of the format has declined in recent years due to deteriorating relations between the French, German and Polish governments.

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 elevated the significance of the Weimar triangle once again. But in the early days of the war, although all three governments condemned the invasion, Poland, Germany and France were far from being on the same page.

    Germany’s cautious response provoked criticism in Poland – and indeed in other Central European countries. Many in the region had long been sceptical of Germany’s Russia policy and had warned of Russian aggression, but did not feel taken seriously.

    While the Polish government was quick to commit significant military support to Ukraine, Germany, under former chancellor Olaf Scholz, soon gained a reputation for being overly cautious in the eyes of its more hawkish allies. This led the Polish government to begin turning to security alliances in Scandinavia and the Baltics.

    Meanwhile, Scholz’s hesitancy and orientation towards Washington for leadership was also met with frustration in France, where the idea of “European sovereignty” in security issues had more traction.

    When the new Merz government made it clear that it wanted to prioritise foreign policy and the Weimar triangle, there was a sense that things were about to change. It is still early days, but the rhetoric of all three Weimar triangle leaders signals a commitment to making the alliance finally deliver, as well as an awareness of earlier failures.

    New challenges in Poland

    It won’t be plain sailing from here though. The election of nationalist Karol Nawrocki as president in Poland in early June was a blow for those that support a new, strong Weimar triangle.

    Poland’s current government is a centrist coalition led by pro-European prime minister Donald Tusk, but the concern now is that Nawrocki will block pro-European legislation as his predecessor did, given that he has the support of the nationalist, Eurosceptic Law and Justice (PiS) party. The PiS party (in government from 2015-2023) has a record of anti-German and anti-EU rhetoric.

    Nawrocki has not yet questioned Poland’s military aid to Ukraine but the Tusk government must now continue to balance pursuing its own more liberal agenda and more pro-German and pro-European approach with the alternative views that Nawrocki represents, and which are clearly backed by a significant portion of Polish voters.

    What next for the Weimar triangle?

    Given the centrality of the Weimar triangle countries in Europe and the EU, their alliance has consequences that go far beyond the bilateral and regional levels. With the ongoing war in Ukraine and the uncertain status of the US as a security partner since Donald Trump’s re-election, a strong and unified pillar at the centre of Europe would be an asset to the EU and European security.

    So far, the Weimar triangle has failed to deliver on the expectations attached to it, often due to domestic differences. However, it holds untapped potential. A divided Europe and EU is in the interest of Putin’s government, and is not the unified ally Ukraine needs.

    The Weimar triangle, in bringing together three key member states – crucially including from Central Europe – can both symbolically and practically strengthen European foreign and security policy.

    This will involve finding compromises to build a united front on security at the EU level, bringing issues and policies to the table, and strengthening understanding where security perspectives diverge. The positions and signals of France, Germany and Poland matter to other EU member states and to Ukraine. Joint efforts could have even more clout.

    Rachel Herring receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.

    – ref. The Weimar triangle: how Germany’s new government could reinvigorate an important European security alliance – https://theconversation.com/the-weimar-triangle-how-germanys-new-government-could-reinvigorate-an-important-european-security-alliance-257995

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Here We Are: how silence defines Stephen Sondheim’s last musical

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ben Macpherson, Reader in Vocal Theatres, University of Portsmouth

    In musical theatre lore, when emotion outgrows words, characters sing (and when emotion outgrows song, they dance). This idea – in various guises, configurations and subversions – has shaped musical theatre for the last eight decades. The expectation that in a musical, characters sing is deeply ingrained: songs move the story along, or suspend time to enlarge a moment of emotion.

    Songs give audiences a chance to connect and to thrill at the virtuosity – and vulnerability – on display. After all, the very term “musical theatre” gives us a clue to its priorities. What happens, then, when the singing stops?

    That is the question posed by Stephen Sondheim’s final musical, Here We Are, which premiered at The Shed in New York in 2023 (two years after his death at 91) and is now playing at The National Theatre in London till the end of June.

    Based on two surrealist films by Spanish auteur Luis Buñuel (1972’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and 1962’s The Exterminating Angel), act one sees a group of wealthy friends searching for a decent brunch.

    In act two, after finally eating in the dining room of an embassy building, they mysteriously find themselves trapped – along with the waitress and the butler – and unable to leave. Completed posthumously and written with playwright David Ives, the show does something radical: in its second act, the characters stop singing.

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    That is not to say the show is not musical, and act two does include three brief moments of musical interlude rather than song. We might suggest this “songlessness” acts as a kind of silence; the characters speak, but as this is not a play, they should – as is expected of a musical – sing.

    Initially keeping up appearances, act one is full of group numbers and sung encounters, yet even here, Sondheim plays games with his audience. The main characters rarely get solo moments; instead, minor characters, including a waiter and a soldier, are given richly expressive songs.

    The usual power dynamics of musical theatre are inverted. Who gets to sing – and who does not – becomes central to the story. Director Joe Mantello has said that this approach was counterintuitive, even for Sondheim.

    By act two, the playfulness escalates. Suddenly, not even the piano in the embassy drawing room makes a sound. Silence here is not simply a gap to be filled – it becomes the point of the drama. Audiences are asked to sit with characters inured to privilege and trapped by their sudden helplessness.

    The absence of song draws attention to everything else: the dynamics and relationships, the constrained movement, the increasingly stilted small talk. Without the emotional release of song, these characters are confronted, confronting and exposed.

    Musical silence and space

    This seems a courageous move in a genre built around song – but in fact, there are many examples in musical theatre where characters who do not sing are nonetheless central. In West Side Story (1957) and Spring Awakening (2006), adults are silent while the youth give voice to generational difference.

    In The Drowsy Chaperone (1998), the central narrator talks but never sings. In more recent works like Maybe Happy Ending (2016), the silence of not singing is more comedic, with the main character Oliver’s best friend being a (silent) house plant named HwaBoon. But Here We Are takes the idea further. Why?

    One reason is dramatic. The characters are trapped in an illogical, surreal situation, leading Sondheim to reportedly ask: “Why would these people be singing when they’re trapped in this room?” To its composer, the emotional directness of singing seemed inappropriate here.

    Instead, as with the ambiguity that characterises much of Sondheim’s work, we get something more open-ended, perhaps even rebellious. Without the usual musical release, tension builds. What do these characters really feel? What does their inaction demonstrate?

    The kind of musical silence gives rise to such questions, becoming a space in which characters and audiences can reflect, transform and critique. The second act of Here We Are is not simply a story about people who cannot leave a room – it is about being confined by habits, class structures and privilege. Characters and audiences alike are forced to confront these things without the thrill of song to soften the edges.

    Here We Are further plays with musical theatre’s deepest conventions. What if the thing we expect most – the habit and structure of singing in a musical – does not happen? What if the absence of singing is the most powerful sonic gesture of all?

    To end his final work in this way feels like Sondheim has played one last trick on his audience. After a career of writing some of the most emotionally complex songs in musical theatre – such as Send in the Clowns from A Little Night Music – he leaves us with one final challenge to the structure of the form he expanded.

    In an interview with journalist Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker in 2014, Sondheim said his dream project would be “not writing”. With Here We Are, he was almost there.

    Ben Macpherson 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. Here We Are: how silence defines Stephen Sondheim’s last musical – https://theconversation.com/here-we-are-how-silence-defines-stephen-sondheims-last-musical-258718

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Five common habits that might be harming your liver

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dipa Kamdar, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice, Kingston University

    Paracetamol overdose is one of the leading causes of acute liver failure, according to the British Liver Trust fizkes/Shutterstock

    The liver is one of the hardest working organs in the human body. It detoxifies harmful substances, helps with digestion, stores nutrients, and regulates metabolism.

    Despite its remarkable resilience – and even its ability to regenerate – the liver is not indestructible. In fact, many everyday habits, often overlooked, can slowly cause damage that may eventually lead to serious conditions such as cirrhosis (permanent scarring of the liver) or liver failure.

    One of the challenges with liver disease is that it can be a silent threat. In its early stages, it may cause only vague symptoms like constant fatigue or nausea.

    As damage progresses, more obvious signs may emerge. One of the most recognisable is jaundice, where the skin and the whites of the eyes turn yellow. While most people associate liver disease with heavy drinking, alcohol isn’t the only culprit. Here are five common habits that could be quietly harming your liver.

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    1. Drinking too much alcohol

    Alcohol is perhaps the most well-known cause of liver damage. When you drink, your liver works to break down the alcohol and clear it from your system. But too much alcohol overwhelms this process, causing toxic by products to build up and damage liver cells.

    Alcohol-related liver disease progresses in stages. At first, fat begins to accumulate in the liver (fatty liver), often without any noticeable symptoms and reversible if drinking stops. Continued drinking can lead to alcoholic hepatitis, where inflammation and scar tissue begin to form as the liver attempts to heal itself.

    Over time, this scarring can develop into cirrhosis, where extensive hardening of the liver seriously affects its ability to function. While cirrhosis is difficult to reverse, stopping drinking can help prevent further damage.

    Even moderate drinking, if sustained over many years, can take its toll, particularly when combined with other risk factors like obesity or medication use. Experts recommend sticking to no more than 14 units of alcohol per week, and including alcohol-free days to give your liver time to recover.

    2. Poor diet and unhealthy eating habits

    You don’t need to drink alcohol to develop liver problems. Fat can build up in the liver due to an unhealthy diet, leading to a condition now called metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), formerly known as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

    Excess fat in the liver can impair its function and, over time, cause inflammation, scarring, and eventually cirrhosis. People who are overweight – particularly those who carry excess weight around their abdomen – are more likely to develop MASLD. Other risk factors include high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol.

    Diet plays a huge role. Foods high in saturated fat, such as red meat, fried foods and processed snacks, can raise cholesterol levels and contribute to liver fat accumulation. Sugary foods and drinks are also a major risk factor. In 2018, a review found that people who consumed more sugar sweetened drinks had a 40% higher risk of developing fatty liver disease.

    Ultra-processed foods such as fast food, ready meals and snacks packed with added sugar and unhealthy fats also contribute to liver strain. A large study found that people who ate more processed foods were significantly more likely to develop liver problems.

    On the flip side, eating a balanced, wholefood diet can help prevent – and even reverse – fatty liver disease. Research suggests that diets rich in vegetables, fruit, whole grains, legumes, and fish may reduce liver fat and improve related risk factors such as high blood sugar and cholesterol.

    Staying hydrated is also important. Aim for around eight glasses of water a day to support your liver’s natural detoxification processes.



    Read more:
    Don’t like drinking plain water? 10 healthy ideas for staying hydrated this summer

    3. Overusing painkillers

    Many people turn to over-the-counter painkillers such as paracetamol for headaches, muscle pain, or fever. While generally safe when used as directed, taking too much – even slightly exceeding the recommended dose – can be extremely dangerous for your liver.

    The liver breaks down paracetamol, but in the process, produces a toxic by-product called NAPQI. Normally, the body neutralises NAPQI using a protective substance called glutathione. However, in an overdose, glutathione stores become depleted, allowing NAPQI to accumulate and attack liver cells. This can result in acute liver failure, which can be fatal.

    Even small overdoses, or combining paracetamol with alcohol, can increase the risk of serious harm. Always stick to the recommended dose and speak to a doctor if you find yourself needing pain relief regularly.

    Regular exercise is one of the simplest and most powerful ways to protect your liver.
    Africa Studio/Shutterstock

    4. Lack of exercise

    A sedentary lifestyle is another major risk factor for liver disease. Physical inactivity contributes to weight gain, insulin resistance, and metabolic dysfunction – all of which can promote fat accumulation in the liver.

    The good news is that exercise can benefit your liver even if you don’t lose much weight. One study found that just eight weeks of resistance training reduced liver fat by 13% and improved blood sugar control. Aerobic exercise is also highly effective: regular brisk walking for 30 minutes, five times a week, has been shown to reduce liver fat and improve insulin sensitivity.

    5. Smoking

    Most people associate smoking with lung cancer or heart disease, but many don’t realise the serious damage it can do to the liver.

    Cigarette smoke contains thousands of toxic chemicals that increase the liver’s workload as it tries to filter and break them down. Over time, this can lead to oxidative stress, where unstable molecules (free radicals) damage liver cells, restrict blood flow, and contribute to scarring (cirrhosis).

    Smoking also significantly raises the risk of liver cancer. Harmful chemicals in tobacco smoke, including nitrosamines, vinyl chloride, tar, and 4-aminobiphenyl, are all known carcinogens. According to Cancer Research UK, smoking accounts for around 20% of liver cancer cases in the UK.

    Love your liver

    The liver is a remarkably robust organ – but it isn’t invincible. You can protect it by drinking alcohol in moderation, quitting smoking, taking medications responsibly, eating a balanced diet, staying active and keeping hydrated.

    If you notice any symptoms that may suggest liver trouble, such as ongoing fatigue, nausea, or jaundice, don’t delay speaking to your doctor. The earlier liver problems are detected, the better the chance of successful treatment.

    Dipa Kamdar 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. Five common habits that might be harming your liver – https://theconversation.com/five-common-habits-that-might-be-harming-your-liver-256921

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: The UK failed grooming gang victims by not seeing ‘children as children’

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michelle McManus, Professor of Safeguarding and Violence Prevention, Co-Director of the Institute for Children’s Futures, Manchester Metropolitan University

    Mariana Serdynska/Shutterstock

    The announcement of a national inquiry into group-based child sexual exploitation raises urgent questions: How did we end up here again? Haven’t there been enough reports? Why weren’t children protected the first time? And will these reforms actually change anything?

    As someone who has worked for years in safeguarding policy and research into grooming, county lines drug trafficking and child criminal exploitation, I believe this moment could be different. For the first time in years, there is political momentum, public scrutiny and survivor-led demand for change all converging. But we have to honest about how we got here.

    The inquiry, which will have full statutory powers, follows crossbench peer Louise Casey’s rapid national audit into grooming gangs. Her report lays bare what the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, described as a “collective failure” over 15 years. This phrase reflects not just high-profile cases in Rotherham, Rochdale or Telford, but a nationwide pattern of authorities disbelieving victims, delaying action and denying the scale of the problem.

    Since 2014, inquiry after inquiry has revealed how children, often girls, care-experienced young people, or those from marginalised backgrounds were not listened to, with some dismissed by social services as making “life choices”. Despite the Jay report, the 2022 Telford inquiry, and the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, victims were often not seen as victims at all.

    Seeing ‘children as children’

    One of the most striking lines in Lady Casey’s audit came just before her 12 recommendations: “We need to see children as children.” This cuts to the heart of how so many victims were failed. When professionals view teenagers as complicit, consenting, or “making choices”, they stop seeing the child in need of protection.

    Casey revealed that even today, many victims are still falling through the cracks because their exploitation doesn’t fit assumptions. The report revealed that cases involving 13- to 15-year-olds were too often dropped or downgraded from rape, with professionals referencing that the child was “in love” or had “consented”.

    These interpretations ignore the law — which sets the age of consent at 16 — and more importantly, they ignore the power imbalance and coercion at the heart of grooming. Casey has called for the law to be unambiguous: any penetrative sex with a child under 16 must be classified as rape.

    This failure to see children as victims is deeply embedded. In 2023, 706 group-based child sexual exploitation offences were recorded. A number dwarfed by the estimated 500,000 annual cases of child sexual abuse in England and Wales.

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    One reason for this gap, as Casey’s audit acknowledges, is that “the results tend to obscure rather than clarify the picture of group-based child sexual exploitation”. Much abuse is made invisible by confusing and inconsistently applied definitions, where grooming is recorded under unrelated offence types such as gang or drug crime, rather than identified as exploitation.

    In my own research and parliamentary evidence, I’ve repeatedly warned that when a child is caught carrying drugs or cash, they are too often seen as a criminal first — not as someone coerced, groomed or harmed.

    These assumptions directly shape the outcome of a case. In earlier grooming gang cases identified in the various inquiries, girls were seen as “promiscuous” or as having “chosen” to associate with older men. These narratives made it easier for agencies to downplay reports, delay interventions or ignore disclosures altogether.

    Casey rightly highlights how exploiters have taken advantage of the blurred legal and professional treatment of 13- to 15-year-olds in sexual exploitation cases. But it is concerning that proposed legislation (the crime and policing bill) appears to replicate the same flaws in how it treats child criminal exploitation. The bill introduces different assumptions about a young person’s “awareness” or involvement, even where grooming or coercion is present.

    This risks embedding a double standard: one where a 14-year-old can’t consent to sex, but can be seen as knowingly trafficking drugs. Without urgent scrutiny, we risk repeating the same failures but under the banner of criminal exploitation. It is still child exploitation.

    What’s different about these reforms?

    The government has accepted all 12 of Casey’s recommendations, including making ethnicity data collection mandatory and fast-tracking rape charges for adults abusing under-16s.

    It has also promised mandated data-sharing to finally resolve the communication failures that have dogged policing, social care and health services for decades.

    The Casey audit underscores how urgent these reforms are. It found that two-thirds of recorded perpetrators had no ethnicity data captured, making it impossible to draw clear national conclusions. In areas like Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire, there was evidence of over-representation among men of Asian ethnicity.

    But the data-sharing failures go far beyond demographics. In many serious case reviews, including ones I’ve worked on, key information held by one agency (such as frequent missing episodes recorded by police) were never pieced together across agencies. Mandated data-sharing could have allowed professionals to spot patterns of grooming earlier and intervene before exploitation escalated.

    We’ve seen versions of these promises before. The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse made over 80 recommendations. The Jay report outlined repeated missed chances to intervene. In 2022, the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse called for urgent reforms to how police and social workers identify and respond to child sexual exploitation. Many of those changes were either delayed, diluted or quietly dropped.

    Some changes, such as the statutory inquiry’s power to compel evidence, are welcome. But legal duty doesn’t automatically translate into professional confidence or competence. The systems and infrastructure needed to enable professionals to share data consistently and safely still do not exist.

    I’ve observed how even the most robust policy and guidance fails in practice because professionals are underresourced, overwhelmed, lack experience, or are unprepared to challenge risk-averse decision making.

    For example, mandated data-sharing has been a goal since the 1980s. It was a central recommendation in the 1987 Cleveland inquiry and the 2000 Victoria Climbié inquiry, both of which dealt with child abuse. It has remained a consistent theme in reviews from the child safeguarding practice review panel and in my own national evaluations.

    Yvette Cooper delivers a speech on the ‘collective failure’ in the handling of grooming gangs cases.
    House of Commons/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

    Case reviews across four decades have cited the same failures: organisations not talking to each other, files siloed, risks misunderstood. In the cases explored in the Casey audit, better data-sharing could have helped agencies identify patterns of concern much earlier, including young people going missing from home or school, presenting at sexual health clinics, or being repeatedly reported in distress by family members, teachers and health practitioners.

    Instead, these signs remained isolated. Without a full picture, no single agency recognised what was happening. Children were left unprotected while perpetrators continued to offend.

    Unless we address why so many professionals have historically avoided taking action, whether due to fear of being seen as racist, fear of reputational harm, or simply not believing children, reforms may look good on paper but fall short in reality.

    The Casey audit shows we haven’t just failed to act, we’ve failed to learn. “Collective failure” is a powerful phrase, but without collective responsibility, we risk repeating the cycle.

    Michelle McManus has received funding from Home Office, Department for Education and National Independent Safeguarding Board Wales. She is also currently seconded as part of a Chancellor’s Fellowship at Manchester Met, with the VKPP, which is part of the National Centre for VAWG and Public Protection.

    – ref. The UK failed grooming gang victims by not seeing ‘children as children’ – https://theconversation.com/the-uk-failed-grooming-gang-victims-by-not-seeing-children-as-children-259098

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Alzheimer’s: bacteria that causes stomach ulcers may protect the brain, our new research indicates

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gefei Chen, Associate professor, Karolinska Institutet

    _H pylori_ is more commonly known as the culprit of stomach infections. Corona Borealis Studio/ Shutterstock

    Every three seconds, someone in the world develops dementia. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, accounting for between 60% and 70% of all cases.

    Although scientists have made significant progress in understanding the disease, there’s still no cure. That’s partly because Alzheimer’s disease has multiple causes – many of which are still not fully understood.

    Two proteins which are widely believed to play central roles in Alzheimer’s disease are amyloid-beta and tau. Amyloid-beta forms sticky plaques on the outside of brain cells. This disrupts communication between neurons. Tau accumulate inside brain cells, where it twists into tangles. This ultimately leads to cell death. These plaques and tangles are the hallmark features of Alzheimer’s disease.

    This understanding, known as the amyloid hypothesis, has shaped research for decades and led to treatments that aim to clear amyloid from the brain. Monoclonal antibody drugs have been approved in recent years for this purpose.

    But they only work in the early stages of the disease. They do not reverse existing damage and may cause serious side-effects such as brain swelling and bleeding. Most importantly, they only target amyloid-beta, leaving tau untreated.

    But in a surprise twist, recent research published by my colleagues and me has found that a protein from Helicobacter pylori – a bacteria best known for causing stomach ulcers – can block the toxic buildup of both amyloid-beta and tau. This unexpected finding may point to a new strategy for the fight against Alzheimer’s disease.

    Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.

    Our discovery began with a very different question. We were initially studying how H pylori interacts with other microbes. Some bacteria form protective communities called biofilms, which rely on amyloid assemblies (similar in structure to the plaques which form in the brain) as a structural scaffold. This led us to wonder: could H pylori influence bacterial biofilms by also interfering with amyloid assemblies in humans?

    We turned our attention to a well-known H pylori protein called CagA. While half of the protein is known to trigger harmful effects in human cells (referred to as the C-terminal region), the other half (the protein’s N-terminal region) may have protective properties. To our surprise, this N-terminal fragment, called CagAN, dramatically reduced the formation of both bacterial amyloids and biofilms in the bacterial species Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas.

    Encouraged by these results, we tested whether the same protein fragment could block the buildup of human amyloid-beta proteins. To do this, we incubated amyloid-beta molecules in the lab: some were treated with CagAN, while others were left as normal. We then tracked amyloid formation using a fluorescence reader and an electron microscope.

    The protein derived from H pylori blocked amyloid-beta plaques from forming.
    Signal Scientific Visuals/ Shutterstock

    We found that treated samples had far less amyloid clump formation during the testing period. Even at very low concentrations, CagAN almost completely stopped amyloid-beta from forming amyloid aggregates.

    To understand how CagAN worked, we used nuclear magnetic resonance (which allows us to look at how molecules interact with each other) to examine how the protein interacts with amyloid-beta. We also used computer modelling to investigate possible mechanisms. Remarkably, CagAN also blocked tau aggregation – suggesting it acts on multiple toxic proteins involved in Alzheimer’s disease.

    Blocking the disease

    Our study has shown us that a fragment from the Helicobacter pylori protein can effectively block the buildup of the two proteins that are implicated in Alzheimer’s disease. This suggests that bacterial proteins – or drugs modelled after them – could someday block the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s.

    What’s more, the benefits may extend beyond Alzheimer’s disease.

    In additional experiments, the same bacterial fragment blocked the aggregation of IAPP (a protein involved in type 2 diabetes) and alpha-synuclein (linked to Parkinson’s disease). All of these conditions are driven by the accumulation of toxic amyloid aggregates.

    That a single bacterial fragment could interfere with so many proteins suggests exciting therapeutic potential. Though these conditions affect different parts of the body, they may be linked through cross-talk between amyloid proteins – a shared mechanism that CagAN could help disrupt.

    Of course, it’s important to be clear: this research is still at an early stage. All of our experiments were conducted in lab settings, not yet in animals or humans. Still, the findings open a new path.

    Our study also uncovered the underlying mechanisms for how CagAN blocked the amyloid-beta and tau from forming amyloid aggregates. One of the ways in which CagAN did this was by preventing the proteins from coming together to form clumps. They also prevented small, premature amyloid aggregates from forming as well. In the future, we will continue the detailed mechanism study and evaluate the effects in animal models.

    These results also prompt a question: could H pylori, long seen only as harmful, also have a protective side? Some studies have hinted at a connection between H pylori infection and Alzheimer’s disease, though the relationship remains unclear. Our discovery adds a new layer to this discussion, suggesting that part of H pylori may actually interfere with the molecular events that lead to Alzheimer’s disease.

    That means in the future, we may need to take a more precise and personalised approach. Instead of aiming to eliminate H pylori completely with antibiotics, it might be more important to understand, in different biological contexts, which parts of the bacterium are harmful, and which might actually be beneficial.

    As medicine continues to move toward greater precision, the goal may no longer be to wipe out every microbe, but to understand how some of them might work with us rather than against us.

    Gefei Chen is also affiliated with Uppsala University.

    – ref. Alzheimer’s: bacteria that causes stomach ulcers may protect the brain, our new research indicates – https://theconversation.com/alzheimers-bacteria-that-causes-stomach-ulcers-may-protect-the-brain-our-new-research-indicates-259018

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Plastics threaten ecosystems and human health, but evidence-based solutions are under political fire

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Tony Robert Walker, Professor, School for Resource and Environmental Studies, Dalhousie University

    Negotiations toward a global, legally binding plastics treaty are set to resume this summer, with the United Nations Environment Programme announcing that the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on plastic pollution will reconvene in August.

    The committee was established to develop an international legally binding instrument — known as the plastics treaty — to end plastic pollution, one of the fastest-growing environmental threats.



    Read more:
    Here’s how the new global treaty on plastic pollution can help solve this crisis

    Globally, 40 per cent of plastics production goes into the production of single-use plastic packaging, which is the single largest source of plastic waste and is a threat to wildlife and human health. Without meaningful action, global plastic waste is projected to nearly triple by 2060, reaching an estimated 1.2 billion tonnes.

    As the world prepares for another round of talks, Canada’s own plastic problem reveals what’s at stake, and what’s possible for the future.

    Canada’s plastic problem

    Canada is no exception to the global plastic crisis. Nearly half (47 per cent) of all plastic waste in Canada comes from the food and drink sector, contributing 3,268 million tonnes annually. Canadians use 15 billion plastic bags annually and nearly 57 million straws daily, yet only nine per cent of plastics are recycled — a figure that is not expected to improve.

    Most of Canada’s plastic — except for plastic bottles made of PET (polyethylene terephthalate) — are uneconomical or difficult to recycle because of the complexity of mixed plastics used in our economy. As a result, 2.8 million tonnes of plastic waste — equivalent to the weight of 24 CN Towers — end up in landfills every year.

    This is not a trivial problem, as Ontario is projected to run out of landfill space by 2035. Plastic pollution poses growing risks to both urban and rural infrastructure.

    In addition to landfill overflow, around one per cent of Canada’s plastic waste leaks into the environment. In 2016, this was 29,000 tonnes of plastic pollution. Once in the environment, plastics disintegrate into tiny particles, called microplastics (small pieces of plastic less than five millimetres long).

    We drink those tiny microplastic particles in our tap water, and eat them in our fish dinners. Some are even making their way into farmland.

    Plastics are everywhere, including inside us

    More than 93 per cent of Canadians have expressed concerns over single-use plastics used in food packaging and have supported government bans. There is a good reason for concern over the mounting levels of plastics in the environment, in our food and in us.

    Growing evidence indicates that plastics can cause harmful health effects in humans and animals. Microplastics and smaller nanoplastics (less than one micron in length) have been found in humans, including infants and breast milk. They can cause metabolic disorders, interfere with our immune and reproductive systems and cause behavioural problems.

    These health problems may be caused by chemicals added to plastics, including single-use plastics, of which 4,200 chemicals have been identified as posing a hazard to human and ecosystem health.

    It is for these reasons that the Canadian government introduced a ban on single-use plastics in 2022 as part of a plan to reach zero plastic waste in Canada by 2030.

    The decision was based extensive public and industry consultation, as well as decades of data on plastic pollution gathered from the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup. This data shows the most common plastic litter items found in the environment across Canada, known as the “dirty dozen” list.

    Six of these items were included in the federal ban. Three eastern Canadian provinces had already implemented single-use plastic bag bans before the federal government, with little to no public or industry opposition. Prince Edward Island was the first Canadian province to implement a province-wide plastic bag ban in July 2019, closely followed by Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia in October 2020.

    The politics of plastic

    Despite overwhelming scientific consensus, debates around plastic pollution are becoming increasingly politicized.

    In February in the United States, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. government to “stop purchasing paper straws and ensure they are no longer provided within federal buildings.”

    Trump told reporters at the White House: “I don’t think plastic is going to affect a shark very much, as they’re munching their way through the ocean.” Almost 2,000 peer-reviewed studies have reported, however, that more than 4,000 species have ingested or been entangled by plastic litter.

    In Canada, plastic has also become a political flashpoint. During the recent federal election, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said he would scrap the federal government’s ban on single-use plastics and bring back plastic straws and grocery bags. He argued the government’s ban was about “symbolism” rather than “science,” saying, “the Liberals’ plastics ban is not about the environment, it’s about cost and control.”

    His promise would have harmed Canadians by dismissing the overwhelming scientific evidence showing that plastics in our bodies are linked to health impacts. Legislation to ban single-use plastics can be highly effective, ranging from 33 to 96 per cent reductions in plastic waste and pollution in the environment, depending on the policy and jurisdiction.

    Canada’s single-use plastics ban is a great example of evidence-based policymaking. The latest data from the conservation group Ocean Wise shows there was a 32 per cent drop in plastic straws found on Canadian shorelines in 2024 compared to the previous year.

    Science-based policies are needed

    It is indisputable that growing plastic production is directly related to plastic pollution in the environment and in human beings. Increasing plastic pollution is a global threat to human and ecosystem health, regardless of borders and political affiliation.

    As negotiators gear up for another round of talks to finalize a Global Plastics Treaty to end plastic pollution, the need for policies that are supported by scientific evidence is more urgent than ever.

    Future generations deserve a healthy and sustainable planet. The path towards a healthy and sustainable planet requires supporting action based on scientific evidence, not misinforming people with catchy phrases and political rhetoric.

    Tony Robert Walker receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Canada Foundation for Innovation, and Research Nova Scotia. He is also a non-remunerated member of the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty.

    Miriam L Diamond receives funding from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, Future Earth, and Environment and Climate Change Canada. She is affiliated with the University of Toronto, serves as a paid expert for the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel of the Global Environment Facility, and has non-remunerated positions with the International Panel on Chemical Pollution (Vice-Chair), is a member of the Scientist Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, and sits on the board of the Canadian Environmental Law Association.

    – ref. Plastics threaten ecosystems and human health, but evidence-based solutions are under political fire – https://theconversation.com/plastics-threaten-ecosystems-and-human-health-but-evidence-based-solutions-are-under-political-fire-256764

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Decolonizing history and social studies curricula has a long way to go in Canada

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Sara Karn, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History, McMaster University

    In June 2015, 10 years ago, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) called for curriculum on Indigenous histories and contemporary contributions to Canada to foster intercultural understanding, empathy and respect. This was the focus of calls to action Nos. 62 to 65.

    As education scholars, we are part of a project supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council called Thinking Historically for Canada’s Future. This project involves researchers, educators and partner organizations from across Canada, including Indigenous and non-Indigenous team members.

    As part of this work, we examined Canadian history and social studies curricula in elementary, middle and secondary schools with the aim of understanding how they address — and may better address in future — the need for decolonization.

    We found that although steps have been made towards decolonizing history curricula in Canada, there is still a long way to go. These curricula must do far more to challenge dominant narratives, prompt students to critically reflect on their identities and value Indigenous world views.



    Read more:
    Looking for Indigenous history? ‘Shekon Neechie’ website recentres Indigenous perspectives

    Reimagining curriculum

    As white settler scholars and educators, we acknowledge our responsibility to unlearn colonial ways of being and learn how to further decolonization in Canada.

    In approaching this study, we began by listening to Indigenous scholars, such as Cree scholar Dwayne Donald. Donald and other scholars call for reimagining curriculum through unlearning colonialism and renewing relationships.



    Read more:
    Leaked Alberta school curriculum in urgent need of guidance from Indigenous wisdom teachings

    The late education scholar Michael Marker, a member of the Lummi Nation, suggested that in history education, renewing relations involves learning from Indigenous understandings of the past, situated within local meanings of time and place.

    History, social studies curricula

    Curricula across Canada have been updated in the last 10 years to include teaching about treaties, Indian Residential Schools and the cultures, perspectives and experiences of Indigenous Peoples over time.

    Thanks primarily to the work of Indigenous scholars and educators, including Donald, Marker, Mi’kmaw educator Marie Battiste, Anishinaabe scholar Nicole Bell and others, some public school educators are attentive to land-based learning and the importance of oral history.

    But these teachings are, for the most part, ad hoc and not supported by provincial curriculum mandates.

    Our study revealed that most provincial history curricula are still focused on colonial narratives that centre settler histories and emphasize “progress” over time. Curricula are largely inattentive to critical understandings of white settler power and to Indigenous ways of knowing and being.

    Notably, we do not include the three territories in this statement. Most of the territorial history curricula have been co-created with local Indigenous communities, and stand out with regard to decolonization.

    For example, in Nunavut’s Grade 5 curriculum, the importance of local knowledge tied to the land is highlighted throughout. There are learning expectations related to survival skills and ecological knowledge.

    Members of our broader research team are dedicated to analyzing curricula in Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. Their work may offer approaches to be adapted for other educational contexts.

    Dominant narratives

    In contrast, we found that provincial curricula often reinforce dominant historical narratives, especially surrounding colonialism. Some documents use the term “the history,” implying a singular history of Canada (for example, Manitoba’s Grade 6 curriculum).

    Historical content, examples and guiding questions are predominantly written from a Euro-western perspective, while minimizing racialized identities and community histories. In particular, curricula often ignore illustrations of Indigenous agency and experience.



    Read more:
    Moving beyond Black history month towards inclusive histories in Québec secondary schools

    Most curricula primarily situate Indigenous Peoples in the past, without substantial consideration for present-day implications of settler colonialism, as well as Indigenous agency and experiences today.

    For example, in British Columbia’s Grade 4 curriculum, there are lengthy discussions of the harms of colonization in the past. Yet, there is no mention of the ongoing impacts of settler colonialism or the need to engage in decolonization today.

    To disrupt these dominant narratives, we recommend that history curricula should critically discuss the ongoing impacts of settler colonialism, while centring stories of Indigenous resistance and survival over time.

    Identity and privilege

    There are also missed opportunities within history curricula when it comes to critical discussions around identity, including systemic marginalization or privilege.

    Who we are informs how we understand history, but curricula largely does not prompt student reflection in these ways, including around treaty relationships.

    In Saskatchewan’s Grade 5 curriculum, students are expected to explain what treaties are and “affirm that all Saskatchewan residents are Treaty people.”

    However, there is no mention of students considering how their own backgrounds, identities, values and experiences shape their understandings of and responsibilities for treaties. Yet these discussions are essential for engaging students in considering the legacies of colonialism and how they may act to redress those legacies.

    A key learning outcome could involve students becoming more aware of how their own personal and community histories inform their historical understandings and reconciliation commitments.

    Indigenous ways of knowing and being

    History curricula generally ignore Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Most curricula are inattentive to Indigenous oral traditions, conceptions of time, local contexts and relationships with other species and the environment.

    Instead, these documents reflect Euro-western, settler colonial worldviews and educational values. For example, history curricula overwhelmingly ignore local meanings of time and place, while failing to encourage opportunities for land-based and experiential learning.

    In Prince Edward Island’s Grade 12 curriculum, the documents expect that students will “demonstrate an understanding of the interactions among people, places and the environment.” While this may seem promising, environmental histories in this curriculum and others uphold capitalist world views by focusing on resource extraction and economic progress.

    To disrupt settler colonial relationships with the land and empower youth as environmental stewards, we support reframing history curricula in ways that are attentive to Indigenous ways of knowing the past and relations with other people, beings and the land.

    Ways forward

    Schools have been, and continue to be, harmful spaces for many Indigenous communities, and various aspects of our schooling beg questions about how well-served both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students are for meeting current and future challenges.

    If, as a society, we accept the premise that the transformation of current curricular expectations is possible for schools, then more substantive engagement is required in working toward decolonization.

    Decolonizing curricula is a long-term, challenging process that requires consideration of many things: who sits on curriculum writing teams; the resources allocated to supporting curricular reform; broader school or board-wide policies; and ways of teaching that support reconciliation.

    We encourage history curriculum writing teams to take up these recommendations as part of a broader commitment to reconciliation.

    While not exhaustive, recommendations for curricular reform are a critical step in the future redesign of history curricula. The goal is a history education committed to listening and learning from Indigenous communities to build more inclusive national stories of the past, and into the future.

    Sara Karn receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

    Kristina R. Llewellyn receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

    Penney Clark receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

    – ref. Decolonizing history and social studies curricula has a long way to go in Canada – https://theconversation.com/decolonizing-history-and-social-studies-curricula-has-a-long-way-to-go-in-canada-253679

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: B.C.’s mental health law is on trial — and so is our commitment to human rights

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Anne Levesque, Assistant professor, Faculty of Law, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

    The British Columbia Supreme Court has begun hearing a long-awaited constitutional challenge to the province’s Mental Health Act.

    The case, nearly a decade in the making, is now drawing greater attention in the wake of the tragedy at the Filipino Lapu Lapu Day street festival earlier this year that left 11 people dead in Vancouver.

    The event has shaken many in the community, leaving behind grief and fear. Furthermore, in light of reports that the person accused of the crime was under Mental Health Act supervision, difficult questions arise. The pain is real, and any conversation about mental health must begin with compassion for all of those affected.



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    At the same time, it’s important to ensure this moment of reckoning leads to thoughtful dialogue, not reactive policy. Unfortunately, much of the public discourse has become mired in fear and misinformation, creating a false and dangerous choice: that Canada must sacrifice individual rights in order to protect public safety.

    As a legal scholar in equality rights and public interest litigation, I don’t believe Canadians have to choose. A mental health system that respects Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms can also promote safety.

    What’s the case is about?

    The case currently before the B.C. Supreme Court was initiated by the Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD), a national human rights organization led by people with disabilities. The group is fighting provisions in the province’s Mental Health Act that strip patients of any right to choose their own health care, or to appoint a loved one to make health care decisions on their behalf.

    The CCD’s motto — “Nothing about us without us” — reflects a longstanding commitment to ensuring that people most affected by policies and systems have a voice in shaping them. This litigation will amplify the voices of people who underwent psychiatric treatment without consent and to shine a light on the deep and lasting harms they have suffered.

    Let’s be clear about what this Charter challenge actually seeks and what it doesn’t. It doesn’t aim to eliminate involuntary hospitalization. It does not change who can be detained, how long they can be held or the legal criteria for involuntary admission.

    What it does seek is something far more modest and humane: to ensure that when psychiatric care is forced, it is delivered with dignity, oversight and the involvement of trusted supporters in accordance with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

    One of the key reforms that CCD has long advocated for is the right for people to name a family member or friend to be involved in treatment decisions. Far from undermining care, this kind of involvement can help bridge the gap between medical necessity and personal dignity.

    It’s a safeguard that respects patients’ values and builds trust, which the current system desperately lacks. And yes, it could even enhance public safety. Reports suggest that a family member of the man accused in the Lapu Lapu mass murders in April was concerned about his deteriorating mental health and had reached out for help just before the tragedy occurred. A more responsive system with the embedded involvement of trusted decision-makers might have made a difference.



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    Reforming the Mental Health Act

    British Columbia is currently an outlier in Canada. It’s the only province where people detained under mental health laws are automatically deemed to consent to any treatment authorized by the facility — regardless of their actual wishes or capacity.

    There’s no right to name a substitute decision-maker, no ability to appeal a treatment decision, no independent oversight, and treatment is often imposed through isolation, physical restraints or security force.

    Advocates have been calling for change for decades. But in the wake of the Lapu Lapu attack, some politicians are proposing not a more compassionate or rights-respecting approach, but harsher, more coercive powers over people with mental health issues. That would be a mistake.

    The current system, which experts have long said is inconsistent with human rights, did nothing to prevent this tragedy. Violating the rights of people in crisis did not and will not keep the public safer.

    B.C. Premier David Eby has acknowledged the shortcomings in the current system, but has said that engaging in law reform while litigation is undergoing would pose a risk. Instead, he says it’s better to wait to hear what the court decides before changing the law.

    That logic is arguably akin to a citizen saying it’s risky to stop driving at a speed they know is over the lawful limit until they’re pulled over.

    Pointless to wait

    Waiting for the courts to force change wastes precious time, and public resources, that could be better spent on designing a new, Charter-compliant mental health system in collaboration with experts, service providers, families and people with lived experiences.

    Meanwhile, substantial public funds are being spent on government lawyers to fight a legal battle defending a regime that is clearly unconstitutional and fails both patients and public safety.

    That money would be far better spent consulting with experts, families and people with lived experiences and developing legislation that upholds constitutional rights and keeps communities safe.

    The time for delay is over. The B.C. government must act now to rewrite the Mental Health Act in order to protect the public and respect Charter rights.

    Anne Levesque is co-chair of the Disability Justice Litigation Initiative of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities.

    – ref. B.C.’s mental health law is on trial — and so is our commitment to human rights – https://theconversation.com/b-c-s-mental-health-law-is-on-trial-and-so-is-our-commitment-to-human-rights-258671

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Can Britain be a nation of tea growers? Scientists say yes – and it could even be good for your health

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Amanda Lloyd, Researcher in Food, Diet and Health, Aberystwyth University

    Almost 100 million cups of tea are consumed daily in the UK. Meteoritka/Shutterstock

    It’s not every day you find yourself standing in a tea garden in Devon, surrounded by rows of Camellia sinensis – the same plant species used to make tea in India, China and Japan. But there we were, in the heart of Dartmoor, picking fresh tea leaves from plants that are thriving in the UK’s cool, damp climate.

    It’s a surprising sight, and one that could become more common. Britain may be known as a “nation of tea drinkers”, but might there be opportunities for it to increasingly be a nation of tea growers? Our research has involved working with growers in Devon and Wales to explore the chemistry of UK-grown tea.

    We’re using a technique called “metabolomics” to understand what’s going on inside the leaves, and how different growing conditions, processing methods and even fermentation (like making kombucha) affect the final cup.

    Tea competes with coffee to be the UK’s favourite drink, but almost all tea leaves are imported. With concerns about climate change, food security and sustainability increasing, there’s growing interest in whether more food, including tea, can be grown in the UK.

    We chose mid-Wales and south-west England for our project because of their mild, wet climates, which are surprisingly well-suited to tea cultivation. Dartmoor, in particular, has a unique microclimate and varied soils that make it an ideal test site. There’s also a strong local appetite for sustainable farming and agricultural innovation.

    Wales already has a tea pioneer in Lucy George, a Nuffield farming scholar who began growing tea near Cardiff in 2014. Her brand, Peterston Tea, is now sold in Welsh shops and around the world. She believes that slower growth in Wales’ cooler climate may actually improve flavour, making Welsh-grown tea more than just a curiosity.

    Dr Amanda J Lloyd and Dr Ali Warren-Walker gathering samples at Dartmoor Estate Tea in Devon.
    Aberystwyth University, CC BY

    What we found

    One of our studies used metabolomics and machine learning to explore the chemical diversity of UK-grown tea.

    Metabolomics involves analysing the small molecules – known as “metabolites” – in a sample. These include sugars, amino acids and polyphenols, as well as more complex “bioactives” like catechins and flavonoids. These types of compounds influence flavour, aroma and potential health benefits.

    We used method called “direct injection mass spectrometry” to create a chemical fingerprint of each sample. Then we used machine learning to spot patterns and differences. We also looked at how the chemistry of the leaves changes depending on the time of day they’re picked and how they’re processed.

    Our findings show that tea grown in the UK has a rich and diverse chemical profile. Different varieties, picking times and processing techniques all influence the concentration of beneficial compounds like catechins and flavonoids.

    The other study was a human trial, which found that drinking green tea from Dartmoor with rhubarb root for 21 days significantly reduced LDL (bad) cholesterol and total cholesterol, and without disrupting the gut microbiome. This suggests that UK-grown tea could be developed into a functional food, supporting health. This product is now being sold by a tea company in Carmarthenshire, west Wales.

    This is exciting because it means we can tailor how we grow and process tea to enhance both its flavour and its health benefits. And it opens the door to a potential new UK-grown tea industry. It could play a part in supporting the rural economy, reduce reliance on imports and offer a more sustainable future for UK agriculture.

    On a global level, this kind of research helps us understand how plants respond to different environments, which is crucial for food security in a changing climate.

    A Cornish tea grower explains the challenges of growing tea in the UK.

    What’s next?

    We’re now investigating how different tea varieties and processing techniques – like steaming, oxidation and novel drying methods – influence the tea’s chemical make-up. These techniques could help preserve more of the beneficial compounds and make it easier to develop new tea-based products like powders or supplements.

    Another human study is looking at how kombucha affects well-being, memory, inflammation and stress.

    We’re also continuing to test how different varieties of tea respond to the UK’s conditions, and how we can refine growing and processing techniques to produce high-quality, health-promoting tea on home soil.

    As climate change reshapes what we can grow and where, tea may just become one of the UK’s most unexpected and exciting new crops.

    Amanda Lloyd receives funding from Welsh Government Covid Recovery Challenge Fund (part of the Welsh Government’s Food and Drink Division funding), alongside Innovate UK Better Food for all (10068218), and the Joy Welch Research Fund (Aberystwyth University internal)

    Nigel Holt receives funding from Innovate UK Better Food for all (10068218)

    – ref. Can Britain be a nation of tea growers? Scientists say yes – and it could even be good for your health – https://theconversation.com/can-britain-be-a-nation-of-tea-growers-scientists-say-yes-and-it-could-even-be-good-for-your-health-257495

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Investing in NHS staff wellbeing could produce economic benefits the UK desperately needs

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Catia Nicodemo, Professor of Health Economics, Brunel University of London

    Drazen Zigic/Shutterstock

    Health emerged as a major beneficiary in the UK government’s recent spending review. It highlighted a clear ambition to modernise public services — particularly the NHS — through digital transformation and expanded use of artificial intelligence (AI).

    Investments in initiatives such as a single-patient NHS record would consolidate all of a patient’s data in one place, potentially accessible through an app. It could significantly improve continuity of care and patient outcomes.

    And AI adoption could streamline operations, from reducing hospital waiting times to improving productivity. AI could, for example, use predictive algorithms to triage patients more efficiently. Or it could automate administrative tasks like scheduling appointments and managing medical records.

    However, amid these forward-looking reforms, the spending review overlooked a critical component of healthcare sustainability: the wellbeing of NHS staff.

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    While technology can boost efficiency, the human element remains the bedrock of healthcare. NHS staff, grappling with burnout from relentless pressures, are at the forefront of delivering patient care. Ignoring their needs risks undermining the very advances the spending review aims to achieve.

    Burnout is not merely a workforce issue. It is an economic challenge. High levels of stress among NHS staff lead to increased absenteeism and worker turnover. It also reduces productivity, ultimately resulting in longer waiting times for patients to be seen. Compounding this are the costs of recruitment when staff quit the service, as well as operational inefficiencies.

    More worryingly, these factors can directly affect patient outcomes. Overstretched and fatigued staff are more likely to make errors, which can result in longer recovery times and potentially lead to costly legal consequences.

    Despite these realities, the spending review did not explicitly allocate resources for initiatives aimed at reducing staff workload and improving mental health support. These omissions stand in stark contrast to the government’s broader goals of increasing productivity and reducing waiting times in the NHS.

    Investing in staff wellbeing is not a competing priority. It is a complementary strategy that enhances the return on investments in technology and infrastructure. Healthier and supported staff are better equipped to use tools like AI effectively, translating digital advances into meaningful improvements in patient care.

    The economic case

    Financially, the case for prioritising staff wellbeing is robust. Proactive measures such as hiring more people to improve staff-to-patient ratios, implementing flexible working arrangements and providing mental health resources can yield significant returns. As an example, Public Health England’s return on investment (ROI) tool shows that workplace wellbeing programmes typically yield an ROI of £2.37 per £1 spent.

    Research has shown that better-supported healthcare workers make fewer errors, provide more compassionate care and can help patients recover faster. These improved outcomes translate into savings across the NHS. This could range from reduced secondary care needs – such as fewer re-admissions or shorter inpatient stays – right through to lower litigation costs linked to clinical mistakes.

    AI tools could help to triage patients more efficiently – but only if staff are healthy enough to implement them.
    toodtuphoto/Shutterstock

    And interventions focused on wellbeing can amplify the impact of other reforms. For example, reducing burnout helps staff to embrace and adapt to the technological changes — such as AI tools and integrated data systems — that they will increasingly be expected to work with. But without adequate support, there could be a greater risk of resistance among staff, or poor adoption of these technologies. This in turn would limit the potential benefits of these tech advances.

    The spending review sent a clear positive message about investing in skills and technology to modernise the NHS. However, it missed an opportunity to address the fundamental role of workforce wellbeing in achieving these objectives.

    Politicians must now recognise that digital transformation and human support are two sides of the same coin.

    As the NHS looks to the future, a more balanced approach is needed — one that couples innovation with investment in the people who make healthcare possible. By focusing on the wellbeing of its workforce, the NHS can unlock the full potential of its modernisation agenda, ensuring that every pound spent delivers maximum value to both patients and staff.

    Catia Nicodemo is affiliated with the University of Oxford.

    – ref. Investing in NHS staff wellbeing could produce economic benefits the UK desperately needs – https://theconversation.com/investing-in-nhs-staff-wellbeing-could-produce-economic-benefits-the-uk-desperately-needs-258863

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Coal power plants were paid to close. Is it time to do the same for slaughterhouses?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stephanie Walton, Researcher on Food Systems and Sustainable Finance, University of Oxford

    Ocphoto/Shutterstock

    The food industry will go to great lengths (and spend a fortune) to lobby policymakers, confuse the public and politicise scientific findings. You can see the results in the UK’s delay of a ban on junk food advertisers targeting children, or the orchestrated backlash to a report that recommended cutting red meat consumption and embracing more plant-based diets.

    It’s a well-worn playbook. When scientific evidence indicates the need to phase down environmentally harmful or unhealthy products, the responsible industry pushes back.

    Motivating this resistance, my colleagues and I believe, is something rarely discussed in the context of food systems: stranded assets. These are investments that lose value or stop generating revenue earlier than their owners and investors anticipated, due to changes in market conditions, technology or – of particular interest here – policy and regulation.

    This concept has been central to debates in the energy transition. For example, studies have shown that keeping global warming below 2 °C will require leaving fossil fuels in the ground and shutting down power plants before they’ve generated a return on investment, wiping off about US$1 trillion (£736 billion) in value for companies, financial institutions and investors.

    The same dynamic applies to the task of feeding everyone well and without substantial environmental harm. What we produce must change, as well as how we produce it.

    Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.

    Producing animal-sourced protein, especially beef and dairy, has environmental impacts that dwarf those of plant-based protein. Some new technologies may reduce these impacts, particularly feed additives to reduce methane emissions from cattle. But the negative impacts go far beyond cow burps to include deforestation, biodiversity loss, water scarcity and pollution.

    Beef in particular, even when produced using intensive systems like feedlots in the US, requires substantially more land to make 100 grams of protein than any other source (excluding lamb, which is produced in much lower quantities).

    As the global population increases and constraints on land use intensify, as much nourishing food as possible will need to be produced on as little land as possible. This will entail slashing the amount of land used for animal-sourced foods.

    However, companies consistently invest in the assets that produce, process, transport and store the foods we consume. These range from slaughterhouses to the grain silos and transport equipment for single-crop supply chains, to manufacturing plants and the research and development of ultra-processed foods.

    Crops are cultivated over vast acres of land to feed livestock.
    Ekrem Sahin/Shutterstock

    In order to curtail certain foods, as part of a global shift towards sustainable and healthy diets, these assets cannot generate the revenue they do now. This means writing off some of the capital that has been sunk into them, and any anticipated revenue.

    Our research identified £217 billion that has been invested in meatpacking plants, for example. A portion of this will be lost in service of a shift to more plant-based sustenance.

    Whether or not policymakers and researchers are aware of the stranded assets problem, food companies certainly are.

    Polluter pays or pay the polluter?

    We outline three things that need to happen.

    First, while it is laudable that companies set targets to cut emissions or deforestation, how they invest their money is not always consistent with these goals. Companies need to disclose to investors and the public which of their assets are incompatible with a sustainable future, and how they plan to phase them out.

    Second, lenders (typically banks) and investors (asset managers and their clients) must work with the companies they fund to manage these transitions rather than simply revoke financing or divest. Shutting down a meatpacking plant and building up a plant-based protein business is costly, and firms will need support.

    Divestment can play an important role symbolically, signalling an ethical and moral stance against certain activities. But unless it is done by all investors at once, assets like shares go to other buyers with little or no interest in sustainability.

    Third, and perhaps the thorniest problem, who pays for stranded assets? The money has already been spent. The investments have been made, the meatpacking plants and infrastructure already built, the anticipated revenue and maximised profit margins already embedded in the value of these companies.

    There is the cost of shutting down assets early as well as the opportunity cost of not making money that was expected from capital that has already been sunk. Who bears those costs?

    Many assume the answer is straightforward: the polluter should pay. This is certainly possible to achieve. Take the recent ruling in Germany, which determined that private companies can be held liable for their share in causing climate damages.

    But implementing this principle requires unusually strong political leadership and sustained public support. Both of these things are difficult to secure, particularly in food systems where industry lobbying is intense, livelihoods are at stake, public attention is fragmented and diets are highly personal and easily politicised.

    Capital sunk into infrastructure makes change costly.
    Catstyecam/Shutterstock

    Even when policies designed to improve public health or sustainability are passed, they can be easily rolled back. Which brings us to an uncomfortable alternative: paying the polluter.

    This approach already exists in other sectors. Since 2020, Germany has paid coal plants to retire early. The same has been done in the Netherlands, parts of the US and several other countries. In the Netherlands, the government paid farmers to reduce dairy herds in certain areas in order to hit pollution targets.

    Paying off food companies to phase out harmful assets sounds like a bailout and feels unfair, since a clean and thriving environment is a human right. Such an approach could only work if it allowed stronger regulation that ensured such pollution wouldn’t occur in the future. This is how abolitionists contributed to ending slavery in the UK.

    If we’re stuck between endless policy whiplash and slow-motion climate and health crises, paying the polluter may be worth considering. It’s politically fraught and emotionally frustrating, but when it comes to stopping pollution sooner rather than later, it is perhaps more tractable than waiting for political will, corporate courage and public consensus to converge.

    Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    Stephanie Walton 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. Coal power plants were paid to close. Is it time to do the same for slaughterhouses? – https://theconversation.com/coal-power-plants-were-paid-to-close-is-it-time-to-do-the-same-for-slaughterhouses-257418

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How to make sure the new grooming gangs inquiry is the last

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aisha K. Gill, Professor of Criminology, Centre for Gender and Violence Research, University of Bristol

    Motortion Films/Shutterstock

    Louise Casey’s recent report on grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation in the UK lays bare institutional failings. It highlights that, at present, victims cannot rely upon the criminal justice system – and that it has badly let them down in the past.

    One of Lady Casey’s 12 recommendations is a new national inquiry into child sexual exploitation. This inquiry would review reported cases that did not result in prosecution, and review police and children’s services to identify children at risk. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has accepted this recommendation, and a statutory inquiry will go ahead into child sexual exploitation and grooming gangs.

    As an activist and researcher with over 20 years’ experience focused on violence against women and children, if this new inquiry is to go ahead, I believe its remit must be clear and it must be delivered promptly: within the next two to three years. Importantly, it must avoid duplicating the previous independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, led by Alexis Jay and published in October 2022. It is a sign of institutional failure that those recommendations have still not been implemented.

    Professor Jay’s inquiry revealed the failure of many schools, local authorities and other institutions to protect and safeguard the children in their care. Survivors and experts criticised a widespread lack of effort on the part of the police, local safeguarding authorities and the government to better protect children from sexual abuse.

    The inquiry made 20 recommendations for action, including mandatory reporting of abuse by people who work with children, and better, more unified data on victims and perpetrators. However, there has been little evidence of such action taking place in the intervening years. None of those recommendations have been fully implemented.

    Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.

    One of the problems facing this new inquiry is how to address the current crisis of confidence and doubt over whether the government will heed these calls for change. In January 2025, Jay questioned whether a national inquiry was the most effective way to address the inherent problems associated with investigating and prosecuting the perpetrators, as well as supporting the victims, of child sexual exploitation.

    The findings of her 2022 review revealed ample evidence that schools, police officers, council chiefs and social services acted improperly. It found that they failed to protect victims and those at risk of becoming victims, either by victim blaming or turning a blind eye.

    But since Jay’s report was released, survivors of child sexual exploitation remain inadequately supported. This has compounded distrust of, and dissatisfaction with, the police and local systems of government.

    Ultimately, the consequence of these multiple government failures is that victims of child sexual exploitation are reluctant to reach out to law enforcement. They fear they will be disbelieved or even blamed for what happened to them. Casey’s recent review states that victims have to live with “an overall system that compounds and exacerbates the damage, [and] rarely acknowledges its failures to victims”.

    Heeding calls for change

    Identifying the failures of the police and local authorities is key to this process. Victims I have spoken to over the years have described being “fobbed off” – told that something was being done when in fact their cases were not progressing at all.

    Some action is underway. Since January 2025, the police have reopened for review more than 800 historic cases of group-based child sexual abuse.

    In response to Casey’s review, the Home Office has announced that the National Crime Agency has been tasked with working with police forces to deliver “long-awaited justice” for victims whose cases have not yet progressed through the criminal justice system. It is also intended to improve how local police forces investigate such crimes.

    But in my opinion, other factors must also be considered as part of these processes. Above all, adequate training for all professionals involved in identifying, investigating and prosecuting these cases is critical to preventing children from becoming prey.

    Healthcare providers, for example, must be equipped with the skills to make sure concern about a child leads to action. They often come into contact with exploited children and so need to know how to identify victims and the signs of exploitation. Hospital staff should be aware of the controlling behaviour that may be displayed by predatory groomers.

    This will also provide an opportunity to develop multi-agency screening tools that enable health professionals to help all victims. Some may require care due to pregnancy or injuries arising from the abuse.

    Casey’s report is a diplomatically framed, national snapshot audit. All who are concerned about child sexual exploitation can find points with which they agree.

    Nevertheless, even if positive legislative changes are implemented, disjointed, dysfunctional practices will continue if education is not put in place. The police, social workers, educators, health workers and community workers should receive effective, consistent training about the issues faced by children who are at risk of exploitation.

    Until the government holistically addresses child sexual exploitation, its efforts to shift the dial will remain no more than a sticking plaster. The new inquiry should thus ensure the issues underlying these crimes are fully investigated and addressed. The legal system must bring perpetrators to justice and support all victims on the path to seeking justice and accountability.

    Aisha K. Gill is affiliated with End Violence Against Women Coalition and Ashiana Network.

    – ref. How to make sure the new grooming gangs inquiry is the last – https://theconversation.com/how-to-make-sure-the-new-grooming-gangs-inquiry-is-the-last-259096

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What could have caused the Air India crash? An expert examines the proposed failure scenarios

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ali Elham, Professor of Design Optimisation, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, University of Southampton

    The recent crash of an Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner in Ahmedabad has prompted widespread discussion about potential causes. As an expert with a background in aircraft design, I would not attempt to speculate on the cause of the incident. We should wait for the crash investigators to carry out a rigorous analysis.

    Instead, I will explain the various flight scenarios currently being discussed in the public domain, and explore what each of them implies from the perspective of aircraft design and performance.

    Understanding how such factors interact with aircraft systems and flight performance can shed light on how modern aircraft are designed to handle rare but critical situations.

    Loss of engine thrust

    Modern commercial aircraft are designed to safely continue takeoff and climb with
    one engine not operating. This is a fundamental certification requirement, particularly for twin-engine aircraft. It ensures that the loss of a single engine, even during the critical takeoff phase, should not result in a catastrophic failure.

    However, the loss of both engines is an extremely serious scenario.

    A notable case of dual engine failure occurred in 2001 on Air Transat Flight 236, which was travelling from Toronto, Canada, to Lisbon in Portugal. The Airbus A330 aircraft lost both engines over the Atlantic Ocean due to a fuel leak, but managed to glide approximately 75 miles (120km) before safely landing at Lajes Air Base in the Azores. This was possible because the aircraft had sufficient altitude and airspeed at the time of its total engine failure.

    However, takeoff and landing are considered the most critical phases of flight
    because the aircraft is close to the ground, giving pilots limited time and
    altitude to respond to failures. At low speed and altitude, the aircraft may also lack the necessary energy (in terms of both airspeed and height) to glide a meaningful distance.

    Bird strikes can also cause engine failure, as seen in the case of US Airways Flight 1549, an Airbus A320 that struck a flock of birds shortly after take off from New York’s LaGuardia Airport on January 15 2009. Both engines failed and, due to the aircraft’s low altitude and limited speed, the pilots determined that returning to the airport was not feasible.

    Instead, pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles executed a successful emergency water landing on the Hudson River, resulting in the survival of all onboard. As such, the incident became known as the “miracle on the Hudson”.

    These examples highlight how altitude, speed and pilot decision-making, along with robust aircraft design, play a critical role in the outcome of rare but severe engine failure events.

    The US Airways plane involved in the ‘miracle on the Hudson’ on display in the Sullenberger Aviation Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina.
    Kevin M. McCarthy / Shutterstock

    Landing gear not retracted

    During a normal takeoff procedure, the landing gear – the sets of wheels under a plane that support it on the ground – is retracted within seconds after liftoff, once the aircraft has safely left the ground.

    Extended landing gear produces significant aerodynamic drag. So, during the initial climb when the aircraft requires maximum thrust to gain altitude, eliminating this drag by retracting the landing gear is highly beneficial for both climb performance and fuel efficiency.

    However, commercial aircraft are designed to remain controllable and flyable even if the landing gear fails to retract. In such cases, the aircraft should still be able to perform a “go-around” before safely landing again, assuming no other critical failures have occurred.

    That said, a scenario involving both loss of engine thrust and non-retracted landing gear can severely degrade glide performance. The additional drag from the extended gear reduces the aircraft’s lift-to-drag ratio, an indication of the aerodynamic efficiency of the airplane.

    The extended landing gear might limit the distance it can glide and increase its descent rate – which is especially critical when altitude is limited.

    Landing gear on a modern airliner.
    Frank Peters / Shutterstock

    Flaps retracted prematurely

    An aircraft’s ability to generate lift depends on several factors, including wing area, airspeed, altitude, and the “lift coefficient” – a number that describes how effectively a wing or other surface generates lift under specific flight conditions. The lift coefficient is largely influenced by the wing’s geometry, particularly its curvature (called camber).

    During takeoff and landing, the aircraft operates at relatively low speeds where the wings alone may not generate enough lift. To compensate, high-lift devices such as flaps are deployed. These devices are usually mounted on the wings’ trailing edges and, when extended, increase each wing’s curvature and surface area, thereby raising the lift coefficient and allowing the aircraft to remain airborne at lower speeds.

    Airplane wing with flaps and spoilers fully extended to slow down the aircraft after landing.
    Desintegrator / Shutterstock

    However, deploying flaps also increases aerodynamic drag. For this reason, once the aircraft accelerates and reaches a safe climb speed, the flaps are gradually retracted to reduce drag and improve fuel efficiency.

    If the flaps are retracted too early, before the aircraft has reached sufficient speed, there can be a sudden loss of lift. This may result in a stall or insufficient climb performance.

    This situation becomes even more critical if it occurs in combination with other issues, such as extended landing gear (which increases drag) or a loss of engine thrust, as the combined aerodynamic penalties may prevent the aircraft from maintaining controlled flight.

    Conclusion

    Over the years, numerous improvements in aircraft design, maintenance and operational procedures have resulted from crash investigations. Each incident, especially a fatal one such as the Air India Boeing 787 crash, offers valuable lessons that can drive further enhancements in aviation safety.

    The fact that both the aircraft’s flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder (sometimes referred to as the “black boxes”) have now been recovered offers hope that the precise cause of this crash will be identified.

    Whatever is ultimately determined to be the cause – technical failure, human error, or a combination of both – there will be lessons to be learned. Every event highlights areas where systems, procedures or training can be strengthened to make aviation even safer in the future.

    Ali Elham 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 could have caused the Air India crash? An expert examines the proposed failure scenarios – https://theconversation.com/what-could-have-caused-the-air-india-crash-an-expert-examines-the-proposed-failure-scenarios-259099

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Brazil’s ‘bill of devastation’ pushes Amazon towards tipping point

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Philip Fearnside, Biólogo e pesquisador titular (Departamento de Ecologia), Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA)

    A bill essentially abolishing Brazil’s environmental licensing system is just days away from likely passage by the country’s National Congress. Despite the environmental discourse of President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, what is known as the “bill of devastation” (PL 2159/2021) apparently has his tacit approval. Even if Lula vetoes the bill, anti-environmental voting blocks in the National Congress have more than the 60% in each house needed to override a veto.

    The “bill of devastation” has been promoted as relieving “low impact” projects of unnecessary bureaucracy, but it is very much more than this. First, it is for both “low” and “medium” impact projects, two categories that are vaguely defined, allowing projects with major impacts to be benefitted. The bill applies to licensing at both the state and federal levels, and at the state level there is expected to be a “race to the bottom” as states compete to attract investments by loosening environmental restrictions.

    The “medium impact” category is a misnomer, as it includes most mining projects such as the mine tailings dams that broke in 2015 at Mariana and in 2019 at Brumadinho to create two of Brazil’s worst environmental disasters.

    Under the bill, these “low” and “medium” impact projects would be licensed by what is known as “self-licensing,”. This eliminates the need for an environmental impact assessment, public hearings and specification of compensatory measures in the event of accidents or other impacts. Basically, this self-declared statement consists of checking a series of boxes on an online form.

    Bypassing any public or committee debate, at the last minute before the Senate’s plenary vote the bill was modified with an amendment that increased its environmental impact even more. The amendment created a “Special Environmental License” that would allow any project considered to be “strategic” to have an accelerated approval process, regardless of the magnitude of its impacts.

    The amendment is believed to be specifically intended to facilitate the controversial mouth-of-the-Amazon oil project, which has major potential impacts both from potentially uncontrollable oil spills and from its impact on climate change.

    Brazil’s imminent climate disaster

    Global climate and the Amazon forest are both approaching tipping points where the process of collapse escapes from human control. These imminent disasters are intertwined: if the Amazon forest were to collapse it would release more than enough greenhouse gases to push global temperatures beyond the point where human society loses the option to contain climate change by cutting emissions to zero, and if global temperatures rise uncontrollably, it would soon push the Amazon forest to collapse.

    The Amazon forest is on the verge of tipping points in terms of temperature, the ongoing increase in dry season length, the percentage of forest cleared and a combination of various climatic and direct anthropogenic impacts.

    The loss of the Amazon forest that would result from crossing any of these tipping points would, among other impacts, sacrifice the forest’s vital role in recycling water.

    A volume of water greater than the Amazon River’s total flow is released as water vapor by the leaves of the trees, providing rainfall that not only maintains Amazon forest but also maintains agriculture and city water supplies in other parts of Brazil and in neighboring countries. The water vapor is transported by winds known as “flying rivers” to São Paulo, the World’s fourth largest city, which depends on this water supply.

    Amazon destruction

    Given these catastrophic prospects, Brazil’s government should be acting decisively to halt the country’s greenhouse gas emissions and to lead the World in combatting climate change. These necessities are interrelated, as effective leadership is done through example and Brazil cannot continue to merely exhort other countries to reduce their emissions when its domestic decisions are acting to increase global warming. This includes the “bill of devastation”.

    Rapidly phasing out fossil fuel use is fundamental to containing global warming. The amount by which human society must reduce its emissions and the trajectory in time that this reduction must follow are determined by analysis of the best available data and climate models.

    The “Global Stocktake” by the Climate Convention, released at COP-28 in 2023, showed that anthropogenic emissions must decline by 43% by 2030 compared to 2023, and by 84% by 2050 to stay within the limit currently agreed under the Paris Agreement of 1.5 ºC above the pre-industrial average global temperature.

    This limit represents a tipping point both for the global climate system and for the Amazon forest. Above this point there is a sharp increase in the annual probability of uncontrollable feedbacks driving the system to a catastrophic shift or collapse.

    The mouth-of-the-Amazon project is critical. A massive auction of drilling rights, both onshore and offshore, is scheduled for 17 June, including 47 blocks in the mouth of the Amazon River.

    Environmental approval of the first “experimental” well (FZA-M-59) is viewed as the key to international oil companies being willing to bid on these blocks. The head of the Brazilian licensing agency (IBAMA) has been under intense pressure to approve the project.

    Oil project

    Within the licensing debate, the focus is almost entirely on whether Petrobras has the infrastructure and personnel to mount a rescue operation for marine wildlife in the event of an oil spill, rather than the more basic question of whether a leak could be plugged if it should occur.

    Unfortunately, there are strong indications that a leak could not be plugged for months or years, as the site has double the 1.5-km water depth at the Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico that spilled uncontrollably for five months in 2010, and the ocean currents are much stronger and more complex in the mouth of the Amazon.

    Petrobras constantly brags about its long experience with offshore oil extraction, but neither Petrobras nor any other company has plugged a leak at a location with the depth and complexity of the mouth-of-the-Amazon site.

    Containing global warming is inconsistent with opening new oil fields due to the economic logic of these projects, which is different from the economics of continued extraction of existing oilfields. This is what led the International Energy Agency (IEA) to recommend that no new oil or gas fields be opened anywhere in the World.

    In the case of the mouth of the Amazon project, the expectation is that it would take five years to begin commercial production and another five years to pay for the investment; since no one will want to stop with zero profit, the project implies extracting petroleum for many years after that – far beyond the time when the World must stop using oil as fuel.

    Petrobras claims that the mouth-of-the-Amazon project and other planned new oilfields are needed for Brazil’s “energy security” to guarantee that Brazilians will not lack fuel for their vehicles.

    The falsity of this argument is obvious from the fact that Brazil currently exports over half of the oil it extracts, and this percentage is expected to rise with the planned expansion. The reserves in Brazil’s existing oilfields are far greater than what the country can consume before fossil-fuel use must cease. In other words, the expansion of oil extraction is purely a matter of money.

    Another argument promoted by Petrobras and by President Lula is that the oil revenue is needed to pay for Brazil’s energy transition. While the energy transition must indeed be paid for, it should have a guaranteed place in Brazil annual budget, like health and education, and not be treated as something optional that depends on windfall financial gains.

    President Lula’s sleepwalk

    President Lula apparently lacks understanding of Brazil’s suicidal course towards a climate catastrophe. He has surrounded himself with proponents of projects with enormous climatic consequences, such as his minister of transportation who presses for Highway BR-319 and his minister of mines and energy and the president of Petrobras who push for the mouth-of-the-Amazon and other new oil and gas projects.

    Clearly, Lula does not listen to his minister of environment and climate change on these issues. He lives in a “disinformation space,” to use the term coined by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinski to describe Donald Trump. The question of whether President Lula will awake from his sleepwalk before COP-30 in November is critical, as this is his opportunity to assume global leadership on climate change. Although there is no indication that this is likely, efforts to penetrate his disinformation space must continue.

    Philip Fearnside receives funding from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), the Amazonas State Research Support Foundation (FAPEAM), and the Brazilian Research Network on Global Climate Change (Rede Clima).

    – ref. Brazil’s ‘bill of devastation’ pushes Amazon towards tipping point – https://theconversation.com/brazils-bill-of-devastation-pushes-amazon-towards-tipping-point-259027

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: China’s support for Mali’s military carries risks: researcher outlines what they are

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Paa Kwesi Wolseley Prah, Postdoctoral Fellow, Dublin City University

    Mali, a landlocked Sahelian nation of 25 million people, has faced significant instability since 2012, marked by terrorism, state neglect and armed conflicts.

    That year a Tuareg rebellion started in northern Mali and President Amadou Toumani Touré was ousted in a military coup. Constitutional rule was suspended. Rebels in northern Mali went on to seize cities like Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal, declaring an independent Islamic State of Azawad and imposing sharia law.

    They also destroyed cultural heritage sites, including 14 of Timbuktu’s 16 Unesco-listed mausoleums. The crisis prompted international intervention, including a UN authorised mission, which retook northern cities within weeks. Islamist rebels retreated into civilian populations and remote areas.

    Despite these efforts, violence against civilians by extremist groups and community militias has continued. By 2023, 8.8 million Malians needed humanitarian assistance. Over 375,500 were internally displaced, primarily women and children.

    Meanwhile, the former French colony had turned to China for military assistance. Between 2012 and 2013, China provided €5 million (about US$5.8 million) in logistical equipment to improve the Malian army’s mobility.



    Read more:
    China’s interests in Africa are being shaped by the race for renewable energy

    In August 2013, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army gave the Malian army military supplies totalling 1.6 billion CFA francs (about US$2.8 million). China made similar donations between 2014 and 2023.

    I am an international security and global governance researcher. My recent research explored the impact of China’s security sector assistance on Mali’s fragility.

    China’s assistance to Mali aims to equip the country to address terrorism and insurgency. But I argue that it may have unintended consequences and cause further damage to the country.

    The heavy reliance on Chinese supply exposes Mali to vulnerabilities, including supply disruptions, diminished bargaining power, and limited strategic flexibility. This could destabilise security even more should China face manufacturing issues or supply chain disruptions leading to delays or shortages in the production of weapons.

    It also raises concerns about the potential influence of China on Mali’s defence policies and decision-making processes. In turn this could entrench the Malian military government’s position. China takes a hands-off approach to the governance structures of the countries it engages with. Hopes of democratisation in the country could be affected.



    Read more:
    US trade wars with China – and how they play out in Africa

    Rich in resources

    Mali has significant natural resources, including 800 tons of gold reserves (it’s Africa’s fourth-largest producer), iron ore, manganese, lithium, and potential uranium and hydrocarbon deposits.

    In 2019, gold production generated US$734 million, or 9.7% of Mali’s GDP, supporting over 10% of the population.

    Chinese firms, such as Ganfeng Lithium and China National Nuclear Corporation, have invested heavily in Mali’s mining sector. They are involved in a US$130 million lithium project and uranium exploration in the Kidal and Falea regions.

    Despite security risks, including attacks on Chinese personnel in 2015 and 2021, China remains committed due to Mali’s resource potential.

    Beyond mining, China has invested in Mali’s infrastructure. A US$2.7 billion railway modernisation project connects Bamako to Dakar, facilitating resource exports like iron ore and bauxite.

    The total of Mali’s external debt to China is not explicitly stated. But the 2014 loan agreement of US$11 billion and the 2016 loan of US$2.7 billion alone suggest Mali’s debt to China could be at least US$13 billion. This is without including loans for projects like the Bamako-Ségou expressway, and bridges in Bamako.

    This has often been criticised as “debt trap diplomacy”, increasing recipient countries’ dependence on Beijing. In Mali, I believe this risks entrenching economic vulnerability and giving China geopolitical leverage.



    Read more:
    China reaps most of the benefits of its relationship with Africa: what’s behind the imbalance

    China’s security sector assistance to Mali

    Historically, Mali relied on France. More recently, it’s used Russia’s expeditionary corps, formerly known as Wagner Group, for security support.

    In 2011, China provided US$11.4 million in grants, US$8.1 million in zero-interest loans, and a US$100.8 million concessional loan to foster bilateral cooperation.

    China’s participation in the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali, starting in 2013 with 395 personnel, marked a shift in its security engagement.

    Chinese peacekeepers, including engineers, medical personnel and security guards, repaired infrastructure, provided medical aid and supported Mali’s 2013 elections.

    Their professionalism earned praise from the UN special envoy Albert Gerard Koenders for helping to ensure a smooth election.

    China’s involvement in Mali challenged traditional European approaches to peacekeeping, particularly France’s military-heavy strategy.



    Read more:
    China-Africa relations: new priorities have driven major shifts over the last 24 years – 5 essential reads

    How China’s assistance contributes to Mali’s fragility

    In spite of the positives, China’s security sector assistance contributes to Mali’s fragility in several ways.

    First, its no-strings-attached nature allows Mali’s military junta to consolidate power without making democratic or governance reforms.

    This lack of accountability enables corrupt military factions to operate unchecked. Governance weaknesses and authoritarianism can continue.

    Second, the heavy reliance on Chinese supply raises concerns about the potential influence of China on Mali’s defence decisions.

    This over-reliance on military solutions risks escalating conflicts and could lead to human rights abuses by security forces, as seen in increased violence against civilians. It doesn’t address root causes of conflict like social cohesion or local governance.

    Third, Mali’s growing dependence on Chinese aid — both military and economic — makes it vulnerable to disruptions from geopolitical tensions, supply chain issues, or changes in China’s foreign policy. This limits Mali’s ability to diversify its military capabilities or respond to evolving threats.

    Finally, China’s infrastructure investments, such as the US$1.48 billion (750 billion CFA francs) Bamako-Dakar railway loan, creates “debt trap diplomacy”.

    This pattern deepens economic dependence and reduces policy autonomy, further weakening state resilience.



    Read more:
    Maps showing China’s growing influence in Africa distort reality – but some risks are real

    The way forward

    To mitigate the risks of Chinese security sector assistance and promote sustainable stability, Mali must adopt a multifaceted strategy.

    First, it should collaborate with China to align security sector assistance with civilian-led security approaches.

    Second, Mali should diversify security and economic partnerships with donors like the US, the UK, and the EU.

    Third, transparent guidelines, developed through consultation with stakeholders, should assess the impacts of assistance to avoid deepening dependence.

    Fourth, engaging civil society and publishing regular reports on security sector assistance use and outcomes will foster public trust.

    Finally, promoting regional economic integration and ties with global powers will bolster Mali’s economic resilience.

    Paa Kwesi Wolseley Prah 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. China’s support for Mali’s military carries risks: researcher outlines what they are – https://theconversation.com/chinas-support-for-malis-military-carries-risks-researcher-outlines-what-they-are-257738

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: The use of federal troops to quell Los Angeles protests recalls militarized law enforcement during the Civil Rights Movement

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Justin Randolph, Assistant Professor of U.S. History, Texas A&M University

    The National Guard and protesters stand off outside of a downtown jail in Los Angeles on June 8, 2025. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

    President Donald Trump activated 4,000 National Guard troops on June 10, 2025, to quell protests in Los Angeles over immigration raids – without the normal request from the state. He has also sent to Los Angeles hundreds of U.S. Marines, with the goal of protecting the unprecedented deportation operations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    If this all feels exceptional, it should. Governors typically activate their own state troops, as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he would do on June 11 ahead of expected immigration protests.

    California quickly sued the president. A federal court has sided with the state, but an appeals court will weigh the Trump administration’s use of the U.S. code on armed services to activate the National Guard, which relies on protesters constituting either an “invasion” or “rebellion.”

    “What we’re witnessing is not law enforcement – it’s authoritarianism,”
    California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on June 10.

    Protesters report violent responses from Los Angeles police, too. Nonetheless, Newsom’s invocation of authoritarianism is apt.

    The last example of a president federalizing troops over the objection of a state government dates to Jim Crow segregation, a period marked by legal practices that routinely denied due process and citizenship rights to Black Americans in the South. In the 1960s, numerous Black freedom struggles took stands against this authoritarianism backed by militarized law enforcement.

    As a scholar of U.S. history, I’ve just completed a book on Jim Crow policing and the ways Black Americans fought back against racist law and order. I think the militarization of policing in Los Angeles opens important questions about democracy and state violence.

    Jim Crow dreams

    During the Civil Rights Movement, the federal government activated National Guard troops over Southern state objections when those states would neither enforce court orders nor protect protesters.

    In those cases, presidents protected people with the help of troops. In Trump’s case, he’s using troops to protect the government from protesters.

    The Trump administration’s vision of law enforcement aims for the type of militarized authority that state governments institutionalized under Jim Crow policing. If your political enemy is perceived more like an enemy combatant, the rules of legal procedure, especially due process, might not apply. Policing becomes war.

    When you see the words “Jim Crow,” your mind may jump to photos of racially segregated water fountains. But Jim Crow was far more than that. It was homegrown racial authoritarianism, or the repression of freedom of thought and action.

    Before troops enforced civil rights, Black Southerners saw the National Guard as an enemy rather than a friend.

    In the words of Ida B. Wells-Barnett after a white riot against Black residents in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1917, “The police were either indifferent or encouraged the barbarities. … The major part of the National Guard was indifferent or inactive. No organized effort was made to protect the Negroes or disperse the murdering groups.”

    Eisenhower sends in the troops

    The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education changed things. It overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that legalized racial segregation and ruled that segregated public school education was unconstitutional. This significantly altered the federal government’s responsibility in the South’s legal system of white supremacy.

    The first test came in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. Though numerous school districts across the South quietly desegregated, Southern governors such as Arkansas’ Orville Faubus resisted the planned desegregation of Little Rock Central High School.

    Seven of nine Black students walk onto the campus of Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., with a National Guard officer as an escort on Oct. 15, 1957.
    AP Photo/File

    Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to stop Black children at the door. For nearly three weeks, Guardsmen blocked the small group of Black students – known as the “Little Rock Nine” – who were supposed to attend the school before President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and ordered them to stand down.

    Eisenhower deployed U.S. Army riot troops to Little Rock under the Insurrection Act. In the end, the Little Rock Nine began their studies at Central High despite the much-photographed spitting from the white mob that surrounded the school.

    State troops, state rights

    Next came the desegregation of interstate transportation.

    In spring 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality, a civil rights advocacy group, sent buses of integrated passengers through the Deep South. White terrorists attacked Freedom Riders, as these activists became known, three times in Alabama.

    But state authorities had learned from the Little Rock experience. Southern governors in Alabama and Mississippi deployed the National Guard themselves. This time they intended to only minimally protect Freedom Riders to block federal law enforcement. In Mississippi, police arrested and prison guards tortured Freedom Riders in the state penitentiary. Mob violence killed no one.

    James Meredith, center, is escorted by federal marshals as he appears for his first day of class at the previously all-white University of Mississippi on Oct. 1, 1962.
    AP Photo, File

    The same was not true during the desegregation of public universities.

    When U.S. marshals arrived to enforce the court order enrolling James Meredith at the University of Mississippi in September 1962, a white riot erupted. State law enforcement withdrew from the scene. Two men died, and many more were injured.

    President John F. Kennedy federalized the Mississippi National Guard and sent them in to restore order. The next summer, he did the same in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to preemptively halt a riot at the University of Alabama.

    The occasion became a publicity stunt for Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace. He temporarily blocked the entrance to Foster Auditorium, intent on stopping the court-ordered registration of three Black students.

    “I stand before you here today in place of thousands of other Alabamians whose presence would have confronted you,” Wallace said to federal authorities. A National Guard general said, “Sir, it is my sad duty to ask you to step aside under the orders of the President of the United States.”

    A National Guard general informs Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace that the guard was under federal control, as the two meet at Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on June 11, 1963.
    AP Photo, File

    Wallace also triggered the last federal use – until now – of the National Guard. Alabama’s Selma-to-Montgomery march began as a memorial to Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young Black civil rights activist who was killed by police on Feb. 26, 1965. The march became primarily a symbol for the year’s Voting Rights Act.

    In an important change, President Lyndon B. Johnson federalized the National Guard to protect marchers. State troopers and sheriff’s deputies had terrorized marchers, including John Lewis, who was almost beaten to death on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965.

    Democracy is in the streets

    The history of the National Guard in the South is an important part of what’s unfolding in Los Angeles and across the nation.

    For most of the National Guard’s history in the South, political leaders used domestic military power to preserve the interests of racial authoritarians, not racial egalitarians. Little Rock, Tuscaloosa, Selma: Those moments when troops protected racial justice protesters at home stand out as some of America’s most hopeful moments.

    Recent statements by Trump administration officials help illustrate how it envisions using military power in domestic law enforcement. On June 8, 2025, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “to arrest rioters” – a request beyond the original order to protect ICE agents.

    And on June 12, Noem said that “the military people that are working on this operation … are staying here to liberate the city from the socialist and burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country.”

    The National Guard and Marines are reportedly protecting immigration enforcement. But what might happen if they directly interact with protests?

    With diverse tactics, protesters are halting business as usual because they see a mass-deportation regime terrorizing and disappearing people in their communities. U.S. courts tend to agree with their analysis but seem powerless to enforce even basic due process rights for those detained by ICE.

    These activists show the messy work of American social change. Their work may look like “anarchy” to even some Democrats. It may be maligned as “invasion” and “rebellion” by the Trump administration.

    But the calls to constrain ICE follow an American tradition of fighting authoritarianism.

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

    – ref. The use of federal troops to quell Los Angeles protests recalls militarized law enforcement during the Civil Rights Movement – https://theconversation.com/the-use-of-federal-troops-to-quell-los-angeles-protests-recalls-militarized-law-enforcement-during-the-civil-rights-movement-258866

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Lower revenues, pricier loans: how flooding in Europe affects firms and the financial system they depend on

    Source: The Conversation – France – By Serena Fatica, Principal Economist — Team Leader, Joint Research Centre (JRC)

    In Europe, the fastest-warming continent, the intensification of extreme weather events and changes in precipitation patterns have led to widespread and catastrophic flooding. Last year, storms and flooding affected an estimated 413,000 people, resulting in the loss of at least 335 lives. Material damage is estimated to amount to at least €18 billion, according to the 2024 European State of the Climate report from the Copernicus Climate Change Service and the World Meteorological Organization.


    A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!

    The flooding in October that hit southeastern Spain and the Valencia province in particular took the heaviest toll. Intense and prolonged rainfall and river flooding led to 232 fatalities, and infrastructure damage and economic losses totalled around €16.5 billion. More than seven months later, the local economy has rebounded, thanks in part to public aid packages worth 0.5% of the country’s GDP. However, in early May, the same part of Spain found itself exposed again to the disruptive consequences of climate change when extreme weather hit.

    The costs of flooding

    The direct costs from the damage to public infrastructure and private assets are only part of the economic losses originating from flooding. The indirect costs might not be immediately visible, but they are certainly not less significant. Business interruptions reduce firms’ revenue and cash flows, straining liquidity and, in the worst cases, threatening their survival. In addition, the increasing likelihood of future flooding may be priced into the valuation of assets and real estate in areas exposed to these types of climate risks. Firms impacted by climate-related hazards might find it difficult to pay back loans or bonds, or to raise finance as physical assets that can be pledged as collateral for bank credit lose value. Ultimately, this can affect the stability of the financial system.

    For these reasons, climate change is not just a long-term environmental issue, but a threat to our economy and financial systems now. Economists at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) have been conducting research to better understand how the links between the business sector and the financial system amplify its impact.

    A JRC study of flood events between 2007 and 2018 finds that flooding significantly worsened the performance of European firms. Manufacturers exposed to flooding experienced reductions in sales, number of employees and the value of their assets. These impacts occurred in the year following the flooding and tended to be persistent, with no clear signs of recovery seven years after the disaster. Some firms even went out of business. The study also finds that companies in flood-prone areas were better able to weather the shock than businesses exposed to less frequent flooding. This is consistent with the fact that adaptation and protection measures reduce the impacts of flooding.

    Threats to smaller firms

    Water damage is particularly disruptive for companies that are highly indebted. A second JRC study zooms in on the mechanisms whereby financing choices, and reliance on bank loans in particular, amplify the impact of climate change. This study focuses on loans extended to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Italy, Spain and Belgium between 2008 and 2019. It was motivated by the idea that smaller firms, which are more financially fragile than larger ones, might also be more vulnerable to the localised impact of climate-related hazards, not least because of their limited capacity to geographically diversify their operations and access market-based finance. The study shows that flood episodes under analysis strained SMEs’ ability to meet their debt obligations. Flooded firms were more likely to incur delays in servicing their loans and eventually fail to repay them, even two years after the disaster.

    In turn, this entails losses for the banks that finance these firms. In general, if banks anticipate the impact of flooding on business operations, they could be expected to divert lending toward safer borrowers or charge a higher interest rate on credit extended to at-risk firms. Indeed, the study finds evidence that prospective flood risk is priced into new loans. In the period under analysis, the “flood risk premium” was especially high for loans to smaller firms and for those granted by local, specialised banks, both of which tend to have geographically concentrated activities that are more exposed to disaster impacts. Loans to borrowers exposed to high flood risk were 12 percent more expensive, all things being equal.

    Thus, flooding causes worse financial conditions for businesses and exposes the banking sector to losses on their loan portfolios. The numbers can be staggering: days after the October 2024 flooding, the Spanish Central Bank said that banks’ exposure in the affected areas would total €20 billion, with €13 billion in household loans and €7 billion in business loans (60% to SMEs), impacting 23,000 companies and 472,000 individuals.

    With extreme weather events becoming more frequent and severe, the direct and indirect costs of climate change are projected to increase, unevenly affecting households, firms and territories across Europe. Increasing investments in adaptation, eg in flood defence, and closing the climate insurance protection gap – the uninsured portion of economic losses caused by natural hazards – are crucial to increase the resilience of our economies and financial systems and preserve the wellbeing of our societies. The complex structure of investment incentives calls for a multilayered approach, with a mix of private and public funding and risk-sharing mechanisms.

    Serena Fatica ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

    – ref. Lower revenues, pricier loans: how flooding in Europe affects firms and the financial system they depend on – https://theconversation.com/lower-revenues-pricier-loans-how-flooding-in-europe-affects-firms-and-the-financial-system-they-depend-on-258755

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Israeli aggression and Iranian nuclear brinkmanship made this confrontation all but inevitable

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matthew Moran, Professor of International Security, King’s College London

    In the early hours of June 13, Israel launched its largest-ever attack on Iran. Airstrikes involving more than 200 aircraft targeted nuclear and missile facilities, as well as key figures in the Iranian military and nuclear programme leadership. The attack, codenamed “Operation Rising Lion”, appears to have been supported on the ground by Israeli agents operating drones positioned deep within Iranian territory.

    In one sense, this attack has been a long time coming. Over the past 15 years, Israel has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran, arguing that Tehran harbours nuclear weapons aspirations that pose an existential threat to the Israeli state. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said as much in a televised address announcing the same-day military operation in which he placed the nuclear issue front and centre: “We struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear weaponisation program.” But why has Israel chosen to act now?

    Clearly, we are looking at a dynamic situation from the outside in, but there are some important points worth considering. First, events over the past 12 months or so have undermined Iran’s ability to deter adversaries, which has left the regime exposed. Israel’s response to an Iranian missile attack in October, for example, seriously degraded Iran’s air defences as well as missile production capabilities. This created weaknesses that Israel has since exploited in its renewed military campaign.

    Looking more broadly, the fallout from the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel has decimated the proxies that Iran spent decades cultivating in the Middle East. The brutal war in Gaza has decimated Hamas, while to the north, Hezbollah is severely degraded after its own 14-month war with Israel.

    Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.

    Add to this the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, and it is clear that Iran’s so called “axis of resistance”, a key pillar of the country’s deterrence posture, is now a dramatically reduced force. Israel has been emboldened by these events. It now clearly sees a unique opportunity to further degrade a major adversary – and potentially bring about regime change.

    What’s more, Iran’s nuclear programme has continued to advance since Donald Trump withdrew the US in 2018 from the joint comprehensive plan of action (JCPOA). This was the 2015 deal negotiated during Barack Obama’s presidency that rolled back the country’s nuclear capabilities in return for a relaxation of harsh sanctions against Iran.

    In March, the Washington-based – but non-partisan – Institute for Science and International Security reported that Iran could convert its current stock of 60% enriched uranium into enough weapons-grade uranium for seven nuclear weapons at the Fordow fuel enrichment plant. This could be done in as little as three weeks.

    At the same time, the US director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, told the Senate intelligence committee on March 27 that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”.

    So this raises the question of whether the Israeli government had intelligence that the Iranians were moving forward with weaponisation. It is possible that Iran was preparing to make a dash for the bomb, crossing an Israeli red line and triggering action – although there is currently no evidence to support this theory. What is clear, however, is that Iran’s brinkmanship around its effort to hedge its bets on a nuclear option meant it was always operating in a dangerous space.

    Was the Israeli attack inevitable?

    At first sight, the answer to this seems obvious. For years now, Israel has been very clear that it will not accept a nuclear armed Iran. Yet Tehran has insisted on a nuclear programme that appears to go well beyond what is required for civil nuclear purposes. On June 12, the International Atomic Energy Agency declared that Iran was not complying with its nuclear safeguards obligations.

    By most estimates, Iran is not far from the bomb and Israel has finally taken action – ostensibly on this basis.

    Had Iran curbed its nuclear advancement and continued to comply with its IAEA obligations, Israel would have found it more challenging to justify any military action politically. In the same vein, if Iran had made quicker and greater progress in its nuclear talks with the Trump administration on reaching some form of new deal, this would also have made it more difficult for Israel to act.

    The combination of the IAEA declaration and the lack of acceptable progress in talks with the US clearly influenced Israeli decision making. So why did the Iranian regime not take more concrete steps in this direction?

    Iran’s nuclear ‘hedging’

    The answer goes to the heart of Iran’s deterrence posture. Alongside its conventional forces and its infamous axis of resistance, Iran has sought to leverage its nuclear programme for influence.

    Nearly ten years ago, we argued that Iran was engaged in a strategy of “nuclear hedging”. The value of this approach lies in the potential for a state to position itself relatively close to the bomb without incurring all the negative – including potentially military – consequences of a fully-fledged nuclear weapons programme, where the goal is to cross the threshold as quickly as possible.

    Yet hedging is a delicate balancing act that requires plausible deniability of weapons intent. A step too far can undermine any idea that the nuclear development is for civilian use, instead inviting military intervention.

    Conversely, too few steps towards a credible breakout capability and hedging has little value. For any coercive or deterrent benefit to be obtained, a state must be perceived by others as relatively close to having the bomb.

    With the deterioration of Iran’s regional power over the past year, the value to Tehran of its nuclear programme has become much greater. This may help to explain why Iran did not take firm steps to reduce external concerns about its nuclear intentions.

    Tehran is likely to have factored the cost of being seen to give in to external pressure on its nuclear programme. At home there is the risk that the regime’s hold on power could be weakened by capitulation to external pressure from the US, and Israel in particular. Regionally, the power costs would include losing valuable influence over other states across the Middle East.

    At the same time, the US government has changed its stance since the JCPOA deal was struck during Obama’s presidency in 2015, allowing Iran some small degree of enrichment capacity. The first Trump administration pulled the US out of the JCPOA in 2018 depicting it as a flawed agreement.

    In Donald Trump’s second term, his administration has continued to take a hard line, pushing for Iran to give up enrichment. From an Iranian perspective, the benefits of rolling back its capabilities failed to materialise.

    This is a rapidly evolving situation. But even at this early stage, this case demonstrates clearly the risks associated with Iran’s strategy of nuclear hedging.

    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. Israeli aggression and Iranian nuclear brinkmanship made this confrontation all but inevitable – https://theconversation.com/israeli-aggression-and-iranian-nuclear-brinkmanship-made-this-confrontation-all-but-inevitable-259024

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Israel’s air strength is giving it a free hand over Iran

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matthew Powell, Teaching Fellow in Strategic and Air Power Studies, University of Portsmouth

    Israel says it quickly gained air superiority over the Iranian capital, Tehran. Luciano Santandreu / Shutterstock

    Israel’s initial attack on Iranian nuclear and military facilities, alongside its assassination of top military officials and nuclear scientists, on June 13 has been followed by days of escalating strikes. Iran threatened “severe punishment” and quickly launched what were, in relative terms, smaller-scale missile attacks against Israeli territory.

    Israel’s military then expanded its assault on Iran, with the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, saying “Tehran will burn” if Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “continues to fire missiles at the Israeli home front”. Israel hit dozens of targets in the Iranian capital, Tehran, on June 15, and has since issued evacuation orders for significant areas of the city.

    The exchange of attacks has put the varying military and defensive capabilities of Israel and Iran on stark display. In particular, it appears that Israel has been able to exercise a high degree of air superiority over Iran.

    Israel was able to use more than 200 manned aircraft in its initial attack, with its air force reportedly suffering zero casualties. Within 48 hours of starting the conflict, Israel said it had gained control of the skies above Tehran.

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    This superiority has largely been gained through concerted efforts over the past year to destroy or degrade Iran’s air defence systems. In October 2024, for example, Israeli strikes targeted air defences protecting Iranian oil and gas facilities as well as those defending sites linked to Tehran’s nuclear programme and ballistic missile production.

    With a weakened air defence system, the Iranian military has been less able to prevent missile attacks and Israeli aircraft from entering its air space. This has given the Israeli military greater freedom of action in terms of the targets it chooses to attack – and greater freedom of choice when planning operations.

    Israeli aircraft have been dropping bombs from within Iran, instead of relying on long-range missiles. Iran, on the other hand, has been restricted to using its arsenal of missiles to strike Israel from distance.

    Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, made reference to the strategic importance of this aerial superiority on June 16. While confirming evacuation orders for the Iranian capital, he said: “The Israeli air force controls the skies over Tehran. This changes the entire campaign.”

    Netanyahu later did not rule out killing Khamenei, saying it would “end the conflict”. Katz repeated the threat the following day, warning Khamenei of a “fate similar to Saddam Hussein”.

    Iran has been far less effective than Israel in its response – which is no great surprise. Israel says it has destroyed “one-third” of the surface-to-surface missile launchers possessed by Iran. And the majority of the missiles and drones that have been fired by Iran into Israeli territory have been intercepted before striking their targets.

    But the strength of Israel’s so-called iron dome air defence system has, somewhat counter-intuitively, also offered Iran some advantages. In order to maintain the Iranian regime’s own internal security and stability, as well as its wider political aims of being a regional power, Tehran had to respond with a certain level of force.

    However, Iran is also fully aware of the protection the iron dome provides to the Israeli population. The Iranian government will still be able to point to the few missiles and drones that have reached their target, and the destruction they have caused, as evidence that it is able to project its power beyond its own borders and respond in the face of aggressive Israeli action.

    It is able to do so in the knowledge that the level of destruction and deaths of Israeli civilians, which so far stands at around 24 people, will be limited to such a degree that any further escalation by Israel will be seen as unjustified by the wider international community.

    However, as the destruction and death toll rises, it will become harder for either government to follow this path of logic. Iran has already criticised the Israeli military’s claim that it has conducted strikes in a precise manner and only against military targets, reporting that over 200 civilians have been killed in the strikes.

    It is here where mistakes and missteps could see events spiral out of control. This may lead to a wider and larger-scale conflict that neither side wants but is unable to prevent occurring. Iran, for its part, is reportedly signalling that it is seeking an end to hostilities and the resumption of talks over its nuclear programme.

    Wider consequences

    If the conflict does escalate, Israel will probably target Iranian military production facilities. The Israeli military has already issued a warning on social media, telling the Iranian people to stay away from all weapons manufacturing facilities.

    Other targets may include nuclear installations – though at least one, the heavily fortified Fordow nuclear site in central Iran, will not be targeted. Fordow is hidden in a mountain, with centrifuges located possibly as deep as 80 metres underground.

    Only the US military has the hardware capable of reaching this facility, so attacking the site would require US intervention. This is something the current Washington administration has proved reluctant to do, so far.

    But any escalation could have ramifications beyond the Middle East. Iran has supplied Shahed-type drones to Russia for use in its war in Ukraine, with them becoming a key part of Russia’s military strategy. However, Russia is now largely producing its own supplies of Shahed drones internally.

    A much more likely effect is the prolonging of the war in Ukraine as international attention shifts to de-escalating tensions between Israel and Iran. The international community has focused on trying to prevent further attacks, with the US president, Donald Trump, advocating for talks rather than more strikes.

    On June 15, Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social: “Iran and Israel should make a deal, and will make a deal, just like I got India and Pakistan to make.” Whether Israel and Iran take heed of his request will become clear over the coming days and weeks.

    Matthew Powell 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. Israel’s air strength is giving it a free hand over Iran – https://theconversation.com/israels-air-strength-is-giving-it-a-free-hand-over-iran-259073

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Could faecal transplants cause long-term health problems?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Georgios Efthimiou, Lecturer in Microbiology, University of Hull

    Getting ready to make some poo pills. microgen/Shutterstock.com

    Keeping a healthy mix of friendly microbes in the gut – known as eubiosis – is crucial for good health. When that delicate balance is thrown off – often by antibiotics, diet or illness – the result can be a range of issues, from digestive problems to more serious conditions like Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and even neurological and metabolic disorders.

    One increasingly popular way to try to restore gut health is through faecal microbiota transplantation. This involves taking stool from a healthy person, isolating the beneficial microbes and putting them in a capsule (jokingly referred to as “crapsules” or “poo pills”). The hope is that the beneficial microbes in the pill will establish themselves in the patient’s gut, thereby improving microbial diversity and function.

    Faecal transplants have been used to treat a wide array of conditions, including irritable bowel syndrome, Parkinson’s disease, obesity and Type 2 diabetes.

    Although generally viewed as safe and effective, a new international study published in the journal Cell has raised some concerns. The scientists found that when the donor’s microbes do not properly match the recipient’s gut environment – a situation they describe as a “mismatch” – the treatment can disrupt the body’s metabolic and immune systems, possibly with long-lasting consequences.

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    The term “mismatch” comes from the world of organ transplants, where the recipient’s body rejects the donor organ. In this case, the problem is that microbes from the donor’s large intestine may not be suitable for other parts of the recipient’s gut, especially the small intestine, where the microbial makeup is very different.

    To test this, researchers gave antibiotics to mice to disturb their natural gut microbes, then treated them with faecal transplants. They also tried transplanting microbes specifically from different parts of the small intestine. The mice were monitored for one to three months to track changes.

    A diverse microbiome is critical for wellbeing.
    Helena Nechaeva/Shutterstock.com

    Wrong microbes in the wrong place

    They found that faecal transplants often led to regional mismatches – the wrong microbes ending up in the wrong place. This altered the mix and behaviour of the gut microbes in unexpected ways, disrupting energy balance and other functions.

    Biopsies from the gut and liver showed significant, lasting changes in how certain genes – particularly those linked to metabolism and immunity – were being expressed.

    The study did not specify exactly what kind of health issues might result from these genetic shifts. But the researchers are urging doctors to take greater care when using faecal transplants, particularly when it comes to dose, timing and possible side-effects.

    There may, however, be a better way forward. A newer method known as the “omni microbial approach” involves transferring microbes from all parts of the intestine, not just the colon. This could help recreate a more balanced and natural gut environment, avoiding the local mismatches seen in standard faecal transplants.

    There is also growing interest in techniques that aim to “terraform” the gut: deliberately reshaping specific regions with carefully selected microbes to restore normal function.

    This new research has certainly sparked debate around the safety of faecal transplants. But with alternative approaches already being developed, there is real hope that the benefits of gut-based treatments can still be delivered, without the risks.

    Georgios Efthimiou 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. Could faecal transplants cause long-term health problems? – https://theconversation.com/could-faecal-transplants-cause-long-term-health-problems-258643

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Declining soil health is a global concern – here’s how AI could help

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nima Shokri, Professor, Applied Engineering, United Nations University

    The arid Loess plateau landscape of northern China. yang1498/Shutterstock

    One-third of the Earth’s land surface is already degraded. The UN estimates that more than 2.6 billion people are harmed by land degradation, with countries losing up to US$10.6 trillion (£7.8 trillion) a year because of damage to “ecosystem services”, including the benefits people get from nature such as water and food.

    Unhealthy soil is a major contributor to land degradation. This can lead to loss of biodiversity, harm plants and animals, cause sand and dust storms and affect crop yields.

    These consequences affect the regulation of the planet’s climate and water cycle, socioeconomic activities, food security and forced migration of people.

    Emerging smart technologies such as artificial intelligence, satellite remote sensing and big data analysis offer a chance to protect our soils. These tools can help track soil health in real time. This will support farmers, landowners, government agencies and local communities in making better decisions to care for the soil.

    Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.

    As a professor of geo-hydroinformatics – a field that combines geoscience, hydrology and information technology – my research focuses on using AI, algorithms and advanced modelling tools to better analyse and predict soil health.

    My team and I have developed the first global map of soil salinisation (accumulation of salt in soil) under various climate scenarios using AI-powered techniques. Soil salinisation is one of the leading contributors to soil degradation and can happen naturally or because of human activities, such as using salty irrigation water or poor drainage systems.

    With increasing climate uncertainty, our models help identify regions most vulnerable to salinisation. Our AI-driven analysis predicts that by the year 2100, dryland regions in South America, southern and western Australia, Mexico, the southwestern US and South Africa will be key hotspots of soil salinisation.

    In another key study, we used satellite data, AI and big data tools to investigate the interaction between soil salinity and soil organic carbon – an important part of healthy soil that stores nutrients, holds water and supports plants.

    Part of this analysis revealed a general negative correlation between salinity levels and soil organic carbon content. As salinity increased, we found that the soil organic carbon content tended to decrease.

    Our two studies underscore the transformative potential of AI technologies and big data analytics in understanding soil degradation. With a deeper understanding, land can be better managed through more effective mitigation policies and sustainable land use planning.

    Restoration at scale

    Large-scale land restoration can transform degraded soils. In the Loess plateau in China, centuries of deforestation and unsustainable farming have led to significant ecological challenges. Loess soils (a type not limited to this location in China, formed essentially by the accumulation of wind-blown dust) are easily eroded because they are made up of fine and loose particles.

    Degradation here has led to more frequent floods, droughts and dust storms because soil degradation is often associated with compaction. This reduces the ability of soil to absorb and hold water.

    In the 1990s, this prompted the Chinese government to invest in reforestation and sustainable agriculture. This led to the landmark Loess plateau watershed rehabilitation project, with the main goal of boosting farming and incomes on 15,600km² of land in the Yellow River’s tributary area. The total project cost of US$150 million, partly funded by the World Bank, was approved in 1994.

    Elsewhere, in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, the EthioTrees project was launched in 2016 to tackle land degradation through community-based reforestation, enclosures to limit grazing, and reinvestment of funds generated through climate finance mechanisms.

    Tree planting and other efforts have transformed the Tigray region of Ethiopia into a more fertile landscape.
    Jon Duncan/Shutterstock

    Despite challenges including drought and limited financial resources, these large-scale restoration projects have transformed the landscape and lives of people living there.

    But the Loess plateau and Tigray projects have been complex and expensive. A lot of coordination between people across huge regions and in different sectors is required to ensure a successful, integrated approach. AI can take these successful but resource-intensive restoration efforts and help scale them up.

    I’m also involved with a European Commission-funded project called AI4SoilHealth, which aims to advance the use of AI to monitor and quantify soil health across Europe. This project shows how data-driven initiatives can support more sustainable land management policies by providing timely, actionable information to governments, farmers and other stakeholders such as landowners, agribusiness companies and local communities.

    By integrating satellite imagery with accurate data about soil properties in different locations, AI can help develop robust, scalable models that cross local boundaries. Knowing where best to invest money, resources and effort in scaling up soil health solutions will help protect people, businesses and ecosystems from extreme events in the future.

    Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    Nima Shokri receives funding from European Commission for the AI4SoilHealth project.

    – ref. Declining soil health is a global concern – here’s how AI could help – https://theconversation.com/declining-soil-health-is-a-global-concern-heres-how-ai-could-help-258847

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: The Inca string code that reveals Peru’s climate history

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sabine Hyland, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews

    The author studying specimens. Author provided, CC BY

    Five centuries ago, the Incas ruled the western half of South America with the help of a unique form of writing based on coloured and knotted cords. These strings, called khipus, recorded major events, tracked economic matters, and even encoded biographies and poetry, according to the Spanish chroniclers who witnessed their use.

    Most khipus have knots that indicate numbers that we can “read”, but we’ve lost the ability to interpret what those numbers mean. Recent discoveries are bringing us closer to deciphering these mysterious strings. In a remote community set high in the Peruvian Andes, my team and I have found khipus that were used by villagers to track climate change.

    Last year, I was invited to study the centuries-old khipus preserved in the village of Santa Leonor de Jucul in the Peruvian Andes. The 97 khipus conserved by villagers include the largest khipu in the world, which is over 68 metres long.

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    An elderly ritual specialist, Don Lenin Margarito, told me that the khipus recorded the annual ritual offerings given at different sacred places in the surrounding landscape. Miniature pink ritual bags stuffed with coca leaves and tobacco hang from the cords, representing the sacred purpose of these ancient strings. Rather than communicating through knots, the Jucul khipus record data with different kinds of tassels.

    For example, a tassel made of fuzzy beige llama tails indicates that an offering was performed at the sacred lake of Paccha-cocha, high in the mountains. The fluffiness of the llama tails is like a rain cloud, Don Lenin explained, representing the fact that offerings given at Paccha-cocha are thought to bring rain.

    Different kinds of tassels indicate offerings made at other ritual sites, each one of which is thought to have its own effect on the local environment. Rituals involving the spirits of the dead, for instance, are thought to halt flooding.

    If you look at one of the Jucul khipus and you see that there were a lot of offerings to Paccha-cocha that year, you know that this was a time of drought since the offerings were given to increase the rain.

    When speaking with community members, we learned that the khipus used to be kept in public so that they could be consulted by the elders. Andean people of the past looked at these khipus as a record of the climate, and they studied them to understand the patterns of what was going on, just as we do today.

    New methods

    New methods for obtaining precise radiocarbon dates for khipus have been pioneered by a team headed by khipu researcher Ivan Ghezzi.

    Efforts are now underway to get accurate radiocarbon dates for the Jucul khipus, which will provide a chronology of these climate-based offerings.

    If we can chart the khipus and then date them, we will have a record of climate data from this region that was created by the local Andean people themselves. In their current state, the Jucul khipus are threatened by insects, mould and rodents. The British Museum recently granted funding to clean, preserve and display the khipus so that these precious objects from the Andean past will persevere into the future.

    There are only five villages in the Peruvian Andes where ancestral khipus are kept. These rare archives offer tantalising clues about how khipus encoded information.

    Research in other villages with living khipu traditions has led to breakthroughs in the significance of khipu colour patterns and phonology. Many Inka khipus possess tassels which we believe may reveal the subject matter of the associated khipu. If we could unlock the significance of the tassels on the Jucul khipus, it might allow us to interpret more precisely the meaning of Inca cords.

    Sabine Hyland receives funding from the British Academy, the British Museum, the National Endowment for the Humanities (USA), the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, and the National Geographic Society.

    – ref. The Inca string code that reveals Peru’s climate history – https://theconversation.com/the-inca-string-code-that-reveals-perus-climate-history-258528

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: When developing countries band together, lifesaving drugs become cheaper and easier to buy − with trade-offs

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Lucy Xiaolu Wang, Assistant Professor, Department of Resource Economics, UMass Amherst

    Pooling procurement of drugs could increase the availability of essential treatments around the globe. narvo vexar/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    Procuring lifesaving drugs is a daunting challenge in many low- and middle-income countries. Essential treatments are often neither available nor affordable in these nations, even decades after the drugs entered the market.

    Prospective buyers from these countries face a patent thicket, where a single drug may be covered by hundreds of patents. This makes it costly and legally difficult to secure licensing rights for manufacturing.

    These buyers also face a complex and often fragile supply chain. Many major pharmaceutical firms have little incentive to sell their products in unprofitable markets. Quality assurance adds another layer of complexity, with substandard and counterfeit drugs widespread in many of these countries.

    Organizations such as the United Nations-backed Medicines Patent Pool have effectively increased the supply of generic versions of patented drugs. But the problems go beyond patents or manufacturing – how medicines are bought are also crucially important. Buyers for low- and middle-income countries are often health ministries and community organizations on tight budgets that have to negotiate with sellers that may have substantial market power and far more experience.

    We are economists who study how to increase access to drugs across the globe. Our research found that while pooling orders for essential medicines can help drive down costs and ensure a steady supply to low- and middle-income countries, there are trade-offs that require flexibility and early planning to address.

    Understanding these trade-offs can help countries better prepare for future health emergencies and treat chronic conditions.

    Pooled procurement reduces drug costs

    One strategy low-income countries are increasingly adopting to improve treatment access is “pooled procurement.” That’s when multiple buyers coordinate purchases to strengthen their collective bargaining power and reduce prices for essential medicines. For example, pooling can help buyers meet the minimum batch size requirements some suppliers impose that countries purchasing individually may not satisfy.

    Compared with decentralized procurement, pooled procurement eases transactions by connecting buyers and sellers in groups.
    Lucy Xiaolu Wang and Nahim Bin Zahur, CC BY-NC-ND

    Countries typically rely on four models for pooled drug procurement:

    • One method, called decentralized procurement, involves buyers purchasing directly from manufacturers.

    • Another method, called international pooled procurement, involves going through international institutions such as the Global Fund’s Pooled Procurement Mechanism or the United Nations.

    • Countries may also purchase prescription drugs through their own central medical stores, which are government-run or semi-autonomous agencies that procure, store and distribute medicines on behalf of national health systems. This method is called centralized domestic procurement.

    • Finally, countries can also go through independent nonprofits, foundations, nongovernmental organizations and private wholesalers.

    We wanted to understand how different procurement methods affect the cost of and time it takes to deliver drugs for HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, because those three infectious diseases account for a large share of deaths and cases worldwide. So we analyzed over 39,000 drug procurement transactions across 106 countries between 2007 and 2017 that were funded by the Global Fund, the largest multilateral funder of HIV/AIDS programs worldwide.

    We found that pooled procurement through international institutions reduced prices by 13% to 20% compared with directly buying from drug manufacturers. Smaller buyers and those purchasing drugs produced by only a small number of manufacturers saw the greatest savings. In comparison, purchasing through domestic pooling offered less consistent savings, with larger buyers seeing greater price advantages.

    The Global Fund and the United Nations were especially effective at lowering the prices of older, off-patent drugs.

    Trade-offs with pooled procurements

    Cost savings from pooled drug procurement may come with trade-offs.

    While the Global Fund reduced unexpected delivery delays by 28%, it required buyers to place orders much earlier. This results in longer anticipated procurement lead time between ordering and delivery – an average of 114 days more than that of direct purchases. In contrast, domestic pooled procurement shortened lead times by over a month.

    Our results suggest a core tension: Pooled procurement improves prices and reliability but can reduce flexibility. Organizations that facilitate pooled procurement tend to prioritize medicines that can be bought at high volume, limiting the availability of other types of drugs. Additionally, the longer lead times may not be suitable for emergency situations.

    With the spread of COVID-19, several large armed conflicts and tariff wars, governments have become increasingly aware of the fragility of the global supply chain. Some countries, such as Kenya, have sought to reduce their dependence on international pooling since 2005 by investing in domestic procurement.

    But a shift toward domestic self-sufficiency is a slow and difficult process due to challenges with quality assurance and large-scale manufacturing. It may also weaken international pooled systems, which rely on broad participation to negotiate better terms with suppliers.

    Scaling up drug production in low-income countries can be difficult.
    Rafiq Maqbool/AP Photo

    Interestingly, we found little evidence that international pooled procurement influences pricing for the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a major purchaser of HIV treatments for developing countries. PEPFAR-eligible products do not appear to benefit more from international pooled procurement than noneligible ones.

    However, domestic procurement institutions were able to secure lower prices for PEPFAR-eligible products. This suggests that the presence of a large donor such as PEPFAR can cut costs, particularly when countries manage procurement internally.

    USAID cuts and global drug access

    While international organizations such as the Medicines Patent Pool and the Global Fund can address upstream barriers such as patents and procurement in the global drug supply chain, other institutions are essential for ensuring that medicines actually reach patients.

    The U.S. Agency for International Development had played a significant role in delivering HIV treatment abroad through PEPFAR. The Trump administration’s decision in February 2025 to cut over 90% of USAID’s foreign aid contracts amounted to a US$60 billion reduction in overall U.S. assistance globally. An estimated hundreds of thousands of deaths are already happening, and millions more will likely die.

    The World Health Organization warned that eight countries, including Haiti, Kenya, Nigeria and Ukraine, could soon run out of HIV treatments due to these aid cuts. In South Africa, HIV services have already been scaled back, with reports of mass layoffs of health workers and HIV clinic closures. These downstream cracks can undercut the gains from efforts to make procuring drugs more accessible if the drugs can’t reach patients.

    Because HIV, tuberculosis and malaria often share the same treatment infrastructure – including drug procurement and distribution networks, laboratory systems, data collection, health workers and community-based services – disruption in the management of one disease can ripple across the others. Researchers have warned of a broader unraveling of progress across these infectious diseases, describing the fallout as a potential “bloodbath” in the global HIV response.

    Research shows that supporting access to treatments around the world doesn’t just save lives abroad. It also helps prevent the next global health crisis from reaching America’s doorstep.

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

    – ref. When developing countries band together, lifesaving drugs become cheaper and easier to buy − with trade-offs – https://theconversation.com/when-developing-countries-band-together-lifesaving-drugs-become-cheaper-and-easier-to-buy-with-trade-offs-255383

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Companies haven’t stopped hiring, but they’re more cautious, according to the 2025 College Hiring Outlook Report

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Murugan Anandarajan, Professor of Decision Sciences and Management Information Systems, Drexel University

    Recent college grads face a tough job market in 2025, but employers are still hiring. sturti/E+ via Getty Images

    Every year, I tell my students in my business analytics class the same thing: “Don’t just apply for a job. Audition for it.”

    This advice seems particularly relevant this year. In today’s turbulent economy, companies are still hiring, but they’re doing it a bit more carefully. More places are offering candidates short-term work experiences like internships and co-op programs in order to evaluate them before making them full-time offers.

    This is just one of the findings of the 2025 College Hiring Outlook Report. This annual report tracks trends in the job market and offers valuable insights for both job seekers and employers. It is based on a national survey conducted in September 2024, with responses from 1,322 employers spanning all major industries and company sizes, from small firms to large enterprises. The survey looks at employer perspectives on entry-level hiring trends, skills demand and talent development strategies.

    I am a professor of information systems at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business in Philadelphia, and I co-authored this report along with a team of colleagues at the Center for Career Readiness.

    Here’s what we found:

    Employers are rethinking talent pipelines

    Only 21% of the 1,322 employers we surveyed rated the current college hiring market as “excellent” or “very good,” which is a dramatic drop from 61% in 2023. This indicates that companies are becoming increasingly cautious about how they recruit and select new talent.

    While confidence in full-time hiring has declined, employers are not stepping away from hiring altogether. Instead, they’re shifting to paid and unpaid internships, co-ops and contract-to-hire roles as a less risky route to identify talent and “de-risk” full-time hiring.

    Employers we surveyed described internships as a cost-effective talent pipeline, and 70% told us they plan to maintain or increase their co-op and intern hiring in 2025. At a time when many companies are tightening their belts, hiring someone who’s already proved themselves saves on onboarding reduces turnover and minimizes potentially costly mishires.

    For job seekers, this makes every internship or short-term role more than a foot in the door. It’s an extended audition. Even with the general market looking unstable, interest in co-op and internship programs appears steady, especially among recent graduates facing fewer full-time opportunities.

    These programs aren’t just about trying out a job. They let employers see if a candidate shows initiative, good judgment and the ability to work well on a team, which we found are traits employers value even more than technical skills.

    What employers want

    We found that employers increasingly prioritize self-management skills like adaptability, ethical reasoning and communication over technical skills such as digital literacy and cybersecurity. Employers are paying attention to how candidates behave during internships, how they take feedback, and whether they bring the mindset needed to grow with the company.

    This reflects what I have observed in classrooms and in conversations with hiring managers: Credentials matter, but what truly sets candidates apart is how they present themselves and what they contribute to a company.

    Based on co-op and internship data we’ve collected at Drexel, however, many students continue to believe that technical proficiency is the key to getting a job.

    In my opinion, this disconnect reveals a critical gap in expectations: While students focus on hard skills to differentiate themselves, employers are looking for the human skills that indicate long-term potential, resilience and professionalism. This is especially true in the face of economic uncertainty and the ambiguous, fast-changing nature of today’s workplace.

    Technology is changing how hiring happens

    Employers also told us that artificial intelligence is now central to how both applicants and employers navigate the hiring process.

    Some companies are increasingly using AI-powered platforms to transform their hiring processes. For example, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia uses platforms like HireVue to conduct asynchronous video interviews. HR-focused firms like Phenom and JJ Staffing Services also leverage technologies such as AI-based resume ranking, automated interview scheduling and one-way video assessments.

    Not only do these tools speed up the hiring process, but they also reshape how employers and candidates interact. In our survey, large employers said they are increasingly relying on AI tools like resume screeners and one-way video interviews to manage large numbers of job applicants. As a result, the candidate’s presence, clarity in communication and authenticity are being evaluated even before a human recruiter becomes involved.

    At the same time, job seekers are using generative AI tools to write cover letters, practice interviews or reformat resumes. These tools can help with preparation, but overreliance on them can backfire. Employers want authenticity, and many employers we surveyed mentioned they notice when applications seem overly robotic.

    In my experience as a professor, the key is teaching students to use AI to enhance their effort and not replace it. I encourage them to leverage AI tools but always emphasize that the final output and the impression it makes should reflect their own thinking and professionalism. The bottom line is that hiring is still a human decision, and the personal impression you make matters.

    This isn’t just about new grads

    While our research focuses on early-career hiring, these findings apply to other audiences as well, such as career changers, returning professionals and even mid-career workers. These workers are increasingly being evaluated on their adaptability, behavior and collaborative ability – not just their experience.

    Many companies now offer project-based assignments and trial roles that let them evaluate performance before making a permanent hire.

    At the same time, employers are investing in internal reskilling and upskilling programs. Reskilling refers to training workers for entirely new roles, often in response to job changes or automation, while upskilling means helping employees deepen their current skills to stay effective and advance in their existing roles. Our report indicates that approximately 88% of large companies now offer structured upskilling and reskilling programs. For job seekers and workers alike, staying competitive means taking the initiative and demonstrating a commitment to learning and growth.

    Show up early, and show up well

    So what can students, or anyone entering or reentering the workforce, do to prepare?

    • Start early. Don’t wait until senior year. First- and second-year internships are growing in importance.

    • Sharpen your soft skills. Communication, time management, problem-solving and ethical behavior are top priorities for employers.

    • Understand where work is happening. Over 50% of entry-level jobs are fully in-person. Only 4% are fully remote. Show up ready to engage.

    • Use AI strategically. It’s a useful tool for research and practice, not a shortcut to connection or clarity.

    • Stay curious. Most large employers now offer reskilling or upskilling opportunities – and they expect employees to take initiative.

    One of the clearest takeaways from this year’s report is that hiring is no longer a one-time decision. It’s a performance process that often begins before an interview is even scheduled.

    Whether you’re still in school, transitioning in your career or returning to the workforce after a break, the same principle applies: Every opportunity is an audition. Treat it like one.

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

    – ref. Companies haven’t stopped hiring, but they’re more cautious, according to the 2025 College Hiring Outlook Report – https://theconversation.com/companies-havent-stopped-hiring-but-theyre-more-cautious-according-to-the-2025-college-hiring-outlook-report-257870

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  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Observers of workplace mistreatment react as strongly as the victims − at times with a surprising amount of victim blaming

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jason Colquitt, Professor of Management, Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame

    Workplace mistreatment harms observers, too. AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin

    Picture this: On your way out of the office, you notice a manager berating an employee. You assume the worker made some sort of mistake, but the manager’s behavior seems unprofessional. Later, as you’re preparing dinner, is the scene still weighing on you – or is it out of sight, out of mind?

    If you think you’d still be bothered, you’re not alone. It turns out that simply observing mistreatment at work can have a surprisingly strong impact on people, even for those not directly involved. That’s according to new research led by Edwyna Hill, co-authored by Rachel Burgess, Manuela Priesemuth, Jefferson McClain and me, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

    Using a method called meta-analysis – which takes results from many different studies and combines them to produce an overall set of findings – we reviewed the growing body of research on what management professors like me call “third-party perceptions of mistreatment.” In this context, “third parties” are people who observe mistreatment between a perpetrator and the victim, who are the first and second parties.

    We looked at 158 studies published in 105 journal articles involving thousands of participants. Those studies explored a number of different forms of workplace mistreatment ranging from incivility to abusive supervision and sexual harassment. Some of those studies took part in actual workplaces, while others examined mistreatment in tightly controlled laboratory settings.

    The results were striking: We found that observing a co-worker being mistreated on the job has significant effects on the observers’ emotions. In fact, we found that observers of mistreatment may be as affected by what happened as the people actually involved in the event.

    These reactions fall along a spectrum – some helpful, others less so. On the encouraging side, we found that observers tend to judge perpetrators and feel empathy for victims. These reactions discourage mistreatment by creating a climate that favors the victim. On the other hand, we found that observers may also enjoy seeing their co-workers suffer – an emotion called “schadenfreude” – or blame the victim. These sorts of reactions damage team dynamics and discourage people from reporting mistreatment.

    Why it matters

    These findings matter because mistreatment in the workplace is disturbingly common – and even more frequently observed than experienced. One recent study found that 34% of employees have experienced workplace mistreatment firsthand, but 44% have observed it happening to someone else. In other words, nearly half of workers have likely seen a scenario like the one described at the start of this article.

    Unfortunately, the human resources playbook on workplace mistreatment rarely takes third parties into account. Some investigation occurs, potentially resulting in some punishment for the perpetrator and some support for the victim. A more effective response to workplace mistreatment would recognize that the harm often extends beyond the victim – and that observers, too, may need support.

    What still isn’t known

    What’s needed now is a better understanding of the nuances involved in observing mistreatment. Why do some observers react with empathy, while others derive pleasure from the suffering of others? And why might observers feel empathy for the victim but still respond by judging or blaming them? Answering these questions is a crucial next step for researchers and leaders seeking to design more effective workplace policies.

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

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

    – ref. Observers of workplace mistreatment react as strongly as the victims − at times with a surprising amount of victim blaming – https://theconversation.com/observers-of-workplace-mistreatment-react-as-strongly-as-the-victims-at-times-with-a-surprising-amount-of-victim-blaming-255761

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  • MIL-OSI Analysis: The hidden bias in college admissions tests: How standardized exams can favor privilege over potential

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Zarrina Talan Azizova, Associate Professor of Education, Health and Behavior, University of North Dakota

    At first glance, calls from members of Congress to restore academic merit in college admissions might sound like a neutral policy.

    In our view, these campaigns often cherry-pick evidence and mask a coordinated effort that targets access and diversity in American colleges.

    As scholars who study access to higher education, we have found that when these efforts are paired with pressure to reinstate standardized tests, they amount to a rollback of inclusive practices.

    A Department of Education letter sent to congressional offices from Feb. 14, 2025, stated that is “unlawful for an educational institution to eliminate standardized testing to achieve a desired racial balance or to increase racial diversity.” The letter also claimed that the most widely used admissions tests, the SAT and ACT, are objective measures of merit.

    In our recent peer-reviewed article, we analyzed more than 70 empirical studies about the SAT’s and ACT’s roles in college admissions. Our work found several flaws in how these exams function, especially for historically underserved students.

    Measuring college readiness

    Supporters of admissions tests contend that they are objective tools for measuring whether students are ready for college-level coursework.
    The Good Brigade/Digital Vision via Getty Images

    Several elite universities – including Yale, Dartmouth and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – have reinstated SAT or ACT requirements, reversing test-optional policies that institutions expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    These changes have reignited debates about how well these tests measure students’ academic preparedness and how colleges should weigh them in admissions decisions.

    During a May 21, 2025, hearing of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development, some witnesses argued that using test scores allows colleges to admit students based on merit. Others maintained that test scores can function as barriers to higher education.

    Our research shows that while these tests are statistically reliable – that is, they produce consistent results for students across subjects and during multiple attempts under similar conditions – they are not as valid as some argue.

    High school grade-point averages are typically better predictors of students’ success in college than either test.

    In addition, the tests are not equitable or similarly predictive for all students, especially given gender, race and socioeconomic demographics.

    That is because they systematically favor those with more access to high-quality schooling, stable socioeconomic conditions and opportunities to engage with test prep coaches and courses. That test prep can cost thousands of dollars.

    In short, both tests tend to reflect privilege more than potential.

    For example, students from higher-income households routinely outperform their peers on the ACT and SAT.

    This isn’t surprising, considering wealthier families can afford test prep services, private tutoring and test retakes. These advantages translate into higher scores and open doors to selective colleges and scholarship opportunities.

    Meanwhile, students from low-income families often face challenges – such as less experienced instructors and less access to high-level science, math and advanced placement courses – that test scores do not factor in.

    Reflecting deep inequities

    In the U.S., high school GPA can be a better predictor than standardized tests of college success.
    Clerkenwell/Vetta via Getty Images

    In our published review, we found that these disparities aren’t incidental – they’re systemic.

    Our review revealed long-standing evidence of bias in test design and differences in average scores along lines of race, gender and language background.

    These outcomes don’t just reflect academic differences; they reflect inequities that shape how students prepare for and perform on these tests.

    We also found that high school GPA outperforms standardized tests in predicting college success. GPA captures years of classroom performance, effort and teacher feedback. It reflects how students navigate real-world challenges, not just how they perform on a single timed exam.

    For many students, particularly those from historically marginalized backgrounds, grades can offer a better indication of how prepared they are for college-level work.

    This issue matters because admissions decisions aren’t just technical evaluations – they are value statements. Choosing to center test scores in admissions rewards certain kinds of knowledge, experiences and preparation.

    The American Council on Education defines equity as opportunities for success. It means building educational environments that recognize diverse forms of potential and equip all learners to thrive.

    It’s worth noting that research on testing often focuses on elite institutions, where standardized test scores are more likely to be used as high-stakes screening tools. Our systematic review found that, even in elite schools, the tests’ ability to accurately predict college academic performance is often limited (moderate in statistical terms).

    But most college students attend state universities, public regional universities, minority-serving institutions, or colleges that accept most applicants. Our study found that at these institutions, standardized test scores are even less likely to predict how students will do.

    This may be because state universities and public regional universities are more likely to serve highly diverse student populations, including older, part-time and first-generation students and those who are balancing work and family responsibilities.

    Where does higher ed go from here?

    Prioritizing standardized tests in college admissions could close the doors of opportunity for some capable students.
    David Schaffer/istock via Getty Images Plus

    With the debate over the role of standardized tests in the admissions process, higher education stands at a crossroads: Will colleges yield to political pressure and narrow definitions of merit and ignore equity? Or will institutions reaffirm their mission by embracing broader, fairer tools for recognizing talent and supporting student success?

    The answer depends on what values are prioritized.

    Our research and that of others make it clear that standardized tests should not be the gatekeepers of opportunity.

    If universities define merit on test scores alone, they risk closing the doors of opportunity to capable students.

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

    – ref. The hidden bias in college admissions tests: How standardized exams can favor privilege over potential – https://theconversation.com/the-hidden-bias-in-college-admissions-tests-how-standardized-exams-can-favor-privilege-over-potential-256967

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  • MIL-OSI Analysis: A radical proposal to abolish state government and strengthen American democracy

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Stephen Legomsky, John S. Lehmann University Professor Emeritus, Washington University in St. Louis

    Abolish all the states? Zoonar/Getty Images Plus

    Get rid of states? Legal scholar Stephen Legomsky, who taught for 34 years at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, has just published a book, “Reimagining the American Union,” that proposes a radical idea: Abolish state government. The Conversation’s politics and democracy editor, Naomi Schalit – a former statehouse reporter herself – interviewed Legomsky about the provocative idea behind his book, in which he advocates moving most of the functions of state government down to the local level, closer to those represented and governed by it.

    You propose abolishing states. Why?

    The book is a thought experiment. The proposal I’m offering is long term. I realize we need states during the current political moment.

    I think the states are the root cause of many, if not most, of the current dangers faced by U.S. democracy. I also see the states as a significant source of fiscal waste. We don’t need three levels of government – national, state and local – all regulating us and all taxing us. Two would do just fine. And after careful, detailed analysis, I concluded that every benefit ever claimed for state government could be achieved at least as well, and in many cases better, by the local governments.

    I’m imagining the framers sitting in Independence Hall. And you go back in time and suggest to them not having states. I think most of them would drop dead at the thought, because it ultimately implies a much more powerful federal government. What would you say to them?

    After they stop laughing, I would emphasize that I’m not proposing a wholesale transfer of power from the states to an all-powerful, all-knowing central government. Yes, some of the functions currently performed by the states could better be performed at the national level, but I’m proposing that the lion’s share devolve down to the local governments, which are even closer to the people they represent than the state legislatures can ever be.

    Some of the most ardent Federalists, including Alexander Hamilton and James Wilson, referred to the states as “artificial beings” or “imaginary beings.” They accepted the states only because keeping them was politically essential to getting the required nine state ratifications, not because they thought states were a good idea.

    George Washington’s working copy of the Constitution from Aug. 6, 1787.
    National Archives, Records of the Continental and Confederation Congresses and the Constitutional Convention

    What functions would your plan hand over to the federal government?

    A prime example is licensing. I looked up all the different occupations that require state licenses. I was astonished: practically every health care profession, barbers, engineers, lawyers, architects, the list is endless.

    If you live near a state line, you can’t practice in both states unless you get two licenses. If you move to another state, you have to get another license. This seems silly. The human anatomy, human hair, engineering principles, don’t change as you cross from New York to New Jersey. Nor do we need 50 different state driver’s licenses; a single national license administered through local agencies would be more efficient.

    You say states are the root cause of the greatest threats to American democracy. What are those threats?

    The structural threats are those that are baked into the Constitution itself. The Electoral College is one. On five occasions, the Electoral College has awarded the presidency to the candidate whom the voters rejected nationwide. And there were many, many near misses where the popular vote loser almost became president, making many such future instances a statistical certainty.

    Perhaps even more important, every state, no matter how large or how small, gets the same number of U.S. senators. In fact, a majority of the U.S. population is represented by only about 18% of the Senate. The minority gets the other 82%.

    These counter-majoritarian defects in the elections of both presidents and senators have a ripple effect. They skew the composition, and thus the decisions, of the federal courts. Three of the current Supreme Court justices were appointed by President Donald Trump after he had lost the national popular vote; five of the current Supreme Court justices were confirmed by senators who collectively represented only a minority of the U.S. population.

    Here’s one especially jarring statistic: From 1969 until today, the Democratic presidential nominees won the national popular vote in a slight majority of the elections. Yet, during the presidential terms that resulted from those elections, Republican presidents have gotten to make 15 of the 20 Supreme Court appointments.

    The Constitution also gives the states broad powers to regulate and run national elections. State legislatures have used those powers to pass gerrymandering, voter suppression and other counter-majoritarian laws.

    If you devolve these functions and services to localities, wouldn’t you end up with a mirror of the current state-level structure? Wouldn’t this just send a lot of state personnel down to the local level?

    Yes, much of that structure would devolve. However, I see that as a good thing. Devolution is unavoidable in a country this size. Not everything can be done by the central government. The question for me is, do we need two levels of subordinate political subdivisions or one? One seems more efficient. And when problems are too big for one local government to handle on its own, it can partner with other local governments or with the national government, just as many local governments do today.

    Abolishing state government means no more meetings of the state legislature, like this one in the Maine House of Representatives on Jan. 4, 2023, at the State House in Augusta.
    AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty

    If there were no states to gerrymander or pass voter-suppression laws, wouldn’t some national government agency just do it instead?

    Redistricting would be performed by a nonpartisan redistricting commission that I propose be made up of technicians, mainly demographers, statisticians and geographers, under broad, general principles enacted by Congress. That’s what almost every other democracy in the world does today.

    Why did you write this book?

    For a long time, I’ve been distressed about so many of the dangers to our democracy. So, one day, I found myself compiling what ended up becoming a fairly long mental list of all of my democracy-related grievances.

    A list of grievances like in the Declaration of Independence!

    That’s a nice analogy. And as I thought about that list, it suddenly struck me that the vast majority of these problems couldn’t occur without states. That got me thinking about whether we really need states in the first place.

    If it’s just a thought experiment, something that’s not going to happen, why would you think it’s worthwhile spending time writing this?

    And why would I be so vain as to think anybody would want to waste their time reading it?

    And your answer is, ‘Because I’m an academic!’

    It’s that, plus more. I do hope there’s some scholarly value in this. But I’m also writing for the long term. States are secure for now, but history teaches us that the more distant future is full of surprises.

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

    – ref. A radical proposal to abolish state government and strengthen American democracy – https://theconversation.com/a-radical-proposal-to-abolish-state-government-and-strengthen-american-democracy-256955

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  • MIL-OSI Analysis: The use of federal troops to quell Los Angles protests recalls militarized law enforcement during the Civil Rights Movement

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Justin Randolph, Assistant Professor of U.S. History, Texas A&M University

    The National Guard and protesters stand off outside of a downtown jail in Los Angeles on June 8, 2025. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

    President Donald Trump activated 4,000 National Guard troops on June 10, 2025, to quell protests in Los Angeles over immigration raids – without the normal request from the state. He has also sent to Los Angeles hundreds of U.S. Marines, with the goal of protecting the unprecedented deportation operations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    If this all feels exceptional, it should. Governors typically activate their own state troops, as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he would do on June 11 ahead of expected immigration protests.

    California quickly sued the president. A federal court has sided with the state, but an appeals court will weigh the Trump administration’s use of the U.S. code on armed services to activate the National Guard, which relies on protesters constituting either an “invasion” or “rebellion.”

    “What we’re witnessing is not law enforcement – it’s authoritarianism,”
    California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on June 10.

    Protesters report violent responses from Los Angeles police, too. Nonetheless, Newsom’s invocation of authoritarianism is apt.

    The last example of a president federalizing troops over the objection of a state government dates to Jim Crow segregation, a period marked by legal practices that routinely denied due process and citizenship rights to Black Americans in the South. In the 1960s, numerous Black freedom struggles took stands against this authoritarianism backed by militarized law enforcement.

    As a scholar of U.S. history, I’ve just completed a book on Jim Crow policing and the ways Black Americans fought back against racist law and order. I think the militarization of policing in Los Angeles opens important questions about democracy and state violence.

    Jim Crow dreams

    During the Civil Rights Movement, the federal government activated National Guard troops over Southern state objections when those states would neither enforce court orders nor protect protesters.

    In those cases, presidents protected people with the help of troops. In Trump’s case, he’s using troops to protect the government from protesters.

    The Trump administration’s vision of law enforcement aims for the type of militarized authority that state governments institutionalized under Jim Crow policing. If your political enemy is perceived more like an enemy combatant, the rules of legal procedure, especially due process, might not apply. Policing becomes war.

    When you see the words “Jim Crow,” your mind may jump to photos of racially segregated water fountains. But Jim Crow was far more than that. It was homegrown racial authoritarianism, or the repression of freedom of thought and action.

    Before troops enforced civil rights, Black Southerners saw the National Guard as an enemy rather than a friend.

    In the words of Ida B. Wells-Barnett after a white riot against Black residents in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1917, “The police were either indifferent or encouraged the barbarities. … The major part of the National Guard was indifferent or inactive. No organized effort was made to protect the Negroes or disperse the murdering groups.”

    Eisenhower sends in the troops

    The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education changed things. It overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that legalized racial segregation and ruled that segregated public school education was unconstitutional. This significantly altered the federal government’s responsibility in the South’s legal system of white supremacy.

    The first test came in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. Though numerous school districts across the South quietly desegregated, Southern governors such as Arkansas’ Orville Faubus resisted the planned desegregation of Little Rock Central High School.

    Seven of nine Black students walk onto the campus of Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., with a National Guard officer as an escort on Oct. 15, 1957.
    AP Photo/File

    Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to stop Black children at the door. For nearly three weeks, Guardsmen blocked the small group of Black students – known as the “Little Rock Nine” – who were supposed to attend the school before President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and ordered them to stand down.

    Eisenhower deployed U.S. Army riot troops to Little Rock under the Insurrection Act. In the end, the Little Rock Nine began their studies at Central High despite the much-photographed spitting from the white mob that surrounded the school.

    State troops, state rights

    Next came the desegregation of interstate transportation.

    In spring 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality, a civil rights advocacy group, sent buses of integrated passengers through the Deep South. White terrorists attacked Freedom Riders, as these activists became known, three times in Alabama.

    But state authorities had learned from the Little Rock experience. Southern governors in Alabama and Mississippi deployed the National Guard themselves. This time they intended to only minimally protect Freedom Riders to block federal law enforcement. In Mississippi, police arrested and prison guards tortured Freedom Riders in the state penitentiary. Mob violence killed no one.

    James Meredith, center, is escorted by federal marshals as he appears for his first day of class at the previously all-white University of Mississippi on Oct. 1, 1962.
    AP Photo, File

    The same was not true during the desegregation of public universities.

    When U.S. marshals arrived to enforce the court order enrolling James Meredith at the University of Mississippi in September 1962, a white riot erupted. State law enforcement withdrew from the scene. Two men died, and many more were injured.

    President John F. Kennedy federalized the Mississippi National Guard and sent them in to restore order. The next summer, he did the same in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to preemptively halt a riot at the University of Alabama.

    The occasion became a publicity stunt for Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace. He temporarily blocked the entrance to Foster Auditorium, intent on stopping the court-ordered registration of three Black students.

    “I stand before you here today in place of thousands of other Alabamians whose presence would have confronted you,” Wallace said to federal authorities. A National Guard general said, “Sir, it is my sad duty to ask you to step aside under the orders of the President of the United States.”

    A National Guard general informs Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace that the guard was under federal control, as the two meet at Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on June 11, 1963.
    AP Photo, File

    Wallace also triggered the last federal use – until now – of the National Guard. Alabama’s Selma-to-Montgomery march began as a memorial to Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young Black civil rights activist who was killed by police on Feb. 26, 1965. The march became primarily a symbol for the year’s Voting Rights Act.

    In an important change, President Lyndon B. Johnson federalized the National Guard to protect marchers. State troopers and sheriff’s deputies had terrorized marchers, including John Lewis, who was almost beaten to death on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965.

    Democracy is in the streets

    The history of the National Guard in the South is an important part of what’s unfolding in Los Angeles and across the nation.

    For most of the National Guard’s history in the South, political leaders used domestic military power to preserve the interests of racial authoritarians, not racial egalitarians. Little Rock, Tuscaloosa, Selma: Those moments when troops protected racial justice protesters at home stand out as some of America’s most hopeful moments.

    Recent statements by Trump administration officials help illustrate how it envisions using military power in domestic law enforcement. On June 8, 2025, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “to arrest rioters” – a request beyond the original order to protect ICE agents.

    And on June 12, Noem said that “the military people that are working on this operation … are staying here to liberate the city from the socialist and burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country.”

    The National Guard and Marines are reportedly protecting immigration enforcement. But what might happen if they directly interact with protests?

    With diverse tactics, protesters are halting business as usual because they see a mass-deportation regime terrorizing and disappearing people in their communities. U.S. courts tend to agree with their analysis but seem powerless to enforce even basic due process rights for those detained by ICE.

    These activists show the messy work of American social change. Their work may look like “anarchy” to even some Democrats. It may be maligned as “invasion” and “rebellion” by the Trump administration.

    But the calls to constrain ICE follow an American tradition of fighting authoritarianism.

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

    – ref. The use of federal troops to quell Los Angles protests recalls militarized law enforcement during the Civil Rights Movement – https://theconversation.com/the-use-of-federal-troops-to-quell-los-angles-protests-recalls-militarized-law-enforcement-during-the-civil-rights-movement-258866

    MIL OSI Analysis –