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Category: Global

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Indigenous choices

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

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

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

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

    How Indigenous practices survived

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

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

    Aztec ritual human sacrifice.
    Via Wikimedia Commons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Beyond graves

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Celebrations continue

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

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

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

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

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

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

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

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

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

    Getty Images

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

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

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

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

    What is place name repatriation?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Why does place naming matter?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    What comes next?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

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

    SPECIAL REPORT: By David Robie in Taipei

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “And this lies with each media house.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Meetings on the margins

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Lacking a coherent agenda

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    UK invovlement in US elections

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The size of the sacrifice

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

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

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

    But do these philanthropic efforts actually present personal sacrifices?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Diving deeper

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Too complicated?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Marginalization and MAiD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Denialism

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

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

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

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

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

    ‘Social murder’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: South Africa amended its research guidelines to allow for heritable human genome editing

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Françoise Baylis, Distinguished Research Professor, Emerita, Dalhousie University

    New genome editing technologies mean that the genetic modification of embryos is a scientific possibility, and laws governing its practice require extensive public consultation. (Shutterstock)

    A little-noticed change to South Africa’s national health research guidelines, published in May of this year, has put the country on an ethical precipice. The newly added language appears to position the country as the first to explicitly permit the use of genome editing to create genetically modified children.

    Heritable human genome editing has long been hotly contested, in large part because of its societal and eugenic implications. As experts on the global policy landscape who have observed the high stakes and ongoing controversies over this technology — one from an academic standpoint (Françoise Baylis) and one from public interest advocacy (Katie Hasson) — we find it surprising that South Africa plans to facilitate this type of research.

    In November 2018, the media reported on a Chinese scientist who had created the world’s first gene-edited babies using CRISPR technology. He said his goal was to provide children with resistance to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. When his experiment became public knowledge, twin girls had already been born and a third child was born the following year.

    The fate of these three children, and whether they have experienced any negative long-term consequences from the embryonic genome editing, remains a closely guarded secret.

    Controversial research

    Considerable criticism followed the original birth announcement. Some argued that genetically modifying embryos to alter the traits of future children and generations should never be done.

    Genetically modifying embryos to alter the traits of future children and generations has immense societal impacts.
    (Shutterstock)

    Many pointed out that the rationale in this case was medically unconvincing – and indeed that safe reproductive procedures to avoid transmitting genetic diseases are already in widespread use, belying the justification typically given for heritable human genome editing. Others condemned his secretive approach, as well as the absence of any robust public consultation, considered a prerequisite for embarking on such a socially consequential path.

    In the immediate aftermath of the 2018 revelation, the organizing committee of the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing joined the global uproar with a statement condemning this research.

    At the same time, however, the committee called for a “responsible translational pathway” toward clinical research. Safety thresholds and “additional criteria” would have to be met, including: “independent oversight, a compelling medical need, an absence of reasonable alternatives, a plan for long-term follow-up, and attention to societal effects.”

    Notably, the additional criteria no longer included the earlier standard of “broad societal consensus.”

    Nobel laureate David Baltimore, chair of the organizing committee for the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, talks about the importance of public global dialogue on gene editing.

    New criteria

    Now, it appears that South Africa has amended its Ethics in Health Research Guidelines to explicitly envisage research that would result in the birth of gene-edited babies.

    Section 4.3.2 of the guidelines on “Heritable Human Genome Editing” includes a few brief and rather vague paragraphs enumerating the following criteria: (a) scientific and medical justification; (b) transparency and informed consent; (c) stringent ethical oversight; (d) ongoing ethical evaluation and adaptation; (e) safety and efficacy; (f) long-term monitoring; and (g) legal compliance.

    While these criteria seem to be in line with those laid out in the 2018 summit statement, they are far less stringent than the frameworks put forth in subsequent reports. This includes, for example, the World Health Organization’s report Human Genome Editing: Framework for Governance (co-authored by Françoise Baylis).

    Alignment with the law

    Further, there is a significant problem with the seemingly permissive stance on heritable human genome editing entrenched in these research guidelines. The guidelines clearly require the research to comply with all laws governing heritable human genome research. Yet, the law and the research guidelines in South Africa are not aligned, which entails a significant inhibition on any possible research.

    This is because of a stipulation in section 57(1) of the South African National Health Act 2004 on the “Prohibition of reproductive cloning of human beings.” This stipulates that a “person may not manipulate any genetic material, including genetic material of human gametes, zygotes, or embryos… for the purpose of the reproductive cloning of a human being.”

    When this act came into force in 2004, it was not yet possible to genetically modify human embryos and so it’s not surprising there’s no specific reference to this technology. Yet the statutory language is clearly wide enough to encompass it. The objection to the manipulation of human genetic material is therefore clear, and imports a prohibition on heritable human genome editing.

    Ethical concerns

    The question that concerns us is: why are South Africa’s ethical guidelines on research apparently pushing the envelope with heritable human genome editing?

    In 2020, we published alongside our colleagues a global review of policies on research involving heritable human genome editing. At the time, we identified policy documents — legislation, regulations, guidelines, codes and international treaties — prohibiting heritable genome editing in more than 70 countries. We found no policy documents that explicitly permitted heritable human genome editing.

    It’s easy to understand why some of South Africa’s ethicists might be disposed to clear the way for somatic human genome editing research. Recently, an effective treatment for sickle cell disease has been developed using genome editing technology. Many children die of this disease before the age of five and somatic genome editing — which does not involve the genetic modification of embryos — promises a cure.

    Somatic genome editing may provide a cure for sickle cell disease.
    (Shutterstock)

    Implications on future research

    But that’s not what this is about. So, what is the interest in forging a path for research on heritable human genome editing, which involves the genetic modification of embryos and has implications for subsequent generations? And why the seemingly quiet modification of the guidelines?

    How many people in South Africa are aware that they’ve just become the only country in the world with research guidelines that envisage accommodating a highly contested technology? Has careful attention been given to the myriad potential harms associated with this use of CRISPR technology, including harms to women, prospective parents, children, society and the gene pool?

    Is it plausible that scientists from other countries, who are interested in this area of research, are patiently waiting in the wings to see whether the law in South Africa prohibiting the manipulation of human genetic material will be an insufficient impediment to creating genetically modified children? Should the research guidelines be amended to accord with the 2004 statutory prohibition?

    Or if, instead, the law is brought into line with the guidelines, would the result be a wave of scientific tourism with labs moving to South Africa to take advantage of permissive research guidelines and laws?

    We hope the questions we ask are alarmist, as now is the time to ask and answer these questions.

    Katie Hasson, Associate Director at the Center for Genetics and Society, co-authored this article.

    Françoise Baylis is affiliated with the International Science Council, the UNESCO World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) and the Royal Society of Canada.

    – ref. South Africa amended its research guidelines to allow for heritable human genome editing – https://theconversation.com/south-africa-amended-its-research-guidelines-to-allow-for-heritable-human-genome-editing-241136

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

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

    ANALYSIS: By Ali Mirin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Indonesia ratified the pact in 2012.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

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

    By Susana Suisuiki, RNZ Pacific journalist in Apia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The death toll stands at 13.

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

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Ukraine cannot defeat Russia – the best the west can do is help Kyiv plan for a secure post-war future

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Frank Ledwidge, Senior Lecturer in Military Strategy and Law, University of Portsmouth

    A friend of mine, usually an intensely optimistic pro-Ukraine analyst, returned from Ukraine last week and told me: “It’s like the German Army in January 1945.” The Ukrainians are being driven back on all fronts – including in the Kursk province of Russia, which they had opened with much hope and fanfare in August. More importantly, they are running out of soldiers.

    For most of 2024, Ukraine has been losing ground. This week, the town of Selidove in the western Donetsk region is being surrounded and, like Vuhledar earlier this month, is likely to fall in the next week or so – the only variable being how many Ukrainians will be lost in the process. Over the winter, the terrible prospect of a major battle to hold the strategically significant industrial town of Pokrovsk beckons.

    Ukrainian forces are steadily losing ground close to the strategically vital town of Pokrovsk, western Donetsk region.
    Institute for the Study of War

    Ultimately, this is not a war of territory but of attrition. The only resource that counts is soldiers – and here the calculus for Ukraine is not positive.

    Ukraine claims to have “liquidated” nearly 700,000 Russian soldiers – with more than 120,000 killed and upwards of 500,000 injured. Its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, admitted in February this year to 31,000 Ukrainian fatalities, with no figure given for injured.

    The problem is these Ukrainian totals are apparently believed by western officials, when the reality is likely to be very different. US sources say the war has seen 1 million people killed and wounded on both sides. Crucially, this includes a growing number of Ukrainian civilians.

    Low morale and desertion, as well as draft-dodging, are now significant problems for Ukraine. These factors are exacerbating already serious recruitment issues, making it hard to supply the front lines with fresh troops.

    A dreadful debate is taking place in Ukraine. The question revolves around whether to mobilise – and risk serious casualties to – the 18-25 age group. Due to economic pressures in the early 2000s, Ukraine suffered a major drop in its birth rate, leaving relatively few people now aged between 15 and 25. Mobilisation and serious attrition of this group may be something Ukraine simply can’t afford, given the already serious demographic crisis the country faces.

    And even if this mobilisation does go ahead, by the time the necessary politics, legislation, bureaucracy and training have run their course, the war may be over.

    Victory look impossible

    History knows of no example where taking on Russia in an attritional contest has proved successful. Let’s be clear: this means there is a real possibility of defeat – there is no sugar-coating this.

    Zelensky’s maximalist war aims of restoring Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders, along with other unlikely conditions – which were unchallenged and encouraged by a confused but self-aggrandising west – will not be achieved, and the west’s leaders are partly to blame. Ill-advised wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East left western armed forces hollow, poorly armed, and entirely unprepared for a serious and prolonged conflict, with ammunition stocks likely to last weeks at best.

    European promises of millions of artillery rounds have failed to materialise – only 650,000 have been supplied to Kyiv this year, whereas the North Koreans have supplied at least twice that to Russia.

    Only the US has significant stocks of weaponry in the form of thousands of armoured vehicles, tanks and artillery pieces in reserve – and it is unlikely to change its policy of drip-feeding weapons to Ukraine now. Even if such a decision is made, the lead-time for delivery will be years, not months.

    In a confidential briefing I attended recently given by western defence officials, the atmosphere was downbeat. The situation is “perilous” and “as bad as it has ever been” for Ukraine. Western powers cannot afford another strategic disaster like Afghanistan which, in the words of Ernest Hemingway (aptly quoted by the strategist Lawrence Freedman), happened “gradually, then suddenly”.

    There will be no decisive breakthrough by Russia’s army when they take this town or that (say, Pokrovsk). They haven’t the capability to do it. So, there won’t be a collapse – no “Kyiv as Kabul” moment.

    However, there are limits to the losses Ukraine can take. We do not know where that limit lies, but we’ll know when it happens. Crucially, there will be no victory for Ukraine. Unforgivably, there is not, and never has been, a western strategy except to bleed Russia as long as possible.

    More fundamentally, two ancient ethical questions governing whether a war is just must now be asked and answered: whether there is a reasonable prospect of success, and whether the potential gain is proportionate to the cost.

    The problem, as so often before, is that the west has not defined what it considers a success. The cost, meanwhile, is becoming all-too clear.

    To have clearly defined its goals and limits would have constituted the beginnings of a strategy – and the west isn’t good at that. Nato’s leaders now need to move quickly beyond meaningless rhetoric or anything that smacks of “as long as it takes”. We saw where that led in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

    We need a realistic answer to what something like a “win”, or at least an acceptable settlement, now looks like – as well as the extent to which it is achievable, and whether the west is really going to pursue it. And then for western leaders to act accordingly.

    A starting point could be accepting that Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk are lost – something an increasing number of Ukrainians are beginning to say openly. Then we need to start planning seriously for a post-war Ukraine that will need the west’s suppport more than ever.

    Russia cannot possibly take all, or even the bulk of, Ukraine’s territory. Even if it could, it could not possibly hold it. It is amply clear there will be a compromise settlement.

    So, it is time for Nato – and the US in particular – to articulate a viable end to this nightmarish ordeal, and to develop a pragmatic strategy to deal with Russia in the coming decade. More importantly, the west must plan how to support a heroic, shattered – but still independent – Ukraine.

    Frank Ledwidge 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 cannot defeat Russia – the best the west can do is help Kyiv plan for a secure post-war future – https://theconversation.com/ukraine-cannot-defeat-russia-the-best-the-west-can-do-is-help-kyiv-plan-for-a-secure-post-war-future-242010

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: ‘Cosmic inflation’: did the early cosmos balloon in size? A mirror universe going backwards in time may be a simpler explanation

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Neil Turok, Higgs Chair of Theoretical Physics, University of Edinburgh

    The mirror universe, with the big bang at the centre. Neil Turok, CC BY-SA

    We live in a golden age for learning about the universe. Our most powerful telescopes have revealed that the cosmos is surprisingly simple on the largest visible scales. Likewise, our most powerful “microscope”, the Large Hadron Collider, has found no deviations from known physics on the tiniest scales.

    These findings were not what most theorists expected. Today, the dominant theoretical approach combines string theory, a powerful mathematical framework with no successful physical predictions as yet, and “cosmic inflation” – the idea that, at a very early stage, the universe ballooned wildly in size. In combination, string theory and inflation predict the cosmos to be incredibly complex on tiny scales and completely chaotic on very large scales.

    The nature of the expected complexity could take a bewildering variety of forms. On this basis, and despite the absence of observational evidence, many theorists promote the idea of a “multiverse”: an uncontrolled and unpredictable cosmos consisting of many universes, each with totally different physical properties and laws.

    This is article is part of our series Cosmology in crisis? which uncovers the greatest problems facing cosmologists today – and discusses the implications of solving them.

    So far, the observations indicate exactly the opposite. What should we make of the discrepancy? One possibility is that the apparent simplicity of the universe is merely an accident of the limited range of scales we can probe today, and that when observations and experiments reach small enough or large enough scales, the asserted complexity will be revealed.

    The other possibility is that the universe really is very simple and predictable on both the largest and smallest scales. I believe this possibility should be taken far more seriously. For, if it is true, we may be closer than we imagined to understanding the universe’s most basic puzzles. And some of the answers may already be staring us in the face.

    The trouble with string theory and inflation

    The current orthodoxy is the culmination of decades of effort by thousands of serious theorists. According to string theory, the basic building blocks of the universe are miniscule, vibrating loops and pieces of sub-atomic string. As currently understood, the theory only works if there are more dimensions of space than the three we experience. So, string theorists assume that the reason we don’t detect them is that they are tiny and curled up.

    Unfortunately, this makes string theory hard to test, since there are an almost unimaginable number of ways in which the small dimensions can be curled up, with each giving a different set of physical laws in the remaining, large dimensions.

    Meanwhile, cosmic inflation is a scenario proposed in the 1980s to explain why the universe is so smooth and flat on the largest scales we can see. The idea is that the infant universe was small and lumpy, but an extreme burst of ultra-rapid expansion blew it up vastly in size, smoothing it out and flattening it to be consistent with what we see today.

    Inflation is also popular because it potentially explains why the energy density in the early universe varied slightly from place to place. This is important because the denser regions would have later collapsed under their own gravity, seeding the formation of galaxies.

    Over the past three decades, the density variations have been measured more and more accurately both by mapping the cosmic microwave background – the radiation from the big bang – and by mapping the three-dimensional distribution of galaxies.

    In most models of inflation, the early extreme burst of expansion which smoothed and flattened the universe also generated long-wavelength gravitational waves –– ripples in the fabric of space-time. Such waves, if observed, would be a “smoking gun” signal confirming that inflation actually took place. However, so far the observations have failed to detect any such signal. Instead, as the experiments have steadily improved, more and more models of inflation have been ruled out.

    Furthermore, during inflation, different regions of space can experience very different amounts of expansion. On very large scales, this produces a multiverse of post-inflationary universes, each with different physical properties.

    The history of the universe according to the model of cosmic inflation.
    wikipedia, CC BY-SA

    The inflation scenario is based on assumptions about the forms of energy present and the initial conditions. While these assumptions solve some puzzles, they create others. String and inflation theorists hope that somewhere in the vast inflationary multiverse, a region of space and time exists with just the right properties to match the universe we see.

    However, even if this is true (and not one such model has yet been found), a fair comparison of theories should include an “Occam factor”, quantifying Occam’s razor, which penalises theories with many parameters and possibilities over simpler and more predictive ones. Ignoring the Occam factor amounts to assuming that there is no alternative to the complex, unpredictive hypothesis – a claim I believe has little foundation.

    Over the past several decades, there have been many opportunities for experiments and observations to reveal specific signals of string theory or inflation. But none have been seen. Again and again, the observations turned out simpler and more minimal than anticipated.

    It is high time, I believe, to acknowledge and learn from these failures, and to start looking seriously for better alternatives.

    A simpler alternative

    Recently, my colleague Latham Boyle and I have tried to build simpler and more testable theories that do away with inflation and string theory. Taking our cue from the observations, we have attempted to tackle some of the most profound cosmic puzzles with a bare minimum of theoretical assumptions.

    Our first attempts succeeded beyond our most optimistic hopes. Time will tell whether they survive further scrutiny. However, the progress we have already made convinces me that, in all likelihood, there are alternatives to the standard orthodoxy – which has become a straitjacket we need to break out of.

    I hope our experience encourages others, especially younger researchers, to explore novel approaches guided strongly by the simplicity of the observations – and to be more sceptical about their elders’ preconceptions. Ultimately, we must learn from the universe and adapt our theories to it rather than vice versa.

    Boyle and I started out by tackling one of cosmology’s greatest paradoxes. If we follow the expanding universe backward in time, using Einstein’s theory of gravity and the known laws of physics, space shrinks away to a single point, the “initial singularity”.

    In trying to make sense of this infinitely dense, hot beginning, theorists including Nobel laureate Roger Penrose pointed to a deep symmetry in the basic laws governing light and massless particles. This symmetry, called “conformal” symmetry, means that neither light nor massless particles actually experience the shrinking away of space at the big bang.

    By exploiting this symmetry, one can follow light and particles all the way back to the beginning. Doing so, Boyle and I found we could describe the initial singularity as a “mirror”: a reflecting boundary in time (with time moving forward on one side, and backward on the other).

    Picturing the big bang as a mirror neatly explains many features of the universe which might otherwise appear to conflict with the most basic laws of physics. For example, for every physical process, quantum theory allows a “mirror” process in which space is inverted, time is reversed and every particle is replaced with its anti-particle (a particle similar to it in almost all respects, but with the opposite electric charge).

    According to this powerful symmetry, called CPT symmetry, the “mirror” process should occur at precisely the same rate as the original one. One of the most basic puzzles about the universe is that it appears to [violate CPT symmetry] because time always runs forward and there are more particles than anti-particles.

    Our mirror hypothesis restores the symmetry of the universe. When you look in a mirror, you see your mirror image behind it: if you are left-handed, the image is right-handed and vice versa. The combination of you and your mirror image are more symmetrical than you are alone.

    Likewise, when Boyle and I extrapolated our universe back through the big bang, we found its mirror image, a pre-bang universe in which (relative to us) time runs backward and antiparticles outnumber particles. For this picture to be true, we don’t need the mirror universe to be real in the classical sense (just as your image in a mirror isn’t real). Quantum theory, which rules the microcosmos of atoms and particles, challenges our intuition so at this point the best we can do is think of the mirror universe as a mathematical device which ensures that the initial condition for the universe does not violate CPT symmetry.

    Surprisingly, this new picture provided an important clue to the nature of the unknown cosmic substance called dark matter. Neutrinos are very light, ghostly particles which, typically, move at close to the speed of light and which spin as they move along, like tiny tops. If you point the thumb of your left hand in the direction the neutrino moves, then your four fingers indicate the direction in which it spins. The observed, light neutrinos are called “left-handed” neutrinos.

    Heavy “right-handed” neutrinos have never been seen directly, but their existence has been inferred from the observed properties of light, left-handed neutrinos. Stable, right-handed neutrinos would be the perfect candidate for dark matter because they don’t couple to any of the known forces except gravity. Before our work, it was unknown how they might have been produced in the hot early universe.

    Our mirror hypothesis allowed us to calculate exactly how many would form, and to show they could explain the cosmic dark matter.

    A testable prediction followed: if the dark matter consists of stable, right-handed neutrinos, then one of three light neutrinos that we know of must be exactly massless. Remarkably, this prediction is now being tested using observations of the gravitational clustering of matter made by large-scale galaxy surveys.

    The entropy of universes

    Encouraged by this result, we set about tackling another big puzzle: why is the universe so uniform and spatially flat, not curved, on the largest visible scales? The cosmic inflation scenario was, after all, invented by theorists to solve this problem.

    Entropy is a concept which quantifies the number of different ways a physical system can be arranged. For example, if we put some air molecules in a box, the most likely configurations are those which maximise the entropy – with the molecules more or less smoothly spread throughout space and sharing the total energy more or less equally. These kinds of arguments are used in statistical physics, the field which underlies our understanding of heat, work and thermodynamics.

    The late physicist Stephen Hawking and collaborators famously generalised statistical physics to include gravity. Using an elegant argument, they calculated the temperature and the entropy of black holes. Using our “mirror” hypothesis, Boyle and I managed to extend their arguments to cosmology and to calculate the entropy of entire universes.

    To our surprise, the universe with the highest entropy (meaning it is the most likely, just like the atoms spread out in the box) is flat and expands at an accelerated rate, just like the real one. So statistical arguments explain why the universe is flat and smooth and has a small positive accelerated expansion, with no need for cosmic inflation.

    How would the primordial density variations, usually attributed to inflation, have been generated in our symmetrical mirror universe? Recently, we showed that a specific type of quantum field (a dimension zero field) generates exactly the type of density variations we observe, without inflation. Importantly, these density variations aren’t accompanied by the long wavelength gravitational waves which inflation predicts – and which haven’t been seen.

    These results are very encouraging. But more work is needed to show that our new theory is both mathematically sound and physically realistic.

    Even if our new theory fails, it has taught us a valuable lesson. There may well be simpler, more powerful and more testable explanations for the basic properties of the universe than those the standard orthodoxy provides.

    By facing up to cosmology’s deep puzzles, guided by the observations and exploring directions as yet unexplored, we may be able to lay more secure foundations for both fundamental physics and our understanding of the universe.

    Neil Turok 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. ‘Cosmic inflation’: did the early cosmos balloon in size? A mirror universe going backwards in time may be a simpler explanation – https://theconversation.com/cosmic-inflation-did-the-early-cosmos-balloon-in-size-a-mirror-universe-going-backwards-in-time-may-be-a-simpler-explanation-238343

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: There’s a crisis in special educational needs provision: here’s the situation across the UK and Ireland

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Cathryn Knight, Senior Lecturer in Psychology in Education, University of Bristol

    Ermolaev Alexander/Shutterstock

    In the UK and Ireland, children who have significant special educational needs and disabilities can receive their education outside mainstream school. This often takes place in “special schools” or “special classes”.

    In the UK, as well as the Republic of Ireland, legislation sets out that children have the right to attend mainstream education. This right cannot be refused based on the complexity of the child’s needs. However, many children are educated in specialist schools, and the devolved governments of the UK, and Ireland, have taken differing approaches to this provision.

    But there is a problem. Across the UK and Ireland, there are far fewer places available in specialist schools and classes for the number of children identified with needs significant enough to warrant a place.

    England

    In 2010, then-prime minister David Cameron set out the aim to “end the bias” towards including children with special educational needs and disabilities in mainstream schools.

    His government felt there had been an overemphasis on inclusion in mainstream schools. As a consequence, England has seen an expansion of specialist education provision. From 2015 to 2023, there has been a 47% increase in the number of pupils at special schools in England – from 109,177 to 161,072.
    However, as of May 2024, 4,407 children across England were waiting for school places in specialist provision.

    There has also been a large increase in the number of appeals against councils by parents or carers of children with special educational needs in England, challenging the decision made around a child’s school placement and provision.

    A new report from the National Audit Office on special educational needs suggests that the current system in England is unsustainable, with many councils set to run out of money by early 2026.

    Wales

    Wales has also seen a 25% increase in special school provision from 2017-18 to 2023-4.

    However, there has recently been a large decrease in the number of learners being identified with additional learning needs. This has coincided with the introduction of a new additional learning needs system.

    However, the proportion of all learners in special schools has increased. This means that this reduction in identification does not seem to have changed the number of those who require specialist placements.

    Scotland

    Scotland has taken a different route. Here, the legal right to mainstream schooling has been taken a step further: there is an underlying “presumption of mainstreaming”, in other words, a right to attend a mainstream school, although exceptions in which a specialist provision should be considered are set out.

    This presumption of mainstreaming means that there has been a reduction in the number of special schools. However, alongside this there has been an increase in the proportion of children not spending time in mainstream classes.

    There has been an increase in special needs provision in mainstream classes in Scotland.
    Evgeny Atamanenko/Shutterstock

    This implies that more children are being educated in units attached to mainstream schools, without necessarily participating in mainstream classes. A recent review has raised concerns that the children with additional support needs in mainstream schools are not having their needs met.

    Northern Ireland

    The number of children with a statement of special educational needs in Northern Ireland increased by 24% in the five years from 2017-18 to 2021-22. A Department of Education official recently told the Education Committee of the NI Assembly that there was a need for an additional 1,000 places for children with SEN. This would require 66 new special school classes and 94 new specialist classes in mainstream schools.

    Northern Ireland is addressing the increased demand for special school places by embarking on a programme to develop specialist provision in mainstream schools. It is important to note, however, that although attached to and often under the same roof as mainstream schools, these are separate, specialist classes for children whose needs would ordinarily have been met in special schools, if pupil places had been available.

    Republic of Ireland

    In the Irish republic, there has been a dramatic increase in demand for specialist provision. There has also been an increase in the number of special schools in recent years, from 123 in 2018-19 to 134 in 2024-25, and further schools are planned.

    However, the challenges experienced by children with SEN in accessing school places continues. Some children are receiving home tuition grants because they don’t have a school place, and even more students are waiting to secure a place for the school year 2024-25. To address this, the minister for education in Ireland is now able to compel schools to open special classes under amended legislation.

    The challenge

    The devolved governments of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland, are committed to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which upholds the right to inclusive education for all learners. This includes the right to be educated without segregation.

    Scotland have addressed this by reducing specialist provision – although there have been criticisms of how this has been implemented in practice. Elsewhere in the UK, the demand for specialist provision is leading to each government increasing the amount of specialist provision, as opposed to considering how the principles of inclusive education could be embedded in mainstream schools.

    In line with guidance from the UN, it is important to consider how mainstream schools can effectively support and include all learners. If these schools are designed to better accommodate a broader range of learners, the need for specialist placements could well decrease.

    However, criticisms of the Scottish system show that without adequate support, placing children with special educational needs in mainstream schools is not enough for students to feel fully included.

    Cathryn Knight receives funding from the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account.

    Joanne Banks receives funding from The Irish Research Council New Foundations Award.

    Noel Purdy 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. There’s a crisis in special educational needs provision: here’s the situation across the UK and Ireland – https://theconversation.com/theres-a-crisis-in-special-educational-needs-provision-heres-the-situation-across-the-uk-and-ireland-240264

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Many important 20th-century philosophers investigated ghosts – here’s how they explained them

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matyáš Moravec, Lecturer in Philosophy, Queen’s University Belfast

    Hamlet and the Ghost by Frederick James Shields (1901). Manchester Art Gallery

    Most people imagine philosophers as rational thinkers who spend their time developing abstract logical theories and strongly reject superstitious beliefs. But several 20th-century philosophers actively investigated spooky topics such as clairvoyance, telepathy – even ghosts.

    Many of these philosophers, including Henri Bergson and William James, were interested in what was called “psychical research”. This was the academic study of paranormal phenomena including telepathy, telekinesis and other-worldly spirits.

    These thinkers attended seances and were attempting to develop theories about ghosts, life after death and the powers exhibited by mediums in trances. My recent archival research has been looking at how these topics shaped 20th-century philosophy.

    CD Broad (1887-1971) was a professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge. He is now recognised as one of the most important writers on the philosophy of time. He also published on ethics, logic and the history of philosophy. What is less known, though, is that he was an active member of the Society for Psychical Research, a learned society dedicated to the study of paranormal phenomena. The society twice elected him as their president, and he published widely on topics including clairvoyance and poltergeists.

    In his 1925 book, The Mind and Its Place in Nature, Broad developed what has come to be known as the “compound theory” of ghosts. Broad argued that the human mind was a compound of two components. One of these was the “physical factor,” roughly corresponding to the body. The other one was the “psychic factor,” which carries our mental content like emotions or thoughts. The two of them conjointly form the human mind – just like salt is composed of sodium and chloride.

    Broad believed that after death, the psychic factor can continue existing for a bit on its own and might enter, like a spirit, a medium during a seance.

    Images in the ether

    Another philosopher interested in ghosts and spirits of the dead was HH Price (1899-1984). He was a professor of logic at the University of Oxford and is mostly known for his publications on the philosophy of perception. However, just like Broad, he was heavily involved in the Society for Psychical Research and attended several international conferences dedicated to life after death and telepathy.

    Price believed ghosts could appear to sensitive people.
    Wellcome Collection, CC BY

    In his presidential address to the society in 1939, Price tried to offer an explanation of ghosts and hauntings.

    At any given moment, he argued, your mind is full of “mental images” – the memory of your last holiday, the things you see outside your window, your hopes and expectations for the future. Price theorised that there is a substance, which he called the “psychic ether” that exists halfway between matter and the human mind. He believed that this ether could carry the images that currently exist in your mind even after you die. A bundle of these images and memories can appear as a ghost to some particularly sensitive people.

    What does ‘ghost’ mean?

    Casimir Lewy (1919-1991) was one of the most influential philosophical logicians of the 20th century. He spent most of his career at the University of Cambridge – in fact, the philosophy faculty library there is named after him.

    Lewy is now mostly known for his work on logic, and few people know that he actually wrote his PhD thesis (which was examined by Broad) on life after death.

    Portrait of Casimir Lewy by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (1937).
    Trinity College

    He was primarily interested in language and in the meanings of the terms people use when they talk about ghosts and life after death. What does it mean to say that I might survive the death of my body? What sort of experiences would I need to have as a ghost for the statement “I have survived my death” to be true? Would I have to be able to see myself in the mirror, or to speak to people in the seance room?

    Lewy insisted that these questions need answering before looking at the empirical “evidence” for ghosts.

    Following a series of scandalous and widely publicised discoveries of fraudulent mediums faking their supernatural powers and accusations of pseudo-scientific research methods, psychical research eventually moved to the fringes of academia. Lewy, for example, never returned to write on these topics after passing the defence of his PhD in 1943.

    Nevertheless, despite its brief lifespan, academic psychical research had a significant influence on an entire generation of British philosophers. It shaped their views on time, causation and matter, and gave them an opportunity to think one of life’s most pressing questions: what happens after we die?


    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.

    Matyáš Moravec 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. Many important 20th-century philosophers investigated ghosts – here’s how they explained them – https://theconversation.com/many-important-20th-century-philosophers-investigated-ghosts-heres-how-they-explained-them-241635

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Students with special educational needs are years behind their peers – they need specialist teachers in mainstream classrooms

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Johny Daniel, Assistant Professor, School of Education, Durham University

    BearFotos/Shutterstock

    A new report from the National Audit Office into special educational needs provision in England has concluded that despite a significant increase investment over the last decade, “the system is still not delivering better outcomes for children and young people”.

    This is borne out by my research. Students with special educational needs in England are significantly behind in reading, writing and maths compared to their classmates.

    Laws like the 2014 Children and Families Act, which aimed to improve support for these students, haven’t closed the gap. My recent research suggests that we need to rethink current educational policies and practices.

    My study looked at data from 2.5 million year 6 students (aged ten and 11) between 2014 and 2019. It shows that students with special educational needs are significantly behind in key academic areas.

    On average, students with special educational needs are two years behind in writing and one and a half years behind in reading and maths. The gap in maths is growing, which is especially worrying. It shows that current educational strategies are failing these students.

    Not all students with special educational needs face the same challenges. Students with intellectual disabilities were, on average, more than two years behind in writing and maths. In contrast, students with autism spectrum disorder and visual impairment do somewhat better, especially in reading, but they are still, on average, about one year behind.

    Rethinking support

    Despite well-intentioned policies, current educational frameworks are falling short. A major issue is the heavy reliance on teaching assistants as the main support for students with special educational needs in mainstream schools.

    Teaching assistants are dedicated and play an important role in classrooms. However, research shows that their involvement can sometimes have negative effects on academic outcomes due to a limited range of teaching methods and lack of professional development. Over-relying on teaching assistants without specialised support might be one reason for the continuing achievement gap.

    This raises important questions. If we would not accept teaching assistants as the main instructors for typical students, it should not be acceptable for students with special educational needs, who have more complex learning needs.

    Support in schools also comes from special educational needs coordinators. They manage the school’s approach to supporting students with special educational needs. They handle administrative tasks, work with parents and outside agencies, and ensure legal compliance. But while their role is important, they usually do not teach students directly.

    One solution is to have specialised special education teachers in mainstream schools. This is not just a suggestion; it’s a critical need.

    Special education teachers are trained educators who work directly with students needing extra support. They teach tailored lessons, adapt teaching materials, and use specialised strategies to meet individual learning needs. Their focus is on providing hands-on educational help within the school.

    Learning from other countries

    Integrating special education teachers into our mainstream classrooms, as seen in countries such as the US and Singapore, could be the key to better supporting our students.

    In these countries, special education teachers are part of the mainstream classrooms. They complete certification programmes, learning advanced skills in assessing students’ needs, developing tailored support and creating individual education plans. They teach alongside general educators, ensuring that students with special educational needs are not left out but receive high-quality support.

    This approach addresses both academic and emotional needs in the classroom, providing an effective support system.

    Similar steps should be taken in England to establish comprehensive special education teacher training programmes. This could include postgraduate certifications in special education or specialised modules in existing teacher education programmes.

    Specialist teachers could help contain the attainment gap.
    PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

    Inspection frameworks like Ofsted must include specific criteria to evaluate the presence and effectiveness of specialised support in classrooms for students with special educational needs.

    Schools should be encouraged to hire qualified special education teachers, and government funding models must be changed to support these professionals. Also, ongoing professional development should be a priority, ensuring that all educators expand their expertise in proven teaching methods.

    By aligning teacher training, hiring and policies, England can reduce its reliance on teaching assistants as the main support for students with special educational needs. Instead, schools can have strong support systems led by trained special education teachers. These specialists can work with teaching assistants and classroom teachers to provide more effective, targeted support.

    This change would provide students with special educational needs with improved overall quality of teaching and learning. This could lead to mainstream classrooms fostering a truly inclusive educational environment.

    Johny Daniel 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. Students with special educational needs are years behind their peers – they need specialist teachers in mainstream classrooms – https://theconversation.com/students-with-special-educational-needs-are-years-behind-their-peers-they-need-specialist-teachers-in-mainstream-classrooms-240147

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The Terminator at 40: this sci-fi ‘B-movie’ still shapes how we view the threat of AI

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tom F.A Watts, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy, Royal Holloway University of London

    October 26, 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of director James Cameron’s science fiction classic, The Terminator – a film that popularised society’s fear of machines that can’t be reasoned with, and that “absolutely will not stop … until you are dead”, as one character memorably puts it.

    The plot concerns a super-intelligent AI system called Skynet which has taken over the world by initiating nuclear war. Amid the resulting devastation, human survivors stage a successful fightback under the leadership of the charismatic John Connor.

    In response, Skynet sends a cyborg assassin (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) back in time to 1984 – before Connor’s birth – to kill his future mother, Sarah. Such is John Connor’s importance to the war that Skynet banks on erasing him from history to preserve its existence.

    Today, public interest in artificial intelligence has arguably never been greater. The companies developing AI typically promise their technologies will perform tasks faster and more accurately than people. They claim AI can spot patterns in data that are not obvious, enhancing human decision-making. There is a widespread perception that AI is poised to transform everything from warfare to the economy.

    Immediate risks include introducing biases into algorithms for screening job applications and the threat of generative AI displacing humans from certain types of work, such as software programming.

    But it is the existential danger that often dominates public discussion – and the six Terminator films have exerted an outsize influence on how these arguments are framed. Indeed, according to some, the films’ portrayal of the threat posed by AI-controlled machines distracts from the substantial benefits offered by the technology.

    Official trailer for The Terminator (1984)

    The Terminator was not the first film to tackle AI’s potential dangers. There are parallels between Skynet and the HAL 9000 supercomputer in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

    It also draws from Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein, and Karel Čapek’s 1921 play, R.U.R.. Both stories concern inventors losing control over their creations.

    On release, it was described in a review by the New York Times as a “B-movie with flair”. In the intervening years, it has been recognised as one of the greatest science fiction movies of all time. At the box office, it made more than 12 times its modest budget of US$6.4 million (£4.9 million at today’s exchange rate).

    What was arguably most novel about The Terminator is how it re-imagined longstanding fears of a machine uprising through the cultural prism of 1980s America. Much like the 1983 film WarGames, where a teenager nearly triggers World War 3 by hacking into a military supercomputer, Skynet highlights cold war fears of nuclear annihilation coupled with anxiety about rapid technological change.



    Read more:
    Science fiction helps us deal with science fact: a lesson from Terminator’s killer robots

    Forty years on, Elon Musk is among the technology leaders who have helped keep a focus on the supposed existential risk of AI to humanity. The owner of X (formerly Twitter) has repeatedly referenced the Terminator franchise while expressing concerns about the hypothetical development of superintelligent AI.

    But such comparisons often irritate the technology’s advocates. As the former UK technology minister Paul Scully said at a London conference in 2023: “If you’re only talking about the end of humanity because of some rogue, Terminator-style scenario, you’re going to miss out on all of the good that AI [can do].”

    That’s not to say there aren’t genuine concerns about military uses of AI – ones that may even seem to parallel the film franchise.

    AI-controlled weapons systems

    To the relief of many, US officials have said that AI will never take a decision on deploying nuclear weapons. But combining AI with autonomous weapons systems is a possibility.

    These weapons have existed for decades and don’t necessarily require AI. Once activated, they can select and attack targets without being directly operated by a human. In 2016, US Air Force general Paul Selva coined the term “Terminator conundrum” to describe the ethical and legal challenges posed by these weapons.

    The Terminator’s director James Cameron says ‘the weaponisation of AI is the biggest danger’.

    Stuart Russell, a leading UK computer scientist, has argued for a ban on all lethal, fully autonomous weapons, including those with AI. The main risk, he argues, is not from a sentient Skynet-style system going rogue, but how well autonomous weapons might follow our instructions, killing with superhuman accuracy.

    Russell envisages a scenario where tiny quadcopters equipped with AI and explosive charges could be mass-produced. These “slaughterbots” could then be deployed in swarms as “cheap, selective weapons of mass destruction”.

    Countries including the US specify the need for human operators to “exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force” when operating autonomous weapon systems. In some instances, operators can visually verify targets before authorising strikes, and can “wave off” attacks if situations change.

    AI is already being used to support military targeting. According to some, it’s even a responsible use of the technology, since it could reduce collateral damage. This idea evokes Schwarzenegger’s role reversal as the benevolent “machine guardian” in the original film’s sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

    However, AI could also undermine the role human drone operators play in challenging recommendations by machines. Some researchers think that humans have a tendency to trust whatever computers say.

    ‘Loitering munitions’

    Militaries engaged in conflicts are increasingly making use of small, cheap aerial drones that can detect and crash into targets. These “loitering munitions” (so named because they are designed to hover over a battlefield) feature varying degrees of autonomy.

    As I’ve argued in research co-authored with security researcher Ingvild Bode, the dynamics of the Ukraine war and other recent conflicts in which these munitions have been widely used raises concerns about the quality of control exerted by human operators.

    Ground-based military robots armed with weapons and designed for use on the battlefield might call to mind the relentless Terminators, and weaponised aerial drones may, in time, come to resemble the franchise’s airborne “hunter-killers”. But these technologies don’t hate us as Skynet does, and neither are they “super-intelligent”.

    However, it’s crucially important that human operators continue to exercise agency and meaningful control over machine systems.

    Arguably, The Terminator’s greatest legacy has been to distort how we collectively think and speak about AI. This matters now more than ever, because of how central these technologies have become to the strategic competition for global power and influence between the US, China and Russia.

    The entire international community, from superpowers such as China and the US to smaller countries, needs to find the political will to cooperate – and to manage the ethical and legal challenges posed by the military applications of AI during this time of geopolitical upheaval. How nations navigate these challenges will determine whether we can avoid the dystopian future so vividly imagined in The Terminator – even if we don’t see time travelling cyborgs any time soon.

    Tom F.A Watts receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellowship scheme.

    – ref. The Terminator at 40: this sci-fi ‘B-movie’ still shapes how we view the threat of AI – https://theconversation.com/the-terminator-at-40-this-sci-fi-b-movie-still-shapes-how-we-view-the-threat-of-ai-236564

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: An Indian village went from hunting Amur falcons to being their biggest protectors. Here’s how conservationists can harness the power of persuasion

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Diogo Veríssimo, Research Fellow in Conservation Marketing, University of Oxford

    An Amur falcon feeds on flying insects as it migrates across Nagaland, India. Greeneries/Shutterstock

    Wildlife conservation is an exercise in human persuasion. It may seem counterintuitive that we hold the keys to the survival of wildlife, but 98% of all threatened species are threatened exclusively by human activities such as pollution, invasive species or habitat loss.

    Influencing human behaviour to benefit nature is hard, but it can be done. In the case of the Amur falcon, we found that legislation and enforcement were successful at stopping hunting of this migratory raptor and maintaining changes in hunting practices. But the key to success involved fostering local pride in the bird, alongside providing economic incentives.

    The Amur falcon is a bird the size of an apple with a yearly commute from Siberia to Africa and back – the equivalent in total to six trips from London to New York. One key stop in the bird’s journey is the forests of Nagaland in north-east India.

    Since its construction in 2000, an artificial reservoir over Nagaland’s Doyang river has attracted vast numbers of winged termites – in turn increasing the number of Amur falcons stopping to feed on these insects. As the numbers of falcons rose, they became very easy targets for local hunters, for whom wildlife hunting is an integral part of their traditional culture. These birds were hunted for food as well as traded in local markets, earning significant seasonal revenue for the hunters.

    Fast-forward to November 2012. The scale of the hunt at Doyang reservoir, particularly in Pangti village, came to the attention of conservationists like us, who estimated that between 120,000 and 140,000 birds (about 10% of the global adult population) were being caught in only ten days. These birds stopped at the Doyang reservoir to fatten up before their migration to Africa, but were trapped using fishing nets hung across trees.

    A global media campaign was spearheaded by the environmental charity Conservation India. A hard-hitting short film, The Amur Falcon Massacre, was shared online to show the true horror and scale of this hunt. Conservationists tried to leverage India’s membership of the Convention on Migratory Species, and such pressure led to the Indian government making a global commitment to protect species including the Amur falcon.

    The government took swift action. It warned Pangti villagers that unless the hunting stopped, it would cut off funding for crucial development projects. Faced with this threat, the village council imposed a ban on hunting falcons in 2013 – without consulting the broader community.

    That decision was deeply unpopular with local villagers. Falcon hunting had been an important source of income, and many villagers were resistant to the ban. Though the hunting stopped, local trust in the council leadership was low because the ban was seen as authoritarian.

    However, the decision was backed by financial incentives and environmental outreach from charitable organisations and the government’s forest department. This helped reframe the falcons as “honoured guests”, and to connect local people more empathetically with the birds. Hunting was actively discouraged; eventually, it ceased altogether.

    An Amur falcon (Falco amurensis) in flight.
    Touhid biplob/Wikimedia, CC BY-NC-ND

    By 2017, a sense of pride began to grow within the community. Awards and recognition from external bodies, including the Indian government, for Pangti’s conservation efforts helped create a positive image of the village worldwide. The community’s emotional bond with the falcons strengthened. Villagers even held prayers for satellite-tagged falcons before releasing them. Falcon conservation became a symbol of local identity and pride, which helped overcome the initial resistance to the hunting ban.

    This allowed conservation measures to expand. The community outlawed air guns to prevent the hunting of small birds, and extended the hunting ban to cover all wildlife for six months of the year. These actions showed the community wasn’t just enforcing government rules; it was actively creating new conservation initiatives of its own.

    The power of persuasion

    Human actions drive biodiversity outcomes. These can be destructive, like poaching, or protective, like community-led conservation. The end of the indiscriminate killing of the Amur falcon in Nagaland highlights that, while behaviour change can take place in a short period, maintaining it over the long term is often much more challenging.

    For instance, while the initial ban was effective in quickly eliminating hunting, the shift from resistance to pride in falcon conservation took years to fully develop. Sustaining this change has required continuous community engagement and building of pride in the species.

    Visual storytelling – in this case, a film widely shared on social media – can also play a powerful role in turning local issues into global ones. The international attention brought to the unsustainable hunting of the Amur falcon was instrumental in prompting government action. This shows how global media exposure can elevate a local conservation issue, creating a sense of urgency that compels authorities to act.

    However, while media campaigns can quickly drive policy changes, they don’t always lead to lasting behaviour change. Campaigns that rely on shock and urgency may alienate local communities, creating resistance.

    Sustainable behaviour change requires building trust, understanding local values, and supporting community leadership. True change happens when people feel empowered and see benefits from their actions – not simply when they feel pressured to comply.


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

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    Sahila Kudalkar received funding from the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation for research on Amur falcon conservation in Nagaland.

    Diogo Veríssimo 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. An Indian village went from hunting Amur falcons to being their biggest protectors. Here’s how conservationists can harness the power of persuasion – https://theconversation.com/an-indian-village-went-from-hunting-amur-falcons-to-being-their-biggest-protectors-heres-how-conservationists-can-harness-the-power-of-persuasion-239856

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

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

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Rachel Buxton, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, Carleton University

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

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

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

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

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



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

    Birds, trees and human connection

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

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

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

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

    Birds and trees as promoters of urban wellness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Importance of urban birds and trees

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Your politics can affect whether you click on sponsored search results, new research shows

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Alexander Davidson, Associate Professor of Marketing, Wayne State University

    Good news for digital marketers. Boy Wirat/Getty Images

    American businesses spend close to US$100 billion each year to secure top advertising spots in search engine results – even though it’s not exactly a secret that most online shoppers scroll right past them.

    In fact, organic links – results that aren’t sponsored advertisements – can receive up to 10 times as many clicks as search ads, industry data shows.

    I refer to this phenomenon as “search ad avoidance,” and it’s a big problem for the multibillion-dollar industry. But it turns out that not all groups are equally averse to clicking on sponsored search results.

    According to my newly published peer-reviewed research, people with conservative political views are more likely to click on sponsored search results.

    Republican-leaning brands such as Black Rifle Coffee Company might want to take note.

    Conservatives are more likely to click search ads

    To explore the relationship between politics and search engine behavior, I conducted several studies.

    First, I examined data from more than 500,000 visitors to a nationwide retailer’s website. I analyzed the percentage of visitors from each U.S. state who arrived at the website by clicking a search ad versus an organic link. Then I looked at the share of each state’s residents who describe themselves as conservative.

    I found that more conservative states were associated with more clicks for search ads over organic links. Specifically, a 10% increase in a state’s conservative identity was associated with a 6.4% increase in search ad clicks.

    Given that, on average, conservatives are older and have higher incomes than liberals, I also looked at each state’s median age and per-capita personal income. Again, the data confirmed the relationship between conservatism and search ad clicks. Neither age nor income had any significant impact.

    To better understand what was going on, I conducted additional studies where I could monitor people’s searches in a more controlled setting using online surveys.

    I asked online participants to search for a product the same way they would using Google. Then, I brought them to a search results page and asked them to indicate how likely they would be to click on a search ad versus an organic link.

    I also measured their political orientation in two different ways: through self-identification and attitudes toward political issues. Once again, I found that regardless of age or income, more conservative people were more likely to click on search ads.

    Why the promotional is political

    The decision to click on an ad – or not – might seem quite minor. But I believe ad avoidance is strongly rooted in people’s core beliefs and values.

    While conservatives tend to trust and justify the role of marketplace systems, liberals are more skeptical. Within the marketplace of online information search, I argue that conservatives are likely to be more trusting of sponsored communications than liberals, who lean toward organic content.

    The importance of values becomes clear in a final analysis I conducted. In this real-world experiment, I created search ads for a website built specifically for this research and found that conservatives were more likely to click ads in response to broad searches, such as “Buy headphones.” But for more specific, detailed searches – for example, “Buy headphones with microphone that reduces background noise” – there was no relationship between politics and clicks.

    I suspect this is because broad searches are less cognitively demanding – in other words, they require less brainpower. This allows our core beliefs to influence our decisions. In fact, this is consistent with research on information processing that shows broad thinking leads to stronger political attitudes.

    On the other hand, I argue that specific searches require us to pay close attention to the information we are processing, which disables our core beliefs from being the primary influence on our decisions.

    Why advertisers should take note

    These findings have obvious benefits for advertisers who want to better understand who’s most likely to click on search ads. This can help them generate campaign strategies that account for consumers’ political orientations, which I have shown to be a better predictor of click behavior than typical segmentation variables such as age or income.

    Given that liberals are less likely to click search ads, it also suggests advertisers should be thinking about alternative ways to reach them. It’s possible that liberals could be persuaded to click search ads through a greater inclusion of trust symbols in advertising communications, such as star ratings or endorsements from credible influencers.

    Alexander Davidson 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. Your politics can affect whether you click on sponsored search results, new research shows – https://theconversation.com/your-politics-can-affect-whether-you-click-on-sponsored-search-results-new-research-shows-239800

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Colorado’s Amendment 80 wants to make school choice ‘a right’ when it already is – an expert in educational policy explains the disconnect

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Christopher Lubienski, Professor of Education Policy, Indiana University

    In November, Colorado voters will decide whether the state’s constitution should be amended to specify a right to school choice.

    But school choice is already guaranteed by state statute and federal courts. So why is this initiative being posed at all?

    Even the initiative’s backers acknowledge that Colorado already has “one of the best school choice statutes in the nation.” Moreover, the ability for parents to choose private schools has been affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court for at least a century.

    I have been studying school choice for almost three decades and can say Amendment 80 raises serious questions about the strategies being used by the school choice advocates who put it on the ballot.

    School choice in Colorado

    School choice options have expanded rapidly across the U.S. in recent years. Currently, it is estimated that over 3.5 million students now attend charter schools, and in the past three years, nine states have approved new programs that provide public funds for private schooling.

    In 1993, Colorado became one of the first states to authorize charter schools. Charter schools are publicly funded but privately or independently managed. They are now legal in 45 states.

    Likewise, Colorado law enables parents to choose public schools outside their district — an open-enrollment option that is also quite common throughout the U.S., permitted in 43 states.

    But a new wave of school choice policies is emerging from conservative legislatures. Several red states, like Utah, Iowa and Indiana, recently created policies to fund universal or near-universal private school choice. These programs – vouchers or education savings accounts – use taxpayer funds to pay for private school tuition and, with education savings accounts, other educational expenses as well. Unlike charter schools, which are technically public schools and accountable to public authorities, these programs funding private schools have few if any regulations on the schools receiving taxpayer dollars.

    Colorado is in a different category altogether.

    Indeed, Colorado voters have repeatedly rejected ballot measures to implement private school choice. That mirrors voters across the country, who tend to reject these intiatives, often resoundingly.

    Moreover, Colorado’s original state constitution explicitly prohibits sending public funds to private schools.

    In essence, Colorado is a trailblazer when it comes to funding school choice in the public sector – but not the private sector. Like all Americans, Coloradans have every right under federal law to choose a private school at their own expense.

    Amendment 80 would give children the ‘right’ to choose from neighborhood, charter, private and home schools, as well as ‘future innovations in education.’
    Ed Andrieski/AP Photo

    Who supports Amendment 80

    Amendment 80 reflects a familiar political divide when it comes to school choice policies.

    Republicans largely support more parental prerogatives to choose schools, including private schools, and fewer restrictions on those schools.

    Democrats tend to oppose unregulated choice and programs that fund private schools, and support accountability measures for schools that receive public funds.

    There are, of course, exceptions to this partisan divide.

    Some Democrats, including Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who founded two charter schools, have objected to efforts to regulate charters.

    Meanwhile, some conservatives, including Christian homeschoolers, have expressed concerns about government involvement in private schooling, which they fear could lead to regulation.

    The proposal frames school choice as a child’s right, leading some to worry it will give a student’s wishes legal predominance over their parents’.

    Those skeptics may have a point. Rather than push directly for school vouchers, backers of Amendment 80 simply make the seemingly innocuous assertion that school choice is a “right.”

    School choice as a ‘right’

    The fact that advocates for this measure are framing the issue this way – rather than as an effective taxpayer-funded policy, for example – is telling.

    While there are different forms of school choice, like charter and magnet schools, the modern private school choice movement emerged as a way for Southern segregationists to avoid integration.

    The movement gained momentum in the 1990s by asserting that choice leads to better educational outcomes, and that it gives low-income students an equitable opportunity to attend better schools.

    Those claims have not stood up.

    Every rigorous study of statewide voucher programs in the past 10 years has shown that they do not improve student outcomes. In fact, they have led to some of the largest learning losses ever measured — comparable to the losses from the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Rather than simply giving low-income students opportunities beyond their segregated schools, charter schools lead to higher levels of segregation.

    Additionally, statewide private school choice programs, such as what one might envision arising from Amendment 80, are budget-busters for state treasuries and for rural schools as they channel public funds away from high-need areas to affluent families using these programs.

    In light of that track record, it is not surprising to see choice advocates move away from their earlier equity claims and focus instead on “rights” — even when such a right can lead to worse educational outcomes for kids.

    But even if the rhetorical strategy around Amendment 80 is clear, the question still stands: Why push to enshrine rights that are already effectively available through both Colorado law and U.S. Supreme Court rulings?

    The full text of Amendment 80 that appears on the November 2024 ballot in Colorado.
    Colorado Secretary of State

    Public funds for private schools

    Michael Fields, the president of Advance Colorado, the organization that promoted the proposal, noted that the idea is to “preserve” and “protect families’ ability to choose the best educational options for themselves.”

    Elsewhere, he said, “It’s really just cementing the school choice laws that we have in Colorado right now into the constitution.”

    Essentially he is arguing that Amendment 80 would confirm the status quo in Colorado.

    But the actual language of the initiative tells a different story.

    Rather than simply affirming an existing right to choose a public, charter or homeschool, the more important issue here is the right to choose a private school.

    Of course, this right already exists. Since at least 1925, parents across the U.S. have been guaranteed the right to choose private schools for their children, but at their own expense.

    If Amendment 80 passes, I expect we will see the argument that such a right is meaningless without funding to support the choice of private schools. After all, when people talk about the right to public education or health care, the underlying assumption is that there is no cost barrier to exercising that right, which is funded by taxpayers.

    Recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court suggest Colorado’s prohibition on the use of public funds for “church or sectarian” schools could be challenged in court. Adding a right to private school choice to the state’s constitution through Amendment 80 appears to be designed to provide the basis for such a challenge.

    Early voting is happening now in Colorado. Find your polling place here.

    Christopher Lubienski 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. Colorado’s Amendment 80 wants to make school choice ‘a right’ when it already is – an expert in educational policy explains the disconnect – https://theconversation.com/colorados-amendment-80-wants-to-make-school-choice-a-right-when-it-already-is-an-expert-in-educational-policy-explains-the-disconnect-240896

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Tiny airborne particles within air pollution could be a silent killer – new study uncovers hidden risks and reveals who’s most at risk in New York state

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Shao Lin, Professor of Public Health, University at Albany, State University of New York

    Ultrafine particles stem from a variety of natural and human-made sources, including vehicle exhaust. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

    Long-term high ultrafine particle concentrations in New York state neighborhoods are linked to higher numbers of deaths. That is the key finding of our new research, published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials.

    Our study shows that high levels of ultrafine particles in the atmosphere over long periods of time are significantly associated with increased non-accidental deaths, particularly from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

    Ultrafine particles are aerosols less than 0.1 micrometers, or 100 nanometers, in diameter — about one-thousandth the width of a human hair. Due to their tiny size, they can be easily inhaled into the distal branches of lungs, quickly absorbed into the bloodstream and even pass through organ barriers.

    We also found that certain underserved populations, including Hispanics, non-Hispanic Black people, children under 5, older adults and non-New York City residents, are more susceptible to the adverse effects of ultrafine particles. The disparities our study uncovered underscore the necessity for public health agencies to focus on and protect high-risk populations.

    We quantified the long-term health impacts of exposure to these pollutants by combining mortality data from vital records in New York state and using a model that tracks how particles move and change through the air.

    Because ultrafine particles are so small, they are difficult to study, and more research is needed to determine how unsafe they are.

    Why it matters

    Air pollution is now ranked the second-leading risk factor for death, accounting for about 8.1 million deaths globally and about 600,000 deaths in the United States in 2021.

    Most air pollution standards and regulations have been focused on larger particulate matter, such as PM2.5 – which includes organic compounds and metal particulates – and PM10, a category that includes dust, pollen and mold.

    In comparison, ultrafine particles are typically much greater in number and have a much larger surface area-to-volume ratio, allowing them to carry substantial amounts of hazardous metals and organic compounds. Furthermore, because of their smaller size, ultrafine particles can follow the air flow and get deep into the lungs when inhaled. These unique characteristics make ultrafine particles particularly dangerous, leading to a range of adverse health problems.

    Despite this understanding, ultrafine particles remain largely unregulated, while larger particulates are regulated under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards.

    Due to their unique characteristics, ultrafine particles require additional, tailored attention.

    Ultrafine particles, not shown, are about one-thousandth the width of a human hair.
    U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

    Ultrafine particles stem from both natural sources and human activity – primarily from combustion processes such as motor vehicles, power plants, wood burning and wildfires. A large share of ultrafine particles is created by chemical reactions in the atmosphere involving acidic gases from fossil fuel burning and ammonia from farming and residential wastes.

    As cities continue to expand and urban populations grow, people’s exposure to these harmful particles is likely to increase. Both PM2.5 and ultrafine particles come from similar sources and can also form through chemical reactions in the atmosphere, but their trends diverge.

    PM2.5 mass has been declining in many places, including New York, thanks to air quality regulations. However, recent research suggests that ultrafine particle numbers are not going down and have been increasing since 2017.

    What still isn’t known

    There are currently no large-scale monitoring sites in the U.S. dedicated to tracking ultrafine particles in the environment. This limits the ability of researchers like us to comprehend the extent of ultrafine particle exposure and its impact on public health.

    What’s more, the exact biological mechanisms through which ultrafine particles cause harm are not yet fully understood. Increasing research evidence suggests that ultrafine particles can affect heart function, causing hardening of arteries, lung inflammation and systemic inflammation.

    There have been few prior studies looking at death rates related to ultrafine particle exposure by demographics and seasonality. By understanding which groups are most vulnerable to ultrafine particle exposure, interventions can be more effectively tailored to lower the risks and protect those who are disproportionately affected. Our study, which is funded by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, helps fill in these critical knowledge gaps.

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

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

    – ref. Tiny airborne particles within air pollution could be a silent killer – new study uncovers hidden risks and reveals who’s most at risk in New York state – https://theconversation.com/tiny-airborne-particles-within-air-pollution-could-be-a-silent-killer-new-study-uncovers-hidden-risks-and-reveals-whos-most-at-risk-in-new-york-state-236299

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: For many Latter-day Saints, America has a special relationship with God − but Christian nationalism is a step too far

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Nicholas Shrum, Doctoral Student in Religious Studies, University of Virginia

    Patriotism and faith can weave together in complicated ways − but when does that count as ‘Christian nationalism’? RiverNorthPhotography/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    On the verge of the 2024 elections, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are ramping up their campaigns in Arizona and Nevada. Beyond being considered swing states, the two have something else in common: Latter-day Saint voters.

    About 5% to 10% of Arizonans and Nevadans belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – among the highest percentages in the country, outside of Utah and Idaho. For decades, a steep majority of Latter-day Saints, often called Mormons, were regarded as reliable Republican voters. But the Trump era has tested that alliance, especially when it comes to many of his backers’ support for Christian nationalism.

    Christian nationalism is often described as the belief that American identity and Christianity are deeply intertwined and, therefore, the U.S. government should promote Christian-based values. Using questions such as whether “being Christian is an important part of being truly American,” a Public Religion Research Institute poll in 2024 found that about 4 in 10 Latter-day Saints nationwide are at least sympathetic to Christian nationalist ideas, if not clear “adherents.” This was the third-highest rate among religious groups, behind white evangelicals and Hispanic Protestants.

    Yet the report also found a seeming contradiction. Utah, home to the church’s headquarters, “is the only red state in which support for Christian nationalism falls below the national average.”

    As a scholar of Mormonism and nationalism, I believe the church’s history and beliefs help explain why so many members wrestle with Christian nationalist ideas – and that this complexity illustrates the difficulty of defining Christian nationalism in the first place. America is sacred in Latter-day Saint doctrine: both the land itself and its constitutional structures. But as a minority that has often faced discrimination from other Christians, the church displays profound skepticism about combining religion and state.

    Sacred space

    The Book of Mormon – one of the church’s key scriptures, alongside the Bible – describes the Americas as “choice above all other lands” and provides an account of Jesus Christ visiting ancient civilizations there after his resurrection.

    In addition, Latter-day Saint doctrine considers the United States’ government to be divinely inspired. In 1833 the church’s founder, Joseph Smith, dictated a revelation wherein God declared “I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up for this very purpose.”

    In the 1830s, Latter-day Saints migrated from New York and Ohio to western Missouri, where they believed themselves divinely commanded to build a sacred city called Zion. By the end of the decade, however, they had been forced out of Missouri by mob violence and an order from the governor, who called for the group to be “exterminated or driven from the State.”

    Church members fled to neighboring Illinois, then began a long trek west after Smith’s death in 1844. The first pioneers reached Utah Territory in 1847, where they set up a society shaped by their beliefs – including, most famously, the practice of plural marriage. But when Utah applied for statehood, tensions with the federal government mounted.

    Congress enacted anti-polygamy legislation that seized some church property, imprisoned more than 1,000 church members, disenfranchised anyone who supported the practice, and revoked Utah’s 1870 decision to give women the right to vote.

    A photo of Utah polygamists in prison, taken around 1889 by Charles Roscoe Savage.
    Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, via Wikimedia Commons

    By 1896, church leaders had begun the process of ending plural marriage, and Utah was admitted to the union. Latter-day Saints also adopted the two-party system and embraced free-market capitalism, giving up their more insular and communal system – adapting to dominant ideas of what it meant to be properly American.

    Constitutional patriots

    These experiences tested Latter-day Saints’ faith in the U.S. government – particularly its failure to intervene as members were forced out of Missouri and Illinois. Nevertheless, church doctrine emphasizes duty to one’s country. One of the church’s 13 Articles of Faith explains that “we believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, and in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.”

    Latter-day Saints have “a unique responsibility to uphold and defend the United States Constitution and principles of constitutionalism,” as Dallin H. Oaks, a member of the church’s highest governing body, said in 2021.

    I would argue that beliefs in the country’s divine purpose and potential, and the close relationship between faith and patriotism, may illuminate Latter-day Saint sympathy for Christian nationalist ideas. Yet the church’s previously fraught relations with the federal government, and with wider American culture, help explain why a majority of Latter-day Saints remain skeptical of Christian nationalism.

    For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, hostility against the church was so high and widespread that if the U.S. had declared itself a Christian nation, Latter-day Saints would likely have been excluded – and around one-third of Americans still do not consider them “Christian.” According to a 2023 Pew survey, only 15% of Americans say they have a favorable impression of Latter-day Saints, while 25% report unfavorable views.

    Latter-day Saint leaders believe they have a right to exert moral influence on public policy. But the church’s awareness of its own precarious position in U.S. culture has made it wary of policies that put some people’s religious freedom above others.

    Church members wait for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ biannual general conference to begin on Oct. 5, 2024, in Salt Lake City, Utah.
    AP Photo/Hannah Schoenbaum

    A step too far

    This wariness has also shaped Latter-day Saint culture’s inclination to avoid extremes. After decades of being marginalized for practices considered radical, the modern church and its adherents have walked a delicate tightrope. And for many, Christian nationalism and the candidate many adherents put their hope in – Donald Trump – seem a step too far.

    Over the past half-century, Latter-day Saints tended to align politically and culturally with conservative Catholics and evangelicals. On balance, the church remains highly conservative on social issues, especially gender and sexuality, and 70% of its American members lean Republican. However, more younger Latter-day Saints have much more progressive views – and even the leadership has parted ways with the GOP on some issues, such as strict immigration proposals. While the church opposes “elective abortion,” it allows for several exceptions.

    During the 2016 election, only about half of the church’s members voted for Trump; 15% voted for Evan McMullin, a Latter-day Saint who positioned himself as a moderate choice between Trump and Hillary Clinton. In 2020, Trump garnered about 7 in 10 Latter-day Saint votes.

    During congressional hearings about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Arizona House Speaker Russell “Rusty” Bowers, who resisted pressure from the Trump administration to recall the state’s electors, cited his Latter-day Saint beliefs. “It is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired,” Bowers said, explaining his refusal to go along with the scheme.

    Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, left, is sworn in before testimony at the Capitol on June 21, 2022, alongside Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Georgia Deputy Secretary of State Gabriel Sterling.
    AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

    In June 2023, church leaders issued a statement against straight-ticket voting, saying “voting based on ‘tradition’ without careful study of candidates and their positions on important issues is a threat to democracy.”

    Holy purpose

    Ever since the Puritans, many people in what became the United States have believed God has a special plan for their society – part of the same current that drives Christian nationalism today.

    Latter-day Saints, however, have a specific vision of that plan. According to the church’s teachings and scriptures, the country’s establishment was a necessary step toward restoring the “only true and living church” – their own. And that church is a global one, not just American. More than half of all Latter-day Saints today live outside the U.S.

    Ultimately, Latter-day Saint teachings consider America’s story part of a greater goal: ushering in the second coming of Jesus Christ. As the church’s name suggests, Latter-day Saints believe that they are living in the last days, just before the millennial reign of Jesus – a kingdom where national and political distinctions melt away.

    But as with all other churches, its members live in the current day, where political, cultural and social realities shape how they interact with the world around them – and how they vote.

    Nicholas Shrum 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. For many Latter-day Saints, America has a special relationship with God − but Christian nationalism is a step too far – https://theconversation.com/for-many-latter-day-saints-america-has-a-special-relationship-with-god-but-christian-nationalism-is-a-step-too-far-228594

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Proof that immigrants fuel the US economy is found in the billions they send back home

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ernesto Castañeda, Professor, American University

    Migrant workers pick strawberries during harvest south of San Francisco, Calif. Visions of America/Joe Sohm/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    Donald Trump has vowed to deport millions of immigrants if he is elected to a second term, claiming that, among other things, foreign-born workers take jobs from others. His running mate JD Vance has echoed those anti-immigrant views.

    Researchers, however, generally agree that massive deportations would hurt the U.S. economy, perhaps even triggering a recession.

    Social scientists and analysts tend to concur that immigration — both documented and undocumented — spurs economic growth. But it is almost impossible to calculate directly how much immigrants contribute to the economy. That’s because we don’t know the earnings of every immigrant worker in the United States.

    We do, however, have a good idea of how much they send back to their home countries – more than US$81 billion in 2022, according to the World Bank. And we can use this figure to indirectly calculate the total economic value of immigrant labor in the U.S.

    Economic contributions are likely underestimated

    I conducted a study with researchers at the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and the Immigration Lab at American University to quantify how much immigrants contribute to the U.S. economy based on their remittances, or money sent back home.

    Several studies indicate that remittances constitute 17.5% of immigrants’ income.

    Given that, we estimate that the immigrants who remitted in 2022 had take-home wages of over $466 billion. Assuming their take-home wages are around 21% of the economic value of what they produce for the businesses they work for – like workers in similar entry-level jobs in restaurants and construction – then immigrants added a total of $2.2 trillion to the U.S. economy yearly.

    That is about 8% of the gross domestic product of the United States and close to the entire GDP of Canada in 2022 – the world’s ninth-largest economy.

    Immigration strengthens the US

    Beyond its sheer value, this figure tells us something important about immigrant labor: The main beneficiaries of immigrant labor are the U.S. economy and society.

    The $81 billion that immigrants sent home in 2022 is a tiny fraction of their total economic value of $2.2 trillion. The vast majority of immigrant wages and productivity – 96% – stayed in the United States.

    Remittances from the U.S. represent a substantial income source for the people who receive them. But they do not represent a siphoning of U.S. dollars, as Trump has implied when he called remittances “welfare” for people in other countries and suggested taxing them to pay for the construction of a border wall.

    The economic contributions of U.S. immigrants are likely to be even more substantial than what we calculate.

    For one thing, the World Bank’s estimate of immigrant remittances is probably an undercount, since many immigrants send money abroad with people traveling to their home countries.

    In prior research, my colleagues and I have also found that some groups of immigrants are less likely to remit than others.

    One is white-collar professionals – immigrants with careers in banking, science, technology and education, for example. Unlike many undocumented immigrants, white-collar professionals typically have visas that allow them to bring their families with them, so they do not need to send money abroad to cover their household expenses back home.

    Immigrants who have been working in the country for decades and have more family in the country also tend to send remittances less often.

    Both of these groups have higher earnings, and their specialized contributions are not included in our $2.2 trillion estimate.

    A Somali business owner stocks her store in Lewiston, Maine.
    Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

    Additionally, our estimates do not account for the economic growth stimulated by immigrants when they spend money in the U.S., creating demand, generating jobs and starting businesses that hire immigrants and locals.

    For example, we calculate the contributions of Salvadoran immigrants and their children alone added roughly $223 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023. That’s about 1% of the country’s entire GDP.

    Considering that the U.S. economy grew by about 2% in 2022 and 2023, that’s a substantial sum.

    These figures are a reminder that the financial success of the U.S. relies on immigrants and their labor.

    Ernesto Castañeda 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. Proof that immigrants fuel the US economy is found in the billions they send back home – https://theconversation.com/proof-that-immigrants-fuel-the-us-economy-is-found-in-the-billions-they-send-back-home-227542

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Is America ready for a woman president? Voters’ attitudes to women politicians are radically different from a decade ago

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Angela L. Bos, Dean and Professor, School of Public Service, Boise State University, Boise State University

    Voters hold clear and positive stereotypes of women politicians − while they don’t think as positively about men in politics. Artis777/iStock/Getty Images

    If U.S. voters elect Kamala Harris – a Black, Asian American woman – president, it would be historic on multiple levels. This is now a real possibility due to voters’ positively evolving stereotypes of women politicians.

    Stereotypes have long hindered female candidates, casting them as emotional, weak and sensitive. But now our political science research shows that voters in the U.S. increasingly see women leaders as synonymous with political leadership – and as more effective than men politicians.

    This transformation reflects a broader change in what voters expect in political leaders. They are now more likely to see a woman candidate as a better “fit” for public office. This might help pave the way for Harris to break through the highest glass ceiling in U.S. politics.

    The classic double bind

    Gender stereotypes are the assumptions and expectations people have about men and women. They traditionally present an obstacle for women leaders, including in politics.

    Among the many barriers to a woman becoming president in the U.S. are voters’ gender stereotypes. Men are generally assumed to have masculine traits such as being ambitious and competitive, while women are assumed to possess feminine traits such as being warm and compassionate. In applying gender stereotypes to politicians, voters end up with very different expectations for men and women candidates.

    Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, left, campaigns with former GOP congresswoman and supporter Liz Cheney in Malvern, Pa., on Oct. 21, 2024.
    Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images

    This presents a classic double bind for women leaders. If they behave like leaders and act dominantly and assertively, they violate expectations of femininity. But if they behave in a stereotypical way, they are not seen as strong leaders.

    The double bind extends to politics. It was long the case that stereotypes of men politicians, but not women politicians, aligned with the leadership qualities that voters desire in political leaders. These traits include competence, strong leadership, empathy and integrity. A 2011 study showed that stereotypes of women politicians lacked clarity, meaning people had no clear expectations. Voters also did not see women politicians in alignment with those same four leadership qualities that voters seek.

    But by 2021, prominent women political leaders such as Hillary Clinton, Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi had reshaped the landscape for women seeking office by shaping and solidifying public expectations.

    More women politicians in the spotlight

    More women have assumed political leadership roles in the U.S. over the past decade than in previous decades. The number of women in Congress increased from 90 to 145 between the 111th Congress, which met from 2009 to 2011, to the 117th Congress, which met from 2021 to 2023.

    In addition, high-profile women politicians such as Democrats Pelosi and Clinton, as well as Liz Cheney, a Republican, have received considerable attention from both the media and the electorate. Gender stereotypes about women politicians evolved from being ambiguous to becoming both well defined and positive as voters grew more familiar with them. This has created a political landscape for Harris today that is notably different from the early 2010s.

    We are political scientists whose research examines how gender stereotypes affect women’s political underrepresentation. In 2021, we conducted a study of how voters’ gender stereotypes of politicians had evolved over the previous decade. These are the three main lessons:

    1. Stereotypes of women politicians are increasingly positive

    A decade ago, people did not agree on the traits that defined women politicians. While some people described them as tough, others thought they were weak. Similarly, some reported them as rational, while others saw them as unable to separate feelings from ideas. There were no traits that large groups of people agreed upon to describe women politicians.

    But our study shows that voters now hold clear and positive stereotypes of them.

    When asked about the traits they associate with women politicians, respondents listed positive traits such as intelligent, rational, analytical, ambitious and moral. At the same time, women politicians are least associated with negative traits such as being weak and spineless.

    While stereotypes of women politicians have become more positive, stereotypes of male politicians are now much more negative.
    Image Source/Getty Images

    2. Stereotypes of men politicians have shifted to increased negativity and distrust

    Male politicians were previously seen as confident, well educated, charismatic and driven. But there’s bad news for men in politics: This perception has shifted. Our study revealed that stereotypes of male politicians became much more negative over the decade we studied.

    Today, male politicians are more commonly viewed as power-hungry, selfish, manipulative and self-interested. They are least associated with traits such as being sympathetic or caring about “people like me.” This indicates that voters have become more negative and distrustful toward male politicians.

    3. Women politicians have gained ground on leadership perceptions, surpassing men politicians

    In the past, stereotypes of women politicians were incompatible with leadership stereotypes. But our study shows that this mismatch has subsided. In fact, between 2011 and 2021, scores for women politicians increased on all four leadership traits valued by voters: competence, leadership, empathy and integrity.

    Men politicians, in contrast, have lost ground on all four leadership traits. Women politicians now surpass men politicians in three out of the four leadership traits: competence, empathy and integrity. Expectations of men politicians concerning the fourth trait, strong leadership, are now equal to those of female politicians.

    Kamala Harris may benefit

    Gender stereotypes have long hindered women seeking political office, but more women in prominent leadership positions have fostered positive stereotype change.

    Granted, highly visible women leaders such as Pelosi and Clinton excite both admiration and intense dislike. But seeing them and many other examples in their wake has familiarized voters with women holding power in politics. Voters are thus now more likely to view women candidates like Harris as fitting into leadership roles such as the presidency.

    With growing distrust in politics, and of male politicians specifically, women political leaders – who are viewed as agents of change – may have an opportunity to restore trust in politics.

    Daphne Joanna van der Pas receives funding from the Dutch Research Council.

    Loes Aaldering receives funding from the Dutch Research Council. She is a member of Groenlinks, the Green party in the Netherlands.

    Angela L. Bos 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. Is America ready for a woman president? Voters’ attitudes to women politicians are radically different from a decade ago – https://theconversation.com/is-america-ready-for-a-woman-president-voters-attitudes-to-women-politicians-are-radically-different-from-a-decade-ago-240326

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Your next favorite story won’t be written by AI – but it could be someday

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Haoran Chu, Assistant Professor of Communications, University of Florida

    AI language models are getting pretty good at writing – but not so much at creative storytelling. Moor Studio/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images

    Stories define people – they shape our relationships, cultures and societies. Unlike other skills replaced by technology, storytelling has remained uniquely human, setting people apart from machines. But now, even storytelling is being challenged. Artificial intelligence, powered by vast datasets, can generate stories that sometimes rival, or even surpass, those written by humans.

    Creative professionals have been among the first to feel the threat of AI. Last year, Hollywood screenwriters protested, demanding – and winning – protections against AI replacing their jobs. As university professors, we’ve seen student work that seems suspiciously AI-generated, which can be frustrating.

    Beyond the threat to livelihoods, AI’s ability to craft compelling, humanlike stories also poses a societal risk: the spread of misinformation. Fake news, which once required significant effort, can now be produced with ease. This is especially concerning because decades of research have shown that people are often more influenced by stories than by explicit arguments and entreaties.

    We set out to study how well AI-written stories stack up against those by human storytellers. We found that AI storytelling is impressive, but professional writers needn’t worry – at least not yet.

    The power of stories

    How do stories influence people? Their power often lies in transportation – the feeling of being transported to and fully immersed in an imagined world. You’ve likely experienced this while losing yourself in the wizarding world of Harry Potter or 19th-century English society in “Pride and Prejudice.” This kind of immersion lets you experience new places and understand others’ perspectives, often influencing how you view your own life afterward.

    When you’re transported by a story, you not only learn by observing, but your skepticism is also suspended. You’re so engrossed in the storyline that you let your guard down, allowing the story to influence you without triggering skepticism in it or the feeling of being manipulated.

    Given the power of stories, can AI tell a good one? This question matters not only to those in creative industries but to everyone. A good story can change lives, as evidenced by mythical and nationalist narratives that have influenced wars and peace.

    Storytelling can be powerfully influential – especially if people sense the human behind the words.
    georgeclerk/E+ via Getty Images

    Studying whether AI can tell compelling stories also helps researchers like us understand what makes narratives effective. Unlike human writers, AI provides a controlled way to experiment with storytelling techniques.

    Head-to-head results

    In our experiments, we explored whether AI could tell compelling stories. We used descriptions from published studies to prompt ChatGPT to generate three narratives, then asked over 2,000 participants to read and rate their engagement with these stories. We labeled half as AI-written and half as human-written.

    Our results were mixed. In three experiments, participants found human-written stories to be generally more “transporting” than AI-generated ones, regardless of how the source was labeled. However, they were not more likely to raise questions about AI-generated stories. In multiple cases, they even challenged them less than human-written ones. The one clear finding was that labeling a story as AI-written made it less appealing to participants and led to more skepticism, no matter the actual author.

    Why is this the case? Linguistic analysis of the stories showed that AI-generated stories tended to have longer paragraphs and sentences, while human writers showed more stylistic diversity. AI writes coherently, with strong links between sentences and ideas, but human writers vary more, creating a richer experience. This also points to the possibility that prompting AI models to write in more diverse tones and styles may improve their storytelling.

    These findings provide an early look at AI’s potential for storytelling. We also looked at research in storytelling, psychology and philosophy to understand what makes a good story.

    We believe four things make stories engaging: good writing, believability, creativity and lived experience. AI is great at writing fluently and making stories believable. But creativity and real-life experiences are where AI falls short. Creativity means coming up with new ideas, while AI is designed to predict the most likely outcome. And although AI can sound human, it lacks the real-life experiences that often make stories truly compelling.

    Closing in?

    It’s too early to come to a definitive conclusion about whether AI can eventually be used for high-quality storytelling. AI is good at writing fluently and coherently, and its creativity may rival that of average writers. However, AI’s strength lies in predictability. Its algorithms are designed to generate the most likely outcome based on data, which can make its stories appealing in a familiar way. This is similar to the concept of beauty in averageness, the documented preference people have for composite images that represent the average face of a population. This predictability, though limiting true creativity, can still resonate with audiences.

    For now, screenwriters and novelists aren’t at risk of losing their jobs. AI can tell stories, but they aren’t quite on par with the best human storytellers. Still, as AI continues to evolve, we may see more compelling stories generated by machines, which could pose serious challenges, especially when they’re used to spread misinformation.

    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. Your next favorite story won’t be written by AI – but it could be someday – https://theconversation.com/your-next-favorite-story-wont-be-written-by-ai-but-it-could-be-someday-239284

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Declaration of Helsinki turns 60 – how this foundational document of medical ethics has stood the test of time

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dominic Wilkinson, Consultant Neonatologist and Professor of Ethics, University of Oxford

    The declaration of Helsinki recently turned 60, but don’t feel bad if you missed the celebrations. It probably passed unnoticed by most people not working in the medical field – and possibly even a good few in the field.

    If you’re not familiar with the declaration – adopted by the World Medical Association on October 19 1964 – here is an explainer on this highly influential document: how it emerged, how it evolved and where it may be heading.

    What is the declaration of Helsinki?

    The World Medical Association was set up in the late 1940s in response to atrocities committed in the name of medical research during the second world war. It was focused on promoting and safeguarding medical ethics and human rights.

    Agreed at a meeting in Finland in 1964, the first version of the declaration included principles that have become the cornerstone of global research ethics. These include the importance of carefully assessing the risks and benefits of research projects, and seeking informed consent from those taking part in research.

    The declaration has been hugely influential and has been incorporated into national guidelines relating to medical research around the world. (For example, in the UK it is cited in legislation and policy relating to research.)

    However, it is not legally binding. It has also, at times, been the focus of controversy. For example, following an intense debate in the early 2000s – about the use of placebos in drug trials and the ethics of conducting research in low-income countries – the US Food and Drug Administration removed reference to the declaration in its own guidance.

    The declaration updated

    It has been revised several times (the new version is the eighth edition), reflecting an evolving understanding of medical ethics, contemporary debates about when research would be ethical, as well changes in the nature and landscape of research.

    Some of these reflect important shifts in values and language. In 1964, the declaration stated that clinical research “should be conducted … under the supervision of a qualified medical man” – sexist language that has long since gone by the wayside.

    The 2024 version refers to “research participants” rather than “research subjects” – in response to a wider shift to greater inclusion of patients and research volunteers as partners in research. There are also new references to concern for the environment and sustainability, as well as attention to issues relating to stored data and biomaterial, such as tissue samples.

    Continuing uncertainty

    Some questions remain. One change in the recent document emphasises the importance of including participants from different backgrounds in research, including those who are potentially “vulnerable” in one or more ways.

    Older versions of the declaration emphasised avoiding research wherever possible involving children, older patients, pregnant women, those with mental illness and prisoners. This came from a need to learn from past scandals and avoid exploiting vulnerable groups.

    However, more recently, it has been recognised that excluding these groups can cause even greater harm, since it leads to a lack of evidence on how best to treat some patients. This then leads to disparities in health. For example, a large proportion of medicines commonly used for children lack high-quality evidence to support them.

    The 2024 declaration tries to balance the priority to include vulnerable groups in research with the need to protect and avoid research that could be feasibly performed in other groups.

    However, this highlights a deeper problem. Ethical problems arise when research is inhibited or discouraged.

    Regulation of research (as encouraged by the declaration) is hugely important, but it can also make it extremely difficult, time consuming and resource intensive to perform. Doctors may change practice based on experience, intuition or inspiration. If they do so outside of a trial, they are not required to seek the approval of any review body.

    As noted by a British paediatrician Richard Smithells in the 1970s: “I need permission to give a drug to half of my patients [to find out whether it does more good than harm], but not [if I want] to give it to them all.”

    One particular form of research that can be important to drive improvements in care are so-called comparative effectiveness trials. Within many areas of medicine, there are variations in practice, where some professionals will take one approach, while others will take another.

    Depending on which doctor you happen to see, (perhaps which clinic you attend, or which day of the week you become unwell), you might receive one treatment or the other.

    Since variations like this affect many patients, it would be important to determine which is the better option, potentially involving a randomised controlled trial, where one group of patients is randomly selected to receive the treatment and another group (the control group), a placebo. These trials take years to conduct and are very expensive to run.

    However, the declaration seems to encourage a one-size-fits-all approach and potentially implies that such trials should go through a formal and lengthy research ethics approval process, with participants providing explicit informed consent. However, many ethicists and researchers have argued in favour of a more slimmed-down regulatory approach focusing on what matters: do trials meaningfully add risk or burden to those that patients would have encountered outside the trial. And would taking part in research restrict patients’ ability to make meaningful decisions, and to make choices that would ordinarily have been offered?

    For example, imagine a trial of two different antiseptics that are commonly used for surgery. Being involved in the trial wouldn’t impose additional risk (since patients ordinarily receive those antiseptics), and it wouldn’t remove an ordinary choice, since it would be rare for medical professionals to ask patients which antiseptic they would like.

    The Declaration of Helsinki may be 60 years old, but it continues to both stimulate debate and inspire ethical practice in medical research. It has been newly revised but it is likely that innovations in research, such as the growing use of AI in medicine, will require further changes in the years ahead. It isn’t time to retire it yet.

    Dominic Wilkinson receives funding from The Wellcome Trust. He is a member of the British Medical Association Medical Ethics Committee (the views in this article are his own).

    – ref. Declaration of Helsinki turns 60 – how this foundational document of medical ethics has stood the test of time – https://theconversation.com/declaration-of-helsinki-turns-60-how-this-foundational-document-of-medical-ethics-has-stood-the-test-of-time-241769

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Light and sound art show Eclipse by Nonotak is an immersive and sensory experience

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rob Flint, Senior Lecturer Nottingham in the School of Art and Design, Nottingham Trent University

    Audiovisual art is changing rapidly. Increasingly powerful projectors, screens and lighting rigs with integrated control systems, pervade the interwoven worlds of cinema, gallery and concert halls. These changes blur the borders of the art form with gaming, club and gig visuals, semi-permanent immersive experiences, and giant outdoor screens and projection-mapped buildings.

    I’m fascinated by electronic light and sound in art, music and cinema, and so was curious to experience Eclipse, “a spatial light and sound experience” by Japanese art studio Nonotak (Noemi Schipfer and Takami Nakamoto).

    You enter the exhibition into a darkened lounge bar that features the first of three separate experiences: a flat, wall-based light work titled Highway that gives a powerful sense of horizontal motion from the stepped sequence of flashing white bands of light.

    The next, Dual, is a large sound and light space that uses the kind of directional lighting seen onstage at concerts to make deep spatial patterns with beams of light against a soft haze.

    The third, Hidden Shadow, returns us to an image-based experience with directional seating and a large flat LED wall, on which shifting and dissolving points continually redefine a circle, linked to powerful overhead strobe-type lights in a way that seems to reference the installation title.

    These are all monochrome, programmed in sequences, with continuous repetition. Although the timed-entry system seems to encourage the viewer’s movement through the spaces, roughly corresponding to their duration, ending again in the lounge and bar area.

    Immersed in pulsing light and sound, I look for coordinates to ground my experience. There’s a long history of artists making light and sound do things simultaneously. Psychedelia seems an obvious ancestor.

    Even before Hoppy Hopkins made liquid light swirl to the sound of Pink Floyd at London’s UFO club in the 1960s, pioneers in the US and Europe had constructed “colour organs” to play coloured lights in a musical way and painted glass slides for theatre projection, to access the synaesthesia (a neurodivergent condition that links the senses in unexpected ways) which was believed by some to be buried deep in all of us.

    Animated film is part of this story, with Disney’s Fantasia the best-known union of music and visual movement in early popular film history, though modernists like Oskar Fischinger (who contributed to Fantasia) and Viking Eggeling made more austere abstract combinations of rhythm and graphic object for avant-garde audiences.

    Nearby the Eclipse venue, the Tate Modern shows Anthony McCall’s 1970’s Solid Light installation works. Originally developed on clattering 16mm celluloid film for dusty and cigarette-smoke-filled social spaces, they play quietly and continually now on digital projectors with programmed haze machines in a clean, purpose-built gallery.

    Closer in appearance (and in time) to the work of Nonotak are audiovisual artists like Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji Ikeda. They reconfigured the “visual music” tradition with a stripped-down and often monochromatic union of sound and light, bringing the precision of post-digital graphics to minimal techno and dub or the spookiness of glitch electronica to what is often now referred to as “a/v performance”.

    Ikeda’s 2017 installation test pattern explored a similar aesthetic across the river at London’s 180 Strand Studios, home of another organisation dedicated to expanded audiovisual art.

    Lumen Studios, who curated and presented the show, are aiming Eclipse at programmers, graphic designers and “edgy people”, literate in gaming, coding, NFTs, cryptocurrencies and other screen-based worlds and objects.

    These are not necessarily the same people who would connect McCall’s lines of “solid light” to 1970s Materialist Cinema’s highly political demand to reject the “illusionistic” conventions of mainstream realist film. Nor should they have to.

    The human eye is trained differently than it was when television ended before midnight and cinemas were not rivalled by streamed media on demand. This space could have entirely different reference points to those I am evoking. Set design, for example. On their website, Nonotak cites scenography, theatre, film, dance, architecture, and drawing among their areas of practice.

    So maybe now it’s me that is the performer, on, or inside, a virtual stage or film set. Standing in the largest of the three installations, Dual, I feel as though I might be running from an alien on a giant transport ship heading for Mars.

    I could also be in a more earth-bound comparison, standing at the back of a giant warehouse party, or a rave, away from the crush of dancing bodies while still in the synchronised cocoon of sensory electronics. It is visual, but also physical, and it creates a powerful kinetic dislocation from the space in which it is situated.

    This last comparison highlights the “in-between” nature of the Eclipse installations in its temporary accommodation in Bermondsey. The cocktail bar points gently (and legally) towards the hedonism of gigs and raves, but the regulated entry system suggests a more institutional mode of attention, closer to the time-stamped immersive museum experience or even a live-action gaming environment, like an upmarket Laserquest.

    Similarly, the audio, filled with effectively light-synchronised rhythmic pulsing, doesn’t have the gut-level bass of a contemporary club or music venue sound system. And while the slightly disembodied vitality of Dual made me think about dancing and moving in a slightly different way, it isn’t a dance floor.

    Nor did it make promises of that kind. So this is less a criticism of the work than a recognition that my coordinates will always need updating, as the spaces we move through adapt to different forms of attention. If our species is fortunate enough to continue devoting time, technology, materials and labour to human sensory curiosity in the decades that follow, there will be more hybrid collisions of light, sound, image, rhythm, music, in real and imaginary, actual and virtual, space. I very much hope so.

    Eclipse by Nonotak is on until December 8 2024 at 47 Tanner St, London


    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.

    Rob Flint 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. Light and sound art show Eclipse by Nonotak is an immersive and sensory experience – https://theconversation.com/light-and-sound-art-show-eclipse-by-nonotak-is-an-immersive-and-sensory-experience-241529

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Harris nudges ahead of Trump in the polls – but could the economy prove her downfall?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex

    Thrive Studios / Shutterstock

    The current US vice-president and Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, appears to have nudged ahead of her Republican rival, Donald Trump, in the race to the White House.

    A poll of polls, which combines polls from different agencies, published on the website FiveThirtyEight on October 22 shows that Harris leads Trump by 48.1% to 46.3% in national voting intentions. So the race remains very tight.

    There is naturally a lot of attention being paid to what is happening in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and North Carolina. However, the polling in these states is not very helpful since it currently predicts a dead heat in practically all of them.

    In the key swing state of Pennsylvania, for example, 47.8% of people intend to vote for Trump compared to 47.6% for Harris. This gap is well within the margin of error, so FiveThirtyEight calls it an even contest.

    One of the surveys in the poll of polls was conducted by YouGov for the Economist newspaper. It shows that 19% of respondents have already voted in the election and a further 72% say they will definitely vote. When registered voters were asked which candidate they think is likely to win, the replies were a dead heat – 38% of them chose Harris and 38% Trump (24% are not sure).

    Another way of judging the contest is to look at who has the advantage in the key drivers of the vote in the election. In an earlier article, I argued that Harris leads Trump in the presidential race in three of the four key measures that explain voting behaviour.

    She is ahead in likeability, and is favoured by more moderates than Trump. Harris also has more support from Republican identifiers than Trump has among voters who identify as Democrats. However, in relation to the fourth driver, which is the issues voters care about, she is at a clear disadvantage.



    Read more:
    Harris leads Trump in the polls – here’s what they really tell us about her chances

    The Economist/YouGov poll shows that 96% of respondents think that jobs, inflation and the economy are important issues in the election. In the same poll 84% think immigration is important and 75% think this about abortion.

    Harris’s problem is that polling indicates she is well behind Trump on the issue of the economy. When asked if Harris or Trump would do the best job dealing with inflation, for example, 39% preferred Harris and 46% Trump. This is despite the fact that the most recent inflation rate is relatively low at 2.4%, and has been falling for some time.

    On the issue of abortion she does much better. Some 50% of Americans approve her pledge to restore the right to abortion enshrined in the Roe v Wade case from 1973, which was reversed by a Supreme Court ruling in 2022. In comparison, only 33% of Americans approve of Trump’s position to uphold the court ruling.

    The economy and voting

    Does it really matter if Harris is behind on the economy? There is historical evidence to suggest that, if we look at the actual performance of the economy as opposed to polls, Harris may have an advantage.

    The graph below shows the relationship between voting for an incumbent Democratic or Republican president (or his party’s nominee) and the state of the economy over a century of presidential elections from 1920 to 2020.

    In the chart, the performance of the economy is captured by two measures. The first is economic growth in real terms and the second is the misery index (the sum of inflation and unemployment). Both are measured in the year of the elections.

    There is a strong positive correlation between growth and voting for the incumbent president or his party’s nominee (+0.55). When growth is buoyant, the incumbent or his successor does well. And when it is weak, they do badly.

    There is also a negative relationship between the misery index and presidential voting. But, in this case, the correlation is very weak (-0.05). This means that, while voters may complain about inflation and unemployment and blame the incumbent president’s administration, economic growth is the real driver of voting in these elections.

    Economic growth is the real driver of voting in US elections


    Paul Whiteley, CC BY-NC-ND

    The Biden administration’s record on growth since 2020 has been very strong. Policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips Act have boosted investment, particularly in high-tech industries. This fact may give Harris the edge in the election.

    That said, Harris can still lose, and the odds that bookmakers are giving currently favour Trump to win. However, it is the American people who will decide the outcome, not betting markets, many of whom who live outside the US, who are trying to disrupt the process.

    Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC

    – ref. Harris nudges ahead of Trump in the polls – but could the economy prove her downfall? – https://theconversation.com/harris-nudges-ahead-of-trump-in-the-polls-but-could-the-economy-prove-her-downfall-242056

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –