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Category: Global

  • MIL-OSI Global: Ancient stone walls and power: what data science tools can reveal in African archaeology

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Mncedisi Siteleki, Researcher, University of Oslo

    Visibility has always been important in people’s decisions about where to live and how to arrange their spaces. People make connections with what they can see. Being able to see prominent landmarks, such as certain mountain peaks, rivers or ancestral sites, could help reinforce a community’s connection to its cultural and spiritual landscape.

    Some people prefer homes with scenic views, such as apartments overlooking parks or waterfronts, and businesses often choose locations with high visibility to attract customers. In both ancient and modern contexts, visibility plays a key role in how people position themselves in their environment.

    That’s why visibility is a useful concept when studying the past.

    Archaeologists are interested in what visible and hidden spaces meant to people in long-ago cultures. They have used the idea of visibility to examine things like where settlements were located, socio-political relationships as well as when and where people chose to move.

    In the past 30 years, they’ve been helped in these studies by digital tools like geographic information systems (GIS). GIS is a computer system that uses software and data to map, analyse and manage geographic information.

    But this method is still underutilised in Africa. It has only recently been taken up and very few visibility studies have been conducted on the continent.

    I’m a geospatial data scientist who specialises in uncovering spatial patterns and relationships in archaeological data. I work with the Arcreate project, a group of researchers working on mobility, migration, creativity and knowledge transmission in African societies.

    Recently I published a study of 19th century settlements in the Magaliesberg region in South Africa, using GIS tools to analyse what the visibility of the sites was telling us. Were the settlements designed and positioned to be more visible or less? And did this say something about what mattered to the people who lived there?

    I hope my study serves as a framework for comparative analyses of other African sites in archaeology and sheds some light on what went into the choice of these locations.

    Sotho-Tswana history in southern Africa

    In the early 19th century, the Sotho-Tswana farming communities in South Africa’s hilly Magaliesberg region (about 179km north-west of Johannesburg) grew substantially and became more concentrated. Thousands of settlements developed. Among them were the sites I studied: Marothodi, Molokwane and Kaditshwene. They have also been studied over the years by other archaeologists. Today, all that is left of these sites are the stone wall ruins.

    These settlements were densely populated. They consisted of central kraals (livestock enclosures, or lesaka in the Sesotho language) surrounded by homesteads built of stone. Kaditshwene was the most populous, with about 15,000 residents, and was inhabited by Sotho-Tswana farming communities for the longest time (1650-1828), followed by Molokwane (about 12,000, 1790-1823). At Marothodi (about 7,000, 1815-1823), people produced a surplus of iron and copper (which they traded) as well as keeping livestock.

    Cattle were very important in these communities, playing a central role in cultural practices and symbolising wealth. The visibility of cattle kraals is therefore of interest: it may reveal what people wanted others to see and know about their wealth. It adds to other kinds of knowledge that archaeologists have built up about these communities.

    Technique to analyse visibility

    My study analysed how these 19th century Sotho-Tswana kraals would have been visible from certain points inside and outside the settlement.

    I used a computational technique that drew on LiDAR imagery (high resolution imagery created using laser technology) and software called ArcMap.

    Visibility analysis finds out to what extent observer locations (kraals) can be seen from different points on a map (LiDAR imagery). It compared the visibility of kraals and other spaces, taking elevation (height of structures like stone walls) as a key variable.



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    The analysis was done at two levels: the settlement (a spatial scale of 650 metres) and the household (a spatial scale of 10×25 metres).

    At the settlement level, I found differences within and between sites.

    At Marothodi, two kraals were highly visible from the surrounding 650 metre area and others less so. Overall, it was the most visible settlement, comparatively.

    At Molokwane, the central cluster of the kraals was highly visible but visibility decreased with distance within the 650 metre surrounding area.

    At Kaditshwene, kraals were not very visible; in fact, this was the case for the settlement overall.

    Marothodi, though smallest in size, featured more kraals, while Kaditshwene, the largest, had the fewest kraals.

    At the household level, the visibility of kraal outlines at Marothodi and Molokwane was significant both from within and outside the kraals.

    So what do these findings tell us?

    Space and priorities

    My analysis of the kraals quantitatively revealed a correlation between spatial arrangements and social, economic and defensive priorities (which other researchers have suggested before).

    Many homesteads and kraals were situated close to each other, emphasising visibility within and around the settlements, which served as symbols of social status and wealth. Larger, more elaborate homesteads, typically belonging to elites, were positioned in a manner that showed off their owners’ power and influence.

    However, more settlements with much larger surrounding areas (beyond 650 metres) need to be studied to confirm these correlations in other landscapes.

    Marothodi had the most visible kraals, likely reflecting its economic focus on the trade of iron and copper. Heightened visibility symbolised wealth and economic activity. Prominent kraals and an open layout suggest deliberate efforts to emphasise trade connections and economic power. The inhabitants evidently wanted to make visible the fact that they were open for business, and that they were doing well from that business.



    Read more:
    How pots, sand and stone walls helped us date an ancient South African settlement

    Conversely, the settlement of Kaditshwene, despite its size, had the least visible kraals. This suggests a defensive strategy aimed at safeguarding cattle from theft during periods of conflict. The undulating landscape and hilltop positioning of settlements reinforced its defensive approach.

    These observations underscore the dual nature of visibility. It serves as a symbol of wealth and status while also functioning as a tactical asset in defensive strategies. While Marothodi needed to be visible to facilitate trade, Kaditshwene concealed its kraals to be safer during conflict.

    In summary, the visibility patterns of these settlements were influenced by a combination of the landscape, as well as social, economic and defensive needs.

    Mncedisi Siteleki 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. Ancient stone walls and power: what data science tools can reveal in African archaeology – https://theconversation.com/ancient-stone-walls-and-power-what-data-science-tools-can-reveal-in-african-archaeology-248603

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Measles: A resurgent threat in Canada

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ruchika Gupta, Assistant Professor and Medical Microbiologist, Department of Pathobiology and Lab Medicine, LHSC and Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University

    The resurgence of measles in Canada is a stark reminder that we cannot take public health achievements for granted. (CDC and NIAID), CC BY

    In the landscape of public health, few stories are as compelling as the unexpected return of a disease we once thought was conquered. Measles, a highly contagious viral infection formally considered eliminated from Canada in 1998, is making a surprising comeback, challenging our public health systems and communities at large.

    The rising numbers of measles cases are a concern as they represent real people and real risks. The current measles situation in Canada is a public health challenge and a critical moment for awareness and action. From urban centres like Toronto and Montréal to smaller communities across the provinces, an emerging pattern demands attention and understanding.

    Outbreaks in Canada

    Current measles outbreaks in Canada are primarily affecting Ontario and Québec. In Ontario, 57 confirmed cases have been documented in 2025, as of Feb. 13. Meanwhile, Québec is experiencing its second outbreak, with 24 confirmed cases reported this year, as of Feb. 21. An earlier outbreak in Québec involved 51 cases from February to June 2024.

    This resurgence can be attributed to several factors, including declining vaccination rates, international travel reintroducing the virus into Canada and the highly contagious nature of measles.

    Vaccination rates for the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine have dropped to approximately 82.5 per cent, a significant decline observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. This reduction has created a population of highly susceptible individuals, undermining community immunity — commonly referred to as herd immunity — which requires a vaccination coverage of 95 per cent to effectively prevent outbreaks.

    How measles spreads

    Measles is also one of the most contagious infectious diseases, with a basic reproduction number (R₀) of 12–18. This means that, in a fully susceptible population, one case of measles can lead to an average of 12–18 secondary cases. For the current outbreak, although the initial source was linked to international travel, the majority of cases are now the result of local transmission within Canada, highlighting the importance of maintaining high vaccination coverage and swift public health interventions.

    Measles is a highly contagious airborne disease that spreads easily through respiratory droplets. When an infected person breathes, coughs or sneezes, they release virus particles into the air. These particles can remain infectious for up to two hours, even after the person has left the area. What makes measles particularly challenging to control is its extended period of contagiousness.

    An infected individual can spread the virus from four days before the characteristic rash appears until four days after its onset. This means people can unknowingly transmit the disease before they even realize they’re infected.

    The virus’s ability to spread before symptoms appear, combined with its long contagious period, makes it difficult to contain outbreaks once they begin. This is why maintaining high vaccination rates across the population is crucial. It’s not just about individual protection, but about safeguarding the entire community, especially those who cannot be vaccinated due to age or medical conditions.

    While anyone who isn’t immune either through vaccination or previous infection can contract measles, certain groups — including pregnant women, immunocompromised patients and unvaccinated children under age five — are at higher risk of complications including pneumonia and brain swelling.

    Protecting individuals and communities

    The measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is safe and highly effective, with two doses providing up to 99 per cent protection.
    (Shutterstock)

    The message from health-care providers is clear: vaccination is the most effective way to prevent measles. Here’s what you can do:

    1. Ensure vaccination is up to date: The measles vaccine is typically combined with mumps and rubella (MMR) or with varicella (MMRV). Two doses of the vaccine are 99 per cent effective at preventing infection.
    2. Check your immunization records: If you’re unsure about your vaccination status, consult your health-care provider or check your Personal Immunization Record.
    3. Vaccinate children on schedule: In Ontario, children receive two doses of the measles vaccine before age seven as part of routine vaccinations.
    4. Consider early vaccination for infants: In areas with ongoing outbreaks, infants as young as six months may be eligible for early vaccination. Contact your health-care provider before travel for their advice.
      Plan ahead for travel: If you’re traveling internationally, consult a health-care provider at least six weeks before your trip to review your immunization history.
    5. Be aware of the symptoms: high fever, cough, runny nose, red eyes and a characteristic rash.

    If you suspect you or someone in your family has measles, call your health-care provider before visiting a medical facility. This allows them to take necessary precautions to prevent further spread.

    Vaccination is our most effective tool against measles. The MMR vaccine is safe and highly effective, with two doses providing up to 99 per cent protection. By maintaining high vaccination rates across our communities, we can prevent outbreaks and protect those who can’t be vaccinated due to age or medical conditions. As we navigate this situation, it’s crucial to stay informed and follow public health guidelines. Together, we can work to contain these outbreaks and protect the health of all Canadians.

    The resurgence of measles in Canada is a stark reminder that we cannot take our public health achievements for granted. Vaccination has been one of the most successful public health interventions in history, saving millions of lives. By working together — health-care providers, parents and communities — we can turn the tide on this resurgence and protect our most vulnerable populations from this preventable disease.

    Measles is not just a childhood illness or a simple rash. It’s a serious disease with potentially severe complications. But with vigilance, education and a commitment to vaccination, we can once again push measles to the brink of elimination in Canada. The health of our communities depends on it.

    Ruchika 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. Measles: A resurgent threat in Canada – https://theconversation.com/measles-a-resurgent-threat-in-canada-249932

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How to teach hope when democracy is retreating

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Joel Westheimer, University research chair in democracy and education, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

    In the wake of Donald Trump’s reelection, the United States has lurched further toward a democratic crisis.

    Institutions once considered stable now feel precarious. The assault on truth — already well underway — has intensified, with political leaders openly flouting constitutional principles, suppressing dissent and dismantling democratic safeguards.

    The rhetoric of grievance and retribution has become the soundtrack of public discourse.

    The U.S. is not alone. Across the globe, democracy is in retreat. The list of nations such as Hungary, Poland, Brazil and India where autocrats and aspiring autocrats have tried to erode democratic norms is growing. Far-right movements in France, Germany, Finland and elsewhere, bolstered by economic anxieties and digital disinformation, stoke resentment and fear.



    Read more:
    What does Donald Trump’s win mean for his brand of populist authoritarianism?

    People, exhausted by economic precarity and what author, activist and documentarian Astra Taylor calls the deliberate manufacturing of insecurity, are drawn to the false promise of strongman rule. The desire for stability — however undemocratic — threatens to eclipse commitments to liberty and justice.

    For educators or civic leaders who teach young people about democracy these are not abstract concerns. Civic educators’ struggles to foster students’ civic engagement and strengthen their commitments to democratic institutions and the growing crisis in democracy makes these efforts even harder.

    As a professor of democracy and education, and as an educator, I cannot promise young people that their efforts will always succeed. But I can assure them that whether in the face of victories or defeats, they are walking a powerful and worthwhile path.

    The risk of civic despair

    One popular approach to strengthening commitments to democracy is to engage students in community projects that address difficult societal challenges.

    Some teachers take students to engage in community work that is deeply tied to the curriculum, through approaches known as action civics or service learning.

    But when young people take on social action projects — especially those aimed at addressing systemic injustices — the experience can backfire if it leads only to frustration and failure.

    Studies have shown that students who participate in civic initiatives that do not produce tangible change often become less likely to engage in civic life in the future.

    When efforts to improve conditions in their schools, communities or governments meet bureaucratic obstacles or outright resistance, young people do not always emerge more energized. Instead, many walk away discouraged, cynical and convinced that the system cannot be moved.

    This is not to say that teachers, parents or other adult mentors should avoid encouraging activism — far from it. But if educators fail to prepare students for the realities of social change — that it can be slow and difficult — we risk reinforcing exactly the kind of disengagement we seek to combat.

    If young people see the struggle for justice only as a series of disappointments, it’s easy to understand why they may turn away.

    Redefining hope

    To counter this despair, we need to redefine what it means to hope.

    We need to cultivate the kind of hope that sustains action despite uncertainty — the kind that fuels long-term struggles for justice, even when victories are slow in coming.



    Read more:
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    Václav Havel, the Czech playwright and political dissident who later became president, wrote that hope is not the same as choosing struggles that are headed for quick success: “Hope … is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

    This distinction is vital. As I explore in my book about education for democracy, hope is not a guarantee of success, but the insistence that working for justice is meaningful in and of itself. When we work collectively on projects we believe in, we form bonds that are valued and energizing.

    Howard Zinn, the late historian and activist, echoed this idea when he urged us to “hold out, even in times of pessimism, the possibility of surprise.”

    Being part of something bigger

    History is filled with unexpected turns, reversals and moments when change happens against all odds. As German theorist and activist Rosa Luxemburg wrote, before the revolution, everyone says it’s impossible. After, they say it was inevitable.

    The singer-songwriter Holly Near expressed this artfully in her anthem to the many social change movements that have existed for as long as there have been things to improve. Change does not always happen at broadband speeds, but knowing one is part of a timeless march toward good goals makes much of what we do worthwhile. In her song “The Great Peace March,” Near sings:

    “Believe it or not / as daring as it may seem / it is not an empty dream
    To walk in a powerful path / neither the first nor the last / great peace march.”

    Social change is about connecting with one another and being part of something larger than ourselves — a “powerful path” that stretches beyond any single moment or movement.

    Hope as a practice

    So how do we teach hope? How do we equip young people not just to work for change, but to sustain that work over the long haul?

    First, we must be honest about setbacks. Too often, we romanticize past movements, presenting them as linear progressions toward justice. We do young people a disservice when we erase the years of struggle, failure and uncertainty that preceded social victories. A more honest history includes moments of despair as well as triumph.

    Second, we must frame civic action as an ongoing practice rather than a single event. Students should see their work as part of a continuum.

    Finally, we must model hope ourselves. Young people are watching us. If we meet today’s challenges with cynicism and resignation, they will learn that democracy is a lost cause. But if we demonstrate an enduring commitment to engagement and justice, they will see that democracy is not something we inherit; it is something we build.

    We can promise young people that to engage in the work of justice is to be part of a legacy that stretches across generations. And that, I believe, is hope worth teaching.

    Joel Westheimer receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

    – ref. How to teach hope when democracy is retreating – https://theconversation.com/how-to-teach-hope-when-democracy-is-retreating-249926

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trump’s tariff and land grab threats signal U.S. expansionist ambitions

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ilan Kapoor, Professor, Critical Development Studies, York University, Canada

    When U.S. President Donald Trump first suggested Canada should become the 51st American state, the federal government dismissed it as just a joke. Finance Minister Dominic Leblanc insisted it was “in no way a serious comment.”

    Similar skepticism was expressed by political leaders across the world when Trump talked about seizing Greenland and the Panama Canal in early January, by military force if necessary, to buttress U.S. national security. He also floated the idea of taking over Gaza to transform it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

    Now that Trump has carried through on his aggressive economic threats — launching a trade war with China and raising the possibility of similar conflicts with Canada, Mexico and the European Union — his imperialist expansionism is in plain sight.

    Canadian leaders have come to realize that Trump’s actions may not be a temporary or minor irritant, but rather an attack on Canadian sovereignty itself.

    The failure to take Trump’s words seriously is reminiscent of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s skepticism in 1938 that Hitler would actually risk world war despite the latter’s aggressive rhetoric, annexation of Austria and threats to Czechoslovakia and Poland.

    What, then, have been the signs of Trump’s expansionist tendencies? American economic and military might, albeit declining relative to emerging powers like China and India, still provides a solid basis for the projection of U.S. supremacy. But there are also two new key elements at play.

    A billionaire-corporate administration

    The Trump administration appears to operate with a distinctly corporate mindset, treating the nation like a business empire. Trump has stacked his administration with private sector leaders and corporate billionaires such as Elon Musk, Doug Burgum and Howard Lutnick.

    Like other billionaires, their immense business success has been founded not on mainstay competitive market practices like productivity or cost-cutting, but on predatory and cannibalistic ones.

    These include controlling resources like oil, gold, diamonds and coltan to secure production inputs; buying out competitors to monopolize markets and patents; and deliberately breaking up and destroying companies through mergers and acquisitions with little regard for the resulting job losses.

    It is within this framework that Trump’s allegations about buying Greenland and Gaza, annexing Canada through “economic force” and capturing the Panama Canal need to be seen.



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    Under the guise of national security, the idea is not simply to safeguard borders, but to engage in economic expansionism and real estate development, aided by the U.S. military when needed. Taking control of land, waterways and mineral wealth is critical to building “America’s Golden Age” of corporate capitalism.

    This approach seems to be a mainly business one, with little concern for the social costs (recession, unemployment, violence) produced by such imperialistic ventures. In line with his infamous book, The Art of the Deal, Trump appears to view foreign nations and domestic opponents alike as obstacles to be callously bullied, degraded, manipulated, exploited and finally vanquished.

    American nationalist populism

    The Trump administration’s imperial ambitions lie in the nationalist populism that propelled Trump and his allies into power for the second time.

    Trump’s populism has successfully tapped into widespread anxieties among Americans — job insecurity, food prices, the housing crisis — by promising to soothe their worries through the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) agenda.



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    Trump’s view of the world is becoming clear: America’s allies come second to its own interests

    Like other right-wing populist movements around the globe — Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s in Turkey, Viktor Orbán’s in Hungary and the Brexit campaign in the U.K. — the MAGA movement has sought to unify the U.S. by identifying and targeting perceived national enemies. These include so-called “illegal” migrants, transgender people and the country’s largest trading rivals: Mexico, Canada and China.

    By blaming these groups, especially those seen as contributing to America’s economic decline, MAGA whips up nationalist sentiment in the form of suspicion, aggression and vengeance. The result is a deeply polarized nationalist discourse in which one is either a loyal supporter or an enemy; a believer or a “woke” liberal.

    A lethal imperial set-up

    The combination of U.S. global power, nationalist populism and the Trump administration’s corporate-driven, predatory approach makes for a dangerous dynamic.

    This mix is fuelling a form of economic expansionism that is now beginning to manifest itself. The impending trade wars, potential dismantling of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement (which Trump initiated in 2018 to avoid unilateral trade moves by its signatories) and the brazen disregard for the socioeconomic consequences of foreign territorial control, such as the forced displacement of Palestinians, are all signs of this.

    While many assumed Trump’s administration would be protectionist and isolationist, a more troubling and nefarious reality is emerging. His administration appears to be intent on securing America’s industrial dominance through trade wars while expanding it through hawkish economic imperialism.

    There is a clear ruthlessness to this approach, with a willingness to pressure not only America’s perceived enemies but also its allies. “America First” is starting to looks like “America Above All Others” as Trump attempts to bully U.S. rivals into subordination, with disturbing echoes of past authoritarians.

    Unravelling American imperial designs

    Many obstacles could prevent Trump’s aggressive expansionism from fully taking shape. While the key ingredients may already be there, and some have begun to be deployed, that doesn’t mean they will come to fruition.

    The Trump administration’s policymaking process is often chaotic and theatrical, prioritizing short-term political gains over long-term strategy. This instability undermines any consistent efforts at expansion.

    There is also the risk that Trump’s trade wars will backfire. They could end up causing hardship to U.S. companies and consumers through higher food and energy prices, job losses in key industries like agriculture and auto manufacturing, and increased stock market instability. Such consequences could negatively affect Trump’s corporate allies.

    Meanwhile, Trump’s economic and military rivals could forge new alliances to challenge his attempts at global supremacy. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for instance, recently met with the head of NATO and other European allies to strengthen trade and security ties.

    The first step to any countermoves by Trump’s foreign adversaries will be seeing his regime’s designs for what they are: chaotic, perhaps, but serious expansionist ones.

    Ilan Kapoor 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. Trump’s tariff and land grab threats signal U.S. expansionist ambitions – https://theconversation.com/trumps-tariff-and-land-grab-threats-signal-u-s-expansionist-ambitions-249924

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Black on the ballot: New research sheds light on the experiences of Black Canadians in politics

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Erin Tolley, Canada Research Chair in Gender, Race, and Inclusive Politics and Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, Carleton University

    Twenty. That’s it. That’s the total number of Black Canadians ever elected to the House of Commons of Canada. There have been 372 Johns and 77 Jeans.
    You can easily find data on women parliamentarians, members of Parliament with military experience and even parliamentarians who have died in office. However, you’d be hard-pressed to find a complete list of Black Canadians in politics, never mind a comprehensive account of their experiences.

    Because of their relative absence from accounts of Canada’s political history, Black Canadians’ contributions to politics are often overlooked or ignored. This erasure prevents governments, political parties, and researchers from crafting strategies to address political inequality.

    When we lack relevant racial data on political candidacy and electoral outcomes, we can’t track progress or identify barriers. And when Black Canadians aren’t present in politics, public policies are less likely to reflect their circumstances and less responsive to their needs.

    Groundbreaking new research from Carleton University and Operation Black Vote Canada aims to change that. Through archival research, a survey and more than 30 in-depth interviews, our report, Black on the Ballot documents the presence, backgrounds, motivations and experiences of Black Canadians in politics. Here’s what we found.

    Black Canadians in elected office

    Our research helped to identify more than 380 Black Canadians who have run for and served in elected office over the past two decades. Our focus was on candidates and officeholders at the school board, municipal, provincial and federal levels of politics.

    Undoubtedly, there are holes in this list, especially further back in history and at the municipal and school board levels, where more ephemeral record-keeping and gaps in local news coverage make this type of historical research challenging.

    From this pool, we tracked down contact information for 212 possible respondents. In January 2023, we invited them to complete the first-ever national survey of Black Canadian candidates and officeholders. Ninety-five did so. This is what they told us.

    The local level is an important political entry point for Black candidates. Most survey respondents said they had run at the municipal level as councillors (52 per cent) or mayor (six per cent), while 23 per cent ran as school board trustees. Less costly campaigns and the absence of gatekeeping by political parties contribute to lower barriers to entry at the local level. Nineteen per cent of respondents had run provincially, and 21 per cent federally.

    Most Black Canadians in politics are first- or second-generation Canadians. A majority of respondents, 62 per cent, identified as Caribbean. Black candidates and officeholders have high levels of education; 40 per cent have earned a graduate or professional degree, and over half (56 per cent) have a college or university degree.

    Business is the most common profession for Black Canadian politicians, followed by government and politics and law. This pipeline into politics roughly mirrors that of other elected officials.

    We found that Black men and women were equally likely to run for office. This pattern diverges from research that finds women, in general, are less likely than men to come forward as candidates, at least at the federal level.

    More than one-third of survey respondents ran for a provincial or federal party; of these, most (47 per cent) ran for the Liberals, 26 per cent for the New Democratic Party, 12 per cent each for the Greens or Conservatives, and three per cent for the Bloc or Parti Québécois.

    Motivations for running

    When asked about the factors that influenced their decision to run for office, 73 per cent of Black candidates said they felt it was important for people like them to have a strong voice in government. Just over half (52 per cent) said they were interested in addressing a particular policy issue.

    Although Black men and women are equally likely to run for office, our research shows other differences in candidate emergence. Just over half of women respondents said they had not seriously considered running until someone else suggested it, compared to 28 per cent of men. While 47 per cent of Black men said running for office was entirely their own idea, just 26 per cent of Black women said the same.

    Encouragement is thus an important catalyst for political engagement, especially for Black women. Other research indicates women are less likely to be recruited by political parties to run for elected office.

    In our survey, 52 per cent of Black women said a party official suggested they run, compared to just 16 per cent of Black men. Ten times as many women respondents as men said party recruitment was consequential to their decision to run. Political parties seem to play an important facilitative role in Black women candidate’s emergence; this phenomenon is known as “affirmative gatekeeping.”

    Improving Black Canadians’ representation in politics

    Our research identifies a number of challenges to gaining elected office, including difficulties raising funds and recruiting volunteers. Half of survey respondents said others had discouraged them from running for office, while 71 per cent said they faced discrimination while running for or serving in office.

    We heard that it’s important to share stories of Black success in politics, to adopt multi-pronged recruitment strategies, to demystify the process of running for office and to ensure elections are accessible to all voters.

    A clip from the podcast series that accompanies the Black on the Ballot report.

    We also heard that diversification initiatives need to focus on the inclusiveness of political spaces, rather than just how many Black Canadians run for office. Candidates and officeholders reported hostility and feelings of isolation, as well as individual and institutional refusals to address discrimination. These experiences are reiterated by guests on the podcast that accompanies our report.

    Despite these challenges, when asked whether they would run again, 87 per cent of survey respondents said yes, a number that reveals Black Canadians’ unflinching commitment to public service and to community. We need to stoke this spark, not extinguish it.

    Erin Tolley receives funding from the Canada Research Chairs program and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. This research was undertaken in partnership with Operation Black Vote Canada.

    – ref. Black on the ballot: New research sheds light on the experiences of Black Canadians in politics – https://theconversation.com/black-on-the-ballot-new-research-sheds-light-on-the-experiences-of-black-canadians-in-politics-249335

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: While the U.S. threatens tariffs and builds walls around its economy, China opens up

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Shaun Narine, Professor of International Relations and Political Science, St. Thomas University (Canada)

    The United States is threatening to impose tariffs on its major trading partners. In the meantime, China is consolidating its position as the world’s manufacturing and technological innovation hub by increasing trade with the Global South.

    If the American role in globalization has been to consume the world’s products and resources by building on a foundation of ever-increasing debt, China’s has been to make tangible goods for the international market.

    China is opening up its economy, especially to the nations of the Global South.

    Effective December 2024, China eliminated all tariffs on goods from the least developed countries. Chinese Premier Li Quang has also described China as an economic opportunity for global investment.

    The centre of Asian trade

    China’s trade surplus with the rest of the world is almost US$1 trillion dollars. Its share of global exports was 14 per cent in 2023, compared to 8.5 per cent for the U.S.

    China is working with regional states to make itself the centre of Asian trade. China’s Belt and Road Initiative is funding infrastructure in about 150 countries as Chinese companies invest internationally, both to avoid American tariffs and diversify their markets.

    At the moment, China accounts for 35 per cent of the world’s manufacturing. By 2030, the United Nations projects this will rise to 45 per cent.

    China has achieved this status by building efficient, high-quality infrastructure.

    It’s also fostered highly competitive and innovative technological and commercial ecosystems. The recent emergence of DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup that is dramatically disrupting the sector, illustrates this reality.

    China also controls global industrial supply chains in a host of critical areas.

    The Chinese powerhouse

    Despite its ongoing economic slowdown, China’s economy grew by almost five per cent in 2024 and has potential to grow further as it transitions to a high-tech economy.

    By 2030, the country will have what’s known as a consuming class of 1.1 billion people, making it the world’s largest consumer market.

    Only 7.8 per cent of the population has the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree, but China produces about 65 per cent of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) graduates globally on an annual basis.

    China is also leading the world in most new technologies and industries, but there is room for infrastructure investment in smaller cities and rural areas. Because China is a global leader in using automation and AI, it will also need to lead in managing these technologies’ social and economic effects.

    China has economies of scale that no other country — except India — can match. Its manufacturing dominance is the logical outcome of introducing an increasingly technologically sophisticated country with a vast population to the modern global system.

    The first Donald Trump administration used tariffs to try to draw investment into the U.S. and stimulate domestic industry. He believed tariffs would create more manufacturing jobs, shrink the federal deficit and lower food prices.

    The second Trump administration has returned to tariffs, again with the goal of pulling jobs and investment from other countries into the U.S.

    Trump has threatened to slap tariffs on Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

    He’s already put 25 per cent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the U.S. and imposed additional 10 per cent tariffs on all Chinese goods. He’s also threatening tariffs on Taiwan, attempting to strip it of its semiconductor industry.

    Trump is basically demanding that other countries address trade imbalances by buying more expensive American exports in exchange for unimpeded access to the U.S. market.

    He’s trying to recreate an American industrial dominance that existed only under unique circumstances after the Second World War. Similarly, the historical circumstances that led to China’s decline in the 19th and 20th centuries are long past.

    To compete with China’s advantages, the U.S. needs a competent and effective government capable of long-term planning. Under Trump, the U.S. is losing this already-weak capacity every day.

    American debt

    The U.S. is the world’s largest consumer economy because both the government and Americans go into extraordinary debt to finance their consumption.

    Currently, the American national debt is more than $36 trillion while consumer debt was $17.5 trillion in 2024.

    The U.S. can accumulate enormous debt because of the American dollar’s status as the world reserve currency. But the U.S. has weaponized the dollar by freezing the dollar assets of sovereign states and using the dollar’s reserve status to apply American laws and sanctions beyond its borders.

    This has created a major push — led by the BRICS countries of Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates — to replace the U.S. dollar with other financial instruments.

    In response, Trump has threatened 100 per cent tariffs on any countries that try to drop the U.S. dollar.

    The American economy has grown through pumping up asset bubbles, but there’s been a decline in most measures of social well-being in the U.S. This aligns with increasing American social, political and economic instability.

    Chinese products dominate

    China’s exports to the Global South exceed its exports to the western world. Chinese companies and products are dominant in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

    To the Global South, there are clear benefits to accessing affordable, high-quality technology and industrial products from China. The industrialized world can also benefit significantly from Chinese manufacturers, but possibly at the cost of its own established industrial capacity.

    While some states may block Chinese imports to protect their industries, China’s increasing manufacturing dominance means that every country will need at least some Chinese products to develop or to sustain industry. It would be next to impossible for most countries to definitively cut all trade with China.

    The world is entering a new era of globalization. For many states, that means trying to keep from being economically undermined by the U.S. while deciding how to manage the economic and political costs and benefits of engaging with China’s massive industrial capabilities.

    Shaun Narine 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. While the U.S. threatens tariffs and builds walls around its economy, China opens up – https://theconversation.com/while-the-u-s-threatens-tariffs-and-builds-walls-around-its-economy-china-opens-up-245012

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Critics condemn ‘cowardly’ BBC for pulling Gaza warzone youth survival documentary

    By Gizem Nisa Cebi

    The BBC has removed its documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone from iPlayer after it was revealed that its teenage narrator is the son of a Hamas official.

    The broadcaster stated that it was conducting “further due diligence” following mounting scrutiny.

    The film, which aired on BBC Two last Monday, follows 13-year-old Abdullah Al-Yazouri as he describes life in Gaza.

    However, it later emerged that his father, Ayman Al-Yazouri, serves as the Hamas Deputy Minister of Agriculture in Gaza.

    In a statement yesterday, the BBC defended the documentary’s value but acknowledged concerns.

    “There have been continuing questions raised about the programme, and in light of these, we are conducting further due diligence with the production company,” the statement said.

    The revelation sparked a backlash from figures including Friday Night Dinner actress Tracy-Ann Oberman, literary agent Neil Blair, and former BBC One boss Danny Cohen, who called it “a shocking failure by the BBC and a major crisis for its reputation”.

    On Thursday, the BBC admitted that it had not disclosed the family connection but insisted it followed compliance procedures. It has since added a disclaimer acknowledging Abdullah’s ties to Hamas.

    UK’s Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said that she would discuss the issue with the BBC, particularly regarding its vetting process.

    However, the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians urged the broadcaster to “stand firm against attempts to prevent firsthand accounts of life in Gaza from reaching audiences”.

    Others also defended the importance of the documentary made last year before the sheer scale of devastation by the Israeli military forces was exposed — and many months before the ceasefire came into force on January 19.

    How to watch the Gaza documentary. Image: Double Down News screenshot/X

    ‘This documentary humanised Palestinian children’
     Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU), criticised the BBC’s decision.

    “It’s very regrettable that this documentary has been pulled following pressure from anti-Palestinian activists who have largely shown no sympathy for persons in Gaza suffering from massive bombardment, starvation, and disease,” Middle East Eye quoted him as saying.

    Doyle also praised the film’s impact, saying, “This documentary humanised Palestinian children in Gaza and gave valuable insights into life in this horrific war zone.”

    Journalist Richard Sanders, who has produced multiple documentaries on Gaza, called the controversy a “huge test” for the BBC and condemned its response as a “cowardly decision”.

    Earlier this week, 45 Jewish journalists and media figures, including former BBC governor Ruth Deech, urged the broadcaster to pull the film, calling Ayman Al-Yazouri a “terrorist leader”.

    The controversy underscores wider tensions over media coverage of the Israel-Gaza war, with critics accusing the BBC of a vetting failure, while others argue the documentary sheds crucial light on Palestinian children’s suffering.

    Pacific Media Watch comments: The BBC has long been accused of an Israeli-bias in its coverage of Palestinian affairs, especially the 15-month genocidal war on Gaza, and this documentary is one of the rare programmes that has restored some balance.

    Another teenager who appears in the Gaza documentary . . . she has o global online following for her social media videos on cooking and life amid the genocide. Image: BBC screenshot APR

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Media analyst criticises Trump for applying ‘strategic coercion, economic blackmail’ policy

    Pacific Media Watch

    One of the leading Middle East’s leading political and media analysts, Marwan Bishara, has accused President Donald Trump of applying a doctrine of ‘strategic coercion” and “economic blackmail” in his approach to the Gaza ceasefire.

    Bishara, senior political analyst of the Doha-based Al Jazeera global television network, was responding to the news that Trump has apparently backed off his plan for expelling more than 2 million Palestinians from their Gaza homeland and to redevelop it as the “Riviera of the Middle East”.

    He has now been describing it as a “recommendation” that would not be enforced.

    “The idea that Trump starts with [about taking over Gaza] is mad. But there is a method to the madness,” Bishara said.

    “The method to the madness, you can see it in the context of Trump’s doctrine, if you will – and that is strategic coercion and economic blackmail.

    “In fact, he started his administration by inviting [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu to Washington, blessing him with all kinds of support . . .  and blackmailing Egypt and Jordan into accepting two million refugees, or else — and then asking them to come up with something else.”

    Bishara said he expected the Trump doctrine to be applied elsewhere in the world, such as with his efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

    ‘This kind of strategic coercion of Arab countries on behalf of the United States and Israel, and economic blackmail — I think we’re going to see it as part of the Trump doctrine throughout the world.


    President Trump’s walkback on his “Riviera” plan for Gaza. Video: Al Jazeera

    ‘Surprised’ over opposition
    The US president had said in a radio interview with Fox News that he was “a little bit surprised” that Jordan and Egypt had voiced opposition to his plan to “take over” Gaza and displace Palestinians.

    “I’ll tell you, the way to do it is my plan — I think that’s the plan that really works,” Trump said.

    “But I’m not forcing it, I’m just going to sit back and recommend it.

    “And then the US would own the site, there’d be no Hamas, and there’d be development and you’d start all over again with a clean plate.”

    A former Egyptian deputy foreign affairs minister to the European Union, Gamal Bayoumi, said the “informal” meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, of the leaders of several Arab countries to discuss an Egyptian counterproposal had led to the softening of Trump’s stance.

    Speaking from Cairo, Bayoumi said Trump had appeared “inexperienced concerning international law” and the Middle East, saying the US president’s plan “has no logic . . . to ask the Palestinians to leave their own country.”

    The Riyadh meeting has ended with the leaders rejecting Trump’s plan and the Arab League will meet in Cairo, Egypt, on March 4 to discuss the counterproposal in more detail.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: I went to CPAC as an anthropologist to see how Trump supporters are feeling − for them, a ‘golden age’ has begun

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

    Attendees take selfies at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Md., on Feb. 20, 2025. Andrew Harnick/Getty Images

    At the start of his inaugural address on Jan. 20, 2025, President Donald Trump declared, “The golden age of America begins right now!”

    A month later, Trump’s supporters gathered at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in Oxon Hill, Maryland, from Feb. 19-22 to celebrate the advent of this golden age.

    Gold glitter jackets, emblazoned with phrases like “Trump the Golden Era,” are for sale in the CPAC exhibition hall. There, attendees decked out in other MAGA-themed clothing and accessories network and mingle. They visit booths with politically charged signs that say “Defund Planned Parenthood” and collect brochures on topics like “The Gender Industrial Complex.”

    Another booth with a yellow and black striped backdrop resembling a prison cell’s bars was called a “Deportation Center.” Attendees photographed themselves at this booth, posing beside full-size cutouts of Trump and his border czar, Tom Homan.

    Former Jan. 6 prisoners, including Proud Boys’ former leader Enrique Tarrio, have also been a visible – and controversial – presence at CPAC.

    The conference’s proceedings kicked off on Feb. 20 with an Arizona pastor, Joshua Navarrete, saying, to loud applause, “We are living in the greatest time of our era – the golden age!”

    Many subsequent speakers repeated this phrase, celebrating the country’s “golden age.”

    For many outside observers, claims of a golden age might seem odd.

    Just months ago during the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump said that an American apocalypse was underway, driven by a U.S. economy in shambles and major cities overrun by an “invasion” of “illegal alien” “terrorists,” “rapists” and “murderers.”

    Now, Trump’s critics argue, the U.S. is led by a convicted felon who is implementing policies that are reckless, stupid and harmful.

    Further, these critics contend, Trump’s illegal power grabs are leading to a constitutional crisis that could cause democracy to crumble in the U.S.

    How, they wonder, could anyone believe the country is in a golden age?

    As an anthropologist of U.S. political culture, I have been studying the Make America Great Again, or MAGA, movement for years. I wrote a related 2021 book, “It Can Happen Here.” And I continue to do MAGA research at places like this year’s CPAC, where the mood has been giddy.

    Here are three reasons why the MAGA faithful believe a golden age has begun. The list begins, and ends, with Trump.

    Elon Musk holds a painting of himself during CPAC in Oxon Hill, Md., on Feb. 20, 2025.
    Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

    1. The warrior hero

    Trump supporters contend that after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attacks, which they consider a “peaceful protest,” Trump became a political pariah and victim.

    Like many a mythic hero, Trump’s response was “never surrender.” In 2023, he repeatedly told his MAGA faithful, “I am your warrior, I am your justice.”

    Trump’s heroism, his supporters believe, was illustrated after a bullet grazed his ear during an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania in July 2024. Trump quickly rose to his feet, pumped his fist in the air and yelled, “Fight, fight, fight.”

    The phrase became a MAGA rally cry and, in February 2025, it has been stamped on CPAC attendees’ shirts and jackets.

    After Trump’s 2024 election victory, many Trump supporters dubbed it
    “the greatest comeback in political history.” MAGA populist Steven Bannon invoked this phrase at a pre-CPAC event on Feb. 19.

    When Bannon spoke on the CPAC main stage on Feb. 20, he led the crowd in a raucous “fight, fight, fight” chant. He compared Trump with Abraham Lincoln and George Washington and called for him to run again for president in 2028.

    This is despite the fact that Trump running for a third term would violate the Constitution.

    2. A wrecking ball

    The MAGA faithful believe that Trump is like a human “wrecking ball,” as evangelical leader Lance Wallnau said in 2015. This metaphor speaks to how Trump supporters believe the president is tearing down an entrenched, corrupt system.

    The day Trump took office, MAGA stalwarts underscore, he began to “drain the swamp” with a slew of executive orders.

    One established the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which is devoted to eliminating government waste. DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk, has dismantled USAID and fired thousands of government workers whom MAGA views as part of an anti-Trump “deep state.”

    Musk stole the show at CPAC on Feb. 20. Speaking to a cheering crowd, Musk held up a large red chain saw and yelled, “This is the chain saw for bureaucracy.”

    Speaker after speaker at this year’s CPAC have celebrated this and other wrecking-ball achievements on panels with titles like “Red Tape Reckoning,” “Crushing Woke Board Rooms” and “The Takedown of Left Tech.”

    3. The Midas touch

    A golden age requires a builder. Who better, the MAGA faithful believe, than a billionaire businessman with a self-proclaimed “Midas touch.” This refers to King Midas, a figure in Greek mythology who turns everything he touches into pure gold.

    “Trump Will Fix It” signs filled his 2024 campaign rallies. And MAGA supporters note that Trump began fixing the country on Day 1 by “flooding the zone” with executive orders aimed at implementing his four-pronged “America First” promise. In addition to draining the swamp, this plan pledges to “make America safe again,” “make America affordable and energy dominant again” and “bring back American values.”

    These themes run through the remarks of almost every CPAC speaker, who offer nonstop praise about how Trump is securing the country’s borders, increasing energy independence, repatriating who they call illegal aliens, restoring free speech and reducing government regulation and waste.

    CPAC speakers said that Trump has already racked up a slew of successes just a month into his presidency.

    This includes Trump using the threat of tariffs to bring other countries to the negotiating table.

    Meanwhile, Trump supporters are pleased that he has been working to cut deals to end the conflict in Gaza and the war between Russia and Ukraine, while reorienting U.S. foreign policy to focus on China.

    House Speaker Mike Johnson expressed the prevailing MAGA sentiment when he stated at CPAC that Trump “wrote the art of the deal. He knows what he’s doing.”

    CPAC attendees wear Trump-themed clothing at the four-day political conference on Feb. 20, 2025.
    Andrew Harnick/Getty Images

    American exceptionalism restored

    The golden-age celebration at CPAC centered on Trump and his mission to “make America great again.”

    Speaker after speaker, including foreign conservative leaders from around the world, paid homage to Trump and this message.

    During her CPAC speech, Liz Truss, the former prime minister of the U.K., stated, “This is truly the golden age of America.” Truss, who does not have a current political position, told the CPAC audience that she wanted to copy the MAGA playbook in order to “make Britain great again.”

    The MAGA faithful believe that Trump is restoring an era of American exceptionalism in which the U.S. is an economic powerhouse, common sense is the rule, and traditional values centered on God, family and freedom are celebrated.

    And they believe in a future where the U.S. is, as Trump said in his inaugural address, “the envy of every nation.”

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

    – ref. I went to CPAC as an anthropologist to see how Trump supporters are feeling − for them, a ‘golden age’ has begun – https://theconversation.com/i-went-to-cpac-as-an-anthropologist-to-see-how-trump-supporters-are-feeling-for-them-a-golden-age-has-begun-250219

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: South Africa’s fight over VAT raises a key question: who should bear the burden of taxes?

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Fabio Andrés Díaz Pabón, Research Fellow, African Centre of Excellence for Inequality Research (ACEIR), University of Cape Town

    The unprecedented postponement of the tabling of South Africa’s 2025 budget because of disagreement within the coalition government over a two percentage point increase in value added tax (VAT), highlights the country’s dilemma.

    The government needs to raise revenue to deliver on its constitutional obligations. But in a context where the global outlook is uncertain and unpredictable, trade-offs are required.

    South Africa has a deficit of around 4.3% of GDP, accounting for R377 billion (US$20,479 billion). According to the Unpublished budget review public debt stands at 76.1% of its GDP.

    Whereas the public debt as a percentage of GDP is in line with that of similarly sized economies, its debt servicing costs are considerably higher. The country pays around 5% on public debt interest as a share of GDP while developing and upper-middle-income countries pay, on average, 2.2% and 1.8% respectively.

    These figures point to why the finance minister wanted to raise more revenue. Treasury’s estimates in the 2025 unpublished Budget Review were that the increase in Vat and other tax adjustments plus factoring in tax foregone due to expanding the basket of zero-rated goods would have brought in an additional R58 billion (US$3.1 billion) for the 2025/26 financial year.

    To date, debates around previous years’ budgets have mostly been about expenditure, with very little scrutiny of the revenue side. Not since the 2013 Davis Tax Committee has there been public debate about reforming the tax policy.



    Read more:
    South Africa’s economy needs a shot in the arm, not austerity: 3 key areas where more public spending would get results

    Based on our academic research we believe the crucial question around tax reform is: who will bear the burden of the reform? And how taxes connect to the promise of the South African social compact. The social compact since democracy, expressed in the constitution, promises to uphold the rights of all citizens.

    Evidence shows that increases in the rate of VAT affect poor households more, particularly women-headed households.

    While the government is concerned about financing its budget and being able to raise the resources needed to make the state work, a rethink is needed about who must bear the burden of raising the money.

    The cost of food

    VAT is a flat tax on consumption of goods and services, usually paid by the end consumer. It affects lower income households more because they spend a greater share of their income on goods such as food, electricity and water.

    The uproar over the recent proposed increase is therefore not surprising.

    At least 34% of the yearly income of poor households is spent on food and groceries. Almost 50% of South Africans live under the poverty line. This is where the impact will be felt in a number of ways.

    Firstly, the net effect of an increase in VAT will mean that mean that already financially stretched households will be paying more for food. This comes on top of
    food inflation was 8% between 2023 and 2024.

    Secondly, meagre increases in social grant payments in the last decade – over 28 million grants are paid out every month – have not kept pace with inflation.

    One of the largest grants is the old age pension grant. There are around 3.9 million beneficiaries. It amounts to R2,190 (US$118) a month for those between 65 and 74 years and is the sole source of income for many families.

    Between 2023 and 2024 this grant increased by R110 (US$5.45) – a 5.2 % increase, while inflation stood at 4.5%. However, after taking into account inflation, the grant amounts to R2,091 (just over US$107), having the net grant increase (after adjusting for inflation) of meagre R11 (the grant was in 2023 R2.080).

    A VAT increase would raise their cost of living for working-class South African households (those earning between R8,000 (US$432) and R22,000 (US$1,188) a month) too. This cohort is already using 67% of their income to cover their debts. Middle class households (earning between R22,000 (US$1,188) and R35,000 (US$1,893) a month) use 69% of their income to cover their debts. A VAT-induced increase in the cost of living may push some to neglect servicing debt to maintain their living standards.

    If middle and working class households defaulted in large numbers on their debt obligations, a vicious cycle might unfold.

    Firstly, banks and financial institutions might face significant losses due to unpaid loans. This could trigger an economic recession as consumption could fall, leading to lower revenue collection. This could increase government debt as the state might need to bail out banks or get loans to cover the revenue shortfall. The result would be a credit downgrade which might make it more expensive to borrow money on international markets.

    In a country with such a limited and vulnerable tax base (in 2024, only 7.4 million people of 63 million paid income tax) these risks should not be taken lightly.

    Wealthy South Africans

    Wealthy South Africans will not be as badly affected by an increase in VAT. Their consumption as a share of their incomes is less. Yet they remain central to the government’s dilemma about raising money from taxes. That’s because taxing wealthier South Africans will result in a push-back, and in some cases put a strain on struggling companies and industries that are central for job creation.

    However, the most likely reason a VAT increase was chosen as opposed to a higher income tax for high income earners, taxes on capital gains, or taxes on wealth is that the government knows the wealthy elites (including those in government) will oppose increases taxes targeted at them. They are more organised and have more leverage over the government than vulnerable households.

    What next?

    The government needs to spend money properly and meet its constitutional obligations. And corruption must be reduced.

    What the standoff over the VAT increase has highlighted is that, if South Africa aims to be a society where everyone actually counts, it should place the well-being of all its citizens at the forefront. This should be the principle that informs the process of raising the resources needed to drive future.

    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. South Africa’s fight over VAT raises a key question: who should bear the burden of taxes? – https://theconversation.com/south-africas-fight-over-vat-raises-a-key-question-who-should-bear-the-burden-of-taxes-250412

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: James Bond is now controlled by Amazon – the franchise’s history holds clues to the future of 007

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Yannis Tzioumakis, Reader in Film and Media Industries, University of Liverpool

    The Broccoli family have controlled the James Bond franchise ever since the films were launched by Albert “Cubby” Broccoli in 1962. Now, his daughter and stepson, long-serving producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, have announced that they have surrendered creative control to Amazon MGM Studios.

    Within minutes of the announcement on February 21, critics, analysts and fans of the Bond films rushed to proclaim the end of the beloved franchise. “Quite possibly the worst thing to happen to this franchise”, “the end of an era” and “RIP James Bond” were just a few of the responses.

    The fear is that, under Amazon’s leadership, Bond will go down the same route as other beloved media properties, such as Star Wars and Marvel.

    Having found themselves under the control of global entertainment conglomerates, these franchises have been treated as intellectual property and content. Films and TV shows expanding the universe of the franchises were used to serve corporate aims and cross-support other business segments of their parent companies.

    This is exactly what happened with Disney, after it acquired Lucasfilm and Marvel and assumed creative control of the Star Wars, Indiana Jones and the Marvel films.

    Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

    Disney embarked on a well-orchestrated campaign that expanded the narrative universe of its franchises through a host of new films, TV series, documentaries and other content. Such content also supported the launch of its streaming service, Disney+, introduced new lines of merchandise for its stores, and installed new attractions in its theme parks.

    While, for a period, this strategy paid off handsomely for the conglomerate, the power of its brands started to become diluted. Complaints about the quality of some of its output and fan fatigue from an infinitely expanding narrative universe seem to have had a strong impact both on Disney’s ability to extract maximum value from its properties. Not to mention the fans’ relationship with their once-favourite stories and characters.

    Will Bond meet with a similar fate? A look at the franchise’s history as well as at Amazon’s recent business practices offers a glimpse into what the future may hold for 007.

    Bond’s studio history

    Eon Productions has controlled the franchise since Bond made his first successful, though not spectacular, appearance in theatres in 1962.

    Originally established by Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman as a company through which to produce the James Bond films, Eon was a subsidiary of Danjaq, a holding company through which the two men managed the film series’ business.

    Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli.
    Wiki Commons

    The film’s distributor, United Artists, eventually became Danjaq’s co-owner and therefore Eon’s production partner, even though creative decisions remained with Eon.

    In the 1980s and early 1990s, MGM took United Artists’ place as Eon’s partner. But after a barrage of corporate takeovers and litigation cases, production of the films in the early 1990s halted. They were only reignited in 1995 when Eon passed on to Broccoli’s children.

    A new corporate takeover of MGM by a consortium of companies led by Sony in the 2004 brought yet another partner on board for EON. But it also led to the transformation of Bond from a film series to a full-fledged franchise.

    Eon rebooted Bond with the origin film Casino Royale in 2006. Ever since, it has carefully managed the Bond universe through a series of films that proved major box office hits worldwide. And it has also cultivated a list of marketing partners, the majority of whom are luxury retail brands such as Tom Ford and Omega.



    Read more:
    The ideal James Bond is an actor on the cusp of superstardom – as film history shows

    At the same time, Sony was able to use product placement in the Bond films as advertisements for its consumer electronic products, as well as benefiting from releasing the films theatrically worldwide.

    The arrangement with Sony was modified in the late 2000s as MGM reemerged as a self-owned production company with an ability to make its own deals. MGM and Eon continued their collaboration with Sony for Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015). But for the most recent James Bond outing, No Time to Die (2021), the Bond franchise owners decided on a split distribution deal that was not as successful.

    Amazon enters the frame

    It was at that time that Amazon took over MGM in a deal worth £6.48 billion (US$8.45 billion), making Amazon Studios Eon’s next production partner. But even with the one of the biggest conglomerates in the picture, Eon continued to have ironclad control of the franchise. This was secured through contracts negotiated following MGM’s successive takeovers.

    Amazon’s takeover of MGM was part of a list of acquisitions motivated by the tech company’s efforts to support their streaming service, Prime. It meant it could add the approximately 4,000 films and TV programmes available in MGM’s library to their streaming catalogue, with the hopes of attracting new subscribers.

    No Time to Die was Craig’s final outing as Bond.

    But Amazon is also in the business of producing original content through what is now known as Amazon MGM Studios. This is the reason for the rampant speculation on how it would manage the franchise, and whether there would be a blitz of new Bond-branded content à la Disney’s treatment of Star Wars.

    Amazon has the resources to pour vast amounts of funding into productions that can support its other business segments. This means it has the means required to reboot Bond and spend lavishly on production and top talent. This could redefine the franchise for audiences in the streaming era.

    Perhaps more intriguingly, Amazon could use Bond’s proven ability to market upscale and luxury products and services through its e-commerce division. This could drive even more (and even more lucrative) business to its online shopping site.

    Indeed, I can see a scenario whereby a new James Bond film will be released on Black Friday, creating an unprecedented level among Amazon’s divisions and redefining “Bondmania” for a new, digital era.

    Yannis Tzioumakis 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. James Bond is now controlled by Amazon – the franchise’s history holds clues to the future of 007 – https://theconversation.com/james-bond-is-now-controlled-by-amazon-the-franchises-history-holds-clues-to-the-future-of-007-250563

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Gout used to be an affliction of royalty but is now a disease of the masses

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dan Baumgardt, Senior Lecturer, School of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience, University of Bristol

    Toe with gout inflammation PJjaruwan/Shutterstock

    “The Queen’s had an attack of gout! Hurry!”

    So exclaimed the crotchety Mrs Meg in Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite, in which Olivia Colman plays a moribund and overweight Queen Anne. The queen was afflicted with, among many other conditions, gout – a disorder which causes joint inflammation and severe pain.

    In the film, while screaming out in pain, her swollen feet are wrapped in strips of soothing beef. The next day her soon-to-be new favourite, Abigail, collects wild herbs to make a poultice for her. A bit more effective than raw steak, she finds.

    You’ve got to feel sorry for Queen Anne. She really didn’t have much of a chance, since doctors of her day had no options for treating gout other than quackery.

    She may have been subject to many other absurd treatments of the time to alleviate the symptoms, like scorching the blood vessels supplying the feet, slathering them in goose fat, or bloodletting with leeches. By the time she passed away in 1714 aged just 49, death may have come as a welcome relief.

    Queen Anne wasn’t the only member of royalty to suffer with gout. Prince Regent George (later George IV) was similarly afflicted. Gout, then, came to be associated with the aristocracy and over indulgence.

    Gout still affects many people. In fact, it is estimated that in 2020 gout affected nearly 56 million people worldwide, a figure that’s predicted to grow to 96 million by 2050. So, a condition that was once considered the disease of kings and queens is a now a disease of the masses, with younger patients also being diagnosed.

    Luckily, raw meat strips and herbs are no longer required. We now know much more about how to treat gout and how to prevent it recurring.

    Understanding gout

    Gout is a crystal arthropathy – a group of joint disorders that occur when crystals build up in joints and soft tissues. Gout develops when uric acid levels rise in the bloodstream, before infiltrating the joints where it solidifies and becomes needle-like crystals that inflame the joints, making them incredibly sore.

    And when I say “sore”, I really do mean sore: many people who experience gout often describe it as one of the worst pains they have ever felt. It most commonly affects the big toe and it can make even the lightest touch to the skin unbearable.

    Some gout patients sleep with a special cage over their foot that lifts up the bedclothes because they can’t bear even the weight of a bed sheet on the affected joint.

    Gout can affect other joints. It may also cause “tophi” to develop (hard swellings around joints and the ears).

    The Gout by James Gillray. Published May 14th 1799.
    Wikimedia Commons

    Gout typically occurs in bouts or attacks, before settling with treatment and becoming dormant. But it can reoccur, requiring more acute treatment.

    A diagnosis of gout is based around the classic symptoms: excruciating pain,
    swelling in and around the affected joint and redness. Microscopic examination of the fluid taken from the swollen joint may also show crystals and there is usually raised uric acid levels on blood tests.

    High uric acid

    High uric acid levels are usually linked to alcohol excess, obesity, diabetes and hypertension. A diet high in purine-rich foods has been found to have the strongest association.

    Purines are compounds comprised of uric acid. Purine-rich foods include meat and offal, oily fish like mackerel and anchovies, and yeasty foods, like Marmite and beer. It may be a good idea to avoid these foods in excess if you suffer from frequent episodes of gout.

    Medication

    But dietary changes alone are unlikely to stave off symptoms of gout. Medications can treat both an acute episode of gout and prevent it recurring.

    When the joints are inflamed, options include anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen, naproxen, or steroid medications. Another option is colchicine, which is typically used for short periods and can be very effective – though it commonly causes bouts of diarrhoea.

    When the inflammation has settled down, it is important to prevent future attacks. Allopurinol can reduce uric acid levels and therefore the risk of further bouts. There’s also evidence to suggest that eating cherries or drinking tart cherry juice could reduce the risk of gout attacks, especially if combined with alloprinol.

    If you want to stay free of gout then perhaps it’s time to consider taking preventative action by making subtle lifestyle modifications. Maintain a healthy weight, eat a balanced diet, cut down on alcohol and avoid binge drinking, take regular exercise and keep yourself well hydrated.

    Dan Baumgardt 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. Gout used to be an affliction of royalty but is now a disease of the masses – https://theconversation.com/gout-used-to-be-an-affliction-of-royalty-but-is-now-a-disease-of-the-masses-249397

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Ukraine war three years on: the bloodiest battles may be still to come

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alexander Titov, Lecturer in Modern European History, Queen’s University Belfast

    Just ahead of the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the conflict has taken a dramatic and unexpected turn. The US is abruptly disengaging from its support of Ukraine, having previously promised that they would stand with Kyiv for “as long as it takes”.

    Europe is in panic mode, while Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is having public spats with the freshly installed US president, Donald Trump.

    At this stage, it seems that Vladimir Putin is firmly on top. But Trump is not the main cause of the current crisis, he merely reflects a more serious problem for Ukraine.

    When war broke out in the early hours of February 24 2022, the world was shocked, but not entirely surprised. Warnings of Russia’s attack on Ukraine had the advantage of preparing a united western front against Russia.

    Western resolve strengthened as expectations of a quick Moscow victory faded and Ukraine’s self-confidence grew. This mood was reflected in Josep Borrell’s statement the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs on April 9 that Russia must be defeated on the battlefield.

    Two weeks earlier, US president Joe Biden declared that Putin “cannot stay in power”. In September 2022, when the Ukrainian army recaptured a large part of the territory occupied by Russia in the Kharkiv region, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, told the EU parliament that “Russia’s industry is in tatters,” and that Moscow was using dishwashing machine chips for its missiles.

    In an atmosphere of euphoria on October 4, Zelensky issued an official ban on negotiations with Putin. There would be only one outcome to this war: Putin’s defeat.

    Indeed, Putin’s original plan had failed. Russia was retreating in Kharkiv and abandoning its strategic foothold on the right bank of the Dnieper in Kherson. On September 21 Putin had to declare a partial mobilisation, the first since the second world war, because Russia’s professional army was running out of men.

    Fortunes of war

    How things have changed: as the war approaches its three-year mark the west’s triumphalist mood is now a distant memory. Mark Rutte, secretary general of Nato, warned on January 13 that “what Russia now produces in three months, that’s what the whole of NATO from Los Angeles to Ankara produces in a year”. It’s a far cry from von der Leyen’s “Russian economy in tatters” jubilation of 2022.

    In its dying days, the Biden administration rushed more weapons to Ukraine and imposed ever harsher sanctions on Moscow. This could not hide the fact that the US could not continue to fund Ukraine as it had for the first three years. Any US president would now struggle to get another Ukraine funding bill through Congress.

    And Donald Trump is not just any US president. In his first month he has changed his country’s Ukraine policy in a characteristically dramatic and abrupt way.

    But the underlying problem was always there: what to do with this war that Ukraine is not going to win and in which Russia is slowly getting the upper hand. It’s been clear since the failure of Ukraine’s much touted counteroffensive in summer 2023 that Ukraine can’t win militarily. So continuing to supply Ukraine at current levels can only prolong the fight, not change the course of the war.

    From Trump’s perspective, this is a Biden war that has already been lost. And politically, it’s much easier for Trump to seek peace than his European counterparts because he campaigned on an anti-war message, repeatedly blaming Biden for the war and saying it would never have happened if he were president. Trump wants to find a quick fix and move on. If it fails, he can wash his hands of it and let the Europeans deal with it.

    Europe clearly doesn’t know what to do now: it can’t accept defeat, but neither can it pretend that Ukraine can win the war without US support. It is a sign of their desperation that in “emergency meetings” called by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, they spend so much time discussing hypothetical and, frankly, highly unlikely scenarios for sending European troops into Ukraine.

    After talks with the US in Saudi Arabia, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov made clear the Russian position: “The troops of Nato countries [in Ukraine] under a foreign flag – an EU flag or any national flag … is unacceptable.” And the Europeans are simply not in a position to impose conditions on the Kremlin.

    The best that the EU can do on the third anniversary of the invasion is to unveil yet another sanctions package: number 16. But now that the US has changed its mind about its war aims, there’s no hiding the fact that Europe’s war strategy is in tatters.

    The end point

    Russia is under no pressure to rush into a deal it doesn’t like. Moscow’s terms are known: formal recognition that the four regions it annexed in September 2022 plus Crimea are now part of Russia, and withdrawal of the remaining Ukrainian troops from those regions. Kyiv must pledge permanent neutrality, limits on its armed forces. It must recognise and establish Russian language rights in Ukraine and ban far-right parties.

    But these terms are completely unacceptable to Kyiv. And while there’s no good way out for Ukraine, it’s not yet in a desperate enough position to accept such a deal.

    The only way to force it on Kyiv is either a complete military collapse by Ukraine’s forces, which is not looking likely at the moment, or concerted pressure from a united west to accept Russia’s unpalatable terms. But the west is divided on this issue, with the Europeans insisting that Ukraine should keep fighting until it can negotiate “from a position of strength”.

    It’s a heroic assumption that Ukraine will be in a stronger position by this time next year. After the peak of confidence in early 2023, when Zelensky declared that “2023 will be the year of our victory!” each subsequent anniversary of the invasion saw Kyiv’s position weaker. But still, on current trends, it would take Russia until the end of the year to capture the rest of the eastern province of Donbas, without which an end to the war is unlikely anyway.

    For these reasons, there is no guarantee that the US-Russian talks will lead to a resolution of the conflict. Unfortunately, this means that the bloodiest battles of the war are yet to come, as the Russian military pushes to maximise its military advantage.

    In keeping with the wishes of Josep Borrell, the outcome of this war is still likely to be decided on the battlefield.

    Alexander Titov 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. Ukraine war three years on: the bloodiest battles may be still to come – https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-three-years-on-the-bloodiest-battles-may-be-still-to-come-250422

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Fast furniture is terrible for the environment – here are five ways to spot it

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Katryn Furmston, PhD candidate in sustainable furniture, Nottingham Trent University

    The UK spent more than £20 million on furniture in 2024, predominantly for bedrooms and living rooms. Many of us are aware of the problems with fast fashion, including the problems caused by dumping this cheap, low-quality clothing in landfills. But there’s a similar issue with furniture, with more than 22 million pieces sent to landfill every year. Unfortunately, most of this will be fast furniture, as it can’t be recycled or reused.

    Fast furniture is classed as being made, bought, consumed and disposed of quickly and cheaply. Its flimsiness is due to the materials used and how it is made. The companies making it are often chasing fast-changing trends in interior design.

    Unlike fast fashion, though – which lasts up to a year, sometimes only being worn once – fast furniture will last a maximum of five to seven years, if you’re lucky. This makes it a burden on our waste systems, especially when furniture should ideally last ten to 20 years at least.

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    Of course, it can be enticing to kit out your house quickly and on the cheap, especially if you’re moving into somewhere unfurnished. But if you have the time and the money, you really should avoid fast furniture as much as possible.

    So, if you want good furniture that lasts long, looks good and isn’t going clog up the planet, here are five simple ways to help you spot fast furniture.

    1. If the price seems too good to be true …

    The biggest giveaway of fast furniture is the price. It tends to be pretty inexpensive and very accessible. Unfortunately, the low cost is often thanks to poor materials or build quality, which means the piece is unlikely to last you very long.

    For example, an £89 sofa from a fast furniture company might seem like a good deal when you consider that a good quality sofa will cost you in the region of £800 to £1,500. But while £89 might seem great now, it probably won’t last long and will end up costing the environment and you more as you’ll have to replace it sooner rather than later.

    2 . Always check the materials

    Companies are supposed to list all the materials in the furniture. If you see a mix of MDF (medium density fibreboard), plastic and chipboard, this is often a signifier that the piece is fast.

    For cabinets, shelves, wardrobes and items with a backboard, a key signifier that it’s fast furniture will be that the backboard is made of taped-together sheets of hardboard that you have to nail in place. You will often find that this backboard starts to come away after a while and sometimes separates at the joins.

    3. Does it require an Allen key?

    If the answer is yes, it’s probably fast. What are the fittings like when you put it together? Do they come in a little bag all jumbled together? If you are using standardised fittings like dowels and bolts with pre-cut holes, known as knockdown fittings, to put the piece together, it will likely be a fast furniture piece.

    These fittings are cheap and easy to use, plus companies can easily provide you with an Allen key or small screwdriver in the kit. Unfortunately, these fittings don’t last very long, either separating from the material they are fixed to or snapping from too much load.

    4. There’s only one image online

    Don’t you just hate it when a company only gives you one view of an item and no way to see any of the details? It’s often not available to view in real life, and the item is either set in a room and looks like a sticker, or is just on a white background.

    Similarly, is the image a photograph or a 3D render? You will likely know because renders either look too perfect or just a bit strange.These things can mean that the company hasn’t had the time or money to do a proper photoshoot. It can also mean that the product you receive may not look exactly like the image, or that the parts might not fit together properly.

    5. Look at the piece’s finish

    Does it have plastic edging strips? Are the finish choices white, black or wood effects? Is it easy to wipe clean? All of these are signifiers of a fast furniture item.

    In short, go and look at the piece before purchase, and also look after whatever you choose as this will also make a big difference to how long it lasts.

    With the rise of television programmes like BBC’s Repair Shop, we are seeing an increase in furniture repair and upcycling. However, this hasn’t stopped us Brits from continuing to buy new.

    While these are a few ways to spot fast furniture, at the end of the day, the decision to buy is yours. Not everyone can spend a lot of money on new pieces but if your budget is smaller and you really don’t want to contribute to fast furniture, consider looking at second-hand items on Facebook Marketplace and in charity shops. Also see if you can repurpose something you already own. The planet will thank you and you will have pieces which will live with you for a long time.

    Katryn Furmston receives funding from AHRC via a university scholarship through NTU. She is affiliated with the British Sociological Association and is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers.

    – ref. Fast furniture is terrible for the environment – here are five ways to spot it – https://theconversation.com/fast-furniture-is-terrible-for-the-environment-here-are-five-ways-to-spot-it-245965

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Will the UK send troops to Ukraine? The challenges facing Starmer’s plan

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

    Plans for the UK and other European countries to send troops to Ukraine are in their very early stages. But the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, will already be thinking about how such a move could play out at home. Sending UK troops abroad, even on a “peacekeeping” mission, always has the potential to spark huge public debate.

    This is the first time the government has considered deploying military forces in 11 years, when the Cameron government debated intervening in Syria alongside the US Obama administration in 2014. Since then, the UK has not seriously considered deploying troops overseas.

    In the intervening years, the Chilcot inquiry found that the UK’s decision to join the invasion of Iraq was made prematurely, before all peaceful options were exhausted.

    This, along with the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, may well have decreased UK public support for military interventions.

    When polled in 2021, the British public were unconvinced about involvement in Afghanistan, with 53% thinking that two decades of war in Afghanistan didn’t achieve anything. Worse, 62% think that the conflict either didn’t improve the lives of ordinary Afghans, or made their lives worse.

    The picture, for now, is a bit different on deploying troops to Ukraine as peacekeepers. Of those polled in mid-January, 58% either strongly or somewhat support deploying UK troops as peacekeepers. Among Labour voters, support is higher at 66%, with Tory voters (67%) and Lib Dem voters (70%) showing similar levels of support.

    Reform voters show far less support (44%), potentially building more of a split between Reform and the other mainstream parties. This division may increase polarisation, and could make it even harder for Starmer to slow the rise of Reform’s challenge to Labour’s voter base.

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    Starmer will draw comfort from the limited opposition to deploying peacekeepers. Only 15% of Labour voters somewhat or strongly oppose deploying UK troops as peacekeepers, below the national average of 21%.

    But looking at history, we can see how changeable public support can be when it comes to war. In 2003, 54% of those polled supported the US and UK invasion of Iraq.

    Despite this, there were voluble public protests against the invasion. In February 2003, an estimated 1 million people marched through London.

    The 12-week initial campaign went well, so this continued level of support is not surprising. However, when people looked back at the war in 2015, only 37% thought it had been a good idea.

    Only eight years later, in 2023, this had fallen further to 23%. Meanwhile one in five thought Tony Blair should be tried as a war criminal for his decision.

    Starmer will need to ensure that the public understand what his government sees as the need for UK troops to serve as peacekeepers in Ukraine – and he will need to do so honestly. Much of the criticism Blair received over Iraq stemmed from accusations he wasn’t “straight” and that he “overstated” the case for UK involvement in Iraq.



    Read more:
    Iraq war 20 years on: the British government has never fully learned from Tony Blair’s mistakes

    The Iraq inquiry report also found the military was ill-equipped at the time of the invasion. There are similar concerns now about the readiness of the British army.

    Party politics and spending

    Starmer will be aware of the importance of parliamentary support for military action. When Cameron sought support for military intervention in Syria, Ed Miliband as leader of the Labour Party was crucial in the vote against this deployment.

    In contrast, when Blair won parliamentary support for invading Iraq, opposition from within the Labour party was so strong that Blair only won because of support from Tory MPs. Starmer will watch the responses in parliament from Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, the Lib Dems and SNP.

    At the time of writing, Badenoch hasn’t commented on the idea of sending troops to Ukraine. She has, however, rejected Donald Trump’s attacks that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is a dictator.

    Comments from former prime minister Boris Johnson that Trump accusing Ukraine of starting the war was the same as claiming that “America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor” may help build cross-party support.

    The most important challenge to Starmer’s plans could come from the Treasury rather than the Tories. Proposals reportedly involve 30,000 British and European troops.

    The number of troops that the UK would contribute to this joint force is unclear. However, the cost will be the prime focus for the chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves.

    Reeves has committed to increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP (up from 2.3%), but the timeline for this has not been set out. Starmer is under pressure to increase it even further, but any increase will be financially difficult given the state of Britain’s finances.

    This might help Starmer on his trip to Washington next week. Trump will be less likely to criticise Starmer if the PM can show that he is listening to Trump’s demands for Nato countries to increase their military spending.

    But crucially, while increased spending to enable this deployment may improve UK-US relations, it could also make things difficult with voters, who could have to endure tax rises or further cuts to public spending.

    Badenoch has said that failing to increase defence spending “is not peacemaking, it is weakness”. This suggests that the cost of intervention will be a key point of contention for the Tory leader.

    Deploying UK troops to Ukraine may be a defining part of Starmer’s foreign policy. Increasing military spending and showing that the UK will help bear the cost of peacekeeping in Ukraine may also help set the tone of Starmer’s relationship with Trump.

    However, politically, the consequences of deploying UK troops to Ukraine could spark numerous domestic challenges. While Labour voters appear to support the proposal now, there is likely to be opposition from at least some Reform voters – something Starmer doesn’t need more of right now. The financial costs will also put even more pressure on Labour’s spending plans, and could build division between PM and chancellor.

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

    – ref. Will the UK send troops to Ukraine? The challenges facing Starmer’s plan – https://theconversation.com/will-the-uk-send-troops-to-ukraine-the-challenges-facing-starmers-plan-250330

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why Germany’s far right hates the Bauhaus movement

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Katrin Schreiter, Senior Lecturer in German and History, King’s College London

    Shutterstock/meunierd

    At a time of political tension in Germany, the Bauhaus – arguably one of most influential architecture, art and design schools in the world – has become the target of far-right attacks.

    Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, a member of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and a member of the regional parliament of Saxony-Anhalt in eastern Germany, has blamed his area’s economic problems on Bauhaus modernism.

    His unlikely diagnosis came in response to the regional conservative CDU government’s “think modern” campaign, which seeks to attract investment into the area and cites the Bauhaus movement as an example of locally grown excellence.

    Tillschneider asserts that for the area’s economic stagnation to be resolved “we do not need to think modern, we need to think conservatively.” He rejects Bauhaus ideas as diffused with communist ideology. With these attacks, Tillschneider has started a quasi-re-enactment of a historical culture war over German national identity and social anxieties.

    Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius.
    Wikipedia/Louis Held

    Founded in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius in the German city of Weimar, the Bauhaus and its staff shared a programme of material utopianism. This was expressed via an explorative workshop concept that departed from traditional modes of teaching.

    Such avant-garde practices moved the Bauhaus politically to the left, which would make it vulnerable to ideological attack throughout the Weimar republic, Germany’s first (and failed) democracy.

    In the contentious debate about national identity that followed the end of the monarchy in 1918, Bauhaus artists inhabited an uncomfortable position between two schools of thought among the educated elite.

    One side had opened up to modern aesthetics (such as impressionism and expressionism). The other – the conservatives – instead embraced an artistic nationalism that had manifested with German unification in 1871.

    They saw “true art” as coming from the people and in turn educating them as loyal citizens. Aesthetically, conservatives found these values expressed in Weimar classicism. Curiously, given the emphasis on art by the people, this was a rather exclusive, high-brow form of literature, theatre and visual arts.

    Bauhaus ideas, instead, were anti-bourgeois, avant-garde and experimental, while at the same time postulating the importance of creating art for everyone to access and enjoy. Such democratisation of style, however, was difficult to achieve, and most of what the Bauhaus produced remained unaffordable to the masses. Nevertheless, these clashing visions politicised culture during the interwar years.

    The reconstructed Bauhaus school in Dessau.
    Wikipedia/Lelikron, CC BY-SA

    In 1925, the school had to move from Weimar to Dessau (in Saxony-Anhalt) after it lost its funding. This was the fallout of a dispute with the conservative political parties that ruled the city at the time.

    In Dessau, the Bauhaus teachers built a school building that followed their modern aesthetic principles. Despite repeated attempts by Gropius to depoliticise the Bauhaus by pointing to its aesthetic pluralism, internal debates about the place of architecture in society and politics continued.

    The point of contention was the concept of “New Objectivity” (Neue Sachlichkeit) which found expression in Neues Bauen: modularised construction which introduced the industrialised pre-fabrication of building parts in a turn away from traditional crafts.

    Eventually, Gropius left the Bauhaus and in his place came the openly socialist architect Hannes Meyer. After taking over as director in 1928, he repoliticised the school and moved it back to the left.

    In the heated political climate of the late Weimar republic, the Bauhaus encountered a new existential threat. When the Nazis took over in local elections in 1931, they requested the destruction of the Bauhaus school.

    The Bauhaus moved again in 1932, this time to Berlin, where it continued as a private institution to avoid renewed conflict with the ever more powerful Nazis. Nevertheless, when Adolf Hitler seized power in early 1933, the school and its staff became victims of the Nazis’ anti-socialist measures.

    The Bauhaus school closed on July 20 1933 and its staff dispersed, often to faraway places. Many went to the United States, where they continued in the legacy of the “Bauhaus spirit” by joining the international modernism movement that became the defining Western aesthetic in the 1950s.

    Although the artistic influences and expressions had remained diverse throughout the lifetime of the school, postwar discourse has streamlined it to simple geometric shapes, a preference for the colours white, blue, red and yellow, and an emphasis on horizontal lines and perspectives.

    The Nazis had labelled Bauhaus aesthetics as “degenerate”. In the cold war era, the socialist East German government called out Bauhaus modernism and its disciples as cosmopolitan in the pejorative sense.

    They were accused of abandoning German national heritage for the sake of international “formalism”, elevating form – as pertaining to function – over cultural content. Tillschneider has put it even more provocatively: “They denied man’s connection to land and his cultural roots”. While a huge interpretative overstretch, these statements do not come as a surprise.

    This year marks the centennial of the move to Dessau, where the school building still stands proudly as a Unesco world heritage site. Tillschneider used this moment to perpetuate the culture war that the AfD has become known for over the past decade.

    He is equating the CDU to an oversimplified depiction of the Bauhaus legacy – one that is anti-crafts, anti-bourgeois and internationalist – he implies his political rivals are against German tradition and culture. These are the nativist sentiments that fuel the AfD. It is a strategy of cheap wins at the expense of the electorate’s anxieties about Germany’s cultural and national identity.

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

    – ref. Why Germany’s far right hates the Bauhaus movement – https://theconversation.com/why-germanys-far-right-hates-the-bauhaus-movement-250416

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What is the AfD? Germany’s far-right party, explained

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Léonie de Jonge, Professor of Research on Far-Right Extremism, Institute for Research on Far-Right Extremism (IRex), University of Tübingen

    In the weeks ahead of the German election, the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) consistently polled around 20%. For the first time, the AfD poses a challenge to mainstream parties’ longstanding strategy of isolating the far right.

    The rise of the AfD is striking, given the country’s history of authoritarianism and National Socialism during the 1930s and 1940s. For decades, far-right movements were generally stigmatised and treated as pariahs. Political elites, mainstream parties, the media and civil society effectively marginalised the far right and limited its electoral prospects.

    The AfD’s breakthrough in the 2017 federal election shattered this status quo. Winning 12.6% of the vote and securing 94 Bundestag seats, it became Germany’s third-largest party — unlocking viable political space to the right of the centre-right party CDU/CSU for the first time in the postwar era.

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    The AfD was founded in 2013 by disaffected CDU members. This included economics professors Bernd Lucke and Joachim Starbatty, and conservative journalists Konrad Adam and Alexander Gauland. It began as a single-issue, anti-euro party advocating Germany’s exit from the Eurozone.

    Dubbed a “party of professors”, it gained credibility through the support of academics and former mainstream politicians, lending it an “unusual gravitas” for a protest party. While nativist elements were arguably present from the start, the AfD was not initially conceived as a far-right party.

    When it first ran for the Bundestag in 2013, its four-page manifesto focused exclusively on dissolving the Eurozone. At the time, the party advocated political asylum for the persecuted and avoided harsh anti-immigrant or anti-Islam rhetoric, cultivating more of a “bourgeois” image.

    This helped the AfD build what political scientist Elisabeth Ivarsflaten has called a reputational shield — a legacy used to deflect social stigma and accusations of extremism.

    Initially, the AfD distanced itself from far-right parties in neighbouring countries. However, successive leadership changes between 2015 and 2017 saw the party adopt a more hardline position, particularly on immigration, Islam and national identity. By 2016, its platform had largely aligned with those of populist radical right parties elsewhere.

    Far-right views

    Today, the party can unequivocally be classified as far right. This umbrella term captures the growing links between “(populist) radical right” (illiberal-democratic) and “extreme right” (anti-democratic) parties and movements. Ideologically, the far right is characterised by nativism and authoritarianism.

    Nativism is a xenophobic form of nationalism, which holds that non-native elements form a threat to the homogeneous nation-state. In Germany, nativism carries a historical legacy. “Völkisch nationalism” was one of the core ideas of the 19th and early 20th centuries that was broadly adopted by National Socialism to justify deportations and, ultimately, the Holocaust.

    Völkisch ideology is based on the essentialist idea that the German people are inextricably connected to the soil. Thus, other people cannot be part of the völkisch community.

    The AfD has evolved into a far-right party by continuously radicalising its positions. It acted like a Trojan horse, importing völkisch nationalist ideology into the parliamentary and public arena, which used to be blocked by the gatekeeping mechanisms of German democracy.

    The AfD carved out a niche for itself by advocating stricter anti-immigration policies. This came in response to the so-called “refugee crisis”, when then-Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed more than a million asylum seekers into Germany. At its campaign kickoff rally in January 2025, AfD’s chancellor candidate Alice Weidel vowed to implement “large-scale repatriations” (or “remigration”) of immigrants.

    The party advocates a return to a blood-based citizenship, insisting that, with very few exceptions for well-assimilated migrants, citizenship can only be determined by ancestry and bloodline rather than birthright.

    Additionally, the party upholds the white, nuclear family as an ideal and has pledged to dismiss university professors accused of promoting “leftist, woke gender ideology”. The party also calls for the immediate lifting of sanctions against Russia and opposes weapons deliveries to Ukraine.

    In recent years, the party has embraced the far-right strategy of flooding the media and public discourse with controversy, misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric, to dominate attention and transgress traditional political norms.

    A striking example is former AfD-leader Alexander Gauland’s 2018 claim that the 12 years of Nazi rule were “mere bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history”. With this remark, he sought to reframe modern Germany as a continuation of its pre-1933 history, while downplaying the significance of the Nazi era.

    Normalising the AfD

    Until recently, the far right was consistently excluded by mainstream political parties. It was a founding myth of the old Federal Republic of Germany that democratic forces do not cooperate with the far right. At least on the parliamentary level, this worked quite well as a part of Germany’s “militant democracy”.

    However, the political firewall — the Brandmauer — has started to crumble. The AfD has since celebrated the election of its first mayors at the local level.

    The success of the AfD has especially been fuelled by the narrative of a “refugee crisis” in Germany. Harsh political rhetoric about migration has contributed to the party’s electoral success, as well as mainstream adoption of some of its positions.

    Oddly enough, the AfD is especially successful in rural, remote areas with low levels of migration. It is weak in more globalised, university-oriented urban areas.



    Read more:
    German party leaders are united against immigration – but there is little evidence for a key part of their argument

    Ahead of the 2025 elections, Friedrich Merz, the lead candidate of the CDU, broke a longstanding political taboo when his proposal to tighten asylum policies narrowly passed in the Bundestag with backing from the AfD. Meanwhile, German media have increasingly treated AfD representatives as legitimate political contenders.

    Once marginalised in political debates, they are now regularly invited to talk shows. And they have received international legitimacy from figures such as US vice-president J.D. Vance, and X owner Elon Musk.

    This election may give an indication of how far the AfD’s normalisation will go and how it will affect Germany’s political future. Beyond electoral success, the main question will be to what extent mainstream parties will incorporate far-right ideas in their political agenda.

    What is already clear, however, is that the political landscape has shifted. The boundaries that once kept the far right at the margins are no longer as firm as they once were

    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. What is the AfD? Germany’s far-right party, explained – https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-afd-germanys-far-right-party-explained-250218

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Your pupils change size as you breathe – here’s why this new discovery is important

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Martin Schaefer, Postdoctoral Researcher in Cognitive Neuroscience and Behavioral Psychology, Karolinska Institutet

    sruilk

    You have probably heard the saying that the eyes are the windows to the soul, but now it turns out that they are also connected to how we breathe. Scientists have long studied the size of our pupils to understand attention, emotion and even medical conditions. But now, new research has surprisingly revealed that they change size in sync with our breathing.

    Our pupils are never static; they constantly adjust in response to both external and internal factors. The most well known is that they control how much light enters the eye, just like a camera aperture.

    You can easily test this yourself: look into a mirror and shine a light into your eye, and you’ll see your pupils shrink. This process directly affects our visual perception. Larger pupils help us to detect faint objects, particularly in our peripheral vision, while smaller pupils enhance sharpness, improving tasks like reading.

    Indeed, this reflex is so reliable that doctors use it to assess brain function. If a pupil fails to react to light, it could signal a medical emergency such as a stroke.

    Doctors will check patients’ pupils to see if they’ve had a stroke.
    Doodeez

    However, it is not just light that our pupils respond to. It’s also well established that our pupils constrict when focusing on a nearby object, and dilate in response to cognitive effort or emotional arousal.

    As the German pupil-research pioneer Irene Loewenfeld once said: “Man may either blush or turn pale when emotionally agitated, but his pupils always dilate.”

    For this reason, pupil size is often used in psychology and neuroscience research as a measure of mental effort and attention.

    The fourth response

    For many decades, these three kinds of pupil response were the only ones that scientists were sure existed. Now, myself and our team of researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands have confirmed that breathing is a fourth.

    In what will now be known as “pupillary respiratory phase response”, pupils tend to be largest during exhalation and smallest around the start of inhalation. Unlike other pupil responses, this one originates exclusively in the body and of course happens constantly. Equally uniquely, it covers both dilation and constriction.

    There had in fact been anecdotal hints of a connection between breathing and our pupils for more than 50 years. But when the team reviewed past studies the evidence was inconclusive at best. Given how widely pupil size is used in both medicine and research, we realised it was crucial to investigate this further.

    We confirmed through a series of five experiments with more than 200 participants that pupil size fluctuates in sync with breathing, and also that this effect is remarkably robust. In these studies, we invited the participants to our lab and recorded their pupil size and breathing pattern while they were relaxing or performing tasks on a computer screen.

    We systematically varied the other key pupil-response factors throughout the study – lighting, fixation distance and mental effort required for tasks. In all cases, the way that breathing affects the pupils remained constant.

    Whichever way you breathe, the effect on pupil size remains the same.
    LuckyStep

    Additionally, we examined how different breathing patterns affected the response.

    Participants were instructed to breathe solely through their nose or mouth and to adjust their breathing rate, as well as slowing it down and speeding it up. In all cases, the same pattern emerged: pupil size remained smallest around the onset of inhalation and largest during exhalation.

    What now

    This discovery changes the way we think about both breathing and vision. It suggests a deeper connection between breathing and the nervous system than we previously realised. The next big question is whether these subtle changes in pupil size affect how we see the world.

    The fluctuations are only fractions of a millimetre, which is less than the pupil response to light, but similar to the pupil response to mental effort or arousal. The size of these fluctuations is theoretically large enough to influence our visual perception. It may therefore be that our vision subtly shifts within a single breath between optimising for detecting faint objects (with larger pupils) and distinguishing fine details (with smaller pupils).

    In addition, just as the pupillary light response is used as a diagnostic tool, changes in the link between pupil size and breathing could be an early sign of neurological disorders.

    This research is part of a broader effort to understand how our internal bodily rhythms influence perception. Scientists are increasingly finding that our brain doesn’t process external information in isolation – it integrates signals from within our bodies, too. For example, information from our heart and gastric rhythms have also been suggested to enhance or hinder the processing of incoming sensory stimuli.

    If our breathing affects how our pupils change, could it also shape how we perceive the world around us? This opens the door to new research on how bodily rhythms shape perception – one breath at a time.

    Martin Schaefer is affiliated with Karolinska Institutet.

    – ref. Your pupils change size as you breathe – here’s why this new discovery is important – https://theconversation.com/your-pupils-change-size-as-you-breathe-heres-why-this-new-discovery-is-important-250435

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why Keir Starmer may gamble on increasing Britain’s defence spending

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Peter Bloom, Professor of Management, University of Essex

    leshiy985/Shutterstock

    Amid rising tensions around the world, the UK government faces pressure to increase defence spending. External threats and uncertainty over the nature of peace talks with Russia over Ukraine have been in the spotlight. But there are also broader political and economic interests shaping these decisions.

    The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, must navigate commitments to Nato, expectations from allies and the influence of the defence industry. All the while, the squeeze on domestic spending and public scepticism loom large.

    The UK’s total military spending for 2024-2025 is expected to be £64.4 billion, with a rise to £67.7 billion in 2025-26. This is equal to 2.3% of the entire UK economy (GDP). It would continue the trend of making the UK one of the highest military spenders in Europe. But it’s still not enough as far as the US president, Donald Trump, is concerned.

    In 2023-2024, the UK’s Ministry of Defence spent its budget across several key areas. Around one-third went towards investment in things such as equipment, infrastructure and technology. Another big area of spending was personnel costs, accounting for around one-fifth of the spend.

    In recent years, UK military spending has fluctuated, reflecting a balance between modernisation, deterrence and operational readiness. One of the most significant areas of investment has been in the UK’s nuclear deterrent (Trident).

    At the same time, cyber defence has become a growing focus, with £1.9 billion allocated to counter threats such as increased cyber attacks and misinformation campaigns from foreign governments and political extremists. The UK has also committed to expanding its next-generation air capabilities.

    Britain’s recent escalation in defence investment mirrors a global surge in military spending. In 2024, worldwide defence expenditures reached an unprecedented US$2.46 trillion (£1.95 trillion), marking a 7.4% real-term increase from the previous year.

    This trend is particularly pronounced in Europe, where nations are bolstering their military capabilities in response to geopolitical tensions such as the war in Ukraine. Germany’s defence budget experienced a significant 23.2% real-term growth, making the country the world’s fourth-largest defence spender.

    In the UK, Labour has pledged to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, aligning with Nato expectations. It also serves as a response to concerns about the country’s military readiness. This could require several billion pounds more annually, raising questions about how this would be funded.

    Publicly, the party presents this commitment as a necessary investment in the UK’s global standing and ability to deter aggression. However, you can argue that there is more at play.

    Political and economic pressures

    Starmer’s government inherited a complex set of geopolitical challenges, from European security concerns to the UK’s international relationships post-Brexit. Nato commitments remain a significant driver of defence spending, particularly as European allies anticipate shifts in US foreign policy under the second Trump presidency.

    The UK must also respond to regional tensions beyond Europe, due to its military alliances in the Indo-Pacific and its arms trade relationships with Middle Eastern states.

    Domestically, Labour’s commitment to raising defence spending is not just about security – it is also a political calculation. Starmer wants to dispel any perceptions that Labour is weak on defence.

    However, it comes at a time of fiscal constraint. Any new defence commitments must compete with demands for public investment in healthcare, education and infrastructure. Without additional taxation or significant budget cuts, Labour may struggle to meet its defence spending targets without compromising other commitments.

    Beyond geopolitical necessity, increased military spending benefits the UK’s powerful military-industrial complex (the relationship between the country’s military and its defence industry). Major defence contractors such as BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce and Lockheed Martin UK secure billions in government contracts.

    The so-called “revolving door” between government and defence firms frequently sees former military officials and politicians taking on lucrative roles in private-sector defence companies.

    The cross-party consensus on expanding Britain’s defence industry, now embraced by trade unions and political commentators, reflects a narrow vision of economic security that overlooks more sustainable alternatives.

    The sector’s 200,000 jobs are frequently claimed to justify increased military spending. But investment in renewable energy infrastructure and domestic energy production could both boost employment and address fundamental security challenges exposed by the Ukraine crisis.

    The reliance on foreign energy sources can be weaponised by adversarial states, as reflected in the continued reliance of EU countries on Russia for their energy needs. By investing in domestic renewable energy infrastructure, the UK can insulate itself from geopolitical energy threats. Stable energy supplies can underpin both economic resilience and military readiness.

    But there is a disconnect between strong government protection for arms manufacturers and relatively limited support for green technology development. This, even as climate change poses an escalating threat to national stability.

    Labour faces a difficult balancing act. Increasing defence spending helps solidify the party’s credibility on national security. But domestically, it risks alienating voters who favour investment in social welfare over military expansion.

    Additionally, higher military expenditure could make tax hikes or borrowing necessary. Both pose political hazards. And there is a real risk that increased spending will disproportionately benefit corporate defence giants rather than the public.

    Starmer hopes increased defence spending will show that he is serious about European security.
    Fred Duval/Shutterstock

    Internationally, Starmer aims to signal Britain’s continued reliability as a Nato ally amid uncertainties about the US commitment to European security. This positioning becomes especially significant given the UK’s post-Brexit need to demonstrate its global relevance and military capability.

    Labour’s drive to increase defence spending is also shaped by economic imperatives that extend beyond immediate security needs. The party faces pressure to expand a major sector of British manufacturing. At stake are not just defence capabilities but jobs, regional development and industrial strategy.

    The government now finds itself caught between competing pressures. The commitment to military expansion reflects not just geopolitical imperatives but also domestic political calculations and economic concerns, which appear to be equally influential. And it raises fundamental questions about how national security priorities are truly determined in an era of multiple challenges.

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

    – ref. Why Keir Starmer may gamble on increasing Britain’s defence spending – https://theconversation.com/why-keir-starmer-may-gamble-on-increasing-britains-defence-spending-250447

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: An explosion of colour and the downfall of an Instagram darling: what to see and watch this week

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jane Wright, Commissioning Editor, Arts & Culture, The Conversation UK

    Anyone familiar with Scotland will know the weather is at best mercurial, and at worst wet, grey and what we call “dreich” – a good Scottish word meaning drab. For an artist in the early 20th century suffering not just miserable weather but a cultural landscape of joyless, soul-sucking Presbyterianism, escaping to the sunlit uplands of the Parisian avant garde, where artists were experimenting wildly with new ideas and techniques, would have been deeply attractive.

    Into this vivid world of colour and possibility stepped four Scottish artists who embraced everything this exciting new art scene had to offer, and in doing so, changed Scotland’s art forever. Inspired by the post-impressionist works of Van Gogh, Matisse, Cezanne and Derain, they often painted outdoors, revelling in nature, creating exceptional artworks that explored light, shape and colour.

    Samuel John Peploe experimented with Cezanne-like geometric forms, while John Duncan Fergusson took on fauvist influences. George Leslie Hunter focused on blocks of colour, and Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell explored bold shapes and impressionistic compositions.

    Together they became known as the “Scottish colourists”, and their work is being celebrated at a new exhibition at the Dovecot in Edinburgh. As our reviewer Blane Savage points out, each brought back to Scotland new approaches to art that were reflected in their subsequent work. Take Peploe’s Green Sea, Iona from 1925, which perfectly captures the mesmerising colours of a Hebridean shoreline. Radiant and vibrant, here was art to lift even the dreichest Presbyterian Scot’s heart.

    The Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives is on at the Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh until June 28.



    Read more:
    Scottish colourists exhibition: the painters who stood shoulder to shoulder with Matisse and Cezanne

    Flowers, grief and reconciliation

    Just as the Scottish colourists loved a nice vase of voluptuous blooms, the new Saatchi Gallery exhibition on the subject, named simply Flowers, explores the place of flora in contemporary art, as well as its wider cultural influence.

    Reviewer Judith Brocklehurst describes the show as resembling a “supersized florist”, filled with bunches of blooms and hanging arrangements of dried flowers. The exhibition offers a wide perspective: from sculpture finding inspiration in Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, to William Morris’s much-loved floral designs, to the digital recreation of 17th-century Dutch paintings, and contemporary photography and video installations too.

    This richly imaginative and engaging exhibition celebrating the importance of flora in our lives is well worth an hour of your time if you’re in London.

    Flowers – Flora in Contemporary Art and Culture is on display at London’s Saatchi Gallery until May 5 2025.



    Read more:
    Flowers at London’s Saatchi Gallery: this exploration of flora in history and contemporary culture smells as good as it looks

    Highly recommended cinema this week is the Japanese film Cottontail, a gentle and touching story about a middle-aged man grieving the loss of his wife after a long illness. Honouring her dying wish, he takes her ashes to be scattered in the Lake District in the north of England – a place that had special significance for her.

    Woven through the tale is the man’s complicated relationship with his son, whom he has neglected for his career. Struggling to connect, they embark on the journey together, each dealing with their own grief and sense of loss. Chao Fang, an expert in ageing, death and dying, found this delicate film’s portrayal of grief realistic and relatable, and the journey to find peace by reconciling the past and present both absorbing and affecting.

    Cottontail is in select cinemas now.



    Read more:
    Cottontail review: how a man’s journey through grief mirrors our search for peace – by an expert in death and grieving

    The Oscar-nominated I’m Still Here, released today, sees director Walter Salles adapt Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s autobiographical novel of the same name. The film follows the grief of a family whose husband and father is disappeared by the regime of Brazilian dictator Emílio Garrastazu Médici in the early 1970s. The film is carried by a memorable performance from actress Fernanda Torres who plays Eunice, the wife of missing left-wing politician Rubens.

    Relating the story from Eunice’s perspective as she desperately searches for her husband, the film details the breakdown of her relationship with her eldest daughters as they all seek to deal with their devastating loss and uncertain future. Professor of film Belén Vidal describes the film as a “clear-cut tribute to the ‘feminine’ politics of resistance”. Sad, moving and bittersweet in its conclusion, I’m Still Here, appropriately, lingers long after the credits have rolled.

    I’m Still Here is in cinemas now.



    Read more:
    I’m Still Here: a vibrant testament to female resilience that mourns Brazil’s dark past

    Downfall of an Instagram darling

    Often real life is stranger than anything created for our screens. Based on the true story of Australian wellness influencer Belle Gibson, Apple Cider Vinegar follows the story of a social media darling documenting her “journey” as she rejects conventional medicine for alternative therapies to treat a rare form of brain cancer. But in 2015, Gibson was exposed as a financial fraud – and worse, was revealed as never having had cancer. The internet, understandably, went wild. But how was she able to perpetrate such an audacious and complex deception?

    Apple Cider Vinegar dramatises Gibson’s story, documenting her meteoric rise to fame and her dramatic downfall, detailing some of the psychological issues that influenced her deceit. But, as sociology professor Stephanie Baker indicates, this shocking story also illustrates a wider point about the conditions that enable frauds like Gibson to gain credibility and influence online. Truly fascinating stuff, it once again reveals how the virtual nature of the internet deludes people when it comes to online behaviour, accountability and getting away with it.

    Apple Cider Vinegar is now streaming on Netflix.



    Read more:
    Apple Cider Vinegar: how social media gave rise to fraudulent wellness influencers like Belle Gibson

    – ref. An explosion of colour and the downfall of an Instagram darling: what to see and watch this week – https://theconversation.com/an-explosion-of-colour-and-the-downfall-of-an-instagram-darling-what-to-see-and-watch-this-week-250437

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: YouTube was born from a failed dating site – 20 years on, the world’s biggest video platform faces new challenges

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Evelyn Polacek Kery, PhD Researcher in Social Work & Social Care, School of Education & Social Work, University of Sussex

    When three former PayPal employees, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, registered the domain www.youtube.com 20 years ago, they wanted to create an online dating site based around videos of users. In 2016, Chen told the SXSW conference: “We thought dating would be the obvious choice.”

    But despite offering to pay users to upload videos of themselves, nobody came forward. When their concept failed, they hatched a new idea for the same domain: “OK, forget the dating aspect, let’s just open it up to any video,” said Chen.

    What followed was revolutionary. Having started as a small project, YouTube rapidly grew into one of the most influential platforms in media history, reshaping journalism, media, entertainment and social interactions.

    Its first-ever video, “Me at the Zoo” – featuring Karim casually describing the elephants at San Diego Zoo – set the tone for democratised content creation, and also the type of content that would become so significant for YouTube: vlogging – where people communicate their own blog-style entries on video, often delivered direct to camera.

    The simplicity of uploading and sharing any type of video, combined with the potential of online content going viral, made the platform an instant hit.

    In October 2006, just over a year after the video platform’s launch, Google acquired YouTube for US$1.65 billion (£1.3 billion) – a move that proved one of the most significant tech acquisitions in history. The platform embarked on monetising its growing library of content via online advertising, not only generating huge profits for Google but also providing content creators with a share.

    The increasing profits prompted content creators to deliver better content.

    Whereas traditional media outlets such as television controlled video production and distribution, YouTube suddenly allowed anyone with a camera to share their voice. This shift led to the rise of independent creators, from beauty vloggers and gamers to educators and activists.

    And so the platform has given birth to an entirely new profession: the YouTuber. Early pioneers built massive audiences, inspiring a new wave of content creators who could earn a living through ad revenue, sponsorships and crowdfunding.

    In the UK in 2010, for example, a group of young content creators nicknamed “Brit Crew” became popular on YouTube. They were relatable, fun to watch, and uploaded videos regularly.

    Today, the highest-paid YouTuber worldwide, according to Forbes magazine, is MrBeast, with more than 360 million subscribers and 10 billion views. In reality, MrBeast is Jimmy Donaldson, a content creator and businessman from Greenville, North Carolina. But the views his videos attract are still nowhere near the most-watched YouTube video of all time, “Baby Shark”, with 15 billion views.

    Baby Shark: the YouTube video with most views to date.

    Donaldson has often talked about understanding YouTube metrics and its algorithm as a key component to his success. He particularly pays attention to a measure known as “retention rate”, noting where viewers stop watching to improve his future videos. He says the algorithm prioritises things that are difficult to accomplish, such as getting high retention rates on a long video, over simply getting a large number of views.

    MrBeast is emblematic of the rise of influencers on YouTube: content creators with lots of followers who look to them for inspiration and lifestyle tips. Established companies and brands have sought to develop partnerships with key influencers in order to promote products and services to their often huge global audiences.

    Overall, detailed audience numbers for YouTube are difficult to come by. However, Statista reports that the platform now has more than 2.5 billion active monthly users.

    Citizen journalism

    YouTube also plays a critical role in modern journalism. The platform, along with others such as Facebook and Twitter-X, has allowed citizen journalists to document events in real time, from protests and social movements to natural disasters and political uprisings – especially since YouTube introduced live streaming in 2011.

    During major global events such as the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter protests, influential coverage emerged from people capturing and sharing their footage on YouTube. This shift has challenged traditional news media, which now often relies on user-generated content as a key source of reporting.

    Similarly, some major world events are streamed live on YouTube, from election coverage to the Olympics to the Glastonbury music festival. There has also been growth in the popularity of video podcasts on the platform – one of the most popular, the Joe Rogan Experience, attracts millions of views per episode.

    Misinformation and conspiracy theories

    Despite its success, YouTube has faced significant challenges. The rapid spread of hate speech, misinformation and conspiracy theories has led the platform to implement stricter content moderation policies. In recent years, YouTube says there has been a substantial drop in the number of videos that violate its policies as a result, although some experts say these numbers can be interpreted in different ways.

    YouTube also continues to face controversies over its data collection, and how its algorithms reinforce conspiracy “rabbit holes”.

    Regulation has become a pressing concern. Governments worldwide are scrutinising YouTube for its role in spreading harmful content. Many countries are discussing how to better protect children online: in the UK, YouTube is the most popular website or app among younger users, used by nearly nine in ten children aged 3-17. (Officially, YouTube does not allow children below the age of 13 to use the platform without supervision, but there are clearly many ways around this for younger users.)

    There is a also drive among regulators to ensure fair competition in the digital marketplace, given YouTube’s dominant position.

    As YouTube enters its third decade, AI could become a powerful tool for creators – from speeding up the process of adding effects to videos, to creating video content from scratch. YouTube will also face continued competition from short-form video platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.

    In my opinion, the growing demand for high-quality, authentic content will shape YouTube’s future. The platform needs to focus on protecting and empowering its creators and their diversity, while nurturing its existing community.

    One thing is clear: YouTube has transformed the way we both consume and create media. From its humble beginnings to becoming a cultural phenomenon, YouTube’s 20-year journey is a testament to the power of digital platforms and social media in shaping modern society. Whether it continues growing or evolves into something entirely new, its impact on global culture is undeniable.

    Evelyn Polacek Kery works for the Guardian and is a judge at the Press Awards 2025.

    – ref. YouTube was born from a failed dating site – 20 years on, the world’s biggest video platform faces new challenges – https://theconversation.com/youtube-was-born-from-a-failed-dating-site-20-years-on-the-worlds-biggest-video-platform-faces-new-challenges-250164

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: China: Xi Jinping has learned from Trump’s first trade war and is ready to fight back

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tom Harper, Lecturer in International Relations, University of East London

    The start of 2025 has been good for China and its reputation as a high-tech innovator. The unveiling of the Chinese-made artificial intelligence (AI) tool, DeepSeek, caused consternation on the US stock exchange and from potential competitors in Silicon Valley.

    Chinese firms are increasingly at the forefront of key high-level technologies such as electric vehicles (EVs) and AI, as reflected by the success of China’s electric vehicles, BYD, and now DeepSeek.

    These moves have made the Chinese economy more self sufficient than it was during Trump’s first term, and has made Beijing more confident about pushing back politically against Trump.

    This is all underlined by a high-level meeting hosted by President Xi Jinping at China’s Great Hall of the People this week. He told the heads of China’s leading tech firms it was time for them “to give full play to their capabilities” and spoke of it as a patriotic duty, according to official accounts.

    This comes as China starts being hit by US tariffs of an additional 10% on its goods, as well as a slew of anti-China rhetoric from the Trump government.

    But China’s high tech industries are on the up, and this is a significant boost for Xi. For instance, in January this year, sales of the Chinese EVs exceeded those of Tesla in the UK for the first time.

    Part of the Chinese EV’s success could be attributed to a backlash against Tesla’s co-founder Elon Musk, after he started backing far-right parties around the world.

    Another factor that Chinese high-tech goods have in their favour are lower prices. Prices for Chinese EVs start at £7,697 in the UK, for example – much lower than Tesla’s Model 3 at £25,490.

    This price difference will be significant in the latest phase of the Sino-US trade war, particularly in countries struggling with a cost-of-living crisis. China is also hoping its cheap prices and tech innovations will help it find new trading allies to counteract Washington’s proposed tariffs.

    What China has to offer

    China is a fast-growing economic and political power and is expected to account for nearly a quarter of the global economy by 2030.

    The success of BYD and DeepSeek comes at a time where Beijing feels more prepared for Trump’s tough tariffs and tension with Washington, than it did in his previous term. China has responded to Trump’s threats with reciprocal tariffs on US coal and liquefied gas, as well as a ban on the export of critical minerals. These are a key component for many US military technologies varying from communications equipment to missiles.

    China accounts for 72% of all rare earth imports for the US. Such measures contrast with the cautious approach taken by Beijing in 2017, when US tariffs during Trump’s first term met little retaliation from Beijing.

    The changes in China’s tactics can partly be attributed to what Beijing learned from the previous trade war. In 2017 there were weaknesses in the supply chains of many Chinese firms, most notably ZTE and Huawei.

    They struggled when Washington pressurised its own chipmakers and those of allied states, such as Britain’s Arm, to stop sales of semiconductor technology to China. As a result, finding long-term alternatives to US technology in the supply chain has become a key priority for Beijing.

    What is Deep Seek?

    Xi has recognised the value of firms such as Huawei and BYD in aiding China’s wider technological (and geopolitical) ambitions, most notably as part of the Made in China 2025 strategy, a national strategy to make China a leader in high-tech technology.



    Read more:
    DeepSeek: how China’s embrace of open-source AI caused a geopolitical earthquake

    Traditionally, China was seen as the home of cheap, low-quality goods, which had been central to its development in the 1980s and 1990s. But many of companies producing these products are increasingly moving to south-east Asia to take advantage of lower labour costs.

    However, Chinese industries are now gaining ground in fields that have traditionally been the preserve of developed nations. For instance, Huawei has developed a spin off, Honor, which has gone from producing cheap, simple smartphones and into AI technology.

    Meanwhile, the success of BYD and DeepSeek have demonstrated that China is, in some ways at least, far better placed for a prolonged trade war. Beijing is feeling more confident, which explains its willingness to push back against Washington this time.

    So the White House will have to deal with higher prices for US goods going into China, as well as additional trade spats with the EU, Canada and the UK. It might be a bumpy ride for US consumers.

    How Beijing responds and its new-found clout may determine the course of this new trade war, and potentially add to its long-term standing in the world.

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

    – ref. China: Xi Jinping has learned from Trump’s first trade war and is ready to fight back – https://theconversation.com/china-xi-jinping-has-learned-from-trumps-first-trade-war-and-is-ready-to-fight-back-250101

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: A Palestinian film is an Oscars favorite − so why is it so hard to see?

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Drew Paul, Associate Professor of Arabic, University of Tennessee

    Directors Basel Adra, left, and Yuval Abraham on stage at the 62nd New York Film Festival on Sept. 29, 2024. Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images

    For many low-budget, independent films, an Oscar nomination is a golden ticket.

    The publicity can translate into theatrical releases or rereleases, along with more on-demand rentals and sales.

    However, for “No Other Land,” a Palestinian film nominated for best documentary at the 2025 Academy Awards, this exposure is unlikely to translate into commercial success in the U.S. That’s because the film has been unable to find a company to distribute it in America.

    “No Other Land” chronicles the efforts of Palestinian townspeople to combat an Israeli plan to demolish their villages in the West Bank and use the area as a military training ground. It was directed by four Palestinian and Israeli activists and journalists: Basel Adra, who is a resident of the area facing demolition, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor. While the filmmakers have organized screenings in a number of U.S. cities, the lack of a national distributor makes a broader release unlikely.

    Film distributors are a crucial but often unseen link in the chain that allows a film to reach cinemas and people’s living rooms. In recent years it has become more common for controversial award-winning films to run into issues finding a distributor. Palestinian films have encountered additional barriers.

    As a scholar of Arabic who has written about Palestinian cinema, I’m disheartened by the difficulties “No Other Land” has faced. But I’m not surprised.

    The role of film distributors

    Distributors are often invisible to moviegoers. But without one, it can be difficult for a film to find an audience.

    Distributors typically acquire rights to a film for a specific country or set of countries. They then market films to movie theaters, cinema chains and streaming platforms. As compensation, distributors receive a percentage of the revenue generated by theatrical and home releases.

    The film “Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat,” another finalist for best documentary, shows how this process typically works. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2024 and was acquired for distribution just a few months later by Kino Lorber, a major U.S.-based distributor of independent films.

    The inability to find a distributor is not itself noteworthy. No film is entitled to distribution, and most films by newer or unknown directors face long odds.

    However, it is unusual for a film like “No Other Land,” which has garnered critical acclaim and has been recognized at various film festivals and award shows. Some have pegged it as a favorite to win best documentary at the Academy Awards. And “No Other Land” has been able to find distributors in Europe, where it’s easily accessible on multiple streaming platforms.

    So why can’t “No Other Land” find a distributor in the U.S.?

    There are a couple of factors at play.

    Shying away from controversy

    In recent years, film critics have noticed a trend: Documentaries on controversial topics have faced distribution difficulties. These include a film about a campaign by Amazon workers to unionize and a documentary about Adam Kinzinger, one of the few Republican congresspeople to vote to impeach Donald Trump in 2021.

    The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of course, has long stirred controversy. But the release of “No Other Land” comes at a time when the issue is particularly salient. The Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing Israeli bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip have become a polarizing issue in U.S. domestic politics, reflected in the campus protests and crackdowns in 2024. The filmmakers’ critical comments about the Israeli occupation of Palestine have also garnered backlash in Germany.

    Locals attend a screening of ‘No Other Land’ in the village of A-Tuwani in the West Bank on March 14, 2024.
    Yahel Gazit/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

    Yet the fact that this conflict has been in the news since October 2023 should also heighten audience interest in a film such as “No Other Land” – and, therefore, lead to increased sales, the metric that distributors care about the most.

    Indeed, an earlier film that also documents Palestinian protests against Israeli land expropriation, “5 Broken Cameras,” was a finalist for best documentary at the 2013 Academy Awards. It was able to find a U.S. distributor. However, it had the support of a major European Union documentary development program called Greenhouse. The support of an organization like Greenhouse, which had ties to numerous production and distribution companies in Europe and the U.S., can facilitate the process of finding a distributor.

    By contrast, “No Other Land,” although it has a Norwegian co-producer and received some funding from organizations in Europe and the U.S., was made primarily by a grassroots filmmaking collective.

    Stages for protest

    While distribution challenges may be recent, controversies surrounding Palestinian films are nothing new.

    Many of them stem from the fact that the system of film festivals, awards and distribution is primarily based on a movie’s nation of origin. Since there is no sovereign Palestinian state – and many countries and organizations have not recognized the state of Palestine – the question of how to categorize Palestinian films has been hard to resolve.

    In 2002, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rejected the first ever Palestinian film submitted to the best foreign language film category – Elia Suleiman’s “Divine Intervention” – because Palestine was not recognized as a country by the United Nations. The rules were changed for the following year’s awards ceremony.

    In 2021, the cast of the film “Let It Be Morning,” which had an Israeli director but primarily Palestinian actors, boycotted the Cannes Film Festival in protest of the film’s categorization as an Israeli film rather than a Palestinian one.

    Film festivals and other cultural venues have also become places to make statements about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and engage in protest. For example, at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017, the right-wing Israeli culture minister wore a controversial – and meme-worthy – dress that featured the Jerusalem skyline in support of Israeli claims of sovereignty over the holy city, despite the unresolved status of Jerusalem under international law.

    Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev wears a dress featuring the old city of Jerusalem during the Cannes Film Festival in 2017.
    Antonin Thuillier/AFP via Getty Images

    At the 2024 Academy Awards, a number of attendees, including Billie Eilish, Mark Ruffalo and Mahershala Ali, wore red pins in support of a ceasefire in Gaza, and pro-Palestine protesters delayed the start of the ceremonies.

    So even though a film like “No Other Land” addresses a topic of clear interest to many people in the U.S., it faces an uphill battle to finding a distributor.

    I wonder whether a win at the Oscars would even be enough.

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

    – ref. A Palestinian film is an Oscars favorite − so why is it so hard to see? – https://theconversation.com/a-palestinian-film-is-an-oscars-favorite-so-why-is-it-so-hard-to-see-249233

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: From ancient emperors to modern presidents, leaders have used libraries to cement their legacies

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Myrsini Mamoli, Lecturer of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology

    The Library of Celsus was a famous landmark in its time – and today. Myrsini Mamoli

    Here in Atlanta, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum has been part of my daily life for years. Parks and trails surrounding the center connect my neighborhood to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park downtown and everything in between.

    At the end of December 2024, thousands of people walked to the library to pay their respects to the former president as he lay in repose. The cold, snow and darkness of the evening were a stark contrast to the warmth of the volunteers who welcomed us in. Our visit spiraled through galleries exhibiting records of Carter’s life, achievements and lifelong work promoting democracy around the world.

    U.S. presidents have been building libraries for more than 100 years, starting with Rutherford B. Hayes. But the urge to shape one’s legacy by building a library runs much deeper. As a scholar of libraries in the Greek and Roman world, I was struck by the similarities between presidential and ancient libraries – some of which were explicitly designed to honor deceased sponsors and played a significant role in their cities.

    Trajan’s library

    The Ulpian Library, a great library in the center of Rome, was founded by Emperor Trajan, who ruled around the turn of the second century C.E. Referenced often by ancient authors, it could have been the first such memorial library.

    Trajan’s Column now stands at the center of Rome.
    AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito

    Today, someone visiting Rome can visit Trajan’s Column, a roughly 100-foot monument to his military and engineering achievements after conquering Dacia, part of present-day Romania. A frieze spirals from bottom to top of the column, depicting his exploits. The monument now stands on its own. Originally, however, it was nestled in a courtyard between two halls of the Ulpian Library complex.

    Most of what scholars know about the library’s architecture comes from remains of the west hall, an elongated room almost 80 feet long, whose walls were lined with rectangular niches and framed by a colonnade. The niches were lined with marble and appear to have had doors; this is where the books would have been placed. Writers from the first few centuries C.E. describe the library having archival documents about the emperor and the empire, including books made of linen and books bound with ivory.

    Trajan dedicated the column in 113 C.E. but died four years later, before the library was complete. Hadrian, his adoptive son and successor, oversaw the shipment of Trajan’s cremated remains back to Rome, where they were placed in Trajan’s Column. Hadrian completed the surrounding library complex in 128 C.E. and dedicated it with two identical funerary inscriptions to his adopted parents, Trajan and Plotina. Scholars Roberto Egidi and Silvia Orlandi have argued that Trajan’s remains could later have been transferred from the column into the library hall.

    Memorial model

    Either way, I would argue that Trajan’s decision to have his remains included in the library complex, instead of in an imperial mausoleum, established a model adopted by other officials at a smaller scale. In the eastern side of the Roman empire – what is now Turkey – at least two other library-mausoleum buildings have been identified.

    One is the library at Nysa on the Maeander, a Hellenistic city named for the nearby river. Under the floor of its entry porch is a sarcophagus with the remains of a man and a woman, possibly the dedicators, that dates to the second century C.E., the time of Hadrian’s reign.

    The ruins of the library at Nysa on the Maeander.
    Myrsini Mamoli

    Another is the Library of Celsus, the most recognizable ancient library today, found in the ancient city of Ephesus. Named after a regional Roman consul and proconsul during the reign of Trajan, the building was founded by Celsus’ son, designed as both a place of learning and a mausoleum.

    The library’s ornate, sculpted facade contained life-size female statues, making it an immediately recognizable landmark. Inscriptions identify the statues as the personifications of Celsus’ character, elevating him into a role model: virtue, intelligence, knowledge and wisdom.

    Upon entering the room, the funerary character of the library became quite literal. The hall was designed like the Ulpian Library, but a door gave access to a crypt underneath. This held the marble sarcophagus with the remains of Celsus, the patron of the library. The sarcophagus itself was visible from the hall, if one stood in front of the central apse and looked down through two slits in the podium.

    An endowment covered the library’s operational expenses in ancient times, as well as annual commemorations on Celsus’ birthday, including the wreathing of the busts and statues and the purchasing of additional books.

    The life-size statues on the facade of the Library of Celsus.
    Myrsini Mamoli

    Power and knowledge

    These two provincial libraries highlight how sponsors hoped to be associated with the virtues a library fosters. Books represent knowledge, and by dedicating a library, one asserted his possession of it. Providing access to learning was an instrument of power on its own.

    Beyond the handful of memorial libraries, many other ancient Roman public libraries were great cultural centers, including the Forum of Peace in Rome, dedicated by Emperor Vespasian; the Library of Hadrian in Athens; and the Gymnasium in Side, a city in present-day Turkey.

    The most magnificent libraries combined access to manuscripts and artworks with spaces for meetings and lectures. Several had great leisure areas, including landscaped sculptural gardens with elaborate water features and colonnaded walkways. Literary sources and material evidence testify to the treasures that were held there: busts of philosophers, poets and other accomplished literary figures; statues of gods, heroes and emperors; treasures confiscated as spoils of war and exhibited in Rome.

    A model of how Hadrian’s Library may have looked, complete with a landscaped courtyard.
    Joris/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

    Like the Ulpian Library itself, they continued the long tradition of Hellenistic public libraries, established by the most famous library of antiquity: the Library of Alexandria. Founded and lavishly endowed by the Hellenistic kings of Egypt, the Ptolemies, the building was meant to portray the king as a patron of intellectual activities and a powerful ruler, collecting knowledge from conquered civilizations.

    In ancient Greece and Rome, anybody who could read had access to public libraries. Rules of use varied: For example, literary sources imply that the Ulpian Library in Rome was a borrowing library, whereas an inscription from the Library of Pantainos in Athens explicitly forbid any book to be taken out.

    But these buildings were also meant to shape their sponsors’ legacies, portraying them as benevolent and learned. Presidential libraries in the United States today follow the same principle: They become monuments to the former presidents, while giving back to their local communities.

    Myrsini Mamoli 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. From ancient emperors to modern presidents, leaders have used libraries to cement their legacies – https://theconversation.com/from-ancient-emperors-to-modern-presidents-leaders-have-used-libraries-to-cement-their-legacies-248423

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: We study mass surveillance for social control, and we see Trump laying the groundwork to ‘contain’ people of color and immigrants

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Brittany Friedman, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, University of Southern California

    Black and Latino communities are disproportionately affected by mass surveillance, studies show. Vicente Méndez/Getty Images

    President Donald Trump has vowed to target his political enemies, and experts have warned that he could weaponize U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct mass surveillance on his targets.

    Mass surveillance is the widespread monitoring of civilians. Governments typically target specific groups – such as religious minorities, certain races or ethnicities, or migrants – for surveillance and use the information gathered to “contain” these populations, for example by arresting and imprisoning people.

    We are experts in social control, or how governments coerce compliance, and we specialize in surveillance. Based on our expertise and years of research, we expect Trump’s second White House term may usher in a wave of spying against people of color and immigrants.

    A man apprehended in an immigration raid on Jan. 28, 2025, sits in a holding cell in New York City.
    Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images

    Spreading moral panic

    Trump is already actively deploying a key tactic in expanding mass surveillance: causing moral panics. Moral panics are created when politicians exaggerate a public concern to manipulate real fears people may have.

    Take Trump on crime, for example. Despite FBI data showing that crime has been dropping across the U.S. for decades, Trump has repeatedly claimed that “crime is out of control.” Stoking fear makes people more likely to back harsh measures purportedly targeting crime.

    Trump has also worked to create a moral panic about immigration.

    He has said, for example, that “illegal” migrants are taking American jobs. In truth, only 5% of the 30 million immigrants in the workforce as of 2022 were unauthorized to work. And in his Jan. 25, 2025, presidential proclamation on immigration, Trump likened immigration at the southern border to an “invasion,” evoking the language of war to describe a population that includes many asylum-seeking women and children.

    The second step in causing moral panics is to label racial, ethnic and religious minorities as villains to justify expanding mass surveillance.

    Building on his rhetoric about crime and immigration, Trump frequently connects the two issues. He has said that migrants murder because they have “bad genes,” echoing beliefs expressed by white supremacists. During the 2016 campaign, Trump’s coinage “bad hombre” invoked stereotypes of dangerous migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to steal jobs and sell drugs.

    The president has similarly connected Black communities with crime. At an August 2024 rally in Atlanta, Georgia, Trump called the majority-Black city “a killing field.” The month prior, he said the same thing about Washington, D.C.

    Primary targets

    History shows that in the U.S. moral panics are most likely to target Latino, Indigenous and Black communities as a precursor to surveillance and subjugation.

    In the 18th century, Colonial politicians passed legislation likening the Indigenous people of the American colonies to “savages” and passed laws identifying Indigenous tribes as political enemies to be assimilated. If “killing the Indian” out of people didn’t work, they were to be tracked down and removed from the population through imprisonment or death.

    Another early form of moral panics escalating to spying and mass surveillance were southern slave patrols, which emerged in the early 1700s after pro-slavery politicians proclaimed that Black escapees would terrorize white communities. Slave patrols tracked down and captured not only Black escapees but also free Black people, whom they sold into bondage. They also imprisoned any person, enslaved or not, suspected of sheltering escapees.

    Once a group of people becomes the subject of moral panics and targeted for government surveillance, our research shows, the effects are felt for generations.

    Black and Indigenous communities are still arrested and incarcerated at disproportionately high rates compared with their percentage in the U.S. population. This even affects children, with Indigenous girls imprisoned at four times the rate of white girls, and Black girls at more than twice the rate of white girls.

    Low-tech methods

    These 21st-century numbers reflect decades of targeted surveillance.

    In the 1950s, the FBI under Director J. Edgar Hoover created the counter-intelligence programs COINTELPRO, allegedly for investigating communists and radical political groups, and the Ghetto Informant Program. In practice, both programs broadly targeted people of color. From Martin Luther King Jr. to U.S. Rep. John Lewis, Black activists were identified as a threat, spied on, investigated and sometimes jailed.

    A 1964 letter from J. Edgar Hoover expressing his dislike for Martin Luther King Jr.
    Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images

    President Lyndon Johnson’s “war on crime,” a sweeping set of federal changes that militarized local police in urban communities, continued this mass surveillance in the 1960s. Later came the “war on drugs,” which an aide to President Richard Nixon later said was designed explicitly to target Black people.

    In subsequent decades, politicians would stir up new moral panics about Black communities – remember the “crack babies” who never really existed? – and use fear to justify police surveillance, arrests and mass incarceration.

    These early examples of mass surveillance lacked the technology that enables spying today, such as CCTV and hacked laptop cameras. Nonetheless, past U.S. administrations have been remarkably effective at achieving social control by creating moral panics then deploying mass surveillance to contain the “threat.” They enlisted droves of police officers, recruited informants to infiltrate groups and locked people away.

    These textbook surveillance methods are still routinely used now.

    Police fusion centers

    For many Americans, the term “mass surveillance” evokes the Department of Homeland Security, which was founded after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This national agency, which forms part of a federal intelligence apparatus of more than 20 agencies focused on surveillance, has played a key role in mass surveillance since 2001, especially of Muslim Americans.

    But it has local help in the form of police units known as fusion centers. These units feed identification information and physical evidence such as video footage to federal agencies such as the FBI and CIA, according to a 2023 whistleblower report from Rutgers Law School.

    The New Jersey Regional Operations Intelligence Center, for example, is a police fusion center overseeing New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. It employs advanced military technology to gather massive amounts of personal data on people perceived as potential security threats. According to the Rutgers report, these “threats” are highly concentrated in Black, Latino and Arab communities, as well as areas with a high concentration of political organizing, such as Black Lives Matter groups and immigrant aid organizations.

    The New Jersey police fusion approach leads to increased arrest rates, according to the report, but there’s no real evidence that it prevents crime or terrorism.

    Guantanamo and black sites

    Given Trump’s pledges to further militarize border enforcement and expand U.S. jails and prisons, we anticipate a rise in spending on fusion centers and other tools of mass surveillance under Trump. The moral panics he’s been stirring up since 2015 suggest that the targets of government surveillance will include immigrants and Black people.

    Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event on April 2, 2024, in Grand Rapids, Mich.
    Spencer Platt/Getty Images

    Sometimes, victims of mass surveillance go missing.

    The Guardian reported in 2015 that Chicago police had been temporarily “disappearing” people at local and federal police “black sites” since at least 2009. At these clandestine jails, under the guise of national security, officers questioned detainees without attorneys and held them for up to 24 hours without any outside contact. Many of the victims were Black.

    Another infamous black site was housed at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba, where the CIA detained and secretly interrogated suspected terrorists following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

    Trump seems to be reviving the Guantanamo black site, flying about 150 Venezuelan migrants to the base since January 2025. It’s unclear whether the U.S. government can lawfully detain migrants there abroad, yet deportation flights continue.

    The administration has not shared the identities of many of the people imprisoned there.

    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. We study mass surveillance for social control, and we see Trump laying the groundwork to ‘contain’ people of color and immigrants – https://theconversation.com/we-study-mass-surveillance-for-social-control-and-we-see-trump-laying-the-groundwork-to-contain-people-of-color-and-immigrants-221073

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Survey shows immigrants in Florida – even US citizens – are less likely to seek health care after passage of anti-immigrant laws

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Elizabeth Aranda, Professor of Sociology, University of South Florida

    For decades, many U.S. immigrants have received subpar health care, and asking about immigration status can make those disparities worse. Maskot via Getty Images

    Since arriving in the United States four years ago, Alex has worked at a primary care office. He has witnessed firsthand how difficult it was for immigrants to access preventive care.

    When he heard of the implementation of Florida’s Senate Bill 1718, Alex feared it would have dire consequences for the patients he served.

    Alex is a pseudonym for one of our research subjects.

    SB 1718, signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis in May 2023, imposed sweeping restrictions aimed at discouraging unauthorized immigration. Among its provisions, it requires hospitals that accept Medicaid funds to question patients about their immigration status and share data about how many immigrants they are serving within the state.

    The law had several more provisions. It mandated E-Verify, a system to check employment eligibility, be used for new hires in businesses employing more than 25 employees. It also criminalized driving into Florida with an unauthorized immigrant, and restricted community organizations from issuing IDs.

    After the law passed, Alex told his patients that they could refuse to divulge their legal status when asked on hospital forms. But he says his reassurances didn’t work. He watched as many immigrant patients hesitated to access necessary medical care for themselves and their children – or even left the state.

    Alex had legal documentation to be in the country, but as his immigrant community shrank, he wondered if he, too, should leave Florida.

    We are a group of social science professors and graduate students studying immigrant communities in Florida. We believe SB 1718 has important implications for immigrants, for Floridians and all Americans – particularly as the country faces surges in outbreaks of communicable diseases like measles and the flu.

    An environment of fear

    These concerns are based on our survey of 466 immigrants to Florida and adult U.S.-born children of immigrants between May and July of 2024.

    Nearly two-thirds of non-U.S. citizens and one-third of U.S. citizens who responded to our survey said they hesitated to seek medical care in the year after SB 1718 passed.

    “I was very sick recently and needed medical care, but I was scared,” one survey participant told us.

    While hospitals cannot deny care based on a patient’s immigration status, our data shows that anticipating they would be asked deterred not only immigrants lacking permanent legal status but also those with legal status, including U.S. citizens, from seeking care.

    We believe U.S. citizens are affected by spillover effects because they are members of mixed-status families.

    Our survey took place during the intense 2024 presidential election season when anti-immigrant rhetoric was prevalent. The immigrants we surveyed also reported experiencing discrimination in their everyday lives, and these experiences were also associated with a reluctance to access health care.

    Laws like SB 1718 amplify preexisting racial and structural inequities. Structural inequities are systemic barriers within institutions — such as health care and employment — that restrict access to essential resources based on one’s race, legal or economic status.

    These kinds of laws discourage immigrants from utilizing health resources. They foster an exclusionary policy environment that heightens fears of enforcement, restricts access to essential services and exacerbates economic and social vulnerabilities. Moreover, restrictive immigration policies exclude people from accessing services based on their race. Immigrants who have been discriminated against in everyday settings may internalize the expectation that seeking care will result in further hostility – or even danger.

    Consequences for public health

    U.S. history holds numerous examples of racial and ethnic barriers to health care. Examples include segregation-era hospitals turning away Black patients . It also involves systemic restrictions on health care access for non-English speakers, including inadequate language assistance services, reliance on untrained interpreters and lack of culturally competent care.

    President Donald Trump’s new executive orders signed in January 2025 threaten to further ostracize certain communities. For example, the order terminating federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs dismantles efforts to address racial disparities in public institutions. New restrictions on federally funded research on race and equity could hinder efforts to study and address these disparities.

    Civil rights advocates believe these measures represent a systemic rollback of rights and diversity practices that generations fought to secure and could accelerate a national shift toward exclusion based on race under the guise of immigration enforcement.

    Supporters of immigrants’ rights protest against U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration policies on Feb. 7, 2025 in Homestead, Florida.
    Joe Raedle via Getty Images

    The results of our survey in Florida may be a warning sign for the rest of the country. Health care hesitancy like we documented could increase the likelihood of delayed treatment, undiagnosed conditions and worsening health disparities among entire communities.

    These legal restrictions are likely to increase the spread of communicable diseases and strain health care systems, increasing costs and placing a greater burden on emergency services and public health infrastructure.

    Elizabeth Aranda is affiliated with American Sociological Association.

    Deborah Omontese is affiliated with American Sociological Association

    Elizabeth Vaquera is a member of the American Sociological Association and has previously received funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health,

    Emely Matos Pichardo is affiliated with the Southern Sociological Society.

    Liz Ventura 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. Survey shows immigrants in Florida – even US citizens – are less likely to seek health care after passage of anti-immigrant laws – https://theconversation.com/survey-shows-immigrants-in-florida-even-us-citizens-are-less-likely-to-seek-health-care-after-passage-of-anti-immigrant-laws-248952

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trump’s moves to strip employment protections from federal workers threaten to make government function worse – not better

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By James L. Perry, Professor of Public and Environmental Affairs Emeritus, Indiana University

    Federal workers’ jobs may become more precarious than in the past. mathisworks/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images

    On top of efforts to fire potentially tens of thousands of federal workers, an early executive order from President Donald Trump’s second term seeks to reclassify the employment status of as many as 50,000 other federal workers – out of more than 2 million total – to make them easier for the president to fire as well.

    The order has already been challenged in court by two federal workers’ unions and other interest groups, though no judge has yet issued any orders. The Trump administration is drafting rules to put the order into effect.

    The Conversation U.S. politics editor Jeff Inglis spoke to James Perry, a scholar of public affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington, to understand what the order is trying to achieve and how it would affect federal workers, the government and the American public. What follows is an edited transcript of the discussion.

    Andrew Jackson, depicted here giving a speech, believed the president should be in control of most federal workers.
    PHOTOS.com / Getty Images Plus

    What is the standard situation for government employees?

    In the 1820s and 1830s, President Andrew Jackson popularized the idea that the president could, and should, hire supporters into government jobs. But by the early 1880s, there was concern on the parts of both Democrats and Republicans that the victor would control a lot of workers who would serve the president, not the American people whose tax dollars paid their salaries.

    So the parties came together in 1883 to pass the Pendleton Act stipulating that government workers are hired based on their skills and abilities, not their political views. That law was updated in 1978 with the Civil Service Reform Act, which added more protections for workers against being fired for political reasons.

    Those rules cover about 99% of staff in the federal civil service. Currently, there are just about 4,000 political appointees. I’ve seen various estimates that this new executive order would shift at least 50,000 positions from career positions to the political-appointments list.

    Some states, such as Mississippi, Texas, Georgia and Florida, have moved to strip employment protections from state government employees, turning protected employees into at-will workers, who can be fired at any time for any reason. These are largely red states, with strong control by Republican governors. Supporters of this move at the federal level argue that at-will employment can work in federal civil service.

    This argument is not backed by strong evidence. The evidence supporters offer is that human resources directors, who are often appointees of the governor who changed the statute, claim no one has complained about the change in policy. But that doesn’t include people who are likely to have a different perspective.

    It could be that nobody is talking about people being fired for political reasons in these states because they are afraid of getting fired themselves.

    What does this executive order change, and why?

    The rationale for the new policy is that the administration wants to get rid of federal workers whom leaders perceive as either intransigent or insubordinate – or who they fear might oppose Trump’s policy initiatives. This sets up a conflict between how government workers see their duties and how Trump appears to view them.

    Federal employees interviewed by sociologist Jamie Kucinskas during Trump’s first term say they are obligated to look beyond the president’s bidding: They took an oath to the Constitution when they started their jobs, and their salaries and benefits are paid for with taxpayer dollars.

    Trump, by contrast, says workers in the executive branch must answer to him and follow his orders.

    Trump and others have tried to cloak this effort in language about removing workers who perform poorly at their jobs. That concern is legitimate. The Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, which surveys hundreds of thousands of federal workers every year about various aspects of their work and working conditions, indicates that in 2024, 40% of those surveyed said people who perform poorly are not fired and do not improve.

    But taking action against only 50,000 of the 2 million-plus federal employees isn’t going to address such a wide problem.

    There’s a stereotype that in government it can be hard to discipline or fire workers who are not competent at their jobs. The flip side of that stereotype is, however, false: Private businesses are not better at holding poor performers accountable. Survey evidence shows the private sector has just as much difficulty as the government with getting workers to perform effectively.

    There’s room for legitimate disagreement about how far federal employees have to go to comply with presidential directives. The people who think loyalty is the key to merit still might not agree on whether that loyalty is owed to the person sitting in the Oval Office or to the Constitution.

    Protests against the Trump administration have been widespread, including against its policies aimed at federal workers.
    AP Photo/Sejal Govindarao

    How does this affect government workers?

    It’s not clear which positions might be targeted. The order calls them “policy influencing positions,” but drawing the line between policy and administration isn’t always easy.

    It’s also not clear whether the change will stick. When the George W. Bush administration reduced job protections for Department of Homeland Security employees in 2005, a major federal workers’ union sued the administration and won.

    In the first round of this effort under the first Trump administration, it seemed that most of the people affected would be at the top of the federal hierarchy, probably mostly based in Washington, D.C.

    Most of the workers in the federal civil service, though, are not there. They work for the Social Security Administration, giving out checks in Bloomington, Indiana, or other departments and offices around the country. It would be very difficult to classify them as influencing political policy or advocating for policies.

    But there are people who are not Senate-confirmed who do have an influence on policy. For instance, at the Department of Justice, assistant and deputy assistant secretaries have influence on civil rights policy or other policies that affect the president’s ability to pursue his agenda. The February 2025 resignation of Danielle Sassoon from her role as U.S. attorney in New York is an example of legitimate divergence between an appointee and the president’s policy direction.

    Any workers who lost their protections would likely feel threatened with losing their job and their livelihood. They might, out of fear, be more responsive to the dictates of their superiors.

    That might sound good – that if you do what your boss says, you’re doing a good job. But it’s different if your obligations are to the public interest and the Constitution.

    How does this affect everyday Americans?

    Large majorities of Americans believe government workers are serving the public over themselves. And as many as 87% of Americans say they want a merit-based, politically neutral civil service.

    The U.S. has attracted to government service workers who are good at their jobs and able to remain politically neutral at work. Saying that’s no longer important would change the relationship between government workers and their jobs. And it would hurt the nation as a whole if government cannot attract the best and the brightest, or if it sends the best and the brightest packing because they are not comfortable with their work situation, or if they stay but their performance declines.

    James L. Perry 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. Trump’s moves to strip employment protections from federal workers threaten to make government function worse – not better – https://theconversation.com/trumps-moves-to-strip-employment-protections-from-federal-workers-threaten-to-make-government-function-worse-not-better-248086

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Brazil coup charges could end Bolsonaro’s political career − but they won’t extinguish Bolsonarismo

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Anthony Pereira, Director of the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center, Florida International University

    The former president looked disappointed on Jan. 18, 2025, after a judge denied his request to travel to the U.S. for Donald Trump’s inauguration. Evaristo Sa/AFP via Getty Images

    Brazilian politics are getting more dramatic again.

    The South American country’s attorney general filed five criminal charges against former President Jair Bolsonaro and 33 others in its Supreme Court on Feb. 18, 2025, detonating political shock waves. The charges include plotting a coup d’état to prevent Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva’s presidency. The other defendants include several former prominent officials, including a former spy chief, defense minister, national security adviser and Bolsonaro’s running mate.

    Lula took office in Brazil for a third time in January 2023, after he defeated Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential election. Bolsonaro, a right-wing politician allied with U.S. President Donald Trump, had served the previous four-year term. Bolsonaro and his codefendants are also charged with trying to poison Lula and assassinate his vice presidential running mate, Geraldo Alckmin, and Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes; participating in an armed criminal organization; and seeking to violently overthrow the democratic rule of law. He denies doing anything wrong.

    As a professor of Brazilian politics, I believe that Bolsonaro’s legal troubles threaten to definitively end his political career. There’s also a possibility that the 69-year-old former president will be sentenced to prison. But, at the same time, the charges could also galvanize Bolsonaro’s base – playing into a narrative that sees the right-wing leader as stymied, unfairly, by the government he used to run.

    No sash passed

    Bolsonaro’s behavior before, during and after his second presidential campaign was unusual for any president seeking another term. He claimed, when he was still in office, that Brazil’s electronic voting system was not secure and predicted that fraud might crop up in the 2022 elections.

    Although he never produced any evidence to support this claim, he promoted it on social media, fostering skepticism about the election among some voters.

    Bolsonaro never formally conceded his narrow electoral defeat to Lula in October 2022, insinuating that instead the election had been stolen. In 2023, Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Court ruled that he had abused his power and banned him from running for political office again for the next eight years.

    Instead of attending Lula’s inauguration on Jan. 1, 2023, where he would have been expected to participate in the traditional passing of the sash from the incumbent to the incoming president, Bolsonaro flew to Orlando, Florida, on Dec. 30, 2022. He stayed in Kissimmee, Florida, for the next three months.

    That meant Bolsonaro was not in Brazil when thousands of his supporters rampaged through and vandalized three government buildings in Brasília on Jan. 8, 2023. The incident was strikingly similar to Trump supporters’ assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

    The new charges accuse Bolsonaro of taking part in a conspiracy to delegitimize the elections. The indictment also alleges that after the results were announced, Bolsonaro and the other defendants encouraged protests and urged the armed forces to intervene, declare a state of siege and prevent the peaceful transition of power from Bolsonaro to Lula.

    Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro can still draw crowds of supporters, as happened on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro on April 21, 2024.
    Buda Mendes/Getty Images

    Possibility of prison

    The evidence in this indictment is based, in part, on plea-bargained testimony by one of the alleged conspirators, the former presidential adviser and army Lt. Col. Mauro Cid.

    The attorney general has also accused Bolsonaro and his associates of being linked to businessmen who paid for buses to take Bolsonaro supporters to Brasília so they could participate in the Jan. 8 attacks, which caused damage estimated at 20 million Brazilian reais (US$3.5 million). And the indictment alleges that the coup plot failed because the commanders of Brazil’s army and air force refused to support the conspiracy, although the commander of the navy did, which explains why he was named as a defendant.

    If Brazil’s Supreme Court accepts the charges, which seems likely, the legal battle will begin. If Bolsonaro is convicted, he could go to prison.

    Bolsonaro’s defense team, for its part, says that the charges are “inept” and unconvincing. His lawyers expressed confidence that they could win the case.

    President Lula, wearing a hat, walks alongside Brazil’s first lady, Rosangela Janja da Silva, in a pink suit, during a rally in Brasilia on Jan. 8, 2025 – two years after supporters of his predecessor staged a failed coup attempt.
    Claudio Reis/Getty Images

    Narrow path

    Bolsonaro and his supporters have long criticized Brazil’s Supreme Court, arguing that it has exceeded its constitutional powers and become a judicial “dictatorship.” They have also pushed for Congress to grant amnesty to everyone who took part in or helped carry out the Jan. 8 attacks, including Bolsonaro.

    To date, Brazil’s Supreme Court has convicted 371 people for participating in the attacks. Those convicted have received prison sentences of between three and 17 years.

    Unlike in the United States, however, there has been a broad consensus in Brazil that the attacks were illegitimate and unacceptable. This consensus includes many lawmakers on the right and center-right in Brazil’s Congress, as well as in state and local governments.

    So, although the example of Donald Trump returning to the presidency and pardoning the participants in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol inspires Bolsonaro’s supporters, his path to achieving a similar result is narrower than was Trump’s.

    Meanwhile, Trump’s media company, which owns Truth Social and Rumble, sued Moraes, the judge Bolsonaro is accused of plotting to kill, for ordering the suspension of social media accounts and thereby undermining the First Amendment rights of U.S. citizens. The case was filed in federal court in Tampa, Florida, on Feb. 19.

    Any trial of Bolsonaro and the other alleged coup plotters could spark a political struggle.

    Brazil’s right wing is currently divided between advocates of hard-line Bolsonarismo – a disruptive ideology that advocates social conservatism, a lightly regulated economy, militarism and a strong executive branch – and a more pragmatic conservatism that works within the conventional rules of politics and is mainly focused on patronage and the management of the spoils of office.

    Should Bolsonaro and his fellow defendants be tried in the Supreme Court, those hard-liners could be mobilized and energized.

    They would see the trial as the political establishment’s persecution of their political hero. And a struggle to find Bolsanaro’s successor, most likely between his son Eduardo and the former president’s wife, Michelle, would ensue.

    The successor would claim the mantle of opposition to Lula, who is eligible to seek a fourth presidential term and claims to want to run for reelection in 2026 – when he would be about to celebrate his 81st birthday.

    High stakes

    There are, to be sure, some Brazilian politicians who are more moderate than Bolsonaro and would also like to run against Lula next time. They would bring much less baggage to that presidential race.

    Their candidacies might offer a possible return to the relative political stability Brazil had experienced for almost two decades before 2013, when the main dividing line in Brazilian politics was between coalitions led by the center-right Social Democratic Party and the center-left Workers’ Party.

    To be clear, it’s hard to overstate the potential consequences of the Supreme Court’s deliberation and judgment in this case.

    The trial, should it occur, would be televised and also have a geopolitical dimension, because it would be closely watched by advocates of hard-right populism in other countries across the Americas and beyond. The stakes are high.

    In the meantime, I have no doubt that Bolsonaro’s supporters will try to use his legal woes to rally his political movement. The judgment of Brazil’s Supreme Court, should it decide to hear this case, could therefore end Bolsonaro’s political career. However, no matter what happens, I believe that Bolsonarismo would still be alive and well as a political force in Brazil and a factor in the 2026 elections.

    Anthony Pereira has received funding in the past from the British Academy and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of the UK.

    I am a senior fellow at Canning House, a think tank based in London. This is an unpaid position.

    – ref. Brazil coup charges could end Bolsonaro’s political career − but they won’t extinguish Bolsonarismo – https://theconversation.com/brazil-coup-charges-could-end-bolsonaros-political-career-but-they-wont-extinguish-bolsonarismo-250478

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Colliding plasma ejections from the Sun generate huge geomagnetic storms − studying them will help scientists monitor future space weather

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Shirsh Lata Soni, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Michigan

    The Sun periodically ejects huge bubbles of plasma from its surface that contain an intense magnetic field. These events are called coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. When two of these ejections collide, they can generate powerful geomagnetic storms that can lead to beautiful auroras but may disrupt satellites and GPS back on Earth.

    On May 10, 2024, people across the Northern Hemisphere got to witness the impact of these solar activities on Earth’s space weather.

    The northern lights, as seen here from Michigan in May 2024, are caused by geomagnetic storms in the atmosphere.
    Shirsh Lata Soni

    Two merging CMEs triggered the largest geomagnetic storm in two decades, which manifested in brightly colored auroras visible across the sky.

    I’m a solar physicist. My colleagues and I aim to track and better understand colliding CMEs with the goal of improving space weather forecasts. In the modern era, where technological systems are increasingly vulnerable to space weather disruptions, understanding how CMEs interact with each other has never been more crucial.

    Coronal mass ejections

    CMEs are long and twisted – kind of like ropes – and how often they happen varies with an 11-year cycle. At the solar minimum, researchers observe about one a week, but near the solar maximum, they can observe, on average, two or three per day.

    During the solar maximum, solar flares and coronal mass ejections are more common.

    When two or more CMEs interact, they generate massive clouds of charged particles and magnetic fields that may compress, merge or reconnect with each other during the collision. These interactions can amplify the impact of the CMEs on Earth’s magnetic field, sometimes creating geomagnetic storms.

    Why study interacting CMEs?

    Nearly one-third of CMEs interact with other CMEs or the solar wind, which is a stream of charged particles released from the outer layer of the Sun.

    In my research team’s study, published in May 2024, we found that CMEs that do interact or collide with each other are much more likely to cause a geomagnetic storm – two times more likely than an individual CME. The mix of strong magnetic fields and high pressure in these CME collisions is likely what causes them to generate storms.

    During solar maxima, when there can be more than 10 CMEs per day, the likelihood of CMEs interacting with each other increases. But researchers aren’t sure whether they become more likely to generate a geomagnetic storm during these periods.

    Scientists can study interacting CMEs as they move through space and watch them contribute to geomagnetic storms using observations from space- and ground-based observatories.

    In this study, we looked at three CMEs that interacted with each other as they traveled through space using the space-based observatory STEREO. We validated these observations with three-dimensional simulations.

    The CME interactions we studied generated a complex magnetic field and a compressed plasma sheath, which is a layer of charged particles in the upper atmosphere that interacts with Earth’s magnetic field.

    When this complex structure encountered Earth’s magnetosphere, it compressed the magnetosphere and triggered an intense geomagnetic storm.

    Four images show three interacting CMEs, based on observations from the STEREO telescope. In images C and D, you can see the northeast flank of CME-1 and CME-2 that interact with the southwest part of CME-3.
    Shirsh Lata Soni

    This same process generated the geomagnetic storm from May 2024.

    Between May 8-9, multiple Earth-directed CMEs erupted from the Sun. When these CMEs merged, they formed a massive, combined structure that arrived at Earth late on May 10, 2024. This structure triggered the extraordinary geomagnetic storm many people observed. People even in parts of the southern U.S. were able to see the northern lights in the sky that night.

    More technology and higher stakes

    Scientists have an expansive network of space- and ground-based observatories, such as the Parker Solar Probe, Solar Orbiter, the Solar Dynamics Observatory and others, available to monitor the heliosphere – the region surrounding the Sun – from a variety of vantage points.

    These resources, coupled with advanced modeling capabilities, provide timely and effective ways to investigate how CMEs cause geomagnetic storms. The Sun will reach its solar maximum in the years 2024 and 2025. So, with more complex CMEs coming from the Sun in the next few years and an increasing reliance on space-based infrastructure for communication, navigation and scientific exploration, monitoring these events is more important than ever.

    Integrating the observational data from space-based missions such as Wind and ACE and data from ground-based facilities such as the e-Callisto network and radio observatories with state-of-the-art simulation tools allows researchers to analyze the data in real time. That way, they can quickly make predictions about what the CMEs are doing.

    These advancements are important for keeping infrastructure safe and preparing for the next solar maximum. Addressing these challenges today ensures resilience against future space weather.

    Shirsh Lata Soni 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. Colliding plasma ejections from the Sun generate huge geomagnetic storms − studying them will help scientists monitor future space weather – https://theconversation.com/colliding-plasma-ejections-from-the-sun-generate-huge-geomagnetic-storms-studying-them-will-help-scientists-monitor-future-space-weather-248384

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Making sex deadly for insects could control pests that carry disease and harm crops

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Bill Sullivan, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Indiana University

    In the toxic male technique, genetically engineered male insects would implant semen containing toxic venom into the female insects during mating. Madugrero/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

    Insects do a lot more harm than ruining picnics. Some insects spread devastating diseases, while others cause staggering economic losses in agriculture. To control some of these pests, scientists are developing males that make sex a deadly event.

    The stakes are high. Mosquitoes carry viruses such as dengue, West Nile and Zika, as well as parasites that cause malaria. Researchers estimate that mosquitoes have caused the deaths of 52 billion people overall – nearly half of all the humans that have ever lived.

    Other insects cause major crop damage, jeopardizing the food supply and driving up prices. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 20% to 40% of global crop production is lost to pests annually at a cost of US$70 billion.

    Pesticides have been the front-line defense against insects, but many bugs have evolved resistance to these chemicals. Some pesticides can indiscriminately kill beneficial insects, harm the environment and endanger human and animal health. Some researchers worry that certain pesticides can cause cancer or have damaging effects on human nervous and endocrine systems.

    I’m a microbiology researcher studying infectious disease. New solutions that do not harm humans and the environment to control disease-carrying insects and agricultural pests could lead to fewer people contracting dangerous diseases. In the past few years, a variety of genetic engineering approaches have emerged as promising tactics to combat problematic insects.

    Genetically modified insects

    To avoid the problems associated with pesticides, scientists have devised new approaches that genetically alter the insects themselves in ways that cause their population to crash or render them incapable of transmitting disease – a strategy called genetic biocontrol.

    Genetic biocontrol entails genetically modifying insects to curb their populations.

    The idea to suppress an insect population by flooding it with sterile males has been around for decades. Since the 1950s, scientists have been using radiation to create infertile male mosquitoes. These sterile males mate with females but produce no offspring. Since females are engaged in a lot of unproductive mating, the overall population tends to decline.

    In the past two decades, genetic engineering has been used to introduce dominant lethal genes into insect populations. In this approach, the offspring of genetically modified males inherit a gene that kills them before they reach reproductive age. A field trial in Brazil found that this strategy reduced the target mosquito population up to 95%. Another approach on the horizon involves releasing insects genetically modified to be poor carriers of pathogens that cause disease.

    Despite these advances, a key shortcoming to current genetic biocontrol methods is that they take time. At least one generation needs to be born before the population suppression begins. This means the female insects continue to be a disease vector or agricultural pest until they die a natural death. An ideal technique would neutralize the females immediately, especially during outbreaks.

    A faster approach

    Biologists Samuel Beach and Maciej Maselko at Macquarie University in Australia sought to solve this dilemma by genetically engineering male insects to make poisonous semen. The poisonous semen would kill the female quickly, reducing the population faster than previous biocontrol methods.

    To test this idea, the team used fruit flies called Drosophila melanogaster, which are easy to genetically modify and study in the lab.

    The Brazilian wandering spider, Phoneutria nigriventer.
    Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

    The researchers transferred venom genes from the Brazilian wandering spider (Phoneutria nigriventer) and the Mediterranean snakelocks sea anemone (Anemonia sulcata) into the genomes of fruit flies.

    The genetically modified fly produces and stores venom proteins in its male accessory gland – a fly’s prostate – along with other seminal fluid proteins. Upon mating, the fly deposits the venomous semen into the female’s reproductive tract. The researchers named this approach the toxic male technique.

    The Mediterranean snakelocks anenome, Anemonia viridis.
    Diego Delso

    After mating, the seminal toxins seep into the female’s body and attack her central nervous system. The toxins bind to proteins called ion channels on cellular membranes, which nerve cells use to communicate with one another. This quickly leads to paralysis and respiratory arrest. You could say these genetically engineered Romeos literally take her breath away.

    The lifespan of female flies that mated with toxic males decreased – up to 64%. A computer simulation of the toxic male technique for Aedes aegypti, a mosquito that transmits several viruses, predicted that this approach could work better than current methods.

    Safety and effectiveness

    While promising and innovative, there are some important challenges that researchers developing the toxic male technique will need to overcome. For example, the technique has been shown to work only in fruit flies. Whether it will work in mosquitoes or other insect pests remains an open question.

    In addition, the technique reduced the female lifespan by only 37% to 64%. To improve the rate of killing, the researchers suggested that other venom formulations might work better. Researchers could try thousands of venom genes from spiders, snakes, scorpions and centipedes. Each new venom they try will require tests to ensure the modified males tolerate them – if they become weak, unmodified males may outcompete them for mating opportunities.

    As with all genetic biocontrol methods, this technique may be too expensive to implement for low-income countries. Nations would need to finance the costs of breeding and deploying the mosquitoes safely.

    Insects also pollinate plants and serve as food sources for other animals, such as bats. If these insects vanish, the ecosystem could face unforeseen adverse effects. Monitoring these potential effects on the environment will also be expensive.

    Other researchers are experimenting with using venom toxins to control parasites that female insects spread through biting. Called paratransgenesis, this technique alters an insect’s gut bacteria to produce a toxin that kills the parasite, leaving the insect unharmed. Since the insect population remains unaltered, paratransgenesis may pose less risk to ecosystems.

    Insects tend to adapt quickly to the methods humans use to control them, so it is advantageous to have multiple strategies at our disposal. The toxic male technique may one day become a valuable new weapon in the arsenal to combat insect pests.

    Bill Sullivan receives funding from the National Institutes of Health.

    – ref. Making sex deadly for insects could control pests that carry disease and harm crops – https://theconversation.com/making-sex-deadly-for-insects-could-control-pests-that-carry-disease-and-harm-crops-248723

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –