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Category: Analysis

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Bali to Biarritz: Surf spot overcrowding and the fight to protect the essence of catching a wave

    Source: The Conversation – France – By Jérémy Lemarié, Maître de conférences à l’Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne (URCA)

    Invented in Hawaii, surfing gained popularity in the United States and Australia in the 1950s before becoming a global phenomenon. Now practiced in more than 150 countries, its spread has been driven by media and tourism. Surf tourism involves travelling to destinations to catch waves, either with a surfboard or through activities such as body surfing or bodyboarding. Tourists range from seasoned surfers to beginners eager to learn.

    The allure of California

    For many, surf tourism evokes exotic imagery shaped by California production companies. Columbia Pictures in 1959 and Paramount Pictures in 1961 introduced surfing to the middle class, showcasing the sport as a gateway to summer adventure and escape. However, it was the 1966 movie The Endless Summer, directed and produced by Bruce Brown, that became a box office success. The film follows two Californians travelling the globe in search of the perfect wave, which they ultimately find in South Africa. Beneath the seemingly lighthearted portrayal of a “surf safari”, it carries undertones of colonial ambition.

    In the film, the Californians tell people in Africa that waves are untapped resources ready to be named and conquered. This sense of Western cultural dominance over populations in poorer countries has permeated surf tourism. Since the 1970s, French surfers have flocked to Morocco for its long-breaking waves, Australians have flocked to Indonesia and Californians to Mexico. The expansion of surfing to Africa, Asia and Latin America was enabled by easier international travel and economic disparities between visitors and hosts.

    Surfing’s impact on local communities

    Indonesia, for instance, became a surfing hotspot after Australian surfers started to explore the waves of Bali and the Mentawai Islands in the 1970s. Once remote regions with modest living standards, these areas saw tourism infrastructure mushroom to meet demand. Today, destinations such as Uluwatu in Bali and Padang Padang in Sumatra attract surfers of all skill levels.

    Similarly, Morocco has experienced a surge in surf tourism, with spots such as Taghazout drawing European visitors in search of affordable waves and sunshine. While this has boosted local economies, it has also raised concerns about environmental degradation and the strain of tourism on previously untouched areas.

    The challenges of overtourism in coastal areas

    Although surfing is often seen as an activity in harmony with nature, mass tourism has created tensions between local surfers and visitors. Overtourism refers to the negative impact of excessive tourist numbers on natural environments and local communities.

    One response to overtourism is localism – where local surfers assert ownership of waves, sometimes discouraging or even intimidating outsiders. This has been particularly pronounced in economically dependent surf destinations. For example, in Hawaii during the 1970s and 1980s, local surfers protested against the influx of professional Australian surfers and international competitions. Today, localism persists globally, from Maroubra in Sydney to Boucau-Tarnos in France’s Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. These places are not systematically off-limits to beginners, but major conflicts can arise during peak tourist seasons.

    Surf schools, while crucial for teaching newcomers, also exacerbate crowding. During high seasons, beaches such as Côte des Basques in Biarritz become overcrowded, straining relations between experienced surfers, instructors and novices. Beginners, often unaware of surf etiquette and safety rules, contribute to frustrations among seasoned surfers.


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    The role of public authorities

    In response to these challenges, public initiatives have emerged to promote sustainable surf tourism. For instance, the Costa Rican government has established marine protected areas and regulated tourism activities to preserve a part of the coastal environment. Local authorities have also begun capping the number of surf schools and making access to the practice more difficult.

    In southwestern France, municipalities use public service delegations (DSP), temporary occupation authorisations (AOT) and other tools to regulate surf schools operating on public beaches. Environmental awareness programmes have been launched to educate tourists on responsible behaviour toward beaches and oceans.

    Gaps in regulation

    Despite these measures, many coastal regions face insufficient action to address the environmental and social challenges posed by surf tourism. In Fiji, a 2010 decree deregulated the surf tourism industry, eliminating traditional indigenous rights to coastal and reef areas. This allowed unregulated development of tourism infrastructure, often ignoring long-term ecological impacts.

    Similar issues are seen in Morocco, where lax regulations allow foreign investors to exploit coastal land for hotel development, often providing little benefit to local communities.

    Yet, there are success stories. In Santa Cruz, California, the initiative Save Our Shores mobilises citizens and tourists to protect beaches through anti-pollution campaigns and regular cleanups.

    Surf tourism has brought significant economic benefits to many coastal regions. However, it has also introduced social and environmental challenges, including localism, overcrowding and ecological strain. Managing these issues requires a collaborative approach, with governments, local stakeholders and tourists working together to preserve the sport’s connection to nature.

    This article was published as part of the 2024 Fête de la Science, of which The Conversation France was a partner. The year’s theme, “Oceans of Knowledge,” explored the wonders of the marine world.

    Jérémy Lemarié is a member of the Fulbright network, as the recipient of the “Chercheuses et Chercheurs” grant from the Franco-American Commission in 2022-2023.

    – ref. Bali to Biarritz: Surf spot overcrowding and the fight to protect the essence of catching a wave – https://theconversation.com/bali-to-biarritz-surf-spot-overcrowding-and-the-fight-to-protect-the-essence-of-catching-a-wave-244550

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: AI is advancing even faster than sci-fi visionaries like Neal Stephenson imagined

    Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Rizwan Virk, Faculty Associate, PhD Candidate in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology, Arizona State University

    In Stephenson’s novel ‘The Diamond Age,’ a device called the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer offers emotional, social and intellectual support. Christopher Michel/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

    Every time I read about another advance in AI technology, I feel like another figment of science fiction moves closer to reality.

    Lately, I’ve been noticing eerie parallels to Neal Stephenson’s 1995 novel “The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer.”

    “The Diamond Age” depicted a post-cyberpunk sectarian future, in which society is fragmented into tribes, called phyles. In this future world, sophisticated nanotechnology is ubiquitous, and a new type of AI is introduced.

    Though inspired by MIT nanotech pioneer Eric Drexler and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, the advanced nanotechnology depicted in the novel still remains out of reach. However, the AI that’s portrayed, particularly a teaching device called the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, isn’t only right in front of us; it also raises serious issues about the role of AI in labor, learning and human behavior.

    In Stephenson’s novel, the Primer looks like a hardcover book, but each of its “pages” is really a screen display that can show animations and text, and it responds to its user in real time via AI. The book also has an audio component, which voices the characters and narrates stories being told by the device.

    It was originally created for the young daughter of an aristocrat, but it accidentally falls into the hands of a girl named Nell who’s living on the streets of a futuristic Shanghai. The Primer provides Nell personalized emotional, social and intellectual support during her journey to adulthood, serving alternatively as an AI companion, a storyteller, a teacher and a surrogate parent.

    The AI is able to weave fairy tales that help a younger Nell cope with past traumas, such as her abusive home and life on the streets. It educates her on everything from math to cryptography to martial arts. In a techno-futuristic homage to George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play “Pygmalion,” the Primer goes so far as to teach Nell the proper social etiquette to be able to blend into neo-Victorian society, one of the prominent tribes in Stephenson’s balkanized world.

    No need for ‘ractors’

    Three recent developments in AI – in video games, wearable technology and education – reveal that building something like the Primer should no longer be considered the purview of science fiction.

    In May 2025, the hit video game “Fortnite” introduced an AI version of Darth Vader, who speaks with the voice of the late James Earl Jones.

    The estate of James Earl Jones gave Epic Games permission to use the late actor’s voice for an AI Darth Vader.
    Jim Spellman/WireImage via Getty Images

    While it was popular among fans of the game, the Screen Actors Guild lodged a labor complaint with Epic Games, the creator of “Fortnite.” Even though Epic had received permission from the late actor’s estate, the Screen Actors Guild pointed out that actors could have been hired to voice the character, and the company – in refusing to alert the union and negotiate terms – violated existing labor agreements.

    In “The Diamond Age,” while the Primer uses AI to generate the fairy tales that train Nell, for the voices of these archetypal characters, Stephenson concocted a low-tech solution: The characters are played by a network of what he termed “ractors” – real actors working in a studio who are contracted to perform and interact in real time with users.

    The Darth Vader “Fortnite” character shows that a Primer built today wouldn’t need to use actors at all. It could rely almost entirely on AI voice generation and have real-time conversations, showing that today’s technology already exceeds Stephenson’s normally far-sighted vision.

    Recording and guiding in real time

    Synthesizing James Earl Jones’ voice in “Fortnite” wasn’t the only recent AI development heralding the arrival of Primer-like technology.

    I recently witnessed a demonstration of wearable AI that records all of the wearer’s conversations. Their words are then sent to a server so they can be analyzed by AI, providing both summaries and suggestions to the user about future behavior.

    Several startups are making these “always on” AI wearables. In an April 29, 2025, essay titled “I Recorded Everything I Said for Three Months. AI Has Replaced My Memory,” Wall Street Journal technology columnist Joanna Stern describes the experience of using this technology. She concedes that the assistants created useful summaries of her conversations and meetings, along with helpful to-do lists. However, they also recalled “every dumb, private and cringeworthy thing that came out of my mouth.”

    AI wearable devices that continuously record the conversations of their users have recently hit the market.

    These devices also create privacy issues. The people whom the user interacts with don’t always know they are being recorded, even as their words are also sent to a server for the AI to process them. To Stern, the technology’s potential for mass surveillance becomes readily apparent, presenting a “slightly terrifying glimpse of the future.”

    Relying on AI engines such as ChatGPT, Claude and Google’s Gemini, the wearables work only with words, not images. Behavioral suggestions occur only after the fact. However, a key function of the Primer – coaching users in real time in the middle of any situation or social interaction – is the next logical step as the technology advances.

    Education or social engineering?

    In “The Diamond Age,” the Primer doesn’t simply weave interactive fairy tales for Nell. It also assumes the responsibility of educating her on everything from her ABCs when younger to the intricacies of cryptography and politics as she gets older.

    It’s no secret that AI tools, such as ChatGPT, are now being widely used by both teachers and students.

    Several recent studies have shown that AI may be more effective than humans at teaching computer science. One survey found that 85% of students said ChatGPT was more effective than a human tutor. And at least one college, Morehouse College in Atlanta, is introducing an AI teaching assistant for professors.

    There are certainly advantages to AI tutors: Tutoring and college tuition can be exorbitantly expensive, and the technology can offer better access to education to people of all income levels.

    Pulling together these latest AI advances – interactive avatars, behavioral guides, tutors – it’s easy to envision how an AI device like the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer could be created in the near future. A young person might have a personalized AI character that accompanies them at all times. It can teach them about the world and offer up suggestions for how to act in certain situations. The AI could be tailored to a child’s personality, concocting stories that include AI versions of their favorite TV and movie characters.

    But “The Diamond Age” offers a warning, too.

    Toward the end of the novel, a version of the Primer is handed out to hundreds of thousands of young Chinese girls who, like Nell, didn’t have access to education or mentors. This leads to the education of the masses. But it also opens the door to large-scale social engineering, creating an army of Primer-raised martial arts experts, whom the AI then directs to act on behalf of “Princess Nell,” Nell’s fairy tale name.

    It’s easy to see how this sort of large-scale social engineering could be used to target certain ideologies, crush dissent or build loyalty to a particular regime. The AI’s behavior could also be subject to the whims of the companies or individuals that created it. A ubiquitous, always-on, friendly AI could become the ultimate monitoring and reporting device. Think of a kinder, gentler face for Big Brother that people have trusted since childhood.

    While large-scale deployment of a Primer-like AI could certainly make young people smarter and more efficient, it could also hamper one of the most important parts of education: teaching people to think for themselves.

    Rizwan Virk owns shares of investments funds which own stock in various private AI companies such as Open AI and X.ai. He owns public stock in Google and Microsoft. Virk has family members who work for a wearable AI company.

    – ref. AI is advancing even faster than sci-fi visionaries like Neal Stephenson imagined – https://theconversation.com/ai-is-advancing-even-faster-than-sci-fi-visionaries-like-neal-stephenson-imagined-257509

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: AI is advancing even faster than sci-fi visionaries like Neal Stephenson imagined

    Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Rizwan Virk, Faculty Associate, PhD Candidate in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology, Arizona State University

    In Stephenson’s novel ‘The Diamond Age,’ a device called the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer offers emotional, social and intellectual support. Christopher Michel/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

    Every time I read about another advance in AI technology, I feel like another figment of science fiction moves closer to reality.

    Lately, I’ve been noticing eerie parallels to Neal Stephenson’s 1995 novel “The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer.”

    “The Diamond Age” depicted a post-cyberpunk sectarian future, in which society is fragmented into tribes, called phyles. In this future world, sophisticated nanotechnology is ubiquitous, and a new type of AI is introduced.

    Though inspired by MIT nanotech pioneer Eric Drexler and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, the advanced nanotechnology depicted in the novel still remains out of reach. However, the AI that’s portrayed, particularly a teaching device called the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, isn’t only right in front of us; it also raises serious issues about the role of AI in labor, learning and human behavior.

    In Stephenson’s novel, the Primer looks like a hardcover book, but each of its “pages” is really a screen display that can show animations and text, and it responds to its user in real time via AI. The book also has an audio component, which voices the characters and narrates stories being told by the device.

    It was originally created for the young daughter of an aristocrat, but it accidentally falls into the hands of a girl named Nell who’s living on the streets of a futuristic Shanghai. The Primer provides Nell personalized emotional, social and intellectual support during her journey to adulthood, serving alternatively as an AI companion, a storyteller, a teacher and a surrogate parent.

    The AI is able to weave fairy tales that help a younger Nell cope with past traumas, such as her abusive home and life on the streets. It educates her on everything from math to cryptography to martial arts. In a techno-futuristic homage to George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play “Pygmalion,” the Primer goes so far as to teach Nell the proper social etiquette to be able to blend into neo-Victorian society, one of the prominent tribes in Stephenson’s balkanized world.

    No need for ‘ractors’

    Three recent developments in AI – in video games, wearable technology and education – reveal that building something like the Primer should no longer be considered the purview of science fiction.

    In May 2025, the hit video game “Fortnite” introduced an AI version of Darth Vader, who speaks with the voice of the late James Earl Jones.

    The estate of James Earl Jones gave Epic Games permission to use the late actor’s voice for an AI Darth Vader.
    Jim Spellman/WireImage via Getty Images

    While it was popular among fans of the game, the Screen Actors Guild lodged a labor complaint with Epic Games, the creator of “Fortnite.” Even though Epic had received permission from the late actor’s estate, the Screen Actors Guild pointed out that actors could have been hired to voice the character, and the company – in refusing to alert the union and negotiate terms – violated existing labor agreements.

    In “The Diamond Age,” while the Primer uses AI to generate the fairy tales that train Nell, for the voices of these archetypal characters, Stephenson concocted a low-tech solution: The characters are played by a network of what he termed “ractors” – real actors working in a studio who are contracted to perform and interact in real time with users.

    The Darth Vader “Fortnite” character shows that a Primer built today wouldn’t need to use actors at all. It could rely almost entirely on AI voice generation and have real-time conversations, showing that today’s technology already exceeds Stephenson’s normally far-sighted vision.

    Recording and guiding in real time

    Synthesizing James Earl Jones’ voice in “Fortnite” wasn’t the only recent AI development heralding the arrival of Primer-like technology.

    I recently witnessed a demonstration of wearable AI that records all of the wearer’s conversations. Their words are then sent to a server so they can be analyzed by AI, providing both summaries and suggestions to the user about future behavior.

    Several startups are making these “always on” AI wearables. In an April 29, 2025, essay titled “I Recorded Everything I Said for Three Months. AI Has Replaced My Memory,” Wall Street Journal technology columnist Joanna Stern describes the experience of using this technology. She concedes that the assistants created useful summaries of her conversations and meetings, along with helpful to-do lists. However, they also recalled “every dumb, private and cringeworthy thing that came out of my mouth.”

    AI wearable devices that continuously record the conversations of their users have recently hit the market.

    These devices also create privacy issues. The people whom the user interacts with don’t always know they are being recorded, even as their words are also sent to a server for the AI to process them. To Stern, the technology’s potential for mass surveillance becomes readily apparent, presenting a “slightly terrifying glimpse of the future.”

    Relying on AI engines such as ChatGPT, Claude and Google’s Gemini, the wearables work only with words, not images. Behavioral suggestions occur only after the fact. However, a key function of the Primer – coaching users in real time in the middle of any situation or social interaction – is the next logical step as the technology advances.

    Education or social engineering?

    In “The Diamond Age,” the Primer doesn’t simply weave interactive fairy tales for Nell. It also assumes the responsibility of educating her on everything from her ABCs when younger to the intricacies of cryptography and politics as she gets older.

    It’s no secret that AI tools, such as ChatGPT, are now being widely used by both teachers and students.

    Several recent studies have shown that AI may be more effective than humans at teaching computer science. One survey found that 85% of students said ChatGPT was more effective than a human tutor. And at least one college, Morehouse College in Atlanta, is introducing an AI teaching assistant for professors.

    There are certainly advantages to AI tutors: Tutoring and college tuition can be exorbitantly expensive, and the technology can offer better access to education to people of all income levels.

    Pulling together these latest AI advances – interactive avatars, behavioral guides, tutors – it’s easy to envision how an AI device like the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer could be created in the near future. A young person might have a personalized AI character that accompanies them at all times. It can teach them about the world and offer up suggestions for how to act in certain situations. The AI could be tailored to a child’s personality, concocting stories that include AI versions of their favorite TV and movie characters.

    But “The Diamond Age” offers a warning, too.

    Toward the end of the novel, a version of the Primer is handed out to hundreds of thousands of young Chinese girls who, like Nell, didn’t have access to education or mentors. This leads to the education of the masses. But it also opens the door to large-scale social engineering, creating an army of Primer-raised martial arts experts, whom the AI then directs to act on behalf of “Princess Nell,” Nell’s fairy tale name.

    It’s easy to see how this sort of large-scale social engineering could be used to target certain ideologies, crush dissent or build loyalty to a particular regime. The AI’s behavior could also be subject to the whims of the companies or individuals that created it. A ubiquitous, always-on, friendly AI could become the ultimate monitoring and reporting device. Think of a kinder, gentler face for Big Brother that people have trusted since childhood.

    While large-scale deployment of a Primer-like AI could certainly make young people smarter and more efficient, it could also hamper one of the most important parts of education: teaching people to think for themselves.

    Rizwan Virk owns shares of investments funds which own stock in various private AI companies such as Open AI and X.ai. He owns public stock in Google and Microsoft. Virk has family members who work for a wearable AI company.

    – ref. AI is advancing even faster than sci-fi visionaries like Neal Stephenson imagined – https://theconversation.com/ai-is-advancing-even-faster-than-sci-fi-visionaries-like-neal-stephenson-imagined-257509

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: The Supreme Court upholds free preventive care, but its future now rests in RFK Jr.’s hands

    Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Paul Shafer, Associate Professor of Health Law, Policy and Management, Boston University

    The Affordable Care Act has survived its fourth Supreme Court challenge. Ted Eytan via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

    On June 26, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 6-3 ruling that preserves free preventive care under the Affordable Care Act, a popular benefit that helps approximately 150 million Americans stay healthy.

    The case, Kennedy v. Braidwood, was the fourth major legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act. The decision, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh with the support of Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, ruled that insurers must continue to cover at no cost any preventive care approved by a federal panel called the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

    Members of the task force are independent scientific experts, appointed for four-year terms. The panel’s role had been purely advisory until the ACA, and the plaintiffs contended that the members lacked the appropriate authority as they had not been appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The Supreme Court rejected this argument, saying that members simply needed to be appointed by the Health and Human Services Secretary – currently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – which they had been, under his predecessor during the Biden administration.

    This ruling seemingly safeguards access to preventive care. But as public health researchers who study health insurance and sexual health, we see another concern: It leaves preventive care vulnerable to how Kennedy and future HHS secretaries will choose to exercise their power over the task force and its recommendations.

    What is the US Preventive Services Task Force?

    The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force was initially created in 1984 to develop recommendations about prevention for primary care doctors. It is modeled after the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care, which was established in 1976.

    Under the ACA, insurers must fully cover all screenings and interventions endorsed by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
    SDI Productions/E+ via Getty Images

    The task force makes new recommendations and updates existing ones by reviewing clinical and policy evidence on a regular basis and weighing the potential benefits and risks of a wide range of health screenings and interventions. These include mammograms; blood pressure, colon cancer, diabetes and osteoporosis screenings; and HIV prevention. Over 150 million Americans have benefited from free coverage of these recommended services under the ACA, and around 60% of privately insured people use at least one of the covered services each year.

    The task force plays such a crucial role in health care because it is one of three federal groups whose recommendations insurers must abide by. Section 2713 of the Affordable Care Act requires insurers to offer full coverage of preventive services endorsed by three federal groups: the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and the Health Resources and Services Administration. For example, the coronavirus relief bill, which passed in March 2020 and allocated emergency funding in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, used this provision to ensure COVID-19 vaccines would be free for many Americans.

    The Braidwood case and HIV prevention

    This case, originally filed in Texas in 2020, was brought by Braidwood Management, a Christian for-profit corporation owned by Steven Hotze, a Texas physician and Republican activist who has previously filed multiple lawsuits against the ACA. Braidwood and its co-plaintiffs argued on religious grounds against being forced to offer preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a medicine that prevents HIV infection, in their insurance plans.

    At issue in Braidwood was whether task force members – providers and researchers who provide independent and nonpartisan expertise – were appropriately appointed and supervised under the appointments clause of the Constitution, which specifies how various government positions are appointed. The case called into question free coverage of all recommendations made by the task force since the Affordable Care Act was passed in March 2010.

    In the ruling, Kavanaugh wrote that “the Task Force members’ appointments are fully consistent with the Appointments Clause in Article II of the Constitution.” In laying out his reasoning, he wrote, “The Task Force members were appointed by and are supervised and directed by the Secretary of HHS. And the Secretary of HHS, in turn, answers to the President of the United States.”

    Concerns over political influence

    The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is meant to operate independently of political influence, and its decisions are technically not directly reviewable. However, the task force is appointed by the HHS secretary, who may remove any of its members at any time for any reason, even if such actions are highly unusual.

    Kennedy recently took the unprecedented step of removing all members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which debates vaccine safety but also, crucially, helps decide what immunizations are free to Americans guaranteed by the Affordable Care Act. The newly constituted committee, appointed in weeks rather than years, includes several vaccine skeptics and has already moved to rescind some vaccine recommendations, such as routine COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women and children.

    Kennedy has also proposed restructuring out of existence the agency that supports the task force, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. That agency has been subject to massive layoffs within the Department of Health and Human Services. For full disclosure, one of the authors is currently funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and previously worked there.

    The decision to safeguard the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force as a body and, by extension, free preventive care under the ACA, doesn’t come without risks and highlights the fragility of long-standing, independent advisory systems in the face of the politicization of health. Kennedy could simply remove the existing task force members and replace them with members who may reshape the types of care recommended to Americans by their doctors and insurance plans based on debunked science and misinformation.

    Partisanship and the politicization of health threaten trust in evidence. Already, signs are emerging that Americans on both side of the political divide are losing confidence in government health agencies. This ruling preserves a crucial part of the Affordable Care Act, yet federal health guidelines and access to lifesaving care could still swing dramatically in Kennedy’s hands – or with each subsequent transition of power.

    Portions of this article originally appeared in previous articles published on Sept. 7, 2021; Dec. 1, 2021; Sept. 13, 2022; April 7, 2023; and April 15, 2025.

    Paul Shafer receives research funding from the National Institutes of Health, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Department of Veterans Affairs. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of these agencies or the United States government.

    Kristefer Stojanovski receives funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of these agencies or the United States government.

    – ref. The Supreme Court upholds free preventive care, but its future now rests in RFK Jr.’s hands – https://theconversation.com/the-supreme-court-upholds-free-preventive-care-but-its-future-now-rests-in-rfk-jr-s-hands-260072

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Philadelphia’s $2B affordable housing plan relies heavily on municipal bonds, which can come with hidden costs for taxpayers

    Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jade Craig, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Mississippi

    The Parker administration says it will issue $800 million in bonds over the next four years to fund affordable housing. Jeff Fusco/The Conversation, CC BY-NC-SA

    Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker’s Housing Opportunities Made Easy initiative, which was included in the city budget passed June 12, 2025, is an ambitious effort to address the city’s affordable housing challenges.

    Parker has promised to create or preserve 30,000 affordable housing units throughout the city, at a cost of roughly US$2 billion.

    To help fund the plan, the Parker administration says it will issue $800 million in housing bonds over the next three years.

    In an April 2025 report on the housing plan, the Parker administration admits that, in light of declining federal investment in affordable housing, proceeds from municipal bonds issued by the local government “have taken on an outsized role” in Philadelphia’s housing programs.

    Often, only city treasurers and the finance committees of city councils pay attention to the details behind these municipal bonds.

    As a law professor who studies the social impact of municipal bonds, I believe it’s important that city residents understand how these bonds work as well.

    While municipal bonds are integral to the city’s effort to increase access to affordable and market-rate housing, they can include hidden costs and requirements that raise prices in ways that make city services unaffordable for lower-income residents.

    The Parker administration has vowed to create or preserve 30,000 affordable housing units in Philly through new construction, rehabilitation and expanded rental assistance.
    Jeff Fusco/The Conversation, CC BY-SA

    How municipal bonds work

    Most people are aware that companies sell shares on the stock market to raise capital. State and local governments do the same thing in the form of municipal bonds, which help them raise money to cover their expenses and to finance infrastructure projects.

    These bonds are a form of debt. Investors can purchase an interest in the bond and, in exchange, the local government promises to pay the money back with interest in a specified time period. The money from investors functions like a loan to the government.

    Municipal bonds are often used so that one generation of taxpayers is not having to bear the full cost of a project that will benefit multiple generations of residents. The cost of building a bridge, for example, which will be in use for decades, can be spread out over 30 years so that residents pay back the loan slowly over time rather than saddle residents with huge tax increases one year to cover the cost.

    However, the cost of borrowing pushes up the cost of projects by adding interest payments the same way a mortgage adds to the overall cost of buying a house. Overall, the market and state and local governments have historically viewed this cost as a worthy trade-off.

    Some municipal bonds have limits

    The Parker administration has several options when it comes to raising capital on the municipal market.

    The most common method is through general obligation bonds, which are backed by the city’s authority to impose and collect taxes. Bondholders rely on the city’s “full faith and credit” to assure them that if the city has difficulty paying back the debt, the city will raise taxes on residents to secure the payment.

    The city plans to use general obligation bonds to help fund its affordable housing plan, but there are limits on how much it can borrow this way. The state constitution limits Philadelphia’s ability to incur debt to a total of 13.5% of the value of its assessed taxable real estate, based on an average of this amount for the preceding 10 years.

    Philadelphia is more affordable than several other big U.S. cities, according to a 2020 report from the Pew Charitable Trusts, but it has a high poverty rate.
    Jeff Fusco/The Conversation, CC BY-SA

    Philly has another option

    The city, however, also has the authority to take on another form of debt: revenue bonds. Revenue bonds rely on specific sources of revenue instead of the government’s taxing power. Jurisdictions issue revenue bonds to fund particular projects or services – usually ones that generate income from fees paid by users.

    For example, a publicly owned water utility or electric company relies on water and sewage fees or electricity rates and charges to pay back their revenue bonds. Likewise, a transportation authority will rely on tolls to pay back revenue bonds issued to build a toll road, such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

    Under state law, revenue bonds are “non-debt debts.” They are not debts owed by the city, because the city has not promised to repay the debt through the use of its own taxing powers. Instead, the people who pay the fees to use the service are paying back the debt.

    Since states began to place stricter limits on debt in the wake of the Great Depression in the 1930s, cities across the U.S. have increasingly used revenue bonds to get around state debt limits and still fund valuable public services, including affordable housing projects.

    When another government entity – rather than the city – issues the bond, and the city pays them a service fee for doing so, it’s a form of what’s called conduit debt. That obligation to pay the service fee to the other government entity is the conduit debt that the city pays out of its general fund.

    In Philadelphia, conduit debt includes revenue bonds issued by the Philadelphia Authority for Industrial Development and Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority.

    From fiscal years 2012 to 2021, the city’s outstanding debt from general obligation bonds paid for out of its general fund was between $1.3 billion to $1.7 billion per year. However, the city’s conduit debt outstripped that number every year, ranging from $1.8 billion to nearly $2.3 billion. In more recent years, conduit debt has been less than the city’s debt from general obligation bonds.

    The city keeps conduit debt on its books – and is obligated to pay it back – even though it comes from bonds issued by the development authorities, because these debts loop back to the city. In the bonds issued by these agencies, the city actually becomes like a client of the agency. The city is typically obligated to pay the agency service fees as part of a contractual obligation that cannot be canceled.

    The revenue on which the development agencies’ bonds rely, the money from which bondholders expect to be paid back, does not come from fees that residents pay out of their own pocket – for example through ticket sales from a sports stadium built with revenue bonds. The money instead comes out of the city’s treasury.

    A loophole to affordable housing

    Essentially this is a loophole for the city to bypass debt limits set for Philadelphia in the state constitution. Sometimes creativity in government requires using loopholes to get the job done – to get to yes instead of a stalemate.

    Consider this analogy. Say your sister takes out a bank loan to buy a car for you because your credit limit is maxed out. She is relying on you to pay her back, and she uses your payment to pay the bank. But if you don’t pay her back, she’s not responsible by law for paying the bank herself. So, it’s your debt, but she is the conduit.

    If the city holds itself accountable, it can use conduit debt responsibly to make affordable housing construction a reality.

    The mayor’s office did not respond to my questions about whether they plan to use conduit debt issued by a development authority, whether that conduit debt would include service fees, and what funds would be used to pay those fees.

    In its quest to increase access to affordable housing, the Parker administration should, in my view, be mindful of limiting the service fees it agrees to pay – which have no legally prescribed limits – and also account for where it will find income to cover these costs. For example, will it come from the sale of city-owned land? Fees charged to developers? Or some other source?

    Otherwise, taxpayers may be left to foot a bill that is essentially unlimited.

    Read more of our stories about Philadelphia.

    Jade Craig 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. Philadelphia’s $2B affordable housing plan relies heavily on municipal bonds, which can come with hidden costs for taxpayers – https://theconversation.com/philadelphias-2b-affordable-housing-plan-relies-heavily-on-municipal-bonds-which-can-come-with-hidden-costs-for-taxpayers-253522

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Legal wrangling over estate of Jimmy Buffett turns his widow’s huge inheritance into a cautionary tale

    Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Reid Kress Weisbord, Distinguished Professor of Law and Judge Norma Shapiro Scholar, Rutgers University – Newark

    Musician Jimmy Buffett and his wife, Jane Slagsvol, attend a Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts event in 2018 in New York. Evan Agostini/Invision via AP

    Lawyers often tell their clients that everyone should have a will that clearly states who should inherit their assets after they die. But even having a will is not necessarily enough to avoid a costly and contentious legal dispute.

    Consider what happened after Jimmy Buffett died of skin cancer at the age of 76 in 2023. The singer and entrepreneurial founder of the Margaritaville brand ordered in his will that his fortune be placed in a trust after his death. To manage the trust, Buffett named two co-trustees: his widow, Jane Slagsvol, and Richard Mozenter, an accountant who had served as the singer’s financial adviser for more than three decades.

    In dueling petitions filed in Los Angeles and Palm Beach, Florida, in June 2025, however, Slagsvol – identified as Jane Buffett in her legal filing – and Mozenter are both seeking to remove each other as a trustee.

    The outcome of this litigation will determine who gets to administer Buffett’s US$275 million estate.

    As law professors who specialize in trusts and estates, we teach graduate courses about the transfer of property during life and at death. We believe that the Buffett dispute offers a valuable lesson for anyone with an estate, large or small. And choosing the right person to manage the assets you leave behind can be just as important as selecting who will inherit your property.

    Buffett’s business empire

    Buffett’s estate includes valuable intellectual property from his hit songs, including “It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere,” “Oldest Surfer on the Beach” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” Buffett’s albums have sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and continue to generate some $20 million annually in royalties. Buffett also owned a yacht, real estate, airplanes, fancy watches and valuable securities.

    In addition, he owned a 20% stake in Margaritaville Holdings LLC, a brand management company he and Slagsvol founded in the 1990s. Margaritaville owns 30 restaurants and 20 hotels, along with vacation clubs, casinos and cruise ships. It also sells branded merchandise.

    According to Slagsvol’s petition, Buffett’s trust was set up to benefit his widow. Slagsvol, who married Buffett in 1977, is one of two trustees of that trust, which is required to have at least one “independent trustee” in addition to her “at all times.” That requirement is stated expressly in Buffett’s trust declaration.

    Slagsvol receives all income earned by the trust – an estate-planning technique for giving away property managed by a trustee on behalf of the trust beneficiaries – for the rest of her life. She can also receive additional trust funds for her health care, living expenses and “any other purpose” that the independent trustee – Mozenter, as of July 2025 – deems to be in Slagsvol’s best interests.

    The estate plan also created separate trusts for their three children: Savannah, Sarah “Delaney” and Cameron Buffett, who are in their 30s and 40s. Each child reportedly received $2 million upon Jimmy’s death. When Slagsvol dies, she can decide who will receive any remaining assets from among Buffett’s descendants and charities.

    The structure of Buffett’s plan is popular among wealthy married couples. It provides lifelong support for the surviving spouse while ensuring that their kids and grandchildren can inherit the remainder of their estate – even if that spouse remarries. This type of trust typically cannot be changed by the surviving spouse without court approval.

    If you’re fortunate enough to reach your golden years with a sizable nest egg, it helps your loved ones if you can draft a detailed will. You might also want to consider establishing a trust.
    Maskot/Getty Images

    Dueling trustee removal petitions

    Slagsvol is trying to remove Mozenter as the trust’s independent trustee.

    She claims he refused to comply with her requests for financial information, failed to cooperate with her as her co-trustee, and hired a trust attorney who pressured her to resign as trustee. Slagsvol also raised numerous questions about the trust’s income projections and compensation paid to Mozenter for his services.

    Mozenter’s petition, filed in Florida, is not available to the public. According to media coverage of this dispute, he seeks to remove Slagsvol as trustee. He claims that, during his decades-long role as Buffett’s financial adviser, the musician “expressed concerns about his wife’s ability to manage and control his assets after his death.”

    That led Buffett to establish a trust, Mozenter asserted, “in a manner that precluded Jane from having actual control” over it.

    Estate planning lessons

    We believe that the public can learn two important estate planning lessons from this dispute.

    First, anyone planning to leave an estate, whether modest or vast, needs to choose the right people to manage the transfer of their property after their death.

    That might mean picking a professional executor or trustee who is not related to you. A professional may be more likely to remain neutral should any disputes arise within the family, but hiring one can saddle the estate with costly fees.

    An alternative is to choose a relative or trusted friend who is willing to do this for free. About 56% of wills name an adult child or grandchild as executor, according to a recent study. Some estates, like Buffett’s trust, name both a professional and a family member. An important consideration is whether the people asked to manage the estate will get along with each other – and with anyone else who is slated to inherit from the estate.

    The second lesson is, whether you choose a professional, a loved one or a friend to manage your estate, make clear what circumstances would warrant their removal. Courts are reluctant to remove a handpicked trustee without proof of negligence, fraud or disloyalty. But trustees can be removed when a breakdown in cooperation interferes with their ability to administer the estate or trust.

    Some trusts anticipate such conflicts by allowing beneficiaries to replace a professional trustee with another professional trustee. That can resolve some disputes while avoiding the cost of seeking court approval.

    Preventing disputes from erupting in the first place can help people avert the costly and embarrassing kind of litigation now ensnaring Jimmy Buffett’s estate.

    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. Legal wrangling over estate of Jimmy Buffett turns his widow’s huge inheritance into a cautionary tale – https://theconversation.com/legal-wrangling-over-estate-of-jimmy-buffett-turns-his-widows-huge-inheritance-into-a-cautionary-tale-259116

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: The rule of law is key to capitalism − eroding it is bad news for American business

    Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Robert Bird, Professor of Business Law & Eversource Energy Chair in Business Ethics, University of Connecticut

    Something dangerous is happening to the U.S. economy, and it’s not inflation or trade wars. Chaotic deregulation and the selective enforcement of laws have upended markets and investor confidence. At one point, the threat of tariffs and resulting chaos evaporated US$4 trillion in value in the U.S. stock market. This approach isn’t helping the economy, and there are troubling signs it will hurt both the U.S. and the global economy in the short and long term.

    The rule of law – the idea that legal rules apply to everyone equally, regardless of wealth or political connections − is essential for a thriving economy. Yet globally the respect for the rule of law is slipping, and the U.S. is slipping with it. According to annual rankings from the World Justice Project, the rule of law has declined in more than half of all countries for seven years in a row. The rule of law in the U.S., the most economically powerful nation in the world, is now weaker than the rule of law in Uruguay, Singapore, Latvia and over 20 other countries.

    When regulation is unnecessarily burdensome for business, government should lighten the load. However, arbitrary and frenzied deregulation does not free corporations to earn higher profits. As a business school professor with an MBA who has taught business law for over 25 years, and the author of a recently published book about the importance of legal knowledge to business, I can affirm that the opposite is true. Chaotic deregulation doesn’t drive growth. It only fuels risk.

    Chaos undermines investment, talent and trust

    Legal uncertainty has become a serious drag on American competitiveness.

    A study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found that public policy risks — such as unexpected changes in taxes, regulation and enforcement — ranked among the top challenges businesses face, alongside more familiar business threats such as competition or economic volatility. Companies that can’t predict how the law might change are forced to plan for the worst. That means holding back on long-term investment, slowing innovation and raising prices to cover new risks.

    When the government enforces rules arbitrarily, it also undermines property rights.

    For example, if a country enters into a major trade agreement and then goes ahead and violates it, that threatens the property rights of the companies that relied on the agreement to conduct business. If the government can seize assets without due process, those assets lose their stability and value. And if that treatment depends on whether a company is in the government’s political favor, it’s not just bad economics − it’s a red flag for investors.

    When government doesn’t enforce rules fairly, it also threatens people’s freedom to enter into contracts.

    Consider presidential orders that threaten the clients of law firms that have challenged the administration with cancellation of their government contracts. The threat alone jeopardizes the value of those agreements.

    If businesses can’t trust public contracts to be respected, they’ll be less likely to work with the government in the first place. This deprives the government, and ultimately the American people, of receiving the best value for their tax dollars in critical areas such as transportation, technology and national defense.

    Regulatory chaos also allows corruption to spread.

    For example, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits businesses from bribing foreign government officials, has leveled the playing field for firms and enabled the best American companies to succeed on their merits. Before the law was enacted in 1977, some American companies felt pressured to pay bribes to compete. “Pausing” enforcement of the law, as the current presidential administration has done, increases the cost of doing business and encourages a wild west economy where chaos thrives.

    When corruption grows, stable and democratic governments weaken, opportunities for terrorism increase and corruption-fueled authoritarian regimes, which oppose the interests of the U.S., thrive. Halting the enforcement of an anti-bribery law, even for a limited time, is an issue of national security.

    Legal uncertainty fuels brain drain

    Chaotic enforcement of the law also corrodes labor markets.

    American companies require a strong pool of talented professionals to fuel their financial success. When legal rights are enforced arbitrarily or unjustly, the very best talent that American companies need may leave the country.

    The science brain drain is already happening. American scientists have submitted 32% more applications for jobs abroad compared with last year. Nonscientists are leaving too. Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs has witnessed a 50% increase in Americans taking steps to obtain an Irish passport. Employers in the U.K. saw a spike in job applications from the United States.

    Business from other countries will gladly accept American talent as they compete against American companies. During the Third Reich, Nazi Germany lost its best and brightest to other countries, including America. Now the reverse is happening, as highly talented Americans leave to work for firms in other nations.

    Threats of arbitrary legal actions also drive away democratic allies and their prosperous populations that purchase American-made goods and services. For example, arbitrarily threatening to punish or even annex a closely allied nation does not endear its citizens to that government or the businesses it represents. So it’s no surprise that Canadians are now boycotting American goods and services. This is devastating businesses in American border towns and hurts the economy nationwide.

    Similarly, the Canadian government has responded to whipsawing U.S. tariff announcements with counter-tariffs, which will slice the profits of American exporters. Close American allies and trading partners such as Japan, the U.K. and the European Union are also signaling their own willingness to impose retaliatory tariffs, increasing the costs of operations to American business even more.

    Modern capitalism depends on smart regulation to thrive. Smart regulation is not an obstacle to capitalism. Smart regulation is what makes American capitalism possible. Smart regulation is what makes American freedom possible.

    Clear and consistently applied legal rules allow businesses to aggressively compete, carefully plan, and generate profits. An arbitrary rule of law deprives business of the true power of capitalism – the ability to promote economic growth, spur innovation and improve the overall living standards of a free society. Americans deserve no less, and it is up to government to make that happen for everyone.

    Robert Bird 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 rule of law is key to capitalism − eroding it is bad news for American business – https://theconversation.com/the-rule-of-law-is-key-to-capitalism-eroding-it-is-bad-news-for-american-business-254922

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Despite claims they’d move overseas after the election, most Americans are staying put

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels, Honorary Reader in MIgration and Politics, University of Kent

    Not that many people are preparing to leave the U.S. gerenme/E+ via Getty Images

    Based on pronouncements in 2024, you might think now is the time to see U.S. citizens streaming out of the country. Months before the 2024 presidential election, Americans were saying they would leave should candidate Donald Trump win the election. Gallup polling in 2024 found that 21% of Americans wanted to leave the United States permanently, more than double the 10% who had said so in 2011.

    And indeed in June 2025, a Vermont legislator announced that she was resigning her seat and moving to Canada because of political concerns and economic opportunities. To be sure, people are moving. Even so, as a scholar of American migration overseas, my research finds that the vast majority of Americans are not about to depart for greener shores.

    A western Massachusetts group

    In October 2024, I surveyed 68 Americans in western Massachusetts, an area with a slight Democratic majority, asking if they wanted to leave the United States for a lengthy period of time, but not necessarily permanently. Over 90% said no, noting that there were factors limiting their mobility, such as financial obligations or having a partner who would not move, and that there were reasons that made them want to stay, such as owning property and having friends nearby.

    Just three respondents indicated they were making plans to move, while an additional 11 said they wanted to move “someday.”

    Reality strikes

    After the November 2024 election, I interviewed seven of those respondents, two of whom had said prior to the election that they might leave the United States. After the election, they all said they planned to stay.

    One who had said she wanted to leave acknowledged her reversal, saying: “I may have flippantly said, ‘Oh, if (Trump) gets voted in … I would leave,’ but I can’t see leaving. Part of it is because of my daughter,” who had recently become a mother. She continued, “It’s never crossed my mind seriously enough to even research it.”

    Another told me, “I’m not going to let somebody push me out of what I consider my country and my home because he’s a jerk.”

    Others spoke of needing to work several more years in order to receive a pension, or having family responsibilities keeping them in the country. None supported the current administration.

    On a national level

    In two nationally representative surveys, my colleague Helen B. Marrow, a sociologist of immigration, and I found no significant increase in migration aspiration between 2014 and 2019. We also found that respondents mentioned exploration and adventure much more often than political or economic reasons for wanting to move abroad.

    Even though the U.S. passport grants visa-free visitor access to more than 180 countries, U.S. citizens still need residence and work visas. At home, they, like others, have family commitments and financial constraints, or may just not want to leave home. More than 95% of the world’s population do not move abroad – and U.S. citizens are no different.

    Relocation coaching

    In addition to my academic research on overseas Americans, I am also an international relocation coach. I help Americans considering a move abroad navigate the emotional, practical and professional complexities of relocation, whether they’re just starting to explore the idea or actively planning their next steps.

    Many of my clients do not want to live in a United States that no longer aligns with their values, while others are concerned about their safety, particularly, but not only, due to racism or homophobia. They are finding jobs overseas, retiring abroad or acquiring a European citizenship through a parent or grandparent. Most recently, American academics seeking to leave are being courted by European universities.

    But most are staying

    In February 2025, a national poll found that 4% of Americans said they were “definitely planning to move” to another country.

    That same month, I followed up with my seven interviewees from western Massachusetts, including one trans man. They all reiterated their choice to remain in the United States. One person, who might move abroad at some point, told me she hadn’t changed her mind about leaving soon: “Leaving doesn’t necessarily mean anything will be better for me, even if it was a financial possibility.”

    Two people said that recent political developments actually meant that they were more committed to remaining in the United States. One told me, “Now, more than ever, individuals need to figure out what small actions can be taken to help our fellow Americans get through this dark period.”

    But even those “definitely planning on moving” can have other factors intervene. Two clients of mine who were making serious plans had to stop when family members’ health situations changed for the worse.

    So how many people are actually leaving? It is clear that a growing number of Americans are considering a move abroad. But far fewer are conducting serious research, seeking professional consultation or actually moving. Drawing on available data, my own academic research and my coaching experience, my educated estimate is that no more than 1% to 2% of U.S. citizens are actively making viable plans to leave the country. Nor are all of those leaving out of protest; many are still motivated by exploration, adventure, employment or to be with a partner.

    Even so, that figure is roughly 3 million to 6 million people – which would be a significant increase over the estimated 5.5 million Americans currently living abroad. As with many migration flows, even the movement of a small percentage of a population can still have the potential to reshape both the United States and its overseas population.

    Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels 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. Despite claims they’d move overseas after the election, most Americans are staying put – https://theconversation.com/despite-claims-theyd-move-overseas-after-the-election-most-americans-are-staying-put-250728

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: What damage did the US do to Iran’s nuclear program? Why it’s so hard to know

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Joshua Rovner, Associate Professor of International Relations, American University

    Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, describes the U.S. military attack on Iranian nuclear sites, which occurred on June 21, 2025, . AP Photo/Alex Brandon

    The U.S. Air Force dropped a dozen ground-penetrating bombs, each weighing 30,000 pounds (13,607 kilograms), in a raid on Iran’s nuclear site at Fordo on June 21, 2025. The attack was an attempt to reach the uranium enrichment facility buried deep inside a mountain. The target, President Donald Trump declared, was “completely and totally obliterated.”

    Others were less sure. On June 24, the administration canceled a classified intelligence briefing to members of Congress, leading to frustration among those with questions about White House claims. While Defense Intelligence Agency analysts apparently agree that the strikes did real damage, they dispute the idea that the attack permanently destroyed Iran’s enrichment capability. Reports emerged that their initial analysis found that the strikes had only set Iran back a few months.

    Such disagreements are unsurprising. Battle damage assessment – originally called bomb damage assessment – is notoriously difficult, and past wars have featured intense controversies among military and intelligence professionals. In World War II, poor weather and the limits of available technology conspired against accuracy.

    Battle damage assessment remained a thorny problem decades later, even after radical improvements in surveillance technology. In the first Gulf War in 1990, for example, military leaders argued with CIA officials over the effects of airstrikes against Iraq’s armored forces.

    I am a scholar of international relations who studies intelligence and strategy in international conflicts, and the author of “Fixing the Facts: National Security and the Politics of Intelligence.” I know from history that overcoming the challenges of battle damage assessment is especially hard when the target is a facility hidden under hundreds of feet of earth and rock, as is the case at Fordo.

    How the U.S. military’s ‘bunker buster’ bomb works.

    Tools of the trade

    The intelligence community has a number of tools and techniques that can help with challenges like assessing the damage at Fordo. Imagery intelligence such as satellite photography is the obvious starting point. Before-and-after comparisons might reveal collapsed tunnels or topographical changes, suggesting unseen subterranean damage.

    More exotic data collection techniques may be able to help infer the underground effects based on particle and electromagnetic emissions from the site. These platforms provide what is called measurement and signatures intelligence. Specialized sensors can measure nuclear radiation, seismographic information and other potentially revealing information from camouflaged facilities. When combined with traditional imagery, measurement and signatures intelligence can provide a more detailed model of the likely effects of the bombing.

    Other sources may prove useful as well. Reporting from human intelligence assets – spies or unwitting informers with firsthand or secondhand knowledge – may provide information on internal Iranian assessments. These may be particularly valuable because Iranian officials presumably know how much equipment was removed in advance, as well as the location of previously enriched uranium.

    The same is true for signals intelligence, which intercepts and interprets communications. Ideally, battle damage assessment will become more comprehensive and accurate as these sources of intelligence are integrated into a single assessment.

    Pervasive uncertainty

    But even in that case, it will still be difficult to estimate the broader effects on Iran’s nuclear program. Measuring the immediate physical effects on Fordo and other nuclear sites is a kind of puzzle, or a problem that can be solved with sufficient evidence. Estimating the long-term effects on Iranian policy is a mystery, or a problem that cannot be solved even with abundant information on hand. It’s impossible to know how Iran’s leaders will adapt over time to their changing circumstances. They themselves cannot know either; perceptions of the future are inherently uncertain.

    Regarding the puzzle over Fordo, Trump seems to believe that the sheer volume of explosives dropped on the site must have done the job. As White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt put it: “Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”

    But the fact that Fordo is buried in the side of a mountain is a reason to doubt this commonsense conclusion. In addition, Iran may have moved enriched uranium and specialized equipment from the site in advance, limiting the effects on its nuclear program.

    Trump’s instincts might be right. Or the skeptics might be right. Both make plausible claims. Analysts will need more intelligence from more sources to make a confident judgment about the effects on Fordo and on Iran’s broader nuclear efforts. Even then, it is likely that they will disagree on the effects, because this requires making predictions.

    News coverage of the attack on Fordo and White House claims of success.

    Politicized intelligence

    In a perfect world, policymakers and intelligence officials would wrestle with dueling assessments in good faith. Such a process would take place outside the political fray, giving both sides the opportunity to offer criticism without being accused of political mischief. In this idealized scenario, policymakers could use reasonable intelligence conclusions to inform their decision-making process. After all, there are a lot of decisions about Middle Eastern security left to be made.

    But we are not in a perfect world, and hopes for a good faith debate seem hopelessly naïve. Already the battle lines are being drawn. Congressional Democrats are suspicious that the administration is being disingenuous about Iran. The White House, for its part, is going on the offensive. “The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump,” Leavitt declared in a written statement, “and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission.”

    Relations between policymakers and their intelligence advisers are often contentious, and U.S. presidents have a long history of clashing with spy chiefs. But intelligence-policy relations today are in a particularly dismal state. Trump bears the most responsibility, given his repeated disparagement of intelligence officials. For example, he dismissed the congressional testimony on Iran from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard: “I don’t care what she said.”

    The problem goes deeper than the president, however. Intelligence-policy relations in a democracy are difficult because of the persuasive power of secret information. Policymakers fear that intelligence officials who control secrets might use them to undermine the policymakers’ plans. Intelligence officials worry that the policymakers will bully them into giving politically convenient answers. Such fears led to intelligence-policy breakdowns over estimates of enemy strength in the Vietnam War and estimates of Soviet missile capabilities in the early years of detente.

    This mutual suspicion has become progressively worse since the end of the Cold War, as secret intelligence has become increasingly public. Intelligence leaders have become recognizable public figures, and intelligence judgments on current issues are often quickly declassified. The public now expects to have access to intelligence findings, and this has helped turn intelligence into a political football.

    What lies ahead

    What does all this mean for intelligence on Iran? Trump might ignore assessments he dislikes, given his history with intelligence. But the acrimonious public dispute over the Fordo strike may lead the White House to pressure intelligence leaders to toe the line, especially if critics demand a public accounting of secret intelligence.

    Such an outcome would benefit nobody. The public would not have a better sense of the questions surrounding Iran’s nuclear effort, the intelligence community would suffer a serious blow to its reputation, and the administration’s efforts to use intelligence in public might backfire, as was the case for the George W. Bush administration after the war in Iraq.

    As with military campaigns, episodes of politicizing intelligence have lasting and sometimes unforeseen consequences.

    Joshua Rovner is associate professor of international relations at American University, and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

    – ref. What damage did the US do to Iran’s nuclear program? Why it’s so hard to know – https://theconversation.com/what-damage-did-the-us-do-to-irans-nuclear-program-why-its-so-hard-to-know-260058

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: We don’t know what happens to the waste we recycle, and that’s a problem

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Faisal Shennib, Environmental Specialist, 24-25 Concordia Public Scholar, PhD Candidate in Individualized Program, Concordia University

    There is a glaring lack of tracking for global recycling. Poor waste management is deeply connected to climate change, plastic pollution and global nutrient imbalances globally.

    Economies also suffer from the lack of tracking. We extract, process and then landfill and incinerate trillions of dollars of materials per year. Instead, these could be recirculating, creating new jobs and reducing reliance on global trade.

    To shift to alternative, circular models, we need better data on local and global waste management.

    My research demonstrates that more local waste tracking through digitalization could yield multiple benefits. It could help track hyper-local recycling and reuse, initiatives that are usually considered too small and burdensome to include in national waste tracking efforts.

    And compared to national waste tracking, localized waste tracking could also provide more timely and relevant insights on the effectiveness of policies, infrastructure investments and education.

    Measuring waste

    The units for measuring waste are fairly standard across the world. Quantity of waste is measured by weight (tonnes) and waste performance is the per cent of total waste not sent for landfill and incineration.

    However, waste terminology varies across both academia and industry. In some settings, “recycling” may mean that the material was collected for recycling, but not necessarily recycled. A term like “municipal waste” can include waste from offices and businesses — or not. This confusion makes global waste tracking challenging.

    Regular global reporting on waste is sorely lacking. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for global action on waste management, but there have been no figures for global recycling in recent UN SDG reports. This is likely due to the lack of available, reliable data.

    Reports on global waste are compiled from sources using a wide variety of formats; a source may represent annual or daily waste, and total waste or waste per capita. Data is often from different years, making it useful for trend analysis but not strict comparisons.

    Estimations and incomplete data are common; only 39 per cent of populations in developing countries are served by waste collection services. Double-counting is another risk when data comes from varied sources like waste collectors, processors and local governments.

    With all these challenges, global waste reports require years to compile, leading to multiyear gaps in published reports.

    Insufficient data

    Even nations with consistent reporting are not immune to methodological gaps. The European Union and Canada both require annual reporting on waste, but allow for a wide variety of methods in data sourcing, including estimation.

    In the United States, annual waste data is reported by states to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on a voluntary basis. No new nationwide reports have been published since 2018.

    Another challenge is that reporting focuses on the weight of waste, but there is a lack of data on its composition. Much of what is collected is not recycled due to contamination, the nature of the material or the lack of a local market.

    Waste characterization is the process of determining waste composition, and when reporting waste, this information is often optional. In the U.S., few states provide updated characterization studies to the EPA. The EU and Canada require reporting on composition but don’t specify requirements for how to determine the composition.

    Reliable waste characterization requires the waste to be audited: sampled, weighed, separated into categories, and then weighed again. It’s a labour-intensive and cost-prohibitive process, which might explain why American states haven’t provided updated waste characterizations to the EPA since 2018.

    Estimating recycling stats

    The oft-cited fact that nine per cent of global plastics are recycled comes from a 2022 report. It was calculated in several steps, each with significant uncertainties, including how much plastic was produced globally, how long it was used for, and how much was collected and likely to have been recycled.

    The nine per cent figure is very much an estimate, representing global plastic waste in 2019. And now, it is an outdated figure.

    Global plastic trade is likely 40 per cent higher than previously estimated. And 40 per cent of textiles exported for reuse and recycling are dumped or incinerated.

    In South Korea, for example, a country renowned for its waste policies and programs, reports a 73 per cent recycling rate for plastics, while Greenpeace estimates that the rate is 26 per cent because much of what is collected is not recycled.

    In Canada, plastic recycling tracking suffers from the same lack of standardization and transparency as recycling in general.

    A much-needed global consensus

    Material consumption and management is a global problem requiring international collaboration, commitments and adequate tracking.

    Consensus on how to define and measure waste data are important, as well as commitments from nations to regularize reporting. The upcoming United Nations Environment Programme session to develop a global plastics treaty might catalyze these steps, at least for plastics.

    To track the quality of waste handled, governments should adopt guidelines for waste characterization, like the UN-Habitat’s Waste Wise Cities Tool. Traceability needs to be integrated into waste management methods. Digital solutions like blockchain and artificial intelligence could improve transparency, automate waste tracking and reduce associated costs.

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

    – ref. We don’t know what happens to the waste we recycle, and that’s a problem – https://theconversation.com/we-dont-know-what-happens-to-the-waste-we-recycle-and-thats-a-problem-254171

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Antarctic research is in decline, and the timing couldn’t be worse

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Elizabeth Leane, Professor of Antarctic Studies, School of Humanities, University of Tasmania

    Oleksandr Matsibura/Shutterstock

    Ice loss in Antarctica and its impact on the planet – sea level rise, changes to ocean currents and disturbance of wildlife and food webs – has been in the news a lot lately. All of these threats were likely on the minds of the delegates to the annual Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting, which finishes up today in Milan, Italy.

    This meeting is where decisions are made about the continent’s future. These decisions rely on evidence from scientific research. Moreover, only countries that produce significant Antarctic research – as well as being parties to the treaty – get to have a final say in these decisions.

    Our new report – published as a preprint through the University of the Arctic – shows the rate of research on the Antarctic and Southern Ocean is falling at exactly the time when it should be increasing. Moreover, research leadership is changing, with China taking the lead for the first time.

    This points to a dangerous disinvestment in Antarctic research just when it is needed, alongside a changing of the guard in national influence. Antarctica and the research done there are key to everyone’s future, so it’s vital to understand what this change might lead to.

    Why is Antarctic research so important?

    With the Antarctic region rapidly warming, its ice shelves destabilising and sea ice shrinking, understanding the South Polar environment is more crucial than ever.

    Ice loss in Antarctica not only contributes to sea level rise, but impacts wildlife habitats and local food chains. It also changes the dynamics of ocean currents, which could interfere with global food webs, including international fisheries that supply a growing amount of food.

    Research to understand these impacts is vital. First, knowing the impact of our actions – particularly carbon emissions – gives us an increased drive to make changes and lobby governments to do so.

    Second, even when changes are already locked in, to prepare ourselves we need to know what these changes will look like.

    And third, we need to understand the threats to the Antarctic and Southern Ocean environment to govern it properly. This is where the treaty comes in.

    What is the Antarctic Treaty?

    The region below 60 degrees south is governed by the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, along with subsequent agreements. Together they are known as the Antarctic Treaty System.

    Fifty-eight countries are parties to the treaty, but only 29 of them – called consultative parties – can make binding decisions about the region. They comprise the 12 original signatories from 1959, along with 17 more recent signatory nations that produce substantial scientific research relating to Antarctica.

    This makes research a key part of a nation’s influence over what happens in Antarctica.

    For most of its history, the Antarctic Treaty System has functioned remarkably well. It maintained peace in the region during the Cold War, facilitated scientific cooperation, and put arguments about territorial claims on indefinite hold. It indefinitely forbade mining, and managed fisheries.

    Lately, however, there has been growing dysfunction in the treaty system.

    Environmental protections that might seem obvious – such as marine protected areas and special protections for threatened emperor penguins – have stalled.

    Because decisions are made by consensus, any country can effectively block progress. Russia and China – both long-term actors in the system – have been at the centre of the impasse.



    Read more:
    Antarctic summer sea ice is at record lows. Here’s how it will harm the planet – and us

    What did our report find?

    Tracking the amount of Antarctic research being done tells us whether nations as a whole are investing enough in understanding the region and its global impact.

    It also tells us which nations are investing the most and are therefore likely to have substantial influence.

    Our new report examined the number of papers published on Antarctic and Southern Ocean topics from 2016 to 2024, using the Scopus database. We also looked at other factors, such as the countries affiliated with each paper.

    The results show five significant changes are happening in the world of Antarctic research.

    • The number of Antarctic and Southern Ocean publications peaked in 2021 and then fell slightly yearly through to 2024.
    • While the United States has for decades been the leader in Antarctic research, China overtook them in 2022.
    • If we look only at the high-quality publications (those published in the best 25% of journals) China still took over the US, in 2024.
    • Of the top six countries in overall publications (China, the US, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany and Russia) all except China have declined in publication numbers since 2016.
    • Although collaboration in publications is higher for Antarctic research than in non-Antarctic fields, Russia, India and China have anomalously low rates of co-authorship compared with many other signatory countries.

    Why is this research decline a problem?

    A recent parliamentary inquiry in Australia emphasised the need for funding certainty. In the UK, a House of Commons committee report considered it “imperative for the UK to significantly expand its research efforts in Antarctica”, in particular in relation to sea level rise.

    US commentators have pointed to the inadequacy of the country’s icebreaker infrastructure. The Trump administration’s recent cuts to Antarctic funding are only likely to exacerbate the situation. Meanwhile China has built a fifth station in Antarctica and announced plans for a sixth.

    Given the nation’s population and global influence, China’s leadership in Antarctic research is not surprising. If China were to take a lead in Antarctic environmental protection that matched its scientific heft, its move to lead position in the research ranks could be positive. Stronger multi-country collaboration in research could also strengthen overall cooperation.

    But the overall drop in global Antarctic research investment is a problem however you look at it. We ignore it at our peril.

    Elizabeth Leane receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Dutch Research Council, the Council on Australian and Latin American Relations DFAT and HX (Hurtigruten Expeditions). She has received in-kind support from Hurtigruten Expeditions in the recent past. The University of Tasmania is a member of the UArctic, which has provided support for this project.

    Keith Larson is affiliated with the UArctic and European Polar Board. The UArctic paid for the development and publication of this report. The UArctic Thematic Network on Research Analytics and Bibliometrics conducted the analysis and developed the report. The Arctic Centre at Umeå University provided in-kind support for staff time on the report.

    – ref. Antarctic research is in decline, and the timing couldn’t be worse – https://theconversation.com/antarctic-research-is-in-decline-and-the-timing-couldnt-be-worse-260197

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Too much vitamin B6 can be toxic. 3 symptoms to watch out for

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nial Wheate, Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University

    Selena3726/Shutterstock

    Side effects from taking too much vitamin B6 – including nerve damage – may be more widespread than we think, Australia’s medicines regulator says.

    In an ABC report earlier this week, a spokesperson for the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) says it may have underestimated the extent of the side effects from vitamin B6 supplements.

    However, there are proposals to limit sales of high-dose versions due to safety concerns.

    A pathologist who runs a clinic that tests vitamin B6 in blood samples from across Australia also appeared on the program. He told the ABC that data from May suggests 4.5% of samples tested had returned results “very likely” indicating nerve damage.

    So what are vitamin B6 supplements? How can they be toxic? And which symptoms do you need to watch out for?

    What is vitamin B6?

    Vitamin B6, also known as pyridoxine, plays an important role in keeping the body healthy. It is involved in the metabolism of proteins, carbohydrates and fats in food. It is also important for the production of neurotransmitters – chemical messengers in the brain that maintain its function and regulate your mood.

    Vitamin B6 also supports the immune system by helping to make antibodies, which fight off infections. And it is needed to produce haemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen around the body.

    Some women take a vitamin B6 supplement when pregnant. It is thought this helps reduce the nausea associated with the early stages of pregnancy. Some women also take it to help with premenstrual syndrome.

    However, most people don’t need, and won’t benefit from, a vitamin B6 supplement. That’s because you get enough vitamin B6 from your diet through meat, breakfast cereal, fruit and vegetables.

    You don’t need much. A dose of 1.3–1.7 milligrams a day is enough for most adults.

    Currently, vitamin B6 supplements with a daily dose of 5–200mg can be sold over the counter at health food stores, supermarkets and pharmacies.

    Because of safety concerns, the TGA is proposing limiting their sale to pharmacies, and only after consultation with a pharmacist.

    Daily doses higher than 200mg already need a doctor’s prescription. So under the proposal that would stay the same.

    What happens if you take too much?

    If you take too much vitamin B6, in most cases the excess will be excreted in your urine and most people won’t experience side effects. But there is a growing concern about long-time, high-dose use.

    A side effect the medical community is worried about is peripheral neuropathy – where there is damage to the nerves outside the brain and spinal cord. This results in pain, numbness or weakness, usually in your hands and feet. We don’t yet know exactly how this happens.

    In most reported cases, these symptoms disappear once you stop taking the supplement. But for some people it may take three months to two years before they feel completely better.

    There is growing, but sometimes contradictory, evidence that high doses (more than 50mg a day) for extended periods can result in serious side effects.

    A study from the 1990s followed 70 patients for five years who took a dose of 100 to 150mg a day. There were no reported cases of neuropathy.

    But more recent studies show high rates of side effects.

    A 2023 case report provides details of a man who was taking multiple supplements. This resulted in a daily combined 95mg dose of vitamin B6, and he experienced neuropathy.

    Another report describes seven cases of neuropathy linked to drinking energy drinks containing vitamin B6.

    Reports to the TGA’s database of adverse events notifications (a record of reported side effects) shows 174 cases of neuropathy linked with vitamin B6 use since 2023.

    What should I do if I take vitamin B6?

    The current advice is that someone who takes a dose of 50mg a day or more, for more than six months, should be monitored by a health-care professional. So if you regularly take vitamin B6 supplements you should discuss continued use with your doctor or pharmacist.

    There are three side effects to watch out for, the first two related to neuropathy:

    1. numbness or pain in the feet and hands

    2. difficulty with balance and coordination as a result of muscle weakness

    3. heartburn and nausea.

    If you have worrying side effects after taking vitamin B6 supplements, contact your state’s poison information centre on 13 11 26 for advice.

    Nial Wheate in the past has received funding from the ACT Cancer Council, Tenovus Scotland, Medical Research Scotland, Scottish Crucible, and the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance. He is a fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. Nial is the chief scientific officer of Vaihea Skincare LLC, a director of SetDose Pty Ltd (a medical device company) and was previously a Standards Australia panel member for sunscreen agents. He is a member of the Haleon Australia Pty Ltd Pain Advisory Board. Nial regularly consults to industry on issues to do with medicine risk assessments, manufacturing, design and testing.

    Slade Matthews provides scientific evaluations to the Therapeutic Goods Administration as a member of the Therapeutic Goods Assessment and Advisory Panel. Slade serves on the NSW Poisons Advisory Committee for NSW Health as the minister-nominated pharmacologist appointed by the Governor of NSW.

    – ref. Too much vitamin B6 can be toxic. 3 symptoms to watch out for – https://theconversation.com/too-much-vitamin-b6-can-be-toxic-3-symptoms-to-watch-out-for-260400

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The Rainbow Warrior saga: 1. French state terrorism and NZ’s end of innocence

    COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

    Immediately after killing Fernando Pereira and blowing up Greenpeace’s flagship the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, several of the French agents went on a ski holiday in New Zealand’s South Island to celebrate.

    Such was the contempt the French had for the Kiwis and the abilities of our police to pursue them.  How wrong they were.

    To mark the 40th anniversary of the French terrorist attack Little Island Press has published a revised and updated edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, first released in 1986.

    A new prologue by former prime minister Helen Clark and a preface by Greenpeace’s Bunny McDiarmid, along with an extensive postscript which bring us up to the present day, underline why the past is not dead; it’s with us right now.

    Written by David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report, who spent 11 weeks on the final voyage of the Warrior, the book is the most remarkable piece of history I have read this year and one of those rare books that has the power to expand your mind and make your blood boil at the same time. I thought I knew a fair bit about the momentous events surrounding the attack — until I read Eyes of Fire.

    Heroes of our age
     The book covers the history of Greenpeace action — from fighting the dumping of nuclear and other toxic waste in European waters, the Arctic and the Pacific, voyages to link besieged communities across the oceans, through to their epic struggles to halt whaling and save endangered marine colonies from predators.

    The Rainbow Warrior’s very last voyage before the bombing was to evacuate the entire population of Rongelap atoll (about 320 people) in the Marshall Islands who had been exposed to US nuclear radiation for decades.

    This article is the first of two in which I will explore themes that the book triggered for me.

    Neither secret nor intelligent – the French secret intelligence service

    Jean-Luc Kister was the DGSE (Direction-générale de la Sécurité extérieure) agent who placed the two bombs that ripped a massive hole in the hull of the Warrior on 10 July 1985. The ship quickly sank, trapping Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira inside.

    Former colonel Kister was a member of a large team of elite agents sent to New Zealand. One had also infiltrated Greenpeace months before, some travelled through the country prior to the attack, drinking, rooting New Zealand women and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that led all the way to the Palais de l’Élysée where François Mitterrand, Socialist President of France, had personally given the order to bomb the famous peace vessel.

    Robie aptly calls the French mission “Blundergate”. The stupidity, howling incompetence and moronic lack of a sound strategic rationale behind the attack were only matched by the mendacity, the imperial hauteur and the racist contempt that lies at the heart of French policy in the Pacific to this very day.

    Thinking the Kiwi police would be no match for their élan, their savoir-faire and their panache, some of the killers hit the ski slopes to celebrate “Mission Accompli”. Others fled to Norfolk Island aboard a yacht, the Ouvéa.

    Tracked there by the New Zealand police it was only with the assistance of our friends and allies, the Australians, that the agents were able to escape. Within days they sank their yacht at sea during a rendezvous with a French nuclear submarine and were evenually able to return to France for medals and promotions.

    Two of the agents, however, were not so lucky. As everyone my age will recall, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, were nabbed after a lightning fast operation by New Zealand police.

    With friends and allies like these, who needs enemies?
     We should recall that the French were our allies at the time. They decided, however, to stop the Rainbow Warrior from leading a flotilla of ships up to Moruroa Atoll in French Polynesia where yet another round of nuclear tests were scheduled. In other words: they bombed a peace ship to keep testing bombs.

    By 1995, France had detonated 193 nuclear bombs in the South Pacific.

    David Robie sees the bombing as “a desperate attempt by one of the last colonial powers in the Pacific to hang on to the vestiges of empire by blowing up a peace ship so it could continue despoiling Pacific islands for the sake of an independent nuclear force”.

    The US, UK and Australia cold-shouldered New Zealand through this period and uttered not a word of condemnation against the French. Within two years we were frog-marched out of the ANZUS alliance with Australia and the US because of our ground-breaking nuclear-free legislation.

    It was a blessing and the dawn of a period in which New Zealanders had an intense sense of national pride — a far cry from today when New Zealand politicians are being referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for war crimes associated with the Gaza genocide.

    Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior . . . publication next week. Image: ©  David Robie/Eyes Of Fire/Little Island Press

    The French State invented the term ‘terrorism’
     I studied French History at university in France and did a paper called “La France à la veille de révolution” (France on the eve of revolution). One of the chilling cultural memories is of the period from September 1793 to July 1794, which was known as La Terreur.

    At the time the French state literally coined the term “terrorisme” — with the blade of the guillotine dropping on neck after neck as the state tried to consolidate power through terror. But, as Robie points out, quoting law professor Roger S. Clark, we tend to use the term today to refer almost exclusively to non-state actors.

    With the US and Israel gunning down starving civilians in Gaza every day, with wave after wave of terror attacks being committed inside Iran and across the Middle East by Mossad, the CIA and MI6, we should amend this erroneous habit.

    The DGSE team who attached limpet mines to the Rainbow Warrior did so as psychopathic servants of the French State. Eyes of Fire: “At the time, Prime Minister David Lange described the Rainbow Warrior attack as ‘nothing more than a sordid act of international state-backed terrorism’.”

    Don’t get me wrong. I am not “anti-French”. I lived for years in France, had a French girlfriend, studied French history, language and literature. I even had friends in Wellington who worked at the French Embassy.

    Curiously when I lived next to Premier House, the official residence of the prime minister, my other next door neighbour was a French agent who specialised in surveillance. Our houses backed onto Premier House. Quelle coïncidence. To his mild consternation I’d greet him with “Salut, mon espion favori.” (Hello, my favourite spy).

    What I despise is French colonialism, French racism, and what the French call magouillage. I don’t know a good English word for it . . .  it is a mix of shenanigans, duplicity, artful deception to achieve unscrupulous outcomes that can’t be publicly avowed. In brief: what the French attempted in Auckland in 1985.

    Robie recounts in detail the lying, smokescreens and roadblocks that everyone from President Mitterrand through to junior officials put in the way of the New Zealand investigators. Mitterrand gave Prime Minister David Lange assurances that the culprits would be brought to justice. The French Embassy in Wellington claimed at the time: “In no way is France involved. The French government doesn’t deal with its opponents in such ways.”

    It took years for the bombshell to explode that none other than Mitterrand himself had ordered the terrorist attack on New Zealand and Greenpeace!

    Rainbow Warrior III . . . the current successor to the bombed ship. Photographed at Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands in April 2025. Image: © Bianca Vitale/Greenpeace

    We the people of the Pacific
     We, the people of the Pacific, owe a debt to Greenpeace and all those who were part of the Rainbow Warrior, including author David Robie. We must remember the crime and call it by its name: state terrorism.

    The French attempted to escape justice, deny involvement and then welched on the terms of the agreement negotiated with the help of the United Nations secretary-general.

    A great way to honour the sacrifice of those who stood up for justice, who stood for peace and a nuclear-free Pacific, and who honoured our own national identity would be to buy David Robie’s excellent book.

    I’ll give the last word to former Prime Minister Helen Clark:

    “This is the time for New Zealand to link with the many small and middle powers across regions who have a vision for a world characterised by solidarity and peace and which can rise to the occasion to combat the existential challenges it faces — including of nuclear weapons, climate change, and artificial intelligence. If our independent foreign policy is to mean anything in the mid-2020s, it must be based on concerted diplomacy for peace and sustainable development.”

    You cannot sink a rainbow.

    Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The Rainbow Warrior saga: 1. French state terrorism and NZ’s end of innocence

    COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

    Immediately after killing Fernando Pereira and blowing up Greenpeace’s flagship the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, several of the French agents went on a ski holiday in New Zealand’s South Island to celebrate.

    Such was the contempt the French had for the Kiwis and the abilities of our police to pursue them.  How wrong they were.

    To mark the 40th anniversary of the French terrorist attack Little Island Press has published a revised and updated edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, first released in 1986.

    A new prologue by former prime minister Helen Clark and a preface by Greenpeace’s Bunny McDiarmid, along with an extensive postscript which bring us up to the present day, underline why the past is not dead; it’s with us right now.

    Written by David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report, who spent 11 weeks on the final voyage of the Warrior, the book is the most remarkable piece of history I have read this year and one of those rare books that has the power to expand your mind and make your blood boil at the same time. I thought I knew a fair bit about the momentous events surrounding the attack — until I read Eyes of Fire.

    Heroes of our age
     The book covers the history of Greenpeace action — from fighting the dumping of nuclear and other toxic waste in European waters, the Arctic and the Pacific, voyages to link besieged communities across the oceans, through to their epic struggles to halt whaling and save endangered marine colonies from predators.

    The Rainbow Warrior’s very last voyage before the bombing was to evacuate the entire population of Rongelap atoll (about 320 people) in the Marshall Islands who had been exposed to US nuclear radiation for decades.

    This article is the first of two in which I will explore themes that the book triggered for me.

    Neither secret nor intelligent – the French secret intelligence service

    Jean-Luc Kister was the DGSE (Direction-générale de la Sécurité extérieure) agent who placed the two bombs that ripped a massive hole in the hull of the Warrior on 10 July 1985. The ship quickly sank, trapping Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira inside.

    Former colonel Kister was a member of a large team of elite agents sent to New Zealand. One had also infiltrated Greenpeace months before, some travelled through the country prior to the attack, drinking, rooting New Zealand women and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that led all the way to the Palais de l’Élysée where François Mitterrand, Socialist President of France, had personally given the order to bomb the famous peace vessel.

    Robie aptly calls the French mission “Blundergate”. The stupidity, howling incompetence and moronic lack of a sound strategic rationale behind the attack were only matched by the mendacity, the imperial hauteur and the racist contempt that lies at the heart of French policy in the Pacific to this very day.

    Thinking the Kiwi police would be no match for their élan, their savoir-faire and their panache, some of the killers hit the ski slopes to celebrate “Mission Accompli”. Others fled to Norfolk Island aboard a yacht, the Ouvéa.

    Tracked there by the New Zealand police it was only with the assistance of our friends and allies, the Australians, that the agents were able to escape. Within days they sank their yacht at sea during a rendezvous with a French nuclear submarine and were evenually able to return to France for medals and promotions.

    Two of the agents, however, were not so lucky. As everyone my age will recall, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, were nabbed after a lightning fast operation by New Zealand police.

    With friends and allies like these, who needs enemies?
     We should recall that the French were our allies at the time. They decided, however, to stop the Rainbow Warrior from leading a flotilla of ships up to Moruroa Atoll in French Polynesia where yet another round of nuclear tests were scheduled. In other words: they bombed a peace ship to keep testing bombs.

    By 1995, France had detonated 193 nuclear bombs in the South Pacific.

    David Robie sees the bombing as “a desperate attempt by one of the last colonial powers in the Pacific to hang on to the vestiges of empire by blowing up a peace ship so it could continue despoiling Pacific islands for the sake of an independent nuclear force”.

    The US, UK and Australia cold-shouldered New Zealand through this period and uttered not a word of condemnation against the French. Within two years we were frog-marched out of the ANZUS alliance with Australia and the US because of our ground-breaking nuclear-free legislation.

    It was a blessing and the dawn of a period in which New Zealanders had an intense sense of national pride — a far cry from today when New Zealand politicians are being referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for war crimes associated with the Gaza genocide.

    Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior . . . publication next week. Image: ©  David Robie/Eyes Of Fire/Little Island Press

    The French State invented the term ‘terrorism’
     I studied French History at university in France and did a paper called “La France à la veille de révolution” (France on the eve of revolution). One of the chilling cultural memories is of the period from September 1793 to July 1794, which was known as La Terreur.

    At the time the French state literally coined the term “terrorisme” — with the blade of the guillotine dropping on neck after neck as the state tried to consolidate power through terror. But, as Robie points out, quoting law professor Roger S. Clark, we tend to use the term today to refer almost exclusively to non-state actors.

    With the US and Israel gunning down starving civilians in Gaza every day, with wave after wave of terror attacks being committed inside Iran and across the Middle East by Mossad, the CIA and MI6, we should amend this erroneous habit.

    The DGSE team who attached limpet mines to the Rainbow Warrior did so as psychopathic servants of the French State. Eyes of Fire: “At the time, Prime Minister David Lange described the Rainbow Warrior attack as ‘nothing more than a sordid act of international state-backed terrorism’.”

    Don’t get me wrong. I am not “anti-French”. I lived for years in France, had a French girlfriend, studied French history, language and literature. I even had friends in Wellington who worked at the French Embassy.

    Curiously when I lived next to Premier House, the official residence of the prime minister, my other next door neighbour was a French agent who specialised in surveillance. Our houses backed onto Premier House. Quelle coïncidence. To his mild consternation I’d greet him with “Salut, mon espion favori.” (Hello, my favourite spy).

    What I despise is French colonialism, French racism, and what the French call magouillage. I don’t know a good English word for it . . .  it is a mix of shenanigans, duplicity, artful deception to achieve unscrupulous outcomes that can’t be publicly avowed. In brief: what the French attempted in Auckland in 1985.

    Robie recounts in detail the lying, smokescreens and roadblocks that everyone from President Mitterrand through to junior officials put in the way of the New Zealand investigators. Mitterrand gave Prime Minister David Lange assurances that the culprits would be brought to justice. The French Embassy in Wellington claimed at the time: “In no way is France involved. The French government doesn’t deal with its opponents in such ways.”

    It took years for the bombshell to explode that none other than Mitterrand himself had ordered the terrorist attack on New Zealand and Greenpeace!

    Rainbow Warrior III . . . the current successor to the bombed ship. Photographed at Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands in April 2025. Image: © Bianca Vitale/Greenpeace

    We the people of the Pacific
     We, the people of the Pacific, owe a debt to Greenpeace and all those who were part of the Rainbow Warrior, including author David Robie. We must remember the crime and call it by its name: state terrorism.

    The French attempted to escape justice, deny involvement and then welched on the terms of the agreement negotiated with the help of the United Nations secretary-general.

    A great way to honour the sacrifice of those who stood up for justice, who stood for peace and a nuclear-free Pacific, and who honoured our own national identity would be to buy David Robie’s excellent book.

    I’ll give the last word to former Prime Minister Helen Clark:

    “This is the time for New Zealand to link with the many small and middle powers across regions who have a vision for a world characterised by solidarity and peace and which can rise to the occasion to combat the existential challenges it faces — including of nuclear weapons, climate change, and artificial intelligence. If our independent foreign policy is to mean anything in the mid-2020s, it must be based on concerted diplomacy for peace and sustainable development.”

    You cannot sink a rainbow.

    Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The takeaway from the Venice Biennale saga: the art world faces deep and troubling structural inequality

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grace McQuilten, Professor of Art and Associate Dean, Research and Innovation, School of Art, RMIT University

    Creative Australia’s decision earlier this year to rescind the selection of artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino as Australia’s 2026 representatives at the Venice Biennale sent shockwaves through the arts sector.

    For many artists and arts workers, it reinforced concerns around participation and access for those from culturally and racially diverse backgrounds.

    This week’s reinstatement of the artistic team offers some comfort. However, the entire incident has reinforced that, while diversity in the arts is celebrated, inclusion at the highest level can’t be taken for granted.

    Some worrying stats

    Our 2024 survey of more than 900 visual and craft artists, and visual arts workers (who we define as workers who support the visual arts sector), revealed several concerning findings in relation to opportunity and inclusion for culturally and racially diverse creatives.

    The first key finding was more than 67% of artists and 78% of arts workers felt there were cultural and/or access-related barriers to them participating in the sector.

    The second was culturally diverse workers in the sector tended to identify as “early career” rather than “established”. This points to challenges for career progression and, in turn, to systemic and structural barriers to career development.

    Of all the people we surveyed, 17% of visual artists and 20% of visual arts workers reported being of a culturally diverse background. Of these, only 15% of artists and 14% of arts workers reported being at an “established” career stage.

    By contrast, among the general population of artists (including those without a diverse background), 30% of the artists reported being “established” in their careers, along with 26% of arts workers.

    Art shouldn’t be at the behest of politics

    Issues around political censorship and cultural bias in the sector were not a focus of our survey, which was conducted nine months after the war in Gaza began, and before Creative Australia’s selection (and swift cancellation) of the 2026 Venice Biennale team.

    Nonetheless, respondents were concerned their political views, and/or their cultural or racial background, could impact their likelihood of advancing a career in the sector.

    Some respondents explained if they were no longer working as an artist or arts worker in five years’ time, it would most likely be due to “systemic discrimination” and “increasing censorship prevalent in this industry”.

    According to an independent review into the Sabsabi decision (and its reversal):

    While no formal assessment was undertaken, it is clear that there was a general awareness within Creative Australia, among those with knowledge of the selected Artistic Team, that the decision had the potential to be controversial. The Panel heard that, at the time, the decision was described as ‘bold’ or ‘courageous’. The source of potential controversy was seen to lie in the fact of selecting any artist with heritage connected to the Middle East at a time when conflict in that region was so emotive and polarising, rather than because of the proposed nature of the work to be undertaken at the 2026 Venice Biennale.

    Entrenched harmful biases

    Sadly, the negative response from politicians to the initial selection of Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino gave credibility to our respondents’ concerns.

    One participant told us “being called Ahmed* is a bit of a disadvantage given the international situation”.

    Another said “only certain cultures and political plights are given support”.

    Financial security is also potentially at risk. As one respondent explained, the main barrier to their personal financial security were political values. “My work is at risk when governments change,” they said.

    Artists and arts workers from culturally and racially diverse backgrounds also reported more significant impacts from the cost-of-living crisis, along with poorer mental health and work-life balance.

    Importantly, our findings don’t stand in isolation. Similar issues have been identified by Diversity Arts Australia, who in 2022 reported on the significant negative impacts of the pandemic on First Nations artists and artists of colour.

    Also, in 2021, Creative Australia reported on problems around inclusion and access for culturally diverse communities in the arts and cultural sector.

    What might progress look like?

    Our research involved making a number of policy recommendations to tackle these issues.

    For one thing, there is a clear need for organisational change. On this front, arts organisations and employers should invest in cultural competency training for all staff and board members. They should also prioritise professional development and career growth for culturally and racially diverse staff.

    To drive meaningful change, funding incentives should be introduced to support diverse leadership. This should include higher pay for culturally and/or racially diverse leaders whose backgrounds lead them to having added responsibility in the workplace.

    The sector also needs greater transparency around cultural and racial representation in staffing and leadership roles, including board roles. This will promote accountability and help drive cultural change.

    Finally, success for artists from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds requires the Australian art world to engage with multiple world views – and understand not all art will be immediately accessible to all audiences.

    The controversy surrounding Creative Australia’s biennale backflip offers an opportunity for the visual arts sector to reckon with deep and troubling issues of structural inequity, along with broader questions of free expression – especially in a fraught political climate.

    These issues are wider than the art world. But what better place to start?

    *Name changed to protect identity.

    Grace McQuilten received funding from the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Projects funding scheme (project LP200100054). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Australian government or Australian Research Council.

    Kate MacNeill received funding from the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Projects funding scheme (project LP200100054). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Australian government or Australian Research Council.

    – ref. The takeaway from the Venice Biennale saga: the art world faces deep and troubling structural inequality – https://theconversation.com/the-takeaway-from-the-venice-biennale-saga-the-art-world-faces-deep-and-troubling-structural-inequality-260316

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Tears, trauma and unpaid work: why men in tinnies aren’t the only heroes during a flood disaster

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca McNaught, Research Fellow, Rural and Remote Health, University of Sydney

    Dan Peled/Getty Images

    When flooding strikes, our screens fill with scenes of devastated victims, and men performing heroic dinghy rescues in swollen rivers. But another story often goes untold: how women step in, and step up, to hold their stricken communities together.

    Unprecedented floods in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales in 2022 are a case in point. Our research shows female leadership was the hidden backbone of community recovery in the aftermath of the emergency. Women rose to leadership roles, filling crucial gaps left by formal disaster responses. As one woman told us:

    I mean there’s some blokes around, I’ve got to give them some credit, but, yeah, I’m amazed … it was always the women saying, what do you need? What can I help with?

    And long after the disaster had passed and the media had moved on, women were still there, quietly leading sustained recovery efforts from their homes, community halls and online networks.

    But while the labour of men was generally supported and recognised, the complex and difficult work of women was largely overlooked.

    The invisible labour of disaster recovery

    The NSW Northern Rivers region is a rural area highly prone to climate disaster.

    In February and March 2022, the region experienced catastrophic flooding and landslips. About 11,000 homes were inundated. Health care facilities were damaged and disrupted. Emergency services were overwhelmed and many communities were cut off, some for weeks.

    In response, the community stepped up in extraordinary ways. Our research explored the particular contribution of women to this effort.

    The research focused on the contribution of women to community recovery after the Lismore floods.
    Dan Peled/Getty Images

    ‘No one else was going to do it’

    The research involved interviews with people involved in the flood response and recovery. We also examined notes from public events and transcripts from a NSW government inquiry into the floods.

    We found that, despite facing immense challenges, women played an essential role in sustaining their communities during and after the crisis.

    For example, they coordinated food relief, managed donation hubs, organised volunteers and provided emotional support to neighbours and strangers. As one female interviewee told us:

    It was more than about food … people would just come and then we’d just hug them and they’d just cry … the food relief turned into something deeper.

    Emergency-management environments are often dominated by men. As a result, female community organisers often felt excluded from formal decision-making. As one woman told us:

    every face in the meeting was a white middle-aged guy with a buzz cut. And, and I was like, there is no women. There is no diversity. There was no sense of community or that whole recovery space.

    One woman cited the example of a local council celebrating “men in their dinghies” who took part in a flood rescue, while failing to recognise women who collectively contributed many thousands of unpaid hours towards the recovery effort:

    here we are with just simply a trillion women doing all of the childcare, all of the cooking, all of the soft labour, literally everything plus being on dinghies … and there’s just nothing for us.

    Some women took unpaid leave from work to coordinate recovery activities in their communities, because, as one woman told us, “no one else was going to do it”.

    Women’s roles were not limited to unskilled tasks and care work. Women also brought professional skills to the recovery effort, such as event management, IT, nursing, communications, clinical psychology, trauma healing, business management, social work and public health.

    Women: there for the long term

    We found while men’s involvement in disaster recovery tended to be concentrated on specific short-term rescue and response, women tended to remain active for months or even years.

    For example, two years after the flooding disaster, at a gathering of grassroots community-disaster
    organisers, 87% of names on the contact list were female.

    Some women continued to volunteer their labour, while others managed to obtain short-term funding. Whether paid or unpaid, the women experienced overwhelm and felt exhausted by the long-term effort, and some experienced vicarious trauma. However, their sense of community responsibility prevented them from stepping back.

    Rethinking who we see as leaders

    The research confirms women’s contributions are consistently overlooked during and after a disaster. It reflects a broader trend in Australia, where women’s labour is historically undervalued.

    Women’s disaster work – coordinating volunteers, providing emotional care and advocating for their communities – was often unsupported by government and continued long after official agencies left.

    Yet, these contributions remained largely invisible.

    Three years after the floods, many women in the Northern Rivers are preparing for the next emergency, and women comprise the majority of community resilience groups in the region.

    Women must be recognised and supported to ensure the health and wellbeing of disaster-affected communities. The health and wellbeing of these women themselves must also be paramount.

    More government and private funding is vital. Where possible, philanthropic community grants should also be expanded.

    The recently formed Northern Rivers Community Resilience Alliance involves 50 grassroots groups combining to provide peer support, advocate together, seek joint funding and provide training. Such networks can provide ongoing support to community organisers.

    As Earth’s climate becomes more hostile and extreme weather events become more likely, there is an urgent need to support community efforts – and to rethink who we see as leaders in times of disaster. Building resilient communities starts with recognising and resourcing the people doing the work – including local women.

    The authors acknowledge Emma Pittaway, Loriana Bethune and Dominica Meade who co-authored the research upon which this article is based.

    Rebecca McNaught receives funding from The Peregrine Foundation and Gender and Disasters Australia. She is a board member of not-for-profit Plan C and President of the volunteer group the South Golden Beach, New Brighton and Ocean Shores Community Resilience Team. She attends the Northern Rivers Community Resilience Alliance.

    Jo Longman has received funding from the NSW State Government Disaster Risk Reduction Fund and the Healthy Environments and Lives Innovation Fund. She is affiliated as a volunteer with Plan C’s research team.

    – ref. Tears, trauma and unpaid work: why men in tinnies aren’t the only heroes during a flood disaster – https://theconversation.com/tears-trauma-and-unpaid-work-why-men-in-tinnies-arent-the-only-heroes-during-a-flood-disaster-260327

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: 10 steps governments can take now to stamp out child sexual abuse in care settings

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Mathews, Distinguished Professor, School of Law, Queensland University of Technology

    Recent cases of prolific alleged child sexual abuse in Melbourne and other Australian early childhood education and care settings have shocked even experienced people who work to prevent child sexual abuse. Parents are right to be outraged, scared and uncertain.

    The most pressing issue, then, is what we do about it.

    Regulation and practice is still falling short, despite all our knowledge and prior recommendations. We have the benefit of the gold-standard Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (including Volume 6 on making institutions child-safe). We can also draw on rigorous scientific work about how best to prevent child sexual abuse in child and youth-serving organisations.

    Criminal history checks are essential, but many offenders will not have a criminal record. These checks are only one part of an entire safety system. Other measures are arguably even more important.

    The federal government, together with states and territories, recently announced new measures. However, these are acknowledged as only a first step.

    Children have a right to be safe from sexual violence. Continued failure is unacceptable. National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds’ demand for a national inquiry, which can fully understand current limitations in the system and create a comprehensive blueprint for reform, is compelling.

    The established evidence has already identified some of these pillars of reform. Here are ten key actions for policy-makers to create key components of safe early childhood education and care settings.

    1. Policy. Every organisation needs to operate under a comprehensive policy about child safety. This should include specific guidelines for the prevention of sexual abuse. The policy should also include clear definitions and objectives, and be driven by a zero-tolerance approach.

    2. Safe screening and hiring. Every organisation needs to recruit staff through rigorous processes, including criminal history checks (supported by information-sharing within and between jurisdictions). But this is only a starting point. Staff are educators and carers, not babysitters; they should be properly qualified and appropriately remunerated.

    Should men be banned from employment in these settings? Employment discrimination based on gender is likely a step too far, but considerations of risk are important and children’s best interests are paramount. Nearly all sexual abuse of young children is by men, and stringent measures could be employed when recruiting men to child-related positions.

    3. Code of conduct. A detailed code of conduct is essential. This is the operating manual for the organisation and its staff, and should be made available to parents. A robust code will specify what conduct is prohibited, and what is required. It will have special rules for high-risk situations – for example, bathrooms, changing clothes, physical interaction, and technology use.

    4. Supervision and monitoring. A safe organisation must have appropriate measures for the implementation of the safety framework. It must also monitor the framework and its components. For example, there must be: appropriate staff supervision, recording of the approach to safety and its implementation, external auditing and oversight. Parents should be involved in oversight.

    All childcare centres should have rigorous prevention, supervision and reporting procedures in place.
    Shutterstock

    5. Environmental risk reduction. Often called “situational crime prevention”, these are actions to create safe environments. It can include measures to prohibit secluded spaces, and improve lines of sight and visibility. This can also include ensuring appropriate ratios of staff to children.

    6. Reporting of suspected cases. Across Australia, there are now clear legal requirements for practitioners in these settings to report suspected cases of child sexual abuse. Every organisation needs to ensure its staff knows about these duties, and how to comply with them. Every organisation then needs to deal appropriately with any report that is made.

    7. Education and training. Child sexual abuse is a complex field. Staff and leaders need high-quality education and training about child sexual abuse (including its nature, indicators and outcomes), organisational policy, reporting processes, legal and ethical obligations, and the protections they have as employees.

    Good education increases knowledge, attitudes and appropriate reporting, and overcomes ignorance, apathy, fear and inaction. This education needs to be multidisciplinary, high-standard, and itself the subject of oversight and monitoring. It is not clear we have high-quality education of practitioners in Australia, both when obtaining qualifications and especially in service.

    8. Leadership. We need knowledgeable and ethical leadership in child- and youth-serving organisations, and by regulators and policy-makers alike.

    Knowledge about child sexual abuse, and empathy towards children and young people, are preconditions for effective and ethical responses. Organisational leaders set the tone for the broader organisation. If leaders are seen to be knowledgeable, ethical and authentically committed to child safety, it is far more likely staff will be inspired to emulate these qualities.

    9. Oversight, enforcement and improvement. The entire system needs to be overseen by an effective regulatory framework and an efficient national regulator.

    We need to create comprehensive and stringent regulatory requirements for provider accreditation. Providers that do not meet these standards should be compelled to meet them, or lose funding and eligibility to operate. It is insufficient to be merely “working towards” the standards.

    Other accountability mechanisms should also be created; for example, owners of childcare centres could be subject to appropriate financial and other penalties.

    10. Locate prevention in these settings as part of a national strategy. As a nation, we have made progress in reducing the prevalence of child sexual abuse in organisational settings. This is partly due to tighter regulation through child-safe standards, legal requirements to report suspected cases of abuse and associated better reporting, and increased social awareness.

    However, no case is acceptable, and we have the capacity and duty to dramatically reduce the prospect that any individual can be a prolific offender. These prevention principles apply equally in schools and other settings serving children and youth.

    We have work to do: among all Australians aged 16 and over, nationally representative data has shown one in four experienced child sexual abuse. In contemporary Australia, this abuse is still prevalent, with data from 16–24-year-olds showing one in three girls are affected, and one in seven boys. The next generation of prevention is already here, but we know what is required to meet this challenge.

    This can be a turning point for Australia. The social and economic return from taking children’s rights seriously and investing in prevention far outweighs the cost of inaction. Safe, effective early childhood education and care is a nation-building strategy, both required for today’s workforce and a key factor in educating and developing young Australians.

    Ben Mathews has received grant funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Department of Social Services, the National Office for Child Safety in the Attorney-General’s Department, the Australian Institute of Criminology, and the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse. He takes sole responsibility for the views in this article.

    – ref. 10 steps governments can take now to stamp out child sexual abuse in care settings – https://theconversation.com/10-steps-governments-can-take-now-to-stamp-out-child-sexual-abuse-in-care-settings-260405

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Does eating cheese before bed really give you nightmares? Here’s what the science says

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charlotte Gupta, Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Appleton Institute, HealthWise Research Group, CQUniversity Australia

    Phoenixns/Shutterstock, The Conversation, CC BY

    Have you heard people say eating cheese before bed will cause you to have vivid dreams or nightmares?

    It’s a relatively common idea. And this week, a new study has landed this suggestion back in the spotlight.

    But is it true? Let’s unpack the evidence.

    A gouda night’s sleep?

    Canadian researchers recently investigated this idea in a sample of 1,082 undergraduate psychology students. The students completed a survey, which included questions about how they perceived their diet influenced their sleep and dreams.

    Some 40% of participants reported certain foods impacted their sleep, with 25% of the whole sample claiming certain foods worsened their sleep, and 20% reporting certain foods improved their sleep.

    Only 5.5% of respondents believed what they ate affected the nature of their dreams. But many of these people thought sweets or dairy products (such as cheese) made their dreams more strange or disturbing and worsened their sleep.

    In contrast, participants reported fruits, vegetables and herbal teas led to better sleep.

    This study used self-reporting, meaning the results rely on the participants recalling and reporting information about their sleep and dreams accurately. This could have affected the results.

    It’s also possible participants were already familiar with the notion that cheese causes nightmares, especially given they were psychology students, many of whom may have studied sleep and dreaming.

    This awareness could have made them more likely to notice or perceive their sleep was disrupted after eating dairy. In other words, the idea cheese leads to nightmares may have acted like a self-fulfilling prophecy and results may overestimate the actual likelihood of strange dreams.

    Nonetheless, these findings show some people perceive a connection between what they eat and how they dream.

    While there’s no evidence to prove cheese causes nightmares, there is evidence that does explain a link.

    The science behind cheese and nightmares

    Humans are diurnal creatures, meaning our body is primed to be asleep at night and awake during the day. Eating cheese before bed means we’re challenging the body with food at a time when it really doesn’t want to be eating.

    At night, our physiological systems are not primed to digest food. For example, it takes longer for food to move through our digestive tract at night compared with during the day.

    If we eat close to going to sleep, our body has to process and digest the food while we’re sleeping. This is a bit like running through mud – we can do it, but it’s slow and inefficient.

    Cheese can be particularly challenging to digest at night because of high concentrations of fat and protein, which slows down our digestion.

    If your body is processing and digesting food instead of focusing all its resources on sleep, this can affect your shut-eye. Research has shown eating close to bedtime reduces our sleep quality, particularly our time spent in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is the stage of sleep associated with vivid dreams.

    People will have an even harder time digesting cheese at night if they’re lactose intolerant, which might mean they experience even greater impacts on their sleep. This follows what the Canadian researchers found in their study, with lactose intolerant participants reporting poorer sleep quality and more nightmares.

    It’s important to note we might actually have vivid dreams or nightmares every night – what could change is whether we’re aware of the dreams and can remember them when we wake up.

    Poor sleep quality often means we wake up more during the night. If we wake up during REM sleep, research shows we’re more likely to report vivid dreams or nightmares that we mightn’t even remember if we hadn’t woken up during them.

    This is very relevant for the cheese and nightmares question. Put simply, eating before bed impacts our sleep quality, so we’re more likely to wake up during our nightmares and remember them.

    What we eat, particularly just before bed, can affect our sleep.
    Ivan Oboleninov/Pexels

    Can I still have brie before bedtime?

    Don’t panic – I’m not here to tell you to give up your cheesy evenings. But what we eat before bed can make a real difference to how well we sleep, so timing matters.

    General sleep hygiene guidelines suggest avoiding meals at least two hours before bed. So even if you’re eating a very cheese-heavy meal, you have a window of time before bed to digest the meal and drift off to a nice peaceful sleep.

    How about other dairy products?

    Cheese isn’t the only dairy product which may influence our sleep. Most of us have heard about the benefits of having a warm glass of milk before bed.

    Milk can be easier to digest than cheese. In fact, milk is a good choice in the evening, as it contains tryptophan, an amino acid that helps promote sleep.

    Nonetheless, we still don’t want to be challenging our body with too much dairy before bed. Participants in the Canadian study did report nightmares after dairy, and milk close to bed might have contributed to this.

    While it’s wise to steer clear of food (especially cheese) in the two hours before lights out, there’s no need to avoid cheese altogether. Enjoy that cheesy pasta or cheese board, just give your body time to digest before heading off to sleep. If you’re having a late night cheese craving, opt for something small. Your sleep (and your dreams) will thank you.

    Charlotte Gupta 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. Does eating cheese before bed really give you nightmares? Here’s what the science says – https://theconversation.com/does-eating-cheese-before-bed-really-give-you-nightmares-heres-what-the-science-says-260205

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Experiencing extreme weather and disasters is not enough to change views on climate action, study shows

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Omid Ghasemi, Research Associate in Behavioural Science at the Institute for Climate Risk & Response, UNSW Sydney

    STR / AFP via Getty Images

    Climate change has made extreme weather events such as bushfires and floods more frequent and more likely in recent years, and the trend is expected to continue. These events have led to human and animal deaths, harmed physical and mental health, and damaged properties and infrastructure.

    Will firsthand experience of these events change how people think and act about climate change, making it seem immediate and local rather than a distant or future problem?

    Research so far has offered a mixed picture. Some studies suggest going through extreme weather can make people more likely to believe in climate change, worry about it, support climate policies, and vote for Green parties. But other studies have found no such effects on people’s beliefs, concern, or behaviour.

    New research led by Viktoria Cologna at ETH Zurich in Switzerland may help to explain what’s going on. Using data from around the world, the study suggests simple exposure to extreme weather events does not affect people’s view of climate action – but linking those events to climate change can make a big difference.

    Global opinion, global weather

    The new study, published in Nature Climate Change, looked at the question of extreme weather and climate opinion using two global datasets.

    The first is the Trust in Science and Science-related Populism (TISP) survey, which includes responses from more than 70,000 people in 68 countries. It measures public support for climate policies and the extent that people think climate change is behind increases in extreme weather.

    The second dataset estimates how much of each country’s population has been affected each year by events such as droughts, floods, heatwaves and storms. These estimates are based on detailed models and historical climate records.

    Public support for climate policies

    The survey measured public support for climate policy by asking people how much they supported five specific actions to cut carbon emissions. These included raising carbon taxes, improving public transport, using more renewable energy, protecting forests and land, and taxing carbon-heavy foods.

    Responses ranged from 1 (not at all) to 3 (very much). On average, support was fairly strong, with an average rating of 2.37 across the five policies. Support was especially high in parts of South Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania, but lower in countries such as Russia, Czechia and Ethiopia.

    Exposure to extreme weather events

    The study found most people around the world have experienced heatwaves and heavy rainfall in recent decades. Wildfires affected fewer people in many European and North American countries, but were more common in parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

    Cyclones mostly impacted North America and Asia, while droughts affected large populations in Asia, Latin America and Africa. River flooding was widespread across most regions, except Oceania.

    Do people in countries with higher exposure to extreme weather events show greater support for climate policies? This study found they don’t.

    In most cases, living in a country where more people are exposed to disasters was not reflected in stronger support for climate action.

    Wildfires were the only exception. Countries with more wildfire exposure showed slightly higher support, but this link disappeared once factors such as land size and overall climate belief were considered.

    In short, just experiencing more disasters does not seem to translate into increased support for mitigation efforts.

    Seeing the link between weather and climate change

    In the global survey, people were asked how much they think climate change has increased the impact of extreme weather over recent decades. On average, responses were moderately high (3.8 out of 5) suggesting that many people do link recent weather events to climate change.

    Such an attribution was especially strong in Latin America, but lower in parts of Africa (such as Congo and Ethiopia) and Northern Europe (such as Finland and Norway).

    Crucially, people who more strongly believed climate change had worsened these events were also more likely to support climate policies. In fact, this belief mattered more for policy support than whether they had actually experienced the events firsthand.

    What does this study tell us?

    While public support for climate policies is relatively high around the world, even more support is needed to introduce stronger, more ambitious measures. It might seem reasonable to expect that feeling the effects of climate change would push people to act, but this study suggests that doesn’t always happen.

    Prior research shows less dramatic and chronic events like rainfall or temperature anomalies have less influence on public views than more acute hazards like floods or bushfires. Even then, the influence on beliefs and behaviour tends to be slow and limited.

    This study shows climate impacts alone may not change minds. However, it also highlights what may affect public thinking: helping people recognise the link between climate change and extreme weather events.

    In countries such as Australia, climate change makes up only about 1% of media coverage. What’s more, most of the coverage focuses on social or political aspects rather than scientific, ecological, or economic impacts.

    Many stories about disasters linked to climate change also fail to mention the link, or indeed mention climate change at all. Making these connections clearer may encourage stronger public support for climate action.

    Omid Ghasemi receives funding from the Australian Academy of Science. He was a member of the TISP consortium and a co-author of the dataset used in this study.

    – ref. Experiencing extreme weather and disasters is not enough to change views on climate action, study shows – https://theconversation.com/experiencing-extreme-weather-and-disasters-is-not-enough-to-change-views-on-climate-action-study-shows-260308

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: ER Report: A Roundup of Significant Articles on EveningReport.nz for July 3, 2025

    ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on July 3, 2025.

    Childcare sexual abuse is mostly committed by men. Failing to recognise that puts children at risk
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Delanie Woodlock, Senior research fellow, UNSW Sydney Australians are reeling from the news that Victorian childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown has been charged with more than 70 offences against children, including rape. As 1,200 children await results for sexually transmitted infections, a horror no parent should ever

    Overtourism is reshaping communities in Europe – could Australia be next?
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Freya Higgins-Desbiolles, Adjunct professor and adjunct senior lecturer in tourism management, University of South Australia Bumble Dee/Shutterstock A media frenzy erupted over the recent Jeff Bezos “wedding of the century” in Venice. Also notable were the public protests that showed tensions around tourism, especially mass tourism, are

    How should I talk to my kids about abuse and body safety?
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Westrupp, Associate Professor in Psychology, Deakin University Jose Luis Peleaz/Getty Hearing about child abuse in trusted places such as childcare centres is every parent’s worst nightmare. So, how can we talk to our kids about it and help them stay safe? While it’s not always possible

    Creative Australia’s backflip on Venice Biennale representatives exposes deep governance failures
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Cairnduff, Lecturer in Media and Communications, The University of Melbourne The reinstatement of artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino as Australia’s representatives for the 2026 Venice Biennale closes a bruising recent cultural episode and exposes the fragility of the systems meant to protect artistic freedom

    Catholic Church warns against PNG declaring itself a ‘Christian country’
    By Reinhard Minong in Port Moresby The Catholic Church has strongly warned against Papua New Guinea’s political rhetoric and push to declare the nation a Christian country, saying such a move threatens constitutional freedoms and risks dangerous implications for the country’s future. Speaking before the Permanent Parliamentary Committee on Communication on Tuesday at Rapopo during

    Antarctic research is in decline, and the timing couldn’t be worse
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Leane, Professor of Antarctic Studies, School of Humanities, University of Tasmania Oleksandr Matsibura/Shutterstock Ice loss in Antarctica and its impact on the planet – sea level rise, changes to ocean currents and disturbance of wildlife and food webs – has been in the news a lot

    Homes are more than walls and a roof, especially for Indigenous people. It’s time housing policy reflects that
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giles Gunesekera, PhD Researcher, University of Technology Sydney Australia is experiencing a housing crisis. But for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the challenge runs deeper than high rents and limited supply. A major problem is that housing in Australia is rarely designed with Indigenous communities

    Fallout: Spies on Norfolk Island – SBS podcast
    Pacific Media Watch In July 1985, Australia’s Pacific territory of Norfolk Island (pop. 2188) became the centre of a real life international spy thriller. Four French agents sailed there on board the Ouvéa, a yacht from Kanaky New Caledonia, after bombing the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland, killing Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira. The Rainbow Warrior was

    Trump is not like other presidents – but can he beat the ‘second term curse’ that haunts the White House?
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Garritt C. Van Dyk, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Waikato Getty Images While he likes to provoke opponents with the possibility of serving a third term, Donald Trump faces a more immediate historical burden that has plagued so many presidents: the “second term curse”. Twenty-one US

    More and more tourists are flocking to Antarctica. Let’s stop it from being loved to death
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darla Hatton MacDonald, Professor of Environmental Economics, University of Tasmania VCG via Getty Images The number of tourists heading to Antarctica has been skyrocketing. From fewer than 8,000 a year about three decades ago, nearly 125,000 tourists flocked to the icy continent in 2023–24. The trend is

    Australia’s superannuation regulator is worried about your fund’s spending. Should you be?
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Melatos, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Sydney GettyImages skynesher/Getty Australia’s superannuation regulator has written to Australian superannuation funds raising concerns their spending might not be benefiting members. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority is not just concerned with the type of expenses, but with the corporate

    Thumbs up: good or passive aggressive? How emojis became the most confusing kind of online language
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brittany Ferdinands, Lecturer in Digital Content Creation, Discipline of Media and Communications, University of Sydney The Conversation, CC BY Emojis, as well as memes and other forms of short-form content, have become central to how we express ourselves and connect online. Yet as meanings shift across different

    Lung cancer screening hopes to save lives. But we also need to watch for possible harms
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katy Bell, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology, Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney There is much to commend about Australia’s lung cancer screening program, which started on July 1. The program is based on gold-standard trial evidence showing this type of screening is likely to reduce

    Uganda’s ride-hailing motorbike service promised safety – but drivers are under pressure to speed
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rich Mallett, Research Associate and Independent Researcher, ODI Global Motorcycle-taxis are one of the fastest and most convenient ways to get around Uganda’s congested capital, Kampala. But they are also the most dangerous. Though they account for one-third of public transport trips taking place within the city,

    Philadelphia’s $2B affordable housing plan relies heavily on municipal bonds, which can come with hidden costs for taxpayers
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jade Craig, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Mississippi The Parker administration says it will issue $800 million in bonds over the next four years to fund affordable housing. Jeff Fusco/The Conversation, CC BY-NC-SA Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker’s Housing Opportunities Made Easy initiative, which was included in

    Around 250 million years ago, Earth was near-lifeless and locked in a hothouse state. Now scientists know why
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Merdith, DECRA Fellow, School of Earth Sciences, University of Adelaide Some 252 million years ago, almost all life on Earth disappeared. Known as the Permian–Triassic mass extinction – or the Great Dying – this was the most catastrophic of the five mass extinction events recognised in

    Politics with Michelle Grattan: Kerrynne Liddle on seizing more opportunities with Indigenous Australians
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra From this Sunday, Australians will be celebrating NAIDOC Week, which marks its 50th anniversary this year. The week highlights the achievements, history and culture of Australia’s First Peoples. It’s also a time to reflect on the huge effort needed to

    Supervision gaps can lead to child abuse – what can be done?
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marg Rogers, Senior Lecturer, Early Childhood Education; Post Doctoral Fellow, Manna Institute, University of New England Suwatchai Pluemruetai/Shutterstock The horrific allegations of child abuse by an early childhood educator in Victoria came to light at a time when the early learning sector was already under fire for

    Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’ has passed the US Senate – these are the winners and losers
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lester Munson, Non-Resident Fellow, United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney Igor Link/Shutterstock One of the unique aspects of Washington life is a Senate “vote-a-rama,” in which the upper house of Congress tortures itself by pulling a marathon all-nighter of speeches, amendments and votes on a critical

    Tonga cybersecurity attack wake-up call for Pacific, warns expert
    By Teuila Fuatai, RNZ Pacific senior journalist A Tongan cybersecurity expert says the country’s health data hack is a “wake-up call” for the whole region. Siosaia Vaipuna, a former director of Tonga’s cybersecurity agency, spoke to RNZ Pacific in the wake of the June 15 cyberattack on the country’s Health Ministry. Vaipuna said Tonga and

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: ER Report: A Roundup of Significant Articles on EveningReport.nz for July 3, 2025

    ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on July 3, 2025.

    Childcare sexual abuse is mostly committed by men. Failing to recognise that puts children at risk
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Delanie Woodlock, Senior research fellow, UNSW Sydney Australians are reeling from the news that Victorian childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown has been charged with more than 70 offences against children, including rape. As 1,200 children await results for sexually transmitted infections, a horror no parent should ever

    Overtourism is reshaping communities in Europe – could Australia be next?
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Freya Higgins-Desbiolles, Adjunct professor and adjunct senior lecturer in tourism management, University of South Australia Bumble Dee/Shutterstock A media frenzy erupted over the recent Jeff Bezos “wedding of the century” in Venice. Also notable were the public protests that showed tensions around tourism, especially mass tourism, are

    How should I talk to my kids about abuse and body safety?
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Westrupp, Associate Professor in Psychology, Deakin University Jose Luis Peleaz/Getty Hearing about child abuse in trusted places such as childcare centres is every parent’s worst nightmare. So, how can we talk to our kids about it and help them stay safe? While it’s not always possible

    Creative Australia’s backflip on Venice Biennale representatives exposes deep governance failures
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Cairnduff, Lecturer in Media and Communications, The University of Melbourne The reinstatement of artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino as Australia’s representatives for the 2026 Venice Biennale closes a bruising recent cultural episode and exposes the fragility of the systems meant to protect artistic freedom

    Catholic Church warns against PNG declaring itself a ‘Christian country’
    By Reinhard Minong in Port Moresby The Catholic Church has strongly warned against Papua New Guinea’s political rhetoric and push to declare the nation a Christian country, saying such a move threatens constitutional freedoms and risks dangerous implications for the country’s future. Speaking before the Permanent Parliamentary Committee on Communication on Tuesday at Rapopo during

    Antarctic research is in decline, and the timing couldn’t be worse
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Leane, Professor of Antarctic Studies, School of Humanities, University of Tasmania Oleksandr Matsibura/Shutterstock Ice loss in Antarctica and its impact on the planet – sea level rise, changes to ocean currents and disturbance of wildlife and food webs – has been in the news a lot

    Homes are more than walls and a roof, especially for Indigenous people. It’s time housing policy reflects that
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giles Gunesekera, PhD Researcher, University of Technology Sydney Australia is experiencing a housing crisis. But for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the challenge runs deeper than high rents and limited supply. A major problem is that housing in Australia is rarely designed with Indigenous communities

    Fallout: Spies on Norfolk Island – SBS podcast
    Pacific Media Watch In July 1985, Australia’s Pacific territory of Norfolk Island (pop. 2188) became the centre of a real life international spy thriller. Four French agents sailed there on board the Ouvéa, a yacht from Kanaky New Caledonia, after bombing the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland, killing Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira. The Rainbow Warrior was

    Trump is not like other presidents – but can he beat the ‘second term curse’ that haunts the White House?
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Garritt C. Van Dyk, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Waikato Getty Images While he likes to provoke opponents with the possibility of serving a third term, Donald Trump faces a more immediate historical burden that has plagued so many presidents: the “second term curse”. Twenty-one US

    More and more tourists are flocking to Antarctica. Let’s stop it from being loved to death
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darla Hatton MacDonald, Professor of Environmental Economics, University of Tasmania VCG via Getty Images The number of tourists heading to Antarctica has been skyrocketing. From fewer than 8,000 a year about three decades ago, nearly 125,000 tourists flocked to the icy continent in 2023–24. The trend is

    Australia’s superannuation regulator is worried about your fund’s spending. Should you be?
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Melatos, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Sydney GettyImages skynesher/Getty Australia’s superannuation regulator has written to Australian superannuation funds raising concerns their spending might not be benefiting members. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority is not just concerned with the type of expenses, but with the corporate

    Thumbs up: good or passive aggressive? How emojis became the most confusing kind of online language
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brittany Ferdinands, Lecturer in Digital Content Creation, Discipline of Media and Communications, University of Sydney The Conversation, CC BY Emojis, as well as memes and other forms of short-form content, have become central to how we express ourselves and connect online. Yet as meanings shift across different

    Lung cancer screening hopes to save lives. But we also need to watch for possible harms
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katy Bell, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology, Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney There is much to commend about Australia’s lung cancer screening program, which started on July 1. The program is based on gold-standard trial evidence showing this type of screening is likely to reduce

    Uganda’s ride-hailing motorbike service promised safety – but drivers are under pressure to speed
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rich Mallett, Research Associate and Independent Researcher, ODI Global Motorcycle-taxis are one of the fastest and most convenient ways to get around Uganda’s congested capital, Kampala. But they are also the most dangerous. Though they account for one-third of public transport trips taking place within the city,

    Philadelphia’s $2B affordable housing plan relies heavily on municipal bonds, which can come with hidden costs for taxpayers
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jade Craig, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Mississippi The Parker administration says it will issue $800 million in bonds over the next four years to fund affordable housing. Jeff Fusco/The Conversation, CC BY-NC-SA Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker’s Housing Opportunities Made Easy initiative, which was included in

    Around 250 million years ago, Earth was near-lifeless and locked in a hothouse state. Now scientists know why
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Merdith, DECRA Fellow, School of Earth Sciences, University of Adelaide Some 252 million years ago, almost all life on Earth disappeared. Known as the Permian–Triassic mass extinction – or the Great Dying – this was the most catastrophic of the five mass extinction events recognised in

    Politics with Michelle Grattan: Kerrynne Liddle on seizing more opportunities with Indigenous Australians
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra From this Sunday, Australians will be celebrating NAIDOC Week, which marks its 50th anniversary this year. The week highlights the achievements, history and culture of Australia’s First Peoples. It’s also a time to reflect on the huge effort needed to

    Supervision gaps can lead to child abuse – what can be done?
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marg Rogers, Senior Lecturer, Early Childhood Education; Post Doctoral Fellow, Manna Institute, University of New England Suwatchai Pluemruetai/Shutterstock The horrific allegations of child abuse by an early childhood educator in Victoria came to light at a time when the early learning sector was already under fire for

    Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’ has passed the US Senate – these are the winners and losers
    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lester Munson, Non-Resident Fellow, United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney Igor Link/Shutterstock One of the unique aspects of Washington life is a Senate “vote-a-rama,” in which the upper house of Congress tortures itself by pulling a marathon all-nighter of speeches, amendments and votes on a critical

    Tonga cybersecurity attack wake-up call for Pacific, warns expert
    By Teuila Fuatai, RNZ Pacific senior journalist A Tongan cybersecurity expert says the country’s health data hack is a “wake-up call” for the whole region. Siosaia Vaipuna, a former director of Tonga’s cybersecurity agency, spoke to RNZ Pacific in the wake of the June 15 cyberattack on the country’s Health Ministry. Vaipuna said Tonga and

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The Dalai Lama is a cisgender man – yet he has an unexpected connection to the trans community

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Kerry, Lecturer in Sociology, Charles Darwin University

    Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, turns 90 this week – a milestone that’s reigniting speculation over his eventual successor.

    While the Dalai Lama is the face of Buddhism to many people across the world, he is actually the head of just one tradition within Tibetan Buddhism known as the Gelug school.

    Tibetans believe the Dalai Lama to be the manifestation of Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, and the “one who hears the cries of the world”.



    Read more:
    What is a bodhisattva? A scholar of Buddhism explains

    Avalokiteśvara is prayed to across Asia, and is known as Chenrezig in Tibet, Guanyin in China, and Kannon or Kanzeon in Japan.

    A statue of Avalokiteśvara.
    Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

    In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a person, or a mythic representation of a person, who denies themselves enlightenment until all beings can achieve enlightenment. Avalokiteśvara appears to living beings in whatever form could best save them.

    Although Avalokiteśvara originated in India as a man, they can be depicted as either a man, woman, or non-binary being. This gender fluidity has led to them being revered as a trans icon in the West.

    I have spent the past five years investigating the lives of queer Buddhists in Australia. As part of this research, I have surveyed and interviewed 109 LGBTQIA+ Buddhist Australians.

    The words of these individuals, and my own experience as a genderqueer Buddhist person, reveal how the Dalai Lama emerges an an unlikely inspiration for individuals sharing a trans and Buddhist identity.

    The Big Buddha is a large bronze sculpture located near the Po Lin Monastery on Lantau Island, Hong Kong.
    Joshua J. Cotten/Unsplash

    Letting go of binaries

    Through my work I have found LGBTQIA+ Buddhist Australians are generally reluctant to disclose their queer identities to their Buddhist communities, and may be told to remain silent about their identities.

    For some, Avalokiteśvara’s gender fluidity has been important for reaffirming both their queer and Buddhist selves.

    One Buddhist trans woman, Annie*, told me Guanyin had special significance for her. Annie spoke about Avalokiteśvara travelling from India to China as a male, before “transitioning” to the mainly female presentation of Guanyin over centuries. Annie said:

    I pray to her regularly and often find I get a response. Of course the enlightened state is beyond all manner of worldly binaries, including gender, and is immensely important in letting go of binaries in my journey towards enlightenment.

    Walter* has had a long fascination with depictions of Avalokiteśvara that “showed ‘him’ looking effeminate and handsome, with a cute moustache […] A little bit homoerotic, a little bit provocatively gender fluid, as seen through my eyes”.

    Walter adds:

    A great many people in different cultures, across history, worship these figures. Clever how this figure can morph into a radical trans! We all want to feel comforted, safe and saved from suffering.

    As queer Buddhists, we turn to to Avalokitesvara to feel “comforted, safe and saved”.

    Another interviewee, Brian*, told me about a Tibetan invocation practice he did with a senior Tibetan monk, in which he encountered Guanyin:

    [She] took my right hand and passed some sort of power into it. She never spoke to me but just returned the way she had come. I was given some sort of gift, that’s all I know.

    Since this experience, Brian has “always felt a strong connection to the feminine through her”. He has a special Guanyin altar on his farm.

    You can’t be what you can’t see

    Some Buddhists deny Avalokiteśvara’s queerness.

    Asher*, a genderqueer Buddhist I interviewed, told me about a teacher who said to them, “there was absolutely no way a gay person could be enlightened”.

    Asher retorted:

    What about Kanzeon, the bodhisattva of compassion, who has manifested as both male and female and, in the stories from Japan, has had erotic relationships with monks?

    The teacher dismissed this, replying, “those are just stories”.

    A black statue of Avalokiteśvara outside a Japanese temple.
    Wikimedia, CC BY

    In her 1996 book Transgender Warriors, trans activist Leslie Feinberg writes: “I couldn’t find myself in history. No one like me seemed to have ever existed.”

    Similarly, Annie evoked the statement: “You can’t be what you can’t see.”

    I, too, experience this need to see myself as a genderqueer, non-binary practitioner of Zen Buddhism. It was only through doing these interviews with other queer Buddhists that I came to realise Guanyin, a trans icon, is a statuette which adorns the altar of the Buddhist group I belong to.

    Knowing Avalokitesvara may be depicted as a man, woman, or non-binary being lets us queer Buddhists know we exist – and have always existed – within Buddhism.

    Despite being a cisgender man who has been somewhat inconsistent in his support of queer people, the Dalai Lama, as the manifestation of the bodhisattva of compassion, is a possible spiritual link between today’s queer Buddhists and centuries-long traditions of gender transition and fluidity.

    *Names have been changed.

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

    – ref. The Dalai Lama is a cisgender man – yet he has an unexpected connection to the trans community – https://theconversation.com/the-dalai-lama-is-a-cisgender-man-yet-he-has-an-unexpected-connection-to-the-trans-community-260106

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The Dalai Lama is a cisgender man – yet he has an unexpected connection to the trans community

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Kerry, Lecturer in Sociology, Charles Darwin University

    Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, turns 90 this week – a milestone that’s reigniting speculation over his eventual successor.

    While the Dalai Lama is the face of Buddhism to many people across the world, he is actually the head of just one tradition within Tibetan Buddhism known as the Gelug school.

    Tibetans believe the Dalai Lama to be the manifestation of Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, and the “one who hears the cries of the world”.



    Read more:
    What is a bodhisattva? A scholar of Buddhism explains

    Avalokiteśvara is prayed to across Asia, and is known as Chenrezig in Tibet, Guanyin in China, and Kannon or Kanzeon in Japan.

    A statue of Avalokiteśvara.
    Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

    In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a person, or a mythic representation of a person, who denies themselves enlightenment until all beings can achieve enlightenment. Avalokiteśvara appears to living beings in whatever form could best save them.

    Although Avalokiteśvara originated in India as a man, they can be depicted as either a man, woman, or non-binary being. This gender fluidity has led to them being revered as a trans icon in the West.

    I have spent the past five years investigating the lives of queer Buddhists in Australia. As part of this research, I have surveyed and interviewed 109 LGBTQIA+ Buddhist Australians.

    The words of these individuals, and my own experience as a genderqueer Buddhist person, reveal how the Dalai Lama emerges an an unlikely inspiration for individuals sharing a trans and Buddhist identity.

    The Big Buddha is a large bronze sculpture located near the Po Lin Monastery on Lantau Island, Hong Kong.
    Joshua J. Cotten/Unsplash

    Letting go of binaries

    Through my work I have found LGBTQIA+ Buddhist Australians are generally reluctant to disclose their queer identities to their Buddhist communities, and may be told to remain silent about their identities.

    For some, Avalokiteśvara’s gender fluidity has been important for reaffirming both their queer and Buddhist selves.

    One Buddhist trans woman, Annie*, told me Guanyin had special significance for her. Annie spoke about Avalokiteśvara travelling from India to China as a male, before “transitioning” to the mainly female presentation of Guanyin over centuries. Annie said:

    I pray to her regularly and often find I get a response. Of course the enlightened state is beyond all manner of worldly binaries, including gender, and is immensely important in letting go of binaries in my journey towards enlightenment.

    Walter* has had a long fascination with depictions of Avalokiteśvara that “showed ‘him’ looking effeminate and handsome, with a cute moustache […] A little bit homoerotic, a little bit provocatively gender fluid, as seen through my eyes”.

    Walter adds:

    A great many people in different cultures, across history, worship these figures. Clever how this figure can morph into a radical trans! We all want to feel comforted, safe and saved from suffering.

    As queer Buddhists, we turn to to Avalokitesvara to feel “comforted, safe and saved”.

    Another interviewee, Brian*, told me about a Tibetan invocation practice he did with a senior Tibetan monk, in which he encountered Guanyin:

    [She] took my right hand and passed some sort of power into it. She never spoke to me but just returned the way she had come. I was given some sort of gift, that’s all I know.

    Since this experience, Brian has “always felt a strong connection to the feminine through her”. He has a special Guanyin altar on his farm.

    You can’t be what you can’t see

    Some Buddhists deny Avalokiteśvara’s queerness.

    Asher*, a genderqueer Buddhist I interviewed, told me about a teacher who said to them, “there was absolutely no way a gay person could be enlightened”.

    Asher retorted:

    What about Kanzeon, the bodhisattva of compassion, who has manifested as both male and female and, in the stories from Japan, has had erotic relationships with monks?

    The teacher dismissed this, replying, “those are just stories”.

    A black statue of Avalokiteśvara outside a Japanese temple.
    Wikimedia, CC BY

    In her 1996 book Transgender Warriors, trans activist Leslie Feinberg writes: “I couldn’t find myself in history. No one like me seemed to have ever existed.”

    Similarly, Annie evoked the statement: “You can’t be what you can’t see.”

    I, too, experience this need to see myself as a genderqueer, non-binary practitioner of Zen Buddhism. It was only through doing these interviews with other queer Buddhists that I came to realise Guanyin, a trans icon, is a statuette which adorns the altar of the Buddhist group I belong to.

    Knowing Avalokitesvara may be depicted as a man, woman, or non-binary being lets us queer Buddhists know we exist – and have always existed – within Buddhism.

    Despite being a cisgender man who has been somewhat inconsistent in his support of queer people, the Dalai Lama, as the manifestation of the bodhisattva of compassion, is a possible spiritual link between today’s queer Buddhists and centuries-long traditions of gender transition and fluidity.

    *Names have been changed.

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

    – ref. The Dalai Lama is a cisgender man – yet he has an unexpected connection to the trans community – https://theconversation.com/the-dalai-lama-is-a-cisgender-man-yet-he-has-an-unexpected-connection-to-the-trans-community-260106

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Overtourism is reshaping communities in Europe – could Australia be next?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Freya Higgins-Desbiolles, Adjunct professor and adjunct senior lecturer in tourism management, University of South Australia

    Bumble Dee/Shutterstock

    A media frenzy erupted over the recent Jeff Bezos “wedding of the century” in Venice.

    Also notable were the public protests that showed tensions around tourism, especially mass tourism, are increasing. Leading the action was the activist collective No space for Bezos, which declared:

    [This wedding] is at the expense of those who live, work, and study in this city [and who are] already faced with countless difficulties after years of mass tourism.

    They complained Venice had been turned into a “private amusement park” for the rich. Locals were fighting for what they describe as a “living Venice”, not a tourism playground.

    The backlash against overtourism is sparking protests across several countries. It has even prompted the US State Department to urge travellers to be cautious when heading to Europe this summer.

    Growth at all costs

    Local residents feel their communities are being reshaped to cater for visitors, and are pushing back against what they call the “touristification” of place.

    Touristification describes a situation where locals fear their home towns and cities are being developed, designed and managed to attract and accommodate tourists.

    This touristification process benefits commerce and industries that profit from catering to visitors. Everyone else misses out, or is literally pushed out by rising housing costs.

    At the heart of this polarising issue are some key questions. Are such places “tourism destinations” or do they belong to the local people who live there? Whose interests should prevail when tourism growth exacerbates tensions?

    These issues are being thoroughly investigated, including through a project I am involved in – Chronic Emergencies and Ecosocial Transformations in Touristified Coastal Spaces. Such research is focused on understanding the problems of tourism and co-designing solutions with communities.

    Continual growth in tourism is one of the guiding principles the industry promotes. It is this “growth fetish” that is catalysing overtourism and unsustainability. This is when tourism exceeds the local social and ecological carrying capacity of a place.

    It means there are simply too many tourists, and the impact is poorly managed.

    Aussie hotspots

    The dynamics of overtourism are emerging in some Australian locations. This includes popular coastal destinations such as Byron Bay and small towns along the scenic Great Ocean Road.

    Some places are overwhelmed by short-term overtourism. This may be the result of mega cruise ship visits or viral postings on social media, such as images of Western Australia’s popular pink lakes.

    Byron Bay offers a telling example. It has evolved from a place attractive for alternative lifestyles, to a magnet for social media influencers and the location for the Netflix series Byron Baes.

    As a result, Byron Bay is the epitome of overtourism in Australia. Local housing, for instance, is being sacrificed for holiday rentals, facilitated by agencies such as Airbnb.

    Not surprisingly, there is growing local resistance to tourism overwhelming the sense of place.

    Is Australia in danger of touristification?

    If we aren’t careful, popular opposition to mass tourism will continue to grow here in Australia.

    But whether we see the European phenomenon of touristification is harder to discern.

    It may already be evident when environmental and social regulations are overturned to make development processes more friendly to the tourism industry.

    Projects can be fast tracked if they are declared a high-priority “major development”, which allows governments to override restrictive regulations. Anti-red-tape rhetoric is clear in Queensland’s tourism strategy harnessing the growth power of the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

    Another example of touristification may be when taxpayer-funded events are run for branding presence on a national or international stage rather, than for the benefit of the surrounding community.

    For example, the South Australian government found itself in hot water when its tourism commission held a marketing event featuring a Sam Smith concert at d’Arenberg winery. Social media influencers were invited to attend – many from interstate with all expenses paid – but locals weren’t welcome.

    It also occurs when public commons are appropriated for tourism purposes, including national parks and protected areas, public spaces and beaches.

    Another example – again from South Australia – involves the decision to move the annual LIV Golf tournament to the Adelaide Parklands from 2028. The state government is being accused of a public land grab. The Adelaide community loves these heritage listed parklands and has resisted attempts to co-opt their use for private interests for decades.

    Reclaimining a sense of place

    Ultimately, in places like Venice, Bali and even in Byron Bay, local communities do not feel heard or empowered by tourism models which are focused on growth.

    Their protest actions are designed to ensure their quality of life is not undermined in the process of catering to tourists. It is a struggle for reclaiming places as local people’s homes, rather than as tourist destinations.

    While locations can be shared, tourism must be better managed so locals don’t find their homes unrecognisable – or even worse, find themselves displaced.

    Freya Higgins-Desbiolles is a collaborator on a project led by colleagues at the University of the Balearic Islands entitled ‘Chronic Emergencies and Ecosocial Transformations in Touristified Coastal Spaces’. This article is part of the R+D+i PID2022-137648OB-C21 financed by MICIU/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and by “ERDF, EU”.

    – ref. Overtourism is reshaping communities in Europe – could Australia be next? – https://theconversation.com/overtourism-is-reshaping-communities-in-europe-could-australia-be-next-260173

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Childcare sexual abuse is mostly committed by men. Failing to recognise that puts children at risk

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Delanie Woodlock, Senior research fellow, UNSW Sydney

    Australians are reeling from the news that Victorian childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown has been charged with more than 70 offences against children, including rape.

    As 1,200 children await results for sexually transmitted infections, a horror no parent should ever face, media commentary has begun to focus on how this case might have implications for male childcare workers.

    Early childhood education is a heavily female-dominated field, and past inquiries into child sexual abuse by male educators have found that, in efforts to avoid appearing discriminatory, male workers are often subject to less scrutiny. This dynamic is compounded by efforts for gender balance in childcare, particularly for the perceived benefits of male role models.

    Ironically, this fear of seeming biased can create the very conditions that offenders exploit – grooming colleagues, parents and children to commit abuse while hidden in plain sight.

    While it is an uncomfortable fact to confront, research shows men with a sexual interest in children are disproportionately more likely to work with children, including in early education and care. Recent data show that one in 20 men in the Australian community are motivated offenders (individuals who reported both sexual interest in and offending against children). However, they are almost three times more likely to work with children compared to other men.

    Unfortunately, systematic data on child sexual abuse in childcare settings are limited. However, existing findings align with the only comprehensive study conducted on this issue, which followed the highly publicised McMartin Preschool trial in the United States.

    This study examined cases from 1983 to 1985, and identified 270 daycare centres where 1,639 children were found to have experienced substantiated sexual abuse. Although men made up only about 5% of childcare staff, they were responsible for 60% of the offences. The abuse was often severe, with 93% of victims subjected to some form of penetrative sexual violence.

    Those who deliberately pursue employment with children to abuse them are often referred to as “professional perpetrators”. These individuals typically have multiple victims and pose a high risk of repeated harm.

    In our current research on serial child sex offenders in childcare settings in Australia and internationally, we identified six cases involving between seven and 87 confirmed victims under the age of five. Five of the offenders were male and one was female. Together, they sexually abused at least 245 children.

    There were striking similarities across these cases. Offenders primarily targeted pre-verbal children, evaded detection for long periods, and were only exposed through external investigations, most often related to the possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material.

    Much like the details emerging from the case of Joshua Dale Brown in Victoria, none of these offenders was uncovered through internal safeguarding systems.

    As is also alleged in the case of Brown, the perpetrators in our case studies were not isolated offenders. They were operating within online communities that normalise and reinforce abusive behaviour and the sharing of child sex abuse material of children who were in their care.

    Research shows child sex offenders typically target pre-verbal children in their care.
    Shutterstock

    If, as some suggest, male workers are subject to close and sometimes unfair scrutiny, these cases highlight a troubling contradiction. Despite this purported scrutiny, child sexual abuse by male staff can and does occur over extended periods without detection in childcare settings. In fact, evidence from another case suggests staff are often hesitant to raise concerns about male colleagues for fear of being perceived as discriminatory.

    It is important to highlight that although women comprise a small minority of child sexual abuse offenders, the reluctance to view women, particularly mothers, as potential perpetrators can also contribute to such abuse going undetected.

    There also needs to be greater awareness of how these offenders infiltrate and groom institutions. In the case studies we analysed, offenders were seen as kind and competent workers. They were often friendly with management or held senior positions themselves, and would socialise outside of work with families whose children they cared for. Even when whistleblowers raised an alarm about the offenders, these concerns were often dismissed, with some offenders even being promoted.

    While most child sexual abuse occurs within families, institutional abuse is no less serious. Unlike families, institutions that work with children can be effectively regulated, making such abuse entirely preventable through robust and consistently enforced safeguarding measures.

    Since children under five may not be developmentally capable of reporting abuse, safeguards must be proactive and preventative. Childcare centres should implement surveillance measures in most areas and observe the “four eyes” rule, requiring at least two adults to be present during nappy changes and other care tasks. A strict no-phone policy could also reduce the risk of image-based offences.

    Moreover, we must confront the uncomfortable truth that some men are drawn to work with children because of a sexual interest in them. Truly centring child protection in early education means prioritising children’s safety above profit, reputational concerns, and fears of appearing biased against men. Preventing child sexual abuse in childcare is not only possible, it is a collective responsibility we must all uphold.

    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. Childcare sexual abuse is mostly committed by men. Failing to recognise that puts children at risk – https://theconversation.com/childcare-sexual-abuse-is-mostly-committed-by-men-failing-to-recognise-that-puts-children-at-risk-260292

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Childcare sexual abuse is mostly committed by men. Failing to recognise that puts children at risk

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Delanie Woodlock, Senior research fellow, UNSW Sydney

    Australians are reeling from the news that Victorian childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown has been charged with more than 70 offences against children, including rape.

    As 1,200 children await results for sexually transmitted infections, a horror no parent should ever face, media commentary has begun to focus on how this case might have implications for male childcare workers.

    Early childhood education is a heavily female-dominated field, and past inquiries into child sexual abuse by male educators have found that, in efforts to avoid appearing discriminatory, male workers are often subject to less scrutiny. This dynamic is compounded by efforts for gender balance in childcare, particularly for the perceived benefits of male role models.

    Ironically, this fear of seeming biased can create the very conditions that offenders exploit – grooming colleagues, parents and children to commit abuse while hidden in plain sight.

    While it is an uncomfortable fact to confront, research shows men with a sexual interest in children are disproportionately more likely to work with children, including in early education and care. Recent data show that one in 20 men in the Australian community are motivated offenders (individuals who reported both sexual interest in and offending against children). However, they are almost three times more likely to work with children compared to other men.

    Unfortunately, systematic data on child sexual abuse in childcare settings are limited. However, existing findings align with the only comprehensive study conducted on this issue, which followed the highly publicised McMartin Preschool trial in the United States.

    This study examined cases from 1983 to 1985, and identified 270 daycare centres where 1,639 children were found to have experienced substantiated sexual abuse. Although men made up only about 5% of childcare staff, they were responsible for 60% of the offences. The abuse was often severe, with 93% of victims subjected to some form of penetrative sexual violence.

    Those who deliberately pursue employment with children to abuse them are often referred to as “professional perpetrators”. These individuals typically have multiple victims and pose a high risk of repeated harm.

    In our current research on serial child sex offenders in childcare settings in Australia and internationally, we identified six cases involving between seven and 87 confirmed victims under the age of five. Five of the offenders were male and one was female. Together, they sexually abused at least 245 children.

    There were striking similarities across these cases. Offenders primarily targeted pre-verbal children, evaded detection for long periods, and were only exposed through external investigations, most often related to the possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material.

    Much like the details emerging from the case of Joshua Dale Brown in Victoria, none of these offenders was uncovered through internal safeguarding systems.

    As is also alleged in the case of Brown, the perpetrators in our case studies were not isolated offenders. They were operating within online communities that normalise and reinforce abusive behaviour and the sharing of child sex abuse material of children who were in their care.

    Research shows child sex offenders typically target pre-verbal children in their care.
    Shutterstock

    If, as some suggest, male workers are subject to close and sometimes unfair scrutiny, these cases highlight a troubling contradiction. Despite this purported scrutiny, child sexual abuse by male staff can and does occur over extended periods without detection in childcare settings. In fact, evidence from another case suggests staff are often hesitant to raise concerns about male colleagues for fear of being perceived as discriminatory.

    It is important to highlight that although women comprise a small minority of child sexual abuse offenders, the reluctance to view women, particularly mothers, as potential perpetrators can also contribute to such abuse going undetected.

    There also needs to be greater awareness of how these offenders infiltrate and groom institutions. In the case studies we analysed, offenders were seen as kind and competent workers. They were often friendly with management or held senior positions themselves, and would socialise outside of work with families whose children they cared for. Even when whistleblowers raised an alarm about the offenders, these concerns were often dismissed, with some offenders even being promoted.

    While most child sexual abuse occurs within families, institutional abuse is no less serious. Unlike families, institutions that work with children can be effectively regulated, making such abuse entirely preventable through robust and consistently enforced safeguarding measures.

    Since children under five may not be developmentally capable of reporting abuse, safeguards must be proactive and preventative. Childcare centres should implement surveillance measures in most areas and observe the “four eyes” rule, requiring at least two adults to be present during nappy changes and other care tasks. A strict no-phone policy could also reduce the risk of image-based offences.

    Moreover, we must confront the uncomfortable truth that some men are drawn to work with children because of a sexual interest in them. Truly centring child protection in early education means prioritising children’s safety above profit, reputational concerns, and fears of appearing biased against men. Preventing child sexual abuse in childcare is not only possible, it is a collective responsibility we must all uphold.

    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. Childcare sexual abuse is mostly committed by men. Failing to recognise that puts children at risk – https://theconversation.com/childcare-sexual-abuse-is-mostly-committed-by-men-failing-to-recognise-that-puts-children-at-risk-260292

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Creative Australia’s backflip on Venice Biennale representatives exposes deep governance failures

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Cairnduff, Lecturer in Media and Communications, The University of Melbourne

    The reinstatement of artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino as Australia’s representatives for the 2026 Venice Biennale closes a bruising recent cultural episode and exposes the fragility of the systems meant to protect artistic freedom in Australia.

    An independent review released this week confirms this was not simply a communications misstep.

    It was a full-scale institutional failure inside Australia’s peak cultural agency, Creative Australia, marked by poor risk management, inadequate escalation protocols, and a fundamental confusion about how to respond when artistic expression meets political controversy.

    What triggered the collapse

    The crisis began in February, just six days after Sabsabi and Dagostino were announced as Australia’s representatives.

    In a sudden reversal, Creative Australia’s board rescinded their appointment.

    At the centre of the backlash were two of Sabsabi’s earlier works – one referencing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the other depicting a view of the Twin Towers on 9/11.

    Coalition senator Claire Chandler raised the issue in Parliament. That evening the board held an emergency meeting. The artists were removed, with Creative Australia citing concerns about “a prolonged and divisive debate” that posed “an unacceptable risk to public support for Australia’s artistic community”.

    The decision triggered resignations, protests and widespread condemnation.

    Mikala Tai, Head of Visual Arts, and program manager Tahmina Maskinyar both resigned. Artist and board member Lindy Lee stepped down. Major donor Simon Mordant withdrew support, calling the move “unprecedented”. More than 4,300 people signed petitions demanding reinstatement.

    In May, chair Robert Morgan resigned from the board, after telling a February senate hearing he would not step down.

    What the review found

    This week’s review, conducted by governance consultancy Blackhall & Pearl, offers a damning but restrained post-mortem.

    It finds no evidence of political interference but reveals Creative Australia lacked basic tools to respond to controversy.

    The agency lacked formal risk assessment processes, a crisis plan, and a clear mechanism for escalating or containing reputational issues.

    More troublingly, the report found the board and staff misunderstood risk itself, believing that identifying risks meant avoiding them.

    In other words, Creative Australia treated controversy as something to flee, not manage. The result was paralysis and ultimately capitulation.

    A fragile funding model

    The episode also exposes the fragility of Australia’s arms-length funding model. As cultural policy expert Jo Caust has noted, this model relies on two key elements: peer review and operational independence from political direction. Both were tested by these events.



    Read more:
    Creative Australia’s decisions should be peer reviewed and at arm’s length. Where did things go wrong?

    Arts Minister Tony Burke’s public expression of “shock” at Sabsabi’s appointment and his suggestion he should have been briefed sent a troubling signal about government oversight.

    In a message released with the review, Creative Australia CEO Adrian Collette acknowledged the damage done:

    The decision the Board took in February has weighed heavily on many people, most particularly the artistic team – and for that we are sorry […] We are also sorry that this has caused concern and uncertainty for many in the broader arts community and we are committed to rebuilding trust in our processes for the commissioning of the Venice Biennale.

    What must change

    The report makes nine recommendations, including clearer governance frameworks, stronger risk protocols and better board training. But the deeper issue is cultural.

    Institutions must find the courage to support artists under pressure, not retreat.

    This means rejecting the false binary between risk management and artistic freedom. Effective risk planning should equip institutions to defend challenging work, not discourage it.

    It also requires cultural leaders to accept that controversy is not a failure to be avoided, but often a by-product of meaningful expression.

    A global warning

    The sector has been here before. The 2015 “Brandis affair”, when then-arts minister George Brandis redirected A$105 million from the Australia Council (predecessor to Creative Australia) into a minister-controlled fund, sparked similar alarm about political influence.

    But this crisis is more revealing. The pressure came not through overt interference but through internal uncertainty and a lack of institutional resolve.

    Globally, cultural institutions face similar strains. Book bans in the United States, museum purges in Hungary, and artistic blacklists in Russia all point to a global narrowing of space for free expression.

    What happened here is not the same, but it warns that institutions can fail without censorship, simply by lacking the will to stand firm.

    A turning point – or not?

    Sabsabi and Dagostino’s reinstatement is not just a symbolic correction. It is a test.

    Can Creative Australia rebuild trust with a community that saw it falter? Will future risk processes be used to support bold programming or suppress it? And will this moment mark the beginning of a stronger, more principled approach to cultural leadership, or a drift into safer, smaller territory?

    As Sabsabi and Dagostino prepare for Venice, they carry more than artistic hopes. They carry a test of whether this moment marks a turning point in Australian cultural governance.

    Their reinstatement is not simply a symbolic reversal. It is a chance to restore trust and demonstrate that institutions can learn from failure.

    Whether this becomes a real shift or missed opportunity depends not only on Creative Australia, but on whether institutions across the country defend artistic integrity and rebuild the leadership culture this moment demands.

    Samuel Cairnduff 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. Creative Australia’s backflip on Venice Biennale representatives exposes deep governance failures – https://theconversation.com/creative-australias-backflip-on-venice-biennale-representatives-exposes-deep-governance-failures-260402

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: How should I talk to my kids about abuse and body safety?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Westrupp, Associate Professor in Psychology, Deakin University

    Jose Luis Peleaz/Getty

    Hearing about child abuse in trusted places such as childcare centres is every parent’s worst nightmare.

    So, how can we talk to our kids about it and help them stay safe?

    While it’s not always possible to prevent abuse – and it’s never the victim’s responsibility – there are practical, age-appropriate ways to help children trust their instincts and feel confident to speak up.

    These conversations don’t have to be frightening. They’re about teaching kids body safety, boundaries and trust in a calm, shame-free way.

    Here’s what parents and carers can do right now and some resources that might help.

    Use real names for body parts

    Many of us grew up in families where private parts were given nicknames or not mentioned at all. Basic body functions were treated as embarrassing or joked about. But when we flinch or make jokes, we teach our children these topics shouldn’t be spoken about.

    Instead, we need to speak about bodies in a clear, matter-of-fact way.

    Research shows one of the simplest and most effective protective factors for children is teaching them correct names for their genitals – penis, vulva, vagina, anus, bottom – without shame or secrecy.

    Using the right words gives children the language to ask questions and tell a trusted adult if something feels wrong.

    We can use everyday moments, such as bath time or getting dressed, to weave these words in. While your child is in the bath you might say: “Have you cleaned your vulva/penis? This is your special area and it’s up to you to look after it.”

    It’s also important to explain, in simple terms, that some things are just for adults. This isn’t about making the topic scary, but about setting safe boundaries: “Sex is for grown-ups. It’s not for children, and it’s never OK for an adult or another child to involve you in anything like that.”

    If you’re unsure how to begin, children’s books about bodies and private parts can help start the conversation. Here are some of my favourites, for toddlers up to late primary school:

    Teaching children the correct names for body parts is one of the most protective things you can do.
    simarik/Getty

    Respect their ‘no’

    Children are often taught to be polite and do as they’re told. While manners matter, this can sometimes teach children not to trust their own instincts.

    It’s vital for children to know they are in charge of their own bodies: they get to decide what happens to them.

    This means they never have to hug, kiss or touch anyone if they don’t want to, not even close family members. As parents, this can feel socially awkward. But we can help by offering alternatives, such as high five, a wave or just saying hello.

    When we respect children saying “no” to safe adults, we reinforce that their boundaries matter and they always have a right to speak up.

    Trusting our children helps them learn to trust themselves.

    Encourage them to listen to their in-built sense when something isn’t right – an “uh-oh” feeling in their tummy. Let them know: “If someone ever makes you feel weird or yucky inside, you can always tell me, even if someone tells you not to. I’ll always listen and believe you.”

    This helps build the confidence to speak up if something doesn’t feel right, whether it’s with another child on a play date, an adult at school, or even a date when they’re older.

    Most importantly, it sends the message that adults will listen, believe and protect them.

    Secrets vs surprises

    From a young age, children can understand safe grown-ups don’t ask them to keep secrets.

    It’s helpful to explain the difference between a secret and a surprise.

    Surprises are fun and temporary, like hiding a birthday present, and are always revealed.

    Secrets are about hiding something for a long time, and can make people feel scared or sad. You might say: “You can tell me anything. You won’t get in trouble, even if an adult says it’s a secret.”

    How to listen and what to look for

    Sometimes children can’t find the words or feel too scared to speak up. They might not fully understand what happened until they’re older.

    One of the most protective things you can do is remind your child it’s never too late to tell you if something’s worrying them. If they raise something from the past, stay calm, listen and thank them for trusting you.

    If your child ever discloses something distressing:

    • take a deep breath before you respond

    • let them know you believe them

    • avoid asking lots of detailed questions and just listen.

    Seek professional help if needed. This might mean talking to your GP, calling a child protection helpline or speaking to a trusted mental health professional.

    Not all children will disclose abuse directly. Look for sudden changes in behaviouror language that seems too mature, fear of certain people or places, regression such as bedwetting or nightmares.

    These signs don’t automatically mean abuse has occurred. But they are cues to gently check in, ask open questions and get help if needed.

    You don’t have to do this perfectly. Small conversations, repeated over time, help protect children and show them you’re always there to listen.

    If this story has raised any issues for you, please contact one of the services below:

    Elizabeth Westrupp receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council. She is affiliated with the Parenting and Family Research Alliance, Editor-in-Chief of Mental Health & Prevention, and is a registered clinical psychologist.

    – ref. How should I talk to my kids about abuse and body safety? – https://theconversation.com/how-should-i-talk-to-my-kids-about-abuse-and-body-safety-260309

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Catholic Church warns against PNG declaring itself a ‘Christian country’

    By Reinhard Minong in Port Moresby

    The Catholic Church has strongly warned against Papua New Guinea’s political rhetoric and push to declare the nation a Christian country, saying such a move threatens constitutional freedoms and risks dangerous implications for the country’s future.

    Speaking before the Permanent Parliamentary Committee on Communication on Tuesday at Rapopo during the ongoing Regional Parliamentary Inquiry into the Standard and Integrity of Journalism in Papua New Guinea, Archbishop Rochus Tatamai of the Rabaul Archdiocese delivered a firm but thoughtful reflection on the issue, voicing the Catholic Church’s opposition to the notion of a legally enshrined Christian nation.

    “When talking about freedom of media and PNG, a Christian country, we must be clear,” said Archbishop Tatamai. “The claim that PNG is a Christian country is not supported by law.

    “The Catholic Church disagrees with this. It conflicts with our Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.”

    The archbishop’s remarks were part of a broader presentation on the influence of evolving technology on church authority, but he took the opportunity to confront what he called one of the major topics in PNG today.

    He raised concerns about the legal, social, and theological implications of attempting to legislate Christianity into state law, stating that politicians were not theologians and risked entering spiritual territory without the understanding to handle it responsibly.

    “If we declare PNG a Christian nation,” he asked, “whose version of Christianity are we referring to? We’re not all the same.”

    Legal obligation
    He warned of a future where attending church could become a legal obligation, not a matter of faith.

    “If PNG is supposedly a Christian nation, police could walk into your village and tell you: it’s not just a sin to skip church on Sunday, it’s illegal and get you arrested.’ That’s how dangerous this path could be.”

    Archbishop Tatamai also referenced the Chief Justice, who had recently stated that if PNG were truly a Christian nation, then principles like honesty would become enforceable laws: “You should not steal. And if you do, you’re not only sinning you’re breaking the law.”

    But the archbishop warned that such a conflation of morality and legality opens up deep conflicts.

    “History has shown us the dangers of blurring the line between church and state. Blood has been spilled over this in other parts of the world. Are we ready for that?”

    He stressed that the founding fathers of PNG had been wise to embed freedom of religion and conscience into the Constitution, ensuring that the state remained neutral in matters of faith.

    “Now, we risk undoing their vision by imposing a national religion,” he said.

    Challenged Parliament
    The archbishop also challenged Parliament and national leaders to think beyond symbolism.

    “Yes, Parliament can pass declarations. Yes, politicians can make the numbers. But have they truly thought through the implications and applications of these decisions?”

    He concluded his presentation with a sharp warning against hypocrisy and selective morality under a Christian state:

    “You cannot use Christianity as a legal framework and continue with corruption. You cannot justify wrongdoing and expect forgiveness simply because now, in a confessional state, sin becomes crime and crime must have consequences.”

    Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Catholic Church warns against PNG declaring itself a ‘Christian country’

    By Reinhard Minong in Port Moresby

    The Catholic Church has strongly warned against Papua New Guinea’s political rhetoric and push to declare the nation a Christian country, saying such a move threatens constitutional freedoms and risks dangerous implications for the country’s future.

    Speaking before the Permanent Parliamentary Committee on Communication on Tuesday at Rapopo during the ongoing Regional Parliamentary Inquiry into the Standard and Integrity of Journalism in Papua New Guinea, Archbishop Rochus Tatamai of the Rabaul Archdiocese delivered a firm but thoughtful reflection on the issue, voicing the Catholic Church’s opposition to the notion of a legally enshrined Christian nation.

    “When talking about freedom of media and PNG, a Christian country, we must be clear,” said Archbishop Tatamai. “The claim that PNG is a Christian country is not supported by law.

    “The Catholic Church disagrees with this. It conflicts with our Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.”

    The archbishop’s remarks were part of a broader presentation on the influence of evolving technology on church authority, but he took the opportunity to confront what he called one of the major topics in PNG today.

    He raised concerns about the legal, social, and theological implications of attempting to legislate Christianity into state law, stating that politicians were not theologians and risked entering spiritual territory without the understanding to handle it responsibly.

    “If we declare PNG a Christian nation,” he asked, “whose version of Christianity are we referring to? We’re not all the same.”

    Legal obligation
    He warned of a future where attending church could become a legal obligation, not a matter of faith.

    “If PNG is supposedly a Christian nation, police could walk into your village and tell you: it’s not just a sin to skip church on Sunday, it’s illegal and get you arrested.’ That’s how dangerous this path could be.”

    Archbishop Tatamai also referenced the Chief Justice, who had recently stated that if PNG were truly a Christian nation, then principles like honesty would become enforceable laws: “You should not steal. And if you do, you’re not only sinning you’re breaking the law.”

    But the archbishop warned that such a conflation of morality and legality opens up deep conflicts.

    “History has shown us the dangers of blurring the line between church and state. Blood has been spilled over this in other parts of the world. Are we ready for that?”

    He stressed that the founding fathers of PNG had been wise to embed freedom of religion and conscience into the Constitution, ensuring that the state remained neutral in matters of faith.

    “Now, we risk undoing their vision by imposing a national religion,” he said.

    Challenged Parliament
    The archbishop also challenged Parliament and national leaders to think beyond symbolism.

    “Yes, Parliament can pass declarations. Yes, politicians can make the numbers. But have they truly thought through the implications and applications of these decisions?”

    He concluded his presentation with a sharp warning against hypocrisy and selective morality under a Christian state:

    “You cannot use Christianity as a legal framework and continue with corruption. You cannot justify wrongdoing and expect forgiveness simply because now, in a confessional state, sin becomes crime and crime must have consequences.”

    Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –