How does soap clean our bodies? – Charlie H., age 8, Stamford, Connecticut
Thousands of years ago, our ancestors discovered something that would clean their bodies and clothes. As the story goes, fat from someone’s meal fell into the leftover ashes of a fire. They were astonished to discover that the blending of fat and ashes formed a material that cleaned things. At the time, it must have seemed like magic.
As the centuries passed, people around the world began to use soap to clean the things that got dirty. During the 1600s, soap was a common item in the American colonies, often made at home. In 1791, Nicholas Leblanc, a French chemist, patented the first soapmaking process. Today, the world spends about US$50 billion every year on bath, kitchen and laundry soap.
But although billions of people use soap every day, most of us don’t know how it works. As a professor of chemistry, I can explain the science of soap – and why you should listen to your mom when she tells you to wash up.
You’ll be amazed at how much work it takes to make a bar of soap.
The chemistry of clean
Water – scientific name: dihydrogen monoxide – is composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. That molecule is required for all life on our planet.
Chemists categorize other molecules that are attracted to water as hydrophilic, which means water-loving. Hydrophilic molecules can dissolve in water.
So if you were to wash your hands under a running faucet without using soap, you’d probably get rid of lots of whatever hydrophilic bits are stuck to your skin.
But there is another category of molecules that chemists call hydrophobic, which means water-fearing. Hydrophobic molecules do not dissolve in water.
Oil is an example of something that’s hydrophobic. You probably know from experience that oil and water just don’t mix. Picture shaking up a jar of vinaigrette salad dressing – the oil and the other watery ingredients never stay mixed.
So just swishing your hands through water isn’t going to get rid of water-fearing molecules such as oil or grease.
Here’s where soap comes in to save the day.
Soap, a complex molecule, is both water-loving and water-fearing. Shaped like a tadpole, the soap molecule has a round head and long tail; the head is hydrophilic, and the tail is hydrophobic. This quality is one of the reasons soap is slippery.
It’s also what gives soap its cleaning superpower.
To see what happens when you wash your hands with soap and water, let’s zoom in.
Picture all the gunk that you touch during the day and that builds up on your skin to make your hands dirty. Maybe there are smears of food, mud from outside, or even sweat and oils from your own skin.
All of that material is either water-loving or water-fearing on the molecular level. Dirt is a jumbled mess of both. Dust and dead skin cells are hydrophilic; naturally occurring oils are hydrophobic; and environmental debris can be either.
If you use only water to clean your hands, plenty will be left behind because you’d only remove the water-loving bits that dissolve in water.
But when you add a bit of soap, it’s a different story, thanks to its simultaneously water-loving and water-fearing properties.
Soap molecules come together and surround the grime on your hands, forming what’s known as a micelle structure. On a molecular level, it looks almost like a bubble encasing the hydrophobic bit of debris. The water-loving heads of the soap molecules are on the surface, with the water-fearing tails inside the micelle. This structure traps the dirt, and running water washes it all away.
To get the full effect, wash your hands at the sink for at least 20 seconds. Rubbing your hands together helps force the soap molecules into whatever dirt is there to break it up and envelope it.
It’s not just dirt
Along with dirt, your body is covered by microorganisms – bacteria, viruses and fungi. Most are harmless and some even protect you from getting sick. But some microorganisms, known as pathogens, can cause illness and disease.
They can also cause you to smell if you haven’t taken a bath in a while. These bacteria break down organic molecules and release stinky fumes.
Although microorganisms are protected by a barrier – it’s called a membrane – soap and water can disrupt the membrane, causing the microorganism to burst open. The water then washes the remains of the microorganism away, along with the stink.
To say that soap changed the course of civilization is an understatement. For thousands of years, it’s helped keep billions of people healthy. Think of that the next time Mom or Dad asks you to wash up – which will likely be sometime soon.
Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.
And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.
Paul E. Richardson receives funding from the NIH and NSF.
Cancer research in the U.S. doesn’t rely on a single institution or funding stream − it’s a complex ecosystem made up of interdependent parts: academia, pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology startups, federal agencies and private foundations. As a cancer biologist who has worked in each of these sectors over the past three decades, I’ve seen firsthand how each piece supports the others.
When one falters, the whole system becomes vulnerable.
The United States has long led the world in cancer research. It has spent more on cancer research than any other country, including more than US$7.2 billion annually through the National Cancer Institute alone. Since the 1971 National Cancer Act, this sustained public investment has helped drive dramatic declines in cancer mortality, with death rates falling by 34% since 1991. In the past five years, the Food and Drug Administration has approved over 100 new cancer drugs, and the U.S. has brought more cancer drugs to the global market than any other nation.
But that legacy is under threat. Funding delays, political shifts and instability across sectors have created an environment where basic research into the fundamentals of cancer biology is struggling to keep traction and the drug development pipeline is showing signs of stress.
These disruptions go far beyond uncertainty and have real consequences. Early-career scientists faced with unstable funding and limited job prospects may leave academia altogether. Mid-career researchers often spend more time chasing scarce funding than conducting research. Interrupted research budgets and shifting policy priorities can unravel multiyear collaborations. I, along with many other researchers, believe these setbacks will slow progress, break training pipelines and drain expertise from critical areas of cancer research – delays that ultimately hurt patients waiting for new treatments.
A 50-year foundation of federal investment
The modern era of U.S. cancer research began with the signing of the National Cancer Act in 1971. That law dramatically expanded the National Cancer Institute, an agency within the National Institutes of Health focusing on cancer research and education. The NCI laid the groundwork for a robust national infrastructure for cancer science, funding everything from early research in the lab to large-scale clinical trials and supporting the training of a generation of cancer researchers.
This federal support has driven advances leading to higher survival rates and the transformation of some cancers into a manageable chronic or curable condition. Progress in screening, diagnostics and targeted therapies – and the patients who have benefited from them – owe much to decades of NIH support.
The Trump administration is cutting billions of dollars of biomedical research funding.
But federal funding has always been vulnerable to political headwinds. During the first Trump administration, deep cuts to biomedical science budgets threatened to stall the progress made under initiatives such as the 2016 Cancer Moonshot. The rationale given for these cuts was to slash overall spending, despite facing strong bipartisan opposition in Congress. Lawmakers ultimately rejected the administration’s proposal and instead increased NIH funding. In 2022, the Biden administration worked to relaunch the Cancer Moonshot.
This uncertainty has worsened in 2025 as the second Trump administration has cut or canceled many NIH grants. Labs that relied on these awards are suddenly facing funding cliffs, forcing them to lay off staff, pause experiments or shutter entirely. Deliberate delays in communication from the Department of Health and Human Services have stalled new NIH grant reviews and funding decisions, putting many promising research proposals already in the pipeline at risk.
Philanthropy’s support is powerful – but limited
While federal agencies remain the backbone of cancer research funding, philanthropic organizations provide the critical support for breakthroughs – especially for new ideas and riskier projects.
Groups such as the American Cancer Society, Stand Up To Cancer and major hospital foundations have filled important gaps in support, often funding pilot studies or supporting early-career investigators before they secure federal grants. By supporting bold ideas and providing seed funding, they help launch innovative research that may later attract large-scale support from the NIH.
Without the bureaucratic constraints of federal agencies, philanthropy is more nimble and flexible. It can move faster to support work in emerging areas, such as immunotherapy and precision oncology. For example, the American Cancer Society grant review process typically takes about four months from submission, while the NIH grant review process takes an average of eight months.
Ted Kennedy Jr., right, and Jeff Keith raise money for the American Cancer Society in 1984. Mikki Ansin/Getty Images
But philanthropic funds are smaller in scale and often disease-specific. Many foundations are created around a specific cause, such as advancing cures for pancreatic, breast or pediatric cancers. Their urgency to make an impact allows them to fund bold approaches that federal funders may see as too preliminary or speculative. Their giving also fluctuates. For instance, the American Cancer Society awarded nearly $60 million less in research grants in 2020 compared with 2019.
While private foundations are vital partners for cancer research, they cannot replace the scale and consistency of federal funding. Total U.S. philanthropic funding for cancer research is estimated at a few billion dollars per year, spread across hundreds of organizations. In comparison, the federal government has typically contributed roughly five to eight times more than philanthropy to cancer research each year.
Industry innovation − and its priorities
Private-sector innovation is essential for translating discoveries into treatments. In 2021, nearly 80% of the roughly $57 billion the U.S. spent on cancer drugs came from pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Many of the treatments used in oncology today, including immunotherapies and targeted therapies, emerged from collaborations between academic labs and industry partners.
But commercial priorities don’t always align with public health needs. Companies naturally focus on areas with strong financial returns: common cancers, projects that qualify for fast-track regulatory approval, and high-priced drugs. Rare cancers, pediatric cancers and basic science often receive less attention.
Industry is also saddled with uncertainty. Rising R&D costs, tough regulatory requirements and investor wariness have created a challenging environment to bring new drugs to market. Several biotech startups have folded or downsized in the past year, leaving promising new drugs stranded in limbo in the lab before they can reach clinical trials.
Without federal or philanthropic entities to pick up the slack, these discoveries may never reach the patients who need them.
A system under strain
Cancer is not going away. As the U.S. population ages, the burden of cancer on society will only grow. Disparities in treatment access and outcomes persist across race, income and geography. And factors such as environmental exposures and infectious diseases continue to intersect with cancer risk in new and complex ways.
Addressing these challenges requires a strong, stable and well-coordinated research system. But that system is under strain. National Cancer Institute grant paylines, or funding cutoffs, remain highly competitive. Early-career researchers face precarious job prospects. Labs are losing technicians and postdoctoral researchers to higher-paying roles in industry or to burnout. And patients, especially those hoping to enroll in clinical trials, face delays, disruptions and dwindling options.
Researchers have been rallying to protect the future of science in the U.S. AP Photo/John McDonnell
This is not just a funding issue. It’s a coordination issue between the federal government, academia and industry. There are currently no long-term policy solutions that ensure sustained federal investment, foster collaboration between academia and industry, or make room for philanthropy to drive innovation instead of just filling gaps.
I believe that for the U.S. to remain a global leader in cancer research, it will need to recommit to the model that made success possible: a balanced ecosystem of public funding, private investment and nonprofit support. Up until recently, that meant fully funding the NIH and NCI with predictable, long-term budgets that allow labs to plan for the future; incentivizing partnerships that move discoveries from bench to bedside without compromising academic freedom; supporting career pathways for young scientists so talent doesn’t leave the field; and creating mechanisms for equity to ensure that research includes and benefits all communities.
Cancer research and science has come a long way, saving about 4.5 million lives in the U.S. from cancer from 1991 to 2022. Today, patients are living longer and better because of decades of hard-won discoveries made by thousands of researchers. But science doesn’t run on good intentions alone. It needs universities. It needs philanthropy. It needs industry. It needs vision. And it requires continued support from the federal government.
Jeffrey MacKeigan receives funding from NIH National Cancer Institute. He has consulting agreements with Merck and scholarly activity with the Translational Genomics Research Institute and the Van Andel Research Institute.
Tove Jansson published her first Moomin book, The Moomins and the Great Flood, 80 years ago, in 1945. The story follows a family of hippo-like creatures called “Moomintrolls”, who become refugees after a flood washes away their home. Written at the end of the second world war, when millions were displaced, it reflects the struggles of rebuilding lives after disaster.
The official theme of the anniversary is “the door is always open”, reflecting the themes of acceptance, kindness and chosen families that run through Jansson’s books.
We’re celebrating 80 wonderful years of her magical creatures with a special screening of the 2014 film Moomins on the Riviera and a panel discussion. Come along to the National Science & Media Museum in Bradford on Friday May 23 to watch the film with us and take part in the Q&A with four expert Moominologists about the theme of the refugee experience in Jansson’s work.
As a City of Sanctuary and home to one of four public art commissions honouring Moomin 80, Bradford is the perfect place to mark this milestone. Tickets include a free ebook of expert articles about Jansson and her Moominous creations.
We’d love to see you there, so come along and join in the discussion. Readers of The Conversation get an exclusive 25% off the ticket price – you can book them here using the code Moomins25.
Communities in Vanuatu are learning to grow climate resilient crops, 18 months after Cyclone Lola devastated the country.
The category 5 storm struck in October 2023, generating wind speeds of up to 215 kmph, which destroyed homes, schools, plantations, and left at least four people dead.
Save the Children Vanuatu country director Polly Banks said they have been working alongside Vanuatu’s Ministry of Agriculture and local partners, supporting families through the Tropical Cyclone Lola Recovery Programme.
“It really affected backyard gardening and the communities across the areas affected – their ability to pursue an income and also their own nutritional needs,” she said.
She said the programme looked at the impact of the cyclone on backyard gardening and on people’s economic reliance on what they grow in their gardens, and developed a recovery plan to respond.
“We trained community members and also provided them with the equipment to establish cyclone resilient nurseries.
Ready for harsh weather “So for example, nurseries that can be put up and then pulled down when a harsh weather event – including cyclones but even heavy rainfall — is arriving.
“There was a focus on these climate resilient nurseries, but also through that partnership with the Department of Agriculture, there was also a much stronger focus than we’ve had before on teaching community members climate smart agricultural techniques.”
Banks said these techniques included open pollinating seed and learning skills such as grassing; and another part of the project was introducing more variety into people’s diets.
She said out of the project has also come the first seed bank on Epi Island.
“That seed bank now has a ready supply of seeds, and the community are adding to that regularly, and they’re taking those seeds from really climate-resilient crops, so that they have a cyclone secure storage facility,” she said.
“The next time a cyclone happens — and we know that they’re going to become more ferocious and more frequent — the community are ready to replant the moment that the cyclone passes.
Setting up seed bank “But in setting the seed bank up as well, the community have been taught how to select the most productive seeds, the seeds that show the most promise; how to dry them out; how to preserve them.”
Banks said they were also working with the Department of Agriculture in the delivery of a community-based climate resilience project, which is funded by the Green Climate Fund.
Rolled out across 282 communities across the country, a key focus of it is the creation of more climate-resilient backyard gardening, food preservation and climate resilient nurseries.
“We’re also setting up early warning systems through the provision of internet to really remote communities so that they have better access to more knowledge about when a big storm or a cyclone is approaching and what steps to take.
“But that particular project is still just a drop in the ocean in terms of the adaptation needs that communities have.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jeremy Howick, Professor and Director of the Stoneygate Centre for Excellence in Empathic Healthcare, University of Leicester
Patients’ lives are being put at risk by poor communication from healthcare professionals in hospitals worldwide, according to new research my colleagues and I conducted.
Our analysis included 46 studies, published between 2013 and 2024, involving over 67,000 patients across Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia. And the findings are alarming. We discovered that poor communication was the sole cause of patient-safety incidents in over one in ten cases and contributed to causing incidents in one in four cases.
These aren’t just statistics, they represent real people harmed by preventable errors.
In one documented case, a doctor accidentally shut off a patient’s Amiodarone drip (a drug to treat heart arrhythmias) while silencing a beeping pump. The doctor failed to tell the nurse, and the patient’s heart rate spiked dangerously.
In another example, a patient died after a nurse failed to tell a surgeon that the patient was experiencing abdominal pains following surgery and had a low red blood cell count – clear indicators of internal bleeding. The patient later died from a haemorrhage that could have been prevented with adequate communication.
These findings confirm what many healthcare professionals have long suspected: communication breakdowns directly threaten patient safety. What’s particularly concerning is that these incidents cut across different healthcare systems worldwide.
The scale of the problem
In the UK alone, over 1,700 lives are lost annually due to medication errors, and at least 3 million deaths occur due to medication errors worldwide. At least half of these – often resulting from poor communication – are preventable.
In the US, communication failures contribute to over 60% of all hospital-based adverse events. Experts believe these figures probably underestimate the true extent of the problem as patient safety incidents are often underreported.
This research fills an important gap in our understanding. While previous studies had established that poor communication was an issue in healthcare settings, this is the first rigorous analysis to quantify precisely how communication lapses affect patient safety.
My colleagues and I also conducted a separate analysis of just the high-quality studies in the review, which yielded similar results, strengthening the validity of our findings.
The critical importance of effective communication has been highlighted in major healthcare investigations. Both the Francis and Ockenden Reports in the UK, which examined serious healthcare failures, cited ineffective communication as a cause of unnecessary deaths at the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust and the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, respectively.
Further emphasising this point, the UK’s health ombudsman has identified poor communication as a contributing factor in about 48,000 avoidable sepsis deaths each year.
Inadequate communication doesn’t just make people feel bad in a nonspecific sense, it causes actual harm. Misunderstandings lead to grave medical errors through misdiagnosis, suboptimal treatments and potentially life-threatening complications.
Hope for improvement
Despite these sobering findings, we emphasise that communication can be improved through targeted interventions. When healthcare practitioners receive training to communicate with additional empathy toward their patients, their empathic behaviour improves – and so do patient outcomes.
Similarly, when healthcare professionals are taught to communicate more effectively with colleagues, measurable improvements follow.
One notable study found that implementing a structured communication protocol in surgical teams reduced adverse events by 23% over a year. Another demonstrated that using standardised handoff procedures between shifts decreased medical errors by nearly 30%.
These communication interventions often take as little as half a day to implement and are likely to be highly cost-effective. For a relatively small investment in training, healthcare systems could see significant reductions in preventable harm.
The evidence is in. It’s time for healthcare leaders, educators and policymakers to act. Communication training must become a universal standard – not an optional extra – in safeguarding patient lives.
Jeremy Howick receives funding from the Stoneygate Trust, and occasionally receives speaking fees for his talks.
After a successful beta-launch this month, PodTalk.live has now called for people to register as foundation members — it’s free to join the post and podcast social platform.
The foundation membership soft-launch is a great opportunity for founders to help shape a brand new, vibrant, algorithm-free, info discussion and debate social platform.
“PodTalk.live has been put to test by selected individuals and we’re pleased to report that it has performed fabulously,” said the the platform developer Selwyn Manning.
Manning is founder and managing director of the company that custom-developed PodTalk.live — Multimedia Investments Ltd.
PodTalk.live . . . a new era. Image: PodTalk screenshot APR
MIL is based in Aotearoa New Zealand, where PodTalk.live was developed and is served from.
And now, PodTalk.live has emerged from its beta stage and is ready for foundation members to shape the next phase of its development.
An alternative platform PodTalk.live was designed to be an alternative platform to other social media platforms.
PodTalk has all the functions that most social media platforms have but has placed the user-experience at the centre of its backend design and engineering.
PodTalk.live has been custom-designed, created and is served from New Zealand.
“We ourselves became annoyed at how social media giants use algorithms to drive what content their users see and experience,” Manning said.
“And, we also were appalled at how some social media companies trade user data, and were unresponsive to user-concerns.
“So we decided to create a platform that focuses on ‘discussion and debate’ communities, and we have engineered PodTalk to ensure the content that users see is what they choose — rather than some obscure algorithm making that decision for them.
“PodTalk.live is independent from other social media platforms, and at best will become an alternative choice for people who seek a community where they are the centre of a platform’s core purpose.
Sign-up invitation ““And today, we invite people to sign up now and become foundation members of this new and ethically-based social community platform,” Manning said.
What PodTalk.live provides includes:
user profiles with full interactivities with other users and friends;
user created groups, posts, video, images, polls, and file sharing;
private and secure one-on-one (and group) messages;
availability of all the above for entry users with a free membership;
premium membership for podcasters and event publishers requiring easy to use podcast publication and syndication services; and next-level community engagement tools that users have all on the one platform.
Manning said PodTalk.live was founded on the belief that for social, political and economical progress to occur people needed to discuss issues in a safe environment and embark on robust debate.
Around 2,500 years ago, a princess living in what is now modern-day Iraq collected a number of artefacts, including a statue, a boundary stone and a mace head. The items, which show signs of preservation, date from around 2100 BCE to 600 BCE. This collection, it is generally thought, was the world’s first known “museum”.
Between Two Rivers, by Oxford scholar Moudhy Al-Rashid, tells the story of ancient Mesopotamia, a period in world history sometimes known as a “forgotten age”.
Review: Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History – Moudhy Al-Rashid (Hodder Press)
The first museum
The world’s first known museum, and its curator, Ennigaldi-Nanna, are among these many firsts. The daughter of the Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus, Ennigaldi-Nanna was a priestess at the temple of the moon deity, as well as a princess.
Both Ennigaldi-Nanna and Nabonidus were keenly interested in history. Indeed, Nabonidus’ interest in excavating old temples and describing his findings once saw him described as the “first archaeologist”. This makes these figures well suited as the book’s central focus.
At its heart, Between Two Rivers is an ode to the power of history. It builds a persuasive case for history writing as a particularly human impulse, and for how lives of people living thousands of years ago can reflect and shape our modern lives in unexpected ways.
10 museum objects
The book is organised around the ten items from Ennigaldi-Nanna’s collection. This structural conceit creates a sense of unity, despite the diversity of topics the book covers. Each chapter is focused on one item. For example, an ancient granite mace head introduces a chapter on warfare, violence and death.
Moudhy Al-Rashid. Hachette
In chapter one, we are introduced to ancient Mesopotamian history. We’re also introduced to the author herself. Al-Rashid punctuates her prose with personal recollections and humour, as well as touching reflections on her experience of motherhood. She is our companion, tour guide and teacher as we navigate this journey into the past, helping the reader feel a personal stake in the scholarly adventure ahead.
Other chapters explore cuneiform script (the world’s first known writing), cities, leadership, education (including some of the earliest doodles by bored students), early scientific developments and the gods. The final three chapters look at economics, warfare and curator Ennigaldi-Nanna herself.
The book offers a useful timeline, though pictures of the ten ancient items and a map would have been useful additions.
Fun historical facts
The broad range of subjects, periods and people explored in this book results in the inclusion of many dazzling features of Mesopotamian history, rarely considered together. Indeed, there is a plethora of fun historical facts.
We get a brief overview of the fascinating diplomatic correspondence between New Kingdom Pharaohs and their West Asian vassals, known as the Amarna Letters. There is also the cuneiform tablet referencing the death of Alexander the Great, and an overview of the practice of divination (including an attempted palace coup).
These highlights from ancient evidence are balanced against frequent commentary from the author. She notes the less glamorous nature of much of it, such as economic texts and legal agreements.
Indeed, Al-Rashid is careful to note the limits of the evidence used to build this vivid picture of ancient Mesopotamia. She notes the difficulties of learning Sumerian, the world’s first known language, written in the intricate cuneiform script. In her chapter on leadership, she notes that further evidence for powerful women leaders may yet be discovered, while discussing what is currently known of these figures.
The author’s transparency and expert handling of evidence puts the reader at ease, while subtly championing the importance of continued studies in this field. This is timely, as the academic field of Mesopotamian history has seen significant cuts in the last decade.
Rediscovering cultural riches
Despite the rich cultural legacy of this region, Mesopotamian history is largely unknown in the modern day. While 21st-century audiences are often familiar with the works of Plato, Homer and Virgil, they may struggle to identify Enheduanna – a princess, priestess, and poetess who lived over 4,000 years ago – as the world’s first known author, or Sin-leqe-uninni as the editor of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
This is likely due to the circumstances around the recovery of the Mesopotamian writing script, cuneiform. This style of writing faded from use around the 1st century CE, and was only re-deciphered in 1857 CE. This meant that for almost two millennia, awareness of the Mesopotamian cultural legacy almost entirely disappeared.
This modern lack of awareness of Mesopotamian history is slowly changing. Between Two Rivers is part of an emerging trend in the field of Assyriology — the study of the languages, literature, history, laws and sciences of Mesopotamia — for producing accessible works, for non-specialist audiences.
Between Two Rivers further demonstrates the usefulness of this approach in bringing the riches of the ancient Near East to modern audiences.
There are new books on Mesopotamian religion and the cuneiform script by Irving Finkel, who has been an ambassador for the discipline for many years. Indeed, Al-Rashid notes his influence.
To write a book like this one, the author needs to have both mastery over the subject material and an engaging style of communication. Al-Rashid excels in both areas. For general audiences, Between Two Rivers is a fascinating, balanced introduction to this complex – and at times elusive – ancient world.
Louise Pryke 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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Eike Schneiders, Assistant Professor, School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton
Alexander Supertramp / shutterstock
People who aren’t legal experts are more willing to rely on legal advice provided by ChatGPT than by real lawyers – at least, when they don’t know which of the two provided the advice. That’s the key finding of our new research, which highlights some important concerns about the way the public increasingly relies on AI-generated content. We also found the public has at least some ability to identify whether the advice came from ChatGPT or a human lawyer.
AI tools like ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) are making their way into our everyday life. They promise to provide quick answers, generate ideas, diagnose medical symptoms, and even help with legal questions by providing concrete legal advice.
But LLMs are known to create so-called “hallucinations” – that is, outputs containing inaccurate or nonsensical content. This means there is a real risk associated with people relying on them too much, particularly in high-stakes domains such as law. LLMs tend to present advice confidently, making it difficult for people to distinguish good advice from decisively voiced bad advice.
We ran three experiments on a total of 288 people. In the first two experiments, participants were given legal advice and asked which they would be willing to act on. When people didn’t know if the advice had come from a lawyer or an AI, we found they were more willing to rely on the AI-generated advice. This means that if an LLM gives legal advice without disclosing its nature, people may take it as fact and prefer it to expert advice by lawyers – possibly without questioning its accuracy.
Even when participants were told which advice came from a lawyer and which was AI-generated, we found they were willing to follow ChatGPT just as much as the lawyer.
One reason LLMs may be favoured, as we found in our study, is that they use more complex language. On the other hand, real lawyers tended to use simpler language but use more words in their answers.
LLMs might voice their advice more confidently than real lawyers. apatrimonio / shutterstock
The third experiment investigated whether participants could distinguish between LLM and lawyer-generated content when the source is not revealed to them. The good news is they can – but not by very much.
In our task, random guessing would have produced a score of 0.5, while perfect discrimination would have produced a score of 1.0. On average, participants scored 0.59, indicating performance that was slightly better than random guessing, but still relatively weak
Regulation and AI literacy
This is a crucial moment for research like ours, as AI-powered systems such as chatbots and LLMs are becoming increasingly integrated into everyday life. Alexa or Google Home can act as a home assistant, while AI-enabled systems can help with complex tasks such as online shopping, summarising legal texts, or generating medical records.
Yet this comes with significant risks of making potentially life altering decisions that are guided by hallucinated misinformation. In the legal case, AI-generated, hallucinated advice could cause unnecessary complications or even miscarriages of justice.
That’s why it has never been more important to properly regulate AI. Attempts so far include the EU AI Act, article 50.9 of which states that text-generating AIs should ensure their outputs are “marked in a machine-readable format and detectable as artificially generated or manipulated”.
But this is only part of the solution. We’ll also need to improve AI literacy so that the public is better able to critically assess content. When people are better able to recognise AI they’ll be able to make more informed decisions.
This means that we need to learn to question the source of advice, understand the capabilities and limitations of AI, and emphasise the use of critical thinking and common sense when interacting with AI-generated content. In practical terms, this means cross-checking important information with trusted sources and including human experts to prevent overreliance on AI-generated information.
In the case of legal advice, it may be fine to use AI for some initial questions: “What are my options here? What do I need to read up on? Are there any similar cases to mine, or what area of law is this?” But it’s important to verify the advice with a human lawyer long before ending up in court or acting upon anything generated by an LLM.
AI can be a valuable tool, but we must use it responsibly. By using a two-pronged approach which focuses on regulation and AI literacy, we can harness its benefits while minimising its risks.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ali Asgary, Professor, Disaster & Emergency Management, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies & Director, CIFAL York, York University, Canada
The carnage along a street lined with food trucks took place shortly after one of the men vying to become Canada’s prime minister — New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh — attended the event. A shell-shocked Singh observed a moment of silence in Penticton, B.C., during another campaign stop the next day.
Vancouver police say the suspect has mental health issues and was known to police prior to the attack. Police also told a news conference there was no indication there was a need for extra policing at the festival, deeming it to have a “low threat level.”
What goes into making that calculation, and is a public event ever truly low-risk?
Vancouver police hold a news conference on the SUV attack. (CTV News)
Difficulties of crowd management
The Vancouver SUV attack is now classified as a crowd-related or mass gathering type of disaster. There have been cases of public vehicle-ramming attacks in Canada in the past, in particular the 2018 Toronto van attack that left 10 people dead.
Unfortunately, many mass gathering events do not allocate either sufficient resources or time for crowd management procedures, particularly those related to risk and emergency management.
Organizing mass gathering events in public spaces should factor in different threats, including the potential for car ramming, and implement effective mitigation and preparedness measures.
‘Soft targets’
Many public spaces where these events take place are vulnerable to car attacks. Evidence shows that mass gatherings are soft targets, meaning they’re easily accessible to large numbers of people and have limited security, protective and warning measures in place. Extreme precautions are needed to protect the public from such attacks so that they don’t become mass casualty events.
Those in attendance should be aware that public spaces generally lack physical barriers, or the proper distribution of them, to resist car or vehicle attacks.
While public awareness programs exist for other hazards such as flooding, earthquakes and extreme weather events, it’s now clear that such awareness and education are needed for mass public gatherings too.
Police should be aware that relying on limited surveillance may not be sufficient to identify such threats at the scene. Vehicle access and traffic control should be in place throughout such events. Lack of warning systems to quickly inform the crowd about an ongoing attack further increases the impacts of vehicular attacks.
Much of the focus on these types of events has been on the motivations of the attackers. Since a considerable number of vehicle-ramming attacks have been attributed to terrorism, communities or events with the perception of lower terrorism threats may not pay close enough attention to this type of threat.
Canadians aren’t likely to get many more details about the Vancouver attack until after voting day on Monday. Could the tragedy have an impact on the outcome of the federal election?
Past and recent studies have drawn different conclusions about the impact of disasters on election results.
According to what’s known as retrospective voting theory, voters judge governments on how they manage disasters, particularly highly publicized, tragic events, when casting their ballots. Voters can evaluate governments based on their handling of the disaster and the amount of effort they have put into minimizing risk.
Voters can and do punish or reward governments and elected politicians based on the effects of recent disasters on them and governments’ responses to them.
Hopefully, however, it will have an influence on how organizers, police and other authorities manage public crowds and events at a time when vehicle-ramming attacks are becoming a recurrent threat. Those elected this election should prioritize efforts to ensure communities can have safer mass gathering events.
Ali Asgary 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.
I was hopeful that when the COVID-19 pandemic drew attention to the plight of senior citizens, the attention might result in meaningful change. Instead, seniors seem to be getting blamed for high costs and high living.
Let me set some context. The Canada Health Act is a remarkable document. It is simple and clear. Provinces must adhere to the principles of universal, reasonable access to comprehensive hospital and doctor care throughout Canada, without charge for medically necessary care and with funding from a publicly administered, non-profit health insurance plan.
Those with a health-care card can go to any hospital or doctor and do not have to worry about health-care bankruptcy or losing health-care coverage if they change jobs or travel across Canada. Because the rich use the same beds as everyone else, they have a vested interest in all beds being high quality.
A good start with good principles
The CHA and the public insurance programs that preceded it dramatically improved access to quality care, quality jobs and — not incidentally in these times — it promoted solidarity across ages, classes and genders through what became Canada’s best loved social program.
However, there are three basic problems with it. First, it was supposed to be the first step towards a system that covered home care, long-term care, eye, dental and pharmaceutical care, but it stalled there until very recently. Second, the principles depended on the federal government using its spending power for enforcement. And third, it failed to prohibit for-profit services being paid public money or doctors from operating in private practices.
There are gaping holes in access to care at home and in long-term care as well as to hospital care and primary care services. And equally important, there is less access to good jobs providing this care.
We hear a lot about how care at home is everyone’s first choice, but staying at home often requires skilled care, special facilities and support for things like food, cleaning and maintenance, as well as help with dressing and walking. Too often, what we mean by care at home is 24/7 care by female relatives, untrained and unpaid for the work, too often doing so to the detriment of their own health and economic future.
Too often it is about shifting costs and labour to families and individuals, not about choice or overall cost savings. Too often there is no choice.
There has been new federal money for health care, a significant amount of which is unconditional and thus available for home care. But we have seen little effective expansion.
If we are serious about home as the place to be, we need to provide the public support for the option, support that needs to go well beyond a few more temporary work permits for care providers.
Although remaining at home is many people’s first choice, people in long-term care say the benefits include feeling safe, there is company, there are activities, and women especially say there is someone to clean the bathroom and make the meals. (Shutterstock)
Nursing homes
Which takes me to nursing homes. At the same time as home care is talked about as the first choice, nursing homes are presented as the last and worst choice. We forget though that many people do not have homes, many homes are unsafe physically and/or in terms of abuse, many homes are isolating, and many people have 24-hour extensive care needs that cannot be accommodated in a private home.
When we ask residents about whether there is anything better about nursing homes compared to their private home, many say yes; they feel safe, there is company, there are activities, and women especially say there is someone to clean the bathroom and make the meals. Of course, we can and should make nursing homes better for people to live, work and visit in them, but we can’t forget that we need them and significantly more of them as well as more people to work in them.
And we need more community care clinics providing the full range of services. Here too the federal government has signed some targeted funding agreements but we need more and we need to severely limit private practice that contributes to fragmented care.
Of course good and fair health care costs money. But we have to remember that investments in care are an investment in the economy, in equity and in solidarity. The money does not go into a hole. It circulates in the economy. And investments in providing good conditions of work can save money at the same time as they promote care, given that the conditions of work are the conditions of care.
We need to put senior care back on the agenda in the aftermath of this election.
Pat Armstrong receives funding from SSHRC
I am a Board member of the Canadian Health Coalition and a member of the economic subgroup of the Ottawa Council on Aging
Online influencers sharing political content can fall into an unregulated grey zone.(Shutterstock)
Political commentary occurs regularly on social media. From politicians and parties promoting their platforms to journalists sharing day-to-day news and everyday people sharing their thoughts, there is no shortage of online content commenting on what governments are doing, aren’t doing and should be doing.
A recent development has been the rise in online content creators, which has become a profession in and of itself. And social media influencers — those content creators who have developed a brand persona around their popular social media accounts — have plenty to say when it comes to politics. They promote politicians, encourage voting, comment on social issues and share political news. They can also be involved in disinformation and foreign interference campaigns.
Influencers might be paid for the content or endorse political campaigns voluntarily. Some interview politicians or produce their own commentary. And others express political views independently, without any formal political ties.
These increasingly blurred lines make it challenging to distinguish between genuine support, co-ordinated marketing or reliable news sources. It also makes it harder for voters to evaluate the credibility and intent behind political messages — which makes it harder for policymakers to regulate it.
Influencers are increasingly integral to election campaign strategies. Political campaigns work with influencers to reach audiences traditional media often misses, or to target specific groups with tailored messaging. And influencers’ deep understanding of social media platforms enable them to create content that can spread quickly and effectively, maximizing reach and engagement.
Influencers can act as advertisers who are paid to promote politicians or parties, celebrity endorsers donating their time and reach to campaigns or campaign volunteers sharing content online. Unlike traditional advertisements and celebrities, influencers have more interactive and intimate relationships with their audiences.
Influencers are invested in appearing authentic, reliable and relatable while also projecting aspirational lifestyles. This makes them particularly persuasive, and their content perceived as genuine and independent, even if it has been paid for or co-ordinated.
Influencers’ ability to move between personal expression and strategic campaigns makes them extremely powerful. At the same time, they are difficult to regulate or hold accountable. The multiple roles they play, and the flexibility they have in shifting from one role to another, allow them to evade the traditional categories that regulation depends on.
For instance, it is often difficult to distinguish between authentic support and paid sponsorship. Influencers may endorse a politician because they genuinely support them or as part of a formal campaign. Influencers may be paid to share particular messages or negotiate informal arrangements involving perks like access to exclusive events. Because they do not always disclose these ties, this content can often go unregulated.
While Canadian election laws are clear that paid advertisement spending needs to be reported, other forms of compensation and co-ordination do not require disclosure. This means that social media users may find it difficult to tell when an influencer’s support is authentic, part of a co-ordinated effort, or sponsored in some way.
Influencers and journalism
Influencers have also become central to sharing news, performing a role previously reserved for journalists. Influencers conduct interviews and provide updates and commentary. Research shows that users — especially younger ones — pay more attention to online influencers and celebrities for news than they do traditional news sources.
In Canada, this trend may have accelerated after the implementation of the Online News Act in 2023, which led Meta to restrict news access on Instagram and Facebook. News influencers are filling this gap.
Unlike professional journalists, many influencers operate without journalistic training, professional standards, editorial oversight or accountability measures. As such, some become unintentionally involved in the spread of disinformation. Others have been co-opted into disinformation campaigns, which see influencers as a path to plausible deniability, as their content can be presented as opinion rather than a co-ordinated effort.
While online influencers adapt to these overlapping roles, many politicians and journalists are adopting strategies similar to those of influencers: building personal brands, cultivating authenticity and fostering relationships with their audiences.
This scenario makes the boundaries between political entities and content creators even more difficult to define.
Younger people pay more attention to online influencers and celebrities for news than they do traditional news sources. (Shutterstock)
Understanding influencer
From endorsing candidates to shaping political narratives and mimicking reporters, influencers play multiple political roles in Canada.
What is organic political support and what is co-ordinated marketing? Who is doing independent political reporting and who is spreading disguised propaganda? And who is being paid? These questions need to be answered to know how to interpret influencers’ content — and how to apply rules around transparency, advertising and political speech.
Currently, media literacy strategies revolve around teaching users how to find trusted sources, gather information from a range of sources and question how content reaches them.
When it comes to political information shared by influencers, this means asking whether the influencer is sponsored or collaborating with some political entity. It means considering whether they talk about how they source and verify their information. It also means not relying on a single or small group of influencers who share the same ideas within a given online community.
Regulating influencers
Current regulatory frameworks are not equipped to handle influencer political content and its possible effects on elections. Election laws were designed around clear professional categories, media-centric advertising and centralized communication environments. This is no longer the information ecosystem that we exist in.
The lack of clear definitions and regulatory blind spots creates loopholes that political campaigns can exploit to evade ad transparency and spending laws. Meanwhile, policymakers struggle to find the balance between regulating political advertising via influencers and guaranteeing their freedom of expression.
Canada’s regulatory framework has to evolve, including clear definitions of political content and advertising, as well as disclosure requirements for paid or co-ordinated political message.
Elizabeth Dubois receives funding from SSHRC and the Alex Trebek Forum for Dialogue, University of Ottawa.
Michelle Bartleman receives funding from SSHRC.
Louise Stahl 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.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ashika Niraula, Senior Research Associate, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration Program, Toronto Metropolitan University
Skilled migrants and international students are leaving the United States for Canada in growing numbers. A March 2025 report by Statistics Canada reveals a sharp rise in the numbers of American non-citizen residents moving to Canada. Reasons given are largely restrictive U.S. immigration policies, visa caps and long wait times for green cards.
This is a shift from earlier decades when American-born citizens dominated the trend. By 2019, nearly half of those making the move were U.S. non-citizen residents.
Since U.S. President Donald Trump’s election win and early days in office, Google searches by American residents on how to move to Canada, New Zealand and Australia have surged.
British Columbia recently announced plans to launch landmark policies to streamline the credential recognition process for internationally trained health-care professionals, particular American doctors and nurses.
Skilled talent like health-care professionals, researchers and engineers are essential to building innovative, future-ready economies. But attracting them requires staying competitive in an increasingly global bid for talent.
Global competition for talent
In this global race for talent, Canada and Australia need to offer not only efficient immigration pathways but also faster credential recognition and better integration support.
Yet both nations find themselves walking a tightrope. Once both celebrated as welcoming destinations for global talent, each country has experienced recent immigration restrictions and growing anti-immigration sentiments, undermining those reputations.
But for migrants in Canada, these goals are becoming harder to attain.
A more cautious approach
Since the pandemic, Canada’s immigration approach has shifted. During the early COVID-19 years, Canada was praised for its inclusive response, including recognizing immigrants as essential to economic recovery. Temporary workers, including essential workers, international student graduates and French-speaking immigrants, were offered new routes to permanent residency through a federal program.
However, since 2024, Canada has taken a more cautious approach.
While permanent residency is still more accessible than in the U.S., skilled migrants are increasingly questioning whether the wait for permanent residency is worth it.
Australia visa rules slow things down
Australia faces similar dilemmas. In late 2023, the government launched a new migration strategy to address critical workforce shortages in construction, tech and health care. The Skills in Demand visa promised faster processing and clearer pathways to permanent residency for workers in priority sectors.
Yet a recent report by the Grattan institute warns that tighter eligibility rules risk excluding much-needed talent, potentially weakening Australia’s competitiveness.
Growing visa delays are also noted to be an additional barrier that may deter both prospective migrants and employers.
Working in jobs far below qualifications
Migration data often tells a story of numbers, categories and eligibility thresholds. However, the human stories behind the numbers reveal deep systemic issues and missed opportunities. One recurring issue is the widespread phenomenon of deskilling.
In both Canada and Australia, many skilled migrants often find themselves working in jobs far below their qualifications.
These experiences are part of a pattern that affects not only individuals but also national economies, which lose out on the full potential of their skilled workforce.
Credential recognition systems are opaque, inconsistent and frequently biased.
Another overlooked issue is that many skilled migrants do not move alone. People arrive with spouses, children and sometimes elderly parents.
Yet immigration and settlement systems in both countries are largely structured around individual economic migrants rather than families. In Canada, for instance, federally funded settlement services are mainly geared toward supporting only permanent residents.
Many spouses, particularly women, face even greater barriers to employment. Issues also include things like high fees for visa processing for parents. Other considerations include children who may struggle with schooling and identity in unfamiliar environments.
Housing shortages and high costs in major urban centres compound these challenges, pushing newcomers into unaffordable living conditions.
All this contributes to growing disillusionment. Migrants initially drawn to Canada or Australia as alternatives to unwelcoming environments elsewhere may choose to still come, but it doesn’t mean they will stay.
The experiences of skilled migrants in Canada and Australia show that attracting talent is only half the battle. The real challenge is in retention and integration.
Many countries like Germany, Japan, South Korea and some Gulf states have begun offering more competitive pathways to immigration along with promises of a work-life balance, streamlined visa programs and competitive salaries. This means skilled migrants are increasingly mobile.
Australia has made strides in streamlining visa categories and targeting sectoral needs, while Canada has built a strong narrative around inclusion and multiculturalism.
However, there is a need to combine Australia’s responsiveness and Canada’s inclusive ethos to build resilient migration systems.
Build future-ready migration systems
In an era defined by geopolitical uncertainties, countries can no longer afford to treat skilled migrants as temporary fixes or just economic inputs. They are people with aspirations, with families and with dreams.
They must be seen and supported as future citizens. To build future-ready migration systems Canada must:
Ensure transparency and consistency in immigration pathways to reduce uncertainties caused by policy reversals and lengthy processing times.
Improve credential recognition and career support to help skilled migrants, including temporary residents, transition into roles that match their qualifications.
Develop regional settlement strategies to address where migrants settle and ensure equitable access to services, job markets and housing, especially outside major cities.
Adopt inclusive, intersectional policies that consider gender, race and class in shaping the migrant experience, including support for spouses, children and aging parents.
Foster collaborative and responsive policymaking. This involves connecting researchers, employers, community organizations and migrants to inform policy making.
For Canada, the challenge ahead is clear. It’s not just about opening the door. It’s about making sure that once here, migrants have the support, rights and opportunities to walk through that door — and thrive.
Ashika Niraula works as a Senior Research Associate at the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration Program at Toronto Metropolitan University. The Skilled Migrant Decision Making Under Uncertainty project has received financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant (435-2021-0752) and from the wider program of the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Iori Hamada 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.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Valerie Oosterveld, Professor, Faculty of Law, and Western Research Chair in International Criminal Justice, Western University
In the last two weeks of February, humanitarian agencies reported 895 cases of conflict-related rape as M23 rebels advanced through the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). According to a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees official, this was an average of more than 60 rapes a day.
UNICEF officials reported similarly grim figures. Between Jan. 27 and Feb. 2, 2025, the number of rape cases treated across 42 health facilities in DRC jumped five-fold, with 30 per cent of these cases being children.
While immediate responses are needed to stop the violence, provide health care to the survivors and assist the displaced, the pursuit of justice also plays a critical role.
Investigative bodies, including the International Criminal Court (ICC), are increasingly using technology to investigate conflict-related sexual violence. In a recent research project, my team interviewed experts who specialize in conflict-related sexual violence investigations around the world. The research was supported by XCEPT, a conflict research program funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development.
Investigating sexual violence
The ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, visited DRC at the end of February and met with sexual violence survivors. The ICC has the mandate to investigate rape, sexual slavery and other gender-based violence amounting to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The office had reactivated investigations in October 2024.
In our research, we found that survivors of conflict-related sexual violence are connecting with investigators through various technologies, such as directly using encrypted apps like Signal. Survivors also go through civil society organizations equipped to take video or electronic statements — Yazda, for example, which works with Yazidi survivors of ISIS crimes in northern Iraq — or via portals like the ICC’s OTPLink. The UN’s Commissions of Inquiry also encourage and receive email submissions.
International courts and investigative bodies are also analyzing open-source information on conflict-related sexual violence, such as videos, photos and statements posted on online platforms. Guided by the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations, this information can be useful to support witness statements, place alleged perpetrators at the scene of the violations and link incidents into a pattern of similar violence.
In Ukraine, our study found that the main technology-related concern in open-source data gathering is identifying AI-created and other artificially generated images, specifically designed and planted in the public domain as a form of disinformation or to compromise investigations.
Face and voice recognition
Conflict-related sexual violence is often perpetrated indoors which makes certain technologies like satellite or drone imagery less useful. However, other forms of technology have proven to be beneficial in Ukraine’s investigations. In particular, face and voice recognition software have supported efforts to identify alleged perpetrators.
While Ukraine’s experience points to some successes, investigations into sexual violence committed by ISIS in northern Iraq have been hampered. This is partly due to the lack of automated translation software in the Yazidi language to facilitate the transcription and translation of testimonies.
This speaks to the importance of developing software to translate minority languages spoken in armed conflict zones.
Survivor concerns
Survivors have expressed concerns about the turn to the digital. They fear that their identities and experiences may be revealed through hacking or poor data handling, which could put them at risk of reprisals from perpetrators or their accomplices. It could also lead to stigmatization and ostracization in some communities, undoing survivors’ efforts to rebuild their lives.
To address these concerns, international courts and investigative bodies have adopted data protection protocols. However, the lack of a standardized framework for the use of technology in the investigation of conflict-related sexual violence remains a significant concern for the investigators we interviewed.
Such a framework would incorporate best practices in supporting survivors providing evidence, tracking and preserving open source information and developing new technological applications.
If there is to be justice for survivors of conflict-related rape in DRC and elsewhere, technology — provided it is used with great sensitivity — will likely be an important and timely aid.
Valerie Oosterveld received funding for this research from the UK’s Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy, and Trends (XCEPT) research programme.
However, all of this prosperity and ostensible stability can mask social tensions, which can simmer for years, even decades, before boiling over into widespread unrest, civil violence and even societal collapse.
Our new organization, Societal Dynamics (SoDy), works to translate what we learn from observing historical patterns into lessons for today.
Even the most powerful empires can collapse
Devoting my time to studying historic crises has shown me just how fragile societies are. Even big, powerful, famous civilizations can succumb to crises.
What happened to these once-mighty empires? The aforementioned study gives some answers. The authors explored the distribution of wealth and income in these empires, comparing it to the modern United States.
They found that each of these empires permitted fairly high disparities to accumulate.
In each case, the richest five per cent and one per cent of citizens controlled an outsized share of their society’s wealth. This leads to fairly high “gini index” values as well. The gini is a commonly used measure of inequality in nations — the higher the number up to one, the more inequitable a society is. For comparison, the current average gini among OECD countries is 0.32, notably lower than each of the four societies shown above.
The researchers suggest this high level of inequality contributed to the eventual collapse of these empires.
It creates conflict as the upper classes become bloated with too many wealthy and powerful families vying for control of the vast spoils that accumulate at the top. It also erodes society’s ability to respond to acute shocks like ecological disasters or economic downturns as the government loses capacity and authority.
Canada today bears several similarities with these and other famous civilizations of the past — and that should make Canadians nervous.
Canada, like the Romans, Han, Aztecs and many other once great societies, has maintained a relatively peaceful and secure rule over a large territory for a time. It’s generated a great deal of wealth, has facilitated the exchange of technology, ideas and movement of people over vast distances and has produced amazing works of art. But Canada has also allowed inequality to grow and linger for generations.
The measurement quantifies the ratio of wealth or income between the richest 10 per cent and the poorest 40 per cent of citizens. Higher numbers indicate that the richest are capturing the lion’s share of a country’s overall wealth.
Canada’s economy has been growing steadily as measured by GDP per capita — with a few notable exceptions — since the Second World War.
Initially, inequality held steady, but starting in about 1980, the Palma ratio jumps up sharply. This suggests the bulk of this growth was making its way into the hands of the wealthy. After a downturn in the late 2000s, inequality has begun to grow again in recent years.
By comparison, the U.S. has experienced similar trends, though without the momentary downturn in the 2000s. Note also that these two graphs show different levels — the Palma ratio in the U.S. in 2022 (the latest available data) is about 4.5, while it’s just over two in Canada.
Heading down a dangerous path
Most citizens living in the heyday of these once mighty empires probably thought that collapse was unfathomable, just as few living in the U.S. or Canada today feel that we’re headed that way.
Canada remains, in many ways, a stable, thriving, modern democratic-socialist country. But it’s on a dangerous path.
If Canada allows inequality continue to rise unchecked as it has over the last few generations, it risks ending up where Rome, Han, the Aztecs and hundreds of other societies have been before: widespread unrest, devastating violence and even complete societal collapse.
As Canadians head to the polls, the country is at another crossroads. Will it continue down this all-too-familiar path, or will it take the opportunity to forge a different route and avoid the fate of the fallen societies of the past?
Daniel Hoyer is director of SoDy and affiliated with ASRA Network, Complexity Science Hub, Vienna, and the SocialAI lab at the University of Toronto. He has received funding from: the Tricoastal Foundation; the Institute for Economics and Peace; and the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation.
Donald Trump campaigned for the White House by unleashing a nearly endless barrage of insults against journalists and news outlets.
He repeatedly threatened to weaponise the federal government against media professionals whom he considers his enemies.
In his first 100 days in office, President Trump has already shown that he was not bluffing.
“The day-to-day chaos of the American political news cycle can make it hard to fully take stock of the seismic shifts that are happening,” said Clayton Weimers, executive director of RSF North America.
“But when you step back and look at the whole picture, the pattern of blows to press freedom is quite clear.
“RSF refuses to accept this massive attack on press freedom as the new normal. We will continue to call out these assaults against the press and use every means at our disposal to fight back against them.
“We urge every American who values press freedom to do the same.”
Here is the Trump administration’s war on the press by the numbers: *
427 million – Weekly worldwide audience of the USAGM news outlets silenced by Trump
In an effort to eliminate the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) by cutting grants to outlets funded by the federal agency and placing their reporters on leave, the government has left millions around the world without vital sources of reliable information.
This leaves room for authoritarian regimes, like Russia and China, to spread their propaganda unchecked.
However, RSF recently secured an interim injunction against the administration’s dismantling of the USAGM-funded broadcaster Voice of America,which also reinstates funding to the outlets Radio Free Asia (RFA) and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN).
8,000+ – US government web pages taken down
Webpages from more than a dozen government sites were removed almost immediately after President Trump took office, leaving journalists and the public without critical information on health, crime, and more.
3,500+ – Journalists and media workers at risk of losing their jobs thanks to Trump’s shutdown of the USAGM
Journalists from VOA, the MBN, RFA, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty are at risk of losing their jobs as the Trump administration works to shut down the USAGM. Furthermore, at least 84 USAGM journalists based in the US on work visas now face deportation to countries where they risk prosecution and severe harassment.
At least 15 journalists from RFA and eight from VOA originate from repressive states and are at serious risk of being arrested and potentially imprisoned if deported.
180 – Public radio stations at risk of closing if public media funding is eliminated
The Trump administration reportedly plans to ask Congress to cut $1.1 billion in allocated funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). These cuts will hit rural communities and stations in smaller media markets the hardest, where federal funding is most impactful.
74 –Days the Associated Press (AP) has been banned from the White House
On February 11, the White House began barring the Associated Press (AP) news agency from its events because of the news agency’s continued use of the term “Gulf of Mexico,” which President Trump prefers to call the “Gulf of America” — a blatant example of retaliation against the media.
Despite a federal judge ruling the administration must reinstate the news agency’s access on April 9, the White House has continued to limit AP’s access.
64 – Disparaging comments made by Trump against the media on Truth Social since inauguration
In addition to regular, personal attacks against the media in press conferences and public speeches, Trump takes to his social media site nearly every day to insult, threaten, or intimidate journalists and media workers who report about him or his administration critically.
13 –Individuals pardoned by President Trump after being convicted or charged for attacking journalists on January 6, 2021
Trump pardoned over a dozen individuals charged with or convicted of violent crimes against journalists at the US Capitol during the January 6 insurrection.
6 –Federal Communications Commission (FCC) inquiries into media companies
Brendan Carr, co-author of the Project 2025 playbook and chair of the FCC, has wasted no time launching politically motivated investigations, explicit threats against media organisations, and implicit threats against their parent companies. These include inquiries into CBS, ABC parent company Disney, NBC parent company Comcast, public broadcasters NPR and PBS, and California television station KCBS.
4 – Trump’s personal lawsuits against media organisations
While Trump settled a lawsuit with ABC’s parent company Disney, he continues to sue CBS, The Des Moines Register, Gannett, and the Pulitzer Center over coverage he deemed biased.
$1.60 – Average annual amount each American pays for public media
Donald Trump has threatened to eliminate federal funding for public broadcasting, framing the move as a cost-cutting measure.
However, public media only costs each American about $1.60 each year, representing a tremendous bargain as it gives Americans access to a wealth of local, national, and lifesaving emergency programming.
* Figures as of the date of publication, 24 April 2025. Pacific Media Watch collaborates with RSF.
Memory and politics are inherently intertwined and can never be fully separated in post-atrocity and post-genocidal contexts. They are also dynamic and ever-changing. The interplay between memory and politics is, therefore, prone to manipulation, exaggeration or misuse by clever actors to meet a range of political ends.
This applies too to Rwanda’s commemoration period (Kwibuka). It runs from April to July each year, dedicated to remembering the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.
Remembrance poses a challenging paradox. Often, when new conflicts arise, memorialisation falls into two distinct and competing categories. There is politically motivated commemoration, where memory is used as cover to advance a political agenda. Then, there are memory practices that transcend politics. These two types of memory coexist at the same time and place.
Drawing from more than a decade of original research on genocide memory in Rwanda, I explore commemoration practices that transcend politics, and identify why Kwibuka is still needed and how individuals keep Kwibuka relevant in today’s challenging socio-political climate.
Three ways genocide remembrance transcends politics
Firstly, Kwibuka can be a freeing practice for survivors.
For many Rwandans, genocide remembrance practices like Kwibuka still hold meaning. According to interviews I held with several Rwandan genocide survivors based in the US and in Rwanda, the commemoration period can be surprisingly and unexpectedly freeing.
One Rwandan woman in her early 40s who survived rape and was forced into hiding during the genocide explains:
When survivors gather for Kwibuka, we feel like we are allowed to express our grief in ways that might seem bizarre to outsiders. As Rwandans, culturally we are expected to be strong and not overly emotional. Yet during Kwibuka, we cry, we tell stories, and we even laugh and tell jokes. During Kwibuka we are not judged for it. This is what it looks like for survivors to move forward.
Secondly, there is genocide memory as a responsibility.
Some survivors continue to engage in commemoration as an outward form of obligation to the victims lost during the genocide.
According to interviews with several early representatives of Ibuka, the main survivors’ organisation in Rwanda, established in 1995, right after the genocide, most survivors didn’t feel ready to put their own needs aside. They doubted that justice would ever be achieved. Yet, by and large, they did it anyway for the good of the collective, or out of respect for the leaders of the movement who were advocating for their rights.
The obligation to victims remains meaningful to genocide survivors today. When sharing her testimony at the UN commemoration on 7 April 2025, genocide survivor Germaine Tuyisenge Müller discussed her personal obligation to victims.
Many of us still have guilt. We do not know why we survived. We tell our stories out of responsibility.
She was only 9 years old during the genocide.
Out of 100 people I interviewed during my research from 2013 to 2020 in Rwanda, the majority feel it’s important to attend Kwibuka ceremonies. The main reason they give is to support their neighbours and their community.
This perspective represents a change that took place some time after 2014, the 20th Kwibuka, from negative incentives to attend (pressure, surveillance from the government and potential consequences), to Kwibuka being perceived as a positive collective good, with relatively little harm in attending ceremonies. As one Rwandan I interviewed in 2017 put it:
We go because it holds communal value, it’s better to go rather than cause a problem in the community, and it isn’t a hassle for me to go Kwibuka.
Thirdly, genocide remembrance provides agency.
Many Rwandan survivors view engaging in Kwibuka as a way to have agency in the present, contrary to the genocide period when they had no control over their fate. They exercise agency through commitments and actions that support victims who experience violence today.
The majority of interview respondents shared that they reflect on different things while attending commemorations, even when official stories told might not represent the diverse range of Rwandan experiences during the genocide. These include Rwandans from mixed marriages, or individuals falsely accused of committing acts of genocide in 1994.
Shaping commemoration
How can external actors and concerned citizens support efforts that shape commemoration that transcends politics?
While it may feel that there is not much “we” can do, as ordinary global citizens, we each play an important role in protecting and promoting truth in the wake of those who manipulate history to harm survivors and gain politically. But we must be discerning. When we learn, listen to and amplify survivor voices, we must focus on two main aspects. First, are people’s stories authentic? Second, are they dedicated to pursuing justice and peace, and not causing division and conflict?
Additionally, building peace is a long struggle. It cannot happen overnight, nor can we expect it to.
Genocide survivors from Rwanda teach us that it takes active dedication and ongoing, daily work from individuals and organisations to confront and challenge rising manipulation by those who seek to promote violence and conflict. Suffering in the world is increasing. Survivor stories and testimonies shared around the world during Kwibuka become even more important to inform analysis and prevention of modern-day crimes and human rights abuses.
By remembering and honouring the struggles and sacrifices made for the right to gather and remember, the international community and stakeholders dedicated to pursuing peace can learn from the forms of remembrance that transcend politics. This includes its critical role in protecting historical truth from manipulation, one of the most significant challenges faced today.
Samantha Lakin, PhD, is a specialist in comparative genocide and a Senior Fellow at The Center for Peace, Democracy, and Development (CPDD) at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Please note: the author is writing in her personal capacity as a genocide scholar, and her views do not represent those of her current employer.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Charles Helm, Research Associate, African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University
A team of scientists who study vertebrate fossil tracks and traces on South Africa’s southern Cape coast have identified the world’s first fossil pangolin trackway, with the help of Indigenous Master Trackers from Namibia. Ichnologists Charles Helm, Clive Thompson and Jan De Vynck tell the story.
What did you find?
A fossil trackway east of Still Bay in South Africa’s Western Cape province was found in 2018 by a colleague and was brought to our attention. It was found on the surface of a loose block of aeolianite rock (formed from hardened sand) that had come to rest near the high-tide mark in a private nature reserve.
We studied it but our cautious approach required that we could not confidently pin down what had made the track. It remained enigmatic.
How did you eventually identify it?
In 2023, we were working with two Ju/’hoansi San colleagues from north-eastern Namibia, #oma Daqm and /uce Nǂamce, who have been interpreting tracks in the Kalahari all their lives. They are certified as Indigenous Master Trackers and we consider them to be among the finest trackers in the world today. We’d called on their expertise to help us understand more about the fossil tracks on the Cape south coast. One example of the insights they provided was of hyena tracks, and we have published on this together.
We showed them the intriguing trackway, which consisted of eight tracks and two scuff marks made, apparently, by the animal’s tail. They examined the track-bearing surface at length, conversed with one another for some time, and then made their pronouncement: the trackway had been registered by a pangolin.
This was an astonishing claim, as no fossilised pangolin tracks had previously been recorded anywhere in the world.
It also confirms that pangolins were once distributed across a larger range than they are now.
We then created three-dimensional digital models of the trackway, using a technique called photogrammetry.
We shared these images with other tracking and pangolin experts in southern Africa (like CyberTracker, Tracker Academy, the African Pangolin Working Group, wildlife guides and a pangolin researcher at the Tswalu Foundation). There were no dissenting voices: not surprisingly, it was agreed that our San colleagues were highly likely correct in their interpretation.
There is something really special about a fossil trackway, compared with fossil bones – it seems alive, as if the animal could have registered the tracks yesterday, rather than so long ago.
What are the characteristics of pangolin tracks?
Pangolins are mostly bipedal (walking on two legs), with a distinctive, relatively ponderous gait. Track size and shape, the distance between the tracks, and the width of the trackway all provide useful clues, as do the tail scuff marks and the absence of obvious digit impressions. A pangolin hindfoot track, in the words of our Master Tracker colleagues, looks as if “a round stick had been poked into the ground”. And being slightly wider at the front end, it has a slightly triangular shape.
Pangolin walking (video in slow motion)
Our Master Tracker colleagues are familiar with the tracks of Temminck’s pangolin (Smutsia temminckii) in the Kalahari, which was the probable species that registered the tracks that are now evident in stone on the Cape coast. Other trackmaker candidates, such as a serval with its slim straddle, were considered, but could be excluded or regarded as far less likely.
How old is the fossil track and how do you know?
The surface would have consisted of loose dune sand when the pangolin walked on it. Now it’s cemented into rock. We work with a colleague, Andrew Carr, at the University of Leicester in the UK. He uses a technique known as optically stimulated luminescence to obtain the age of rocks in the area.
The results he provided for the region suggest that these tracks were made between 90,000 and 140,000 years ago, during the “Ice Ages”. For much of this time the coastline might have been as much as 100km south of its present location.
What’s important about this find?
Firstly, this demonstrates what you can uncover when you bring together different kinds of knowledge: our western scientific approach combined with the remarkable skill sets of the Master Trackers, which have been inculcated in them from a very young age.
Without them, the trackway would have remained enigmatic, and would have deteriorated in quality due to erosion without the trackmaker ever being identified.
Secondly, we hope it brings attention to the plight of the pangolin in modern times. There are eight extant pangolin species in the world today, and all are considered to be threatened with extinction. Pangolin meat is regarded as a delicacy, pangolin scales are used in traditional medicines, and pangolins are among the most trafficked wild animals on earth. Large numbers in Africa are hunted for their meat every year.
What does the future hold?
Our San Indigenous Master Tracker colleagues have just completed their third visit to the southern Cape coast, thanks to funding from the Discovery Wilderness Trust.
The results have once again been both unexpected and stupendous, and their tracking skills have again been demonstrated to be unparalleled. Many more publications will undoubtedly ensue, bringing their expertise to the attention of the wider scientific community and anyone interested in our fossil heritage or in ancient hunter-gatherer traditions.
We hope that our partnership continues to lead to our mutual benefit as we probe the secrets of the Pleistocene epoch by following the spoor of ancient animals.
Clive Thompson is a trustee of the Discovery Wilderness Trust, a non-profit organization that supports environmental conservation and the fostering of tracking skills.
Charles Helm and Jan Carlo De Vynck do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
When the US Embassy knocked on my door in late 2024, I was both pleased and more than a little suspicious.
I’d worked with them before, but the organisation where I did that work, Tohatoha, had closed its doors. My new project, Dark Times Academy, was specifically an attempt to pull myself out of the grant cycle, to explore ways of funding the work of counter-disinformation education without dependence on unreliable governments and philanthropic funders more concerned with their own objectives than the work I believed then — and still believe — is crucial to the future of human freedom.
But despite my efforts to turn them away, they kept knocking, and Dark Times Academy certainly needed the money. I’m warning you all now: There is a sense in which everything I have to say about counter-disinformation comes down to conversations about how to fund the work.
DARK TIMES ACADEMY
There is nothing I would like more than to talk about literally anything other than funding this work. I don’t love money, but I do like eating, having a home, and being able to give my kids cash.
I have also repeatedly found myself in roles where other people look to me for their livelihoods; a responsibility that I carry heavily and with more than a little clumsiness and reluctance.
But if we are to talk about President Donald Trump and disinformation, we have to talk about money. As it is said, the love of money is the root of all evil. And the lack of it is the manifestation of that evil.
Trump and his attack on all of us — on truth, on peace, on human freedom and dignity — is, at its core, an attack that uses money as a weapon. It is an attack rooted in greed and in avarice.
In his world, money is power But in that greed lies his weakness. In his world, money is power. He and those who serve him and his fascist agenda cannot see beyond the world that money built. Their power comes in the form of control over that world and the people forced to live in it.
Of course, money is just paper. It is digital bits in a database sitting on a server in a data centre relying on electricity and water taken from our earth. The ephemeral nature of their money speaks volumes about their lack of strength and their vulnerability to more powerful forces.
They know this. Trump and all men like him know their weaknesses — and that’s why they use their money to gather power and control. When you have more money than you and your whānau can spend in several generations, you suddenly have a different kind of relationship to money.
It’s one where money itself — and the structures that allow money to be used for control of people and the material world — becomes your biggest vulnerability. If your power and identity are built entirely on the power of money, your commitment to preserving the power of money in the world becomes an all-consuming drive.
Capitalism rests on many “logics” — commodification, individualism, eternal growth, the alienation of labour. Marx and others have tried this ground well already.
In a sense, we are past the time when more analysis is useful to us. Rather, we have reached a point where action is becoming a practical necessity. After all, Trump isn’t going to stop with the media or with counter-disinformation organisations. He is ultimately coming for us all.
What form that action must take is a complicated matter. But, first we must think about money and about how money works, because only through lessening the power of money can we hope to lessen the power of those who wield it as their primary weapon.
Beliefs about poor people If you have been so unfortunate to be subject to engagement with anti-poverty programmes during the neoliberal era either as a client or a worker, you will know that one of the motivations used for denying direct cash aid to those in need of money is a belief on the part of government and policy experts that poor people will use their money in unwise ways, be it drugs or alcohol, or status purchases like sneakers or manicures.
But over and over again, there’s another concern raised: cash benefits will be spent on others in the community, but outside of those targeted with the cash aid.
You see this less now that ideas like a universal basic income (UBI) and direct cash transfers have taken hold of the policy and donor classes, but it is one of those rightwing concerns that turned out to be empirically accurate.
Poor people are more generous with their money and all of their other resources as well. The stereotype of the stingy Scrooge is one based on a pretty solid mountain of evidence.
The poor turn out to understand far better than the rich how to defeat the power that money gives those who hoard it — and that is community. The logic of money and capital can most effectively be defeated through the creation and strengthening of our community ties.
Donald Trump and those who follow him revel in creating a world of atomised individuals focused on themselves; the kind of world where, rather than relying on each other, people depend on the market and the dollar to meet their material needs — dollars. of course, being the source of control and power for their class.
Our ability to fund our work, feed our families, and keep a roof over our heads has not always been subject to the whims of capitalists and those with money to pay us. Around the world, the grand multicentury project known as colonialism has impoverished us all and created our dependency.
Colonial projects and ‘enclosures’ I cannot speak as a direct victim of the colonial project. Those are not my stories to tell. There are so many of you in this room who can speak to that with far more eloquence and direct experience than I. But the colonial project wasn’t only an overseas project for my ancestors.
Enclosure is one of the core colonial logics. Enclosure takes resources (land in particular) that were held in common and managed collectively using traditional customs and hands them over to private control to be used for private rather than communal benefit. This process, repeated over and over around the globe, created the world we live in today — the world built on money.
As we lose control over our access to what we need to live as the land that holds our communities together, that binds us to one another, is co-opted or stolen from us, we lose our power of self-determination. Self-governance, freedom, liberty — these are what colonisation and enclosure take from us when they steal our livelihoods.
As part of my work, I keep a close eye on the approaches to counter-disinformation that those whose relationship to power is smoother than my own take. Also, in this the year of our Lord 2025, it is mandatory to devote at least some portion of each public talk to AI.
I am also profoundly sorry to have to report that as far as I can tell, the only work on counter-disinformation still getting funding is work that claims to be able to use AI to detect and counter disinformation. It will not surprise you that I am extremely dubious about these claims.
AI has been created through what has been called “data colonialism”, in that it relies on stolen data, just as traditional forms of colonialism rely on stolen land.
Risks and dangers of AI AI itself — and I am speaking here specifically of generative AI — is being used as a tool of oppression. Other forms of AI have their own risks and dangers, but in this context, generative AI is quite simply a tool of power consolidation, of hollowing out of human skill and care, and of profanity, in the sense of being the opposite of sacred.
Words, art, conversation, companionship — these are fiercely human things. For a machine to mimic these things is to transgress against all of our communities — all the more so when the machine is being wielded by people who speak openly of genocide and white supremacy.
However, just as capitalism can be fought through community, colonialism can and has been fought through our own commitment to living our lives in freedom. It is fought by refusing their demands and denying their power, whether through the traditional tools of street protest and nonviolent resistance, or through simply walking away from the structures of violence and control that they have implemented.
In the current moment, that particularly includes the technological tools that are being used to destroy our communities and create the data being used to enact their oppression. Each of us is free to deny them access to our lives, our hopes, and dreams.
This version of colonisation has a unique weakness, in that the cyber dystopia they have created can be unplugged and turned off. And yet, we can still retain the parts of it that serve us well by building our own technological infrastructure and helping people use that instead of the kind owned and controlled by oligarchs.
By living our lives with the freedom we all possess as human beings, we can deny these systems the symbolic power they rely on to continue.
That said, this has limitations. This process of theft that underlies both traditional colonialism and contemporary data colonialism, rather than that of land or data, destroys our material base of support — ie. places to grow food, the education of our children, control over our intellectual property.
Power consolidated upwards The outcome is to create ever more dependence on systems outside of our control that serve to consolidate power upwards and create classes of disposable people through the logic of dehumanisation.
Disposable people have been a feature across many human societies. We see it in slaves, in cultures that use banishment and exile, and in places where imprisonment is used to enforce laws.
Right now we see it in the United States being directed at scale towards those from Central and Latin America and around the world. The men being sent to the El Salvadorian gulag, the toddlers sent to immigration court without a lawyer, the federal workers tossed from their jobs — these are disposable people to Trump.
The logic of colonialism relies on the process of dehumanisation; of denying the moral relevance of people’s identity and position within their communities and families. When they take a father from his family, they are dehumanising him and his family. They are denying the moral relevance of his role as a father and of his children and wife.
When they require a child to appear alone before an immigration judge, they are dehumanising her by denying her the right to be recognised as a child with moral claims on the adults around her. When they say they want to transition federal workers from unproductive government jobs to the private sector, they are denying those workers their life’s work and identity as labourers whose work supports the common good.
There was a time when I would point out that we all know where this leads, but we are there now. It has led there, although given the US incarceration rate for Black men, it isn’t unreasonable to argue that in fact for some people, the US has always been there. Fascism is not an aberration, it is a continuation. But the quickening is here. The expansion of dehumanisation and hate have escalated under Trump.
Dehumanisaton always starts with words and language. And Trump is genuinely — and terribly — gifted with language. His speeches are compelling, glittering, and persuasive to his audiences. With his words and gestures, he creates an alternate reality. When Trump says, “They’re eating the cats! They’re eating the dogs!”, he is using language to dehumanise Haitian immigrants.
An alternate reality for migrants When he calls immigrants “aliens” he is creating an alternate reality where migrants are no longer human, no longer part of our communities, but rather outside of them, not fully human.
When he tells lies and spews bullshit into our shared information system, those lies are virtually always aimed at creating a permission structure to deny some group of people their full humanity. Outrageous lie after outrageous lie told over and over again crumbles society in ways that we have seen over and over again throughout history.
In Europe, the claims that women were consorting with the devil led to the witch trials and the burning of thousands of women across central and northern Europe. In Myanmar, claims that Rohinga Muslims were commiting rape, led to mass slaughter.
Just as we fight the logics of capitalism with community and colonialism with a fierce commitment to our freedom, the power to resist dehumanisation is also ours. Through empathy and care — which is simply the material manifestation of empathy — we can defeat attempts to dehumanise.
Empathy and care are inherent to all functioning societies — and they are tools we all have available to us. By refusing to be drawn into their hateful premises, by putting morality and compassion first, we can draw attention to the ridiculousness of their ideas and help support those targeted.
Disinformation is the tool used to dehumanise. It always has been. During the COVID-19 pandemic when disinformation as a concept gained popularity over the rather older concept of propaganda, there was a real moment where there was a drive to focus on misinformation, or people who were genuinely wrong about usually public health facts. This is a way to talk about misinformation that elides the truth about it.
There is an empirical reality underlying the tsunami of COVID disinformation and it is that the information was spread intentionally by bad actors with the goal of destroying the social bonds that hold us all together. State actors, including the United States under the first Trump administration, spread lies about COVID intentionally for their own benefit and at the cost of thousands if not millions of lives.
Lies and disinformation at scale This tactic was not new then. Those seeking political power or to destroy communities for their own financial gain have always used lies and disinformation. But what is different this time, what has created unique risks, is the scale.
Networked disinformation — the power to spread bullshit and lies across the globe within seconds and within a context where traditional media and sources of both moral and factual authority have been systematically weakened over decades of neoliberal attack — has created a situation where disinformation has more power and those who wield it can do so with precision.
But just as we have the means to fight capitalism, colonialism, and dehumanisation, so too do we — you and I — have the tools to fight disinformation: truth, and accurate and timely reporting from trustworthy sources of information shared with the communities impacted in their own language and from their own people.
If words and images are the chosen tools of dehumanisation and disinformation, then we are lucky because they are fighting with swords that we forged and that we know how to wield. You, the media, are the front lines right now. Trump will take all of our money and all of our resources, but our work must continue.
Times like this call for fearlessness and courage. But more than that, they call on us to use all of the tools in our toolboxes — community, self-determination, care, and truth. Fighting disinformation isn’t something we can do in a vacuum. It isn’t something that we can depersonalise and mechanise. It requires us to work together to build a very human movement.
I can’t deny that Trump’s attacks have exhausted me and left me depressed. I’m a librarian by training. I love sharing stories with people, not telling them myself. I love building communities of learning and of sharing, not taking to the streets in protest.
More than anything else, I just want a nice cup of tea and a novel. But we are here in what I’ve seen others call “a coyote moment”. Like Wile E. Coyote, we are over the cliff with our legs spinning in the air.
We can use this time to focus on what really matters and figure out how we will keep going and keep working. We can look at the blue sky above us and revel in what beauty and joy we can.
Building community, exercising our self-determination, caring for each other, and telling the truth fearlessly and as though our very lives depend on it will leave us all the stronger and ready to fight Trump and his tidal wave of disinformation.
Mandy Henk, co-founder of Dark Times Academy, has been teaching and learning on the margins of the academy for her whole career. As an academic librarian, she has worked closely with academics, students, and university administrations for decades. She taught her own courses, led her own research work, and fought for a vision of the liberal arts that supports learning and teaching as the things that actually matter. This article was originally presented as an invited address at the annual general meeting of the Asia Pacific Media Network on 24 April 2025.
Activists for Palestine paid homage to Pope Francis in Aotearoa New Zealand today for his humility, care for marginalised in the world, and his courageous solidarity with the besieged people of Gaza at a street theatre rally just hours before his funeral in Rome.
He was remembered and thanked for his daily calls of concern to Gaza and his final public blessing last Sunday — the day before he died — calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinian enclave.
Several speakers thanked the late Pope for his humanitarian concerns and spiritual leadership at the vigil in Auckland’s “Palestinian Corner” in Te Komititanga Square, beside the Britomart transport hub, as other rallies were held across New Zealand over the weekend.
“Last November, Pope Francis said that what is happening in Gaza was not a war. It was cruelty,” said Catholic deacon Chris Sullivan. “Because Israel is always claiming it is a war. But it isn’t a war, it’s just cruelty.”
During the last 18 months of his life, Pope Francis had a daily ritual — he called Gaza’s only Catholic church to see how people were coping with the “cruel” onslaught.
Deacon Sullivan said the people of the church in Gaza “have been attacked by Israeli rockets, Israeli shells, and Israeli snipers, and a number of people have been killed as a result of that.”
In his Easter message before dying, Pope Francis said: “I appeal to the warring parties: call a ceasefire, release the hostages and come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace.”
‘We lost the best man’ Also speaking at today’s rally, Dr Abdallah Gouda said: “We lost the best man. He was talking about Palestine and he was working to stop this genocide.
“Pope Francis; as a Palestinian, as a Palestinian from Gaza, and as a Moslem, thank you Pope Francis. Thank you. And we will never, never forget you.
“As we will always talk about you, the man who called every night to talk to the Palestinians, and he asked, ‘what do you eat’. And he talked to leaders around the world to stop this genocide.”
Pope Francis called Gaza’s Catholic parish every night. Video: AJ+
In Rome, the coffin of Pope Francis made its way through the city from the Vatican after the funeral to reach Santa Maria Maggiore basilica for a private burial ceremony.
It arrived at the basilica after an imposing funeral ceremony at St Peter’s Square.
The Vatican said that more than 250,000 people attended the open-air service that was held under clear blue skies
Dozens of foreign dignitaries, including heads of state, were also in attendance.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re eulogised Pope Francis as a pontiff who knew how to communicate to the “least among us” and urged people to build bridges and not walls.
In Auckland at the “guerrilla theatre” event, several highly publicised examples of recent human rights violations and war crimes in Gaza were recreated in several skits with “actors” taking part from the crowd.
Palestinian Dr Faiez Idais role played the kidnapping of courageous Kamal Adwan Hospital medical director Dr Hussam Abu Safiya by the Israeli military last December and his detention and torture in captivity since.
Palestinian Dr Faiez Idais (hooded) during his role play for courageous Kamal Adwan Hospital medical director Dr Hussam Abu Safiya held prisoner by Israeli forces since December 2024. Image: APR
Khalil was seized by ICE agents from his university apartment without a warrant and abducted to a remote immigration prison in Louisiana but the courts have blocked his deportation in a high profile case.
He is one of at least 300 students who have been captured ICE agents for criticising Israel and its genocide.
A one-and-a-half-year-old child holds a “peace for all children” in Gaza placard at today’s rally. Image: APR
The skits included a condemnation of the US corporation Starbucks, the world’s leading coffee roaster and retailer, with mock blood being kicked over fake bodies on the plaza.
The backlash against the brand has caused heavy losses and 100 outlets in Malaysia have been forced to shut down.
Singers and musicians Hone Fowler, who was also MC, Brenda Liddiard and Mark Laurent — including their dedicated “Make Peace Today” inspired by Jesus’ “Blessed are the peacemakers” — also lifted the spirits of the crowd.
Protesters call for an end to the genocide in Palestine, both in Gaza and the West Bank. Image: APR
This Monday marks 80 years since Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was killed in an Italian village towards the end of the Second World War in 1945. The following day, his body was publicly desecrated in Milan.
Given the scale of Adolf Hitler’s atrocities, our image of fascism today has largely been shaped by Nazism. Yet, Mussolini preceded Hitler. Il Duce, as Mussolini was known, was Hitler’s inspiration.
Today, as commentators, bloggers and scholars are debating whether the governments of US President Donald Trump, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin are “fascist”, we can learn from Il Duce’s career about how democracies fail and dictators consolidate autocratic rule.
The early years
The term “fascist” itself originated around the time of Mussolini’s founding in 1914 of the Fasci d’Azione Rivoluzionaria, a militaristic group promoting Italy’s entry into the First World War.
Mussolini had been raised in a leftist family. Before WWI, he edited and wrote for socialist newspapers. Yet, from early on, the young rebel was also attracted to radically anti-democratic thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche, George Sorel, and Wilfred Pareto.
When WWI broke out, Mussolini broke from the socialists, who opposed Italy’s involvement in the conflict. Like Hitler, he fought in the war. Mussolini considered his front-line experience as formative for his future ideas around fascism. His war experience led him to imagine making Italy great again – an imperial power worthy of the heritage of ancient Rome.
In March 1919, Mussolini formed the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in Milan. This group brought together a motley collection of war veterans, primarily interested in fighting the socialists and communists. They were organised in squadristi (squads), which would become known for their black shirts and violence – they forced many of their targets to drink castor oil.
The political success of Mussolini’s fascist ideals, however, was neither instant nor inevitable. In the 1919 Italian elections, Mussolini received so few votes, communists held a mock funeral march outside his house to celebrate his political death.
The rise to power and the march on Rome
Fascism became a part of national political life in 1920-21, following waves of industrial and agricultural strikes and worker occupations of land and factories.
As a result, rural and industrial elites turned to the fascist squadristi to break strikes and combat workers’ organisations. Fascist squads also overturned the results of democratic elections in Bologna and Cremona, preventing left-wing candidates from assuming office.
The following October, fascists occupied the towns of Bolzano and Trento. The liberals, socialists and Italian monarchy were indecisive in the face of these provocations, allowing Mussolini to seize the moment. Mustering the fascist squads, he ordered the famous “march on Rome” in late October 2022 to demand he be appointed prime minister.
All the evidence suggests if the government had intervened, the march on Rome would have disbanded. It was a bold piece of political theatre. Nevertheless, fearing civil war — and the communists more than the black shirts — King Victor Emmanuel III caved in without a shot being fired.
Mussolini was made leader of a new government on October 31, 1922.
The consolidation of dictatorship
Like Hitler in 1933, Mussolini’s rule started as the head of a coalition government including non-fascist parties. Yet, with the repressive powers of the state now at his disposal, Mussolini exploited the division among his rivals and gradually consolidated power.
In 1923, the communist party was targeted with mass arrests and the fascist squads were brought under official state control as a paramilitary force. Mussolini began to use state powers to surveil all non-fascist political parties.
In the 1924 general election, with fascist militia menacingly manning the polls, Il Duce won 65% of the vote.
Then, in June, socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti was kidnapped and murdered by black shirts. When investigations pointed to Mussolini’s responsibility, he at first denied any knowledge of the killing. Months later, however, Mussolini proudly admitted responsibility for the deed, celebrating the fascists’ brutality. He faced no legal or political consequences.
The last nail in the coffin of Italy’s enfeebled democracy came in late 1926. Following an assassination attempt in which Mussolini’s nose was grazed (he wore a bandage for a time afterwards), Mussolini definitively banned all political opposition.
The “lesser evil”
Following his death in April 1945, Mussolini’s dictatorship was often portrayed as “dictatorship-lite”, a “lesser evil” compared to Nazism or Stalinist Russia. This narrative, bolstered by German crimes against Italians in the last months of the war, has understandably been embraced by many Italians.
Mussolini also pursued an imperialist dream by invading Ethiopia. Defying international conventions, Il Duce’s troops used chemical weapons and summary executions to quell acts of resistance. Over 700,000 Ethiopians are estimated by scholars to have been killed by the invaders, with around 35,000 forced into internment camps.
Italian Ca-111 bombers over Ethiopia in the 1930s. Getty Images/Wikimedia Commons
Mussolini’s fascists ran over 30 concentration camps from 1926–45, almost all of them offshore. Some 50–70,000 Libyans alone died in camps set up under Italy’s brutal colonial regime from 1929–34. Many more died through executions, starvation and ethnic cleansing.
Slovenian prisoner of the Italian Rab concentration camp. Archives, Museum of Modern History, Ljubljana/Wikimedia Commons
From late 1943, Italian fascists also participated in the rounding up of over 7,000 Italian Jews to transfer to Auschwitz. Almost all of them were murdered.
Following the war, even with Il Duce dead, few perpetrators faced justice for these atrocities.
Lessons for democracies after 80 years
The infamy of the crimes associated with the word “fascism” has meant that few people today claim the label – even those attracted to the same kinds of authoritarian, ethnonationalist politics.
Mussolini, even more than Hitler, can seem a bombastic fool, with his uniform, theatrical gestures, stylised hyper-masculinity and patented steely jaw.
Yet, one of the lessons of Mussolini’s career is that such political adventurists are only as strong as the democratic opposition allows. To fail to take them seriously is to enable their success.
Mussolini pushed his luck time and again between 1920 and 1926. As the wonderful recent teleseries of his ascent, Mussolini, Figlio del Seculo shows, time and again, the opposition failed to concertedly oppose the fascists’ attacks on democratic norms and institutions. Then it was too late.
Democracies mostly fall over time, by a thousand cuts and shifts of the goalposts of what is considered “normal”. Fascism, moreover, depends in no small measure on shameless political deception, including the readiness to conceal its own most radical intentions.
Fascist “strongmen” like Mussolini accumulate power thanks to people’s inabilities to believe that the barbarisation of political life – including open violence against opponents – could happen in their societies.
And there is a final, unsettling lesson of Mussolini’s career. Il Duce was a skilled propagandist who portrayed himself as leading a popular revolt to restore respectable values. He was able to win widespread popular support, including among the elites, even as he destroyed Italian democracy.
Yet, if the monarchy, military, other political parties and the church had attempted a principled, united opposition to fascism early enough, most of Mussolini’s crimes would likely have been avoided.
Matthew Sharpe has in the past (2013-17) received funding from the ARC to study religion and politics in the contemporary world.
The doors of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican have now been closed and the coffin sealed, ahead of preparations for tonight’s funeral of Pope Francis.
The Vatican says a quarter of a million people have paid respects to Pope Francis in the last three days.
Sister Susana Vaifale of the Missionaries of Faith has lived in Rome for more than 10 years and worked at the Vatican’s St Peter’s parish office.
She told RNZ Pacific Waves that when she met the Pope in 2022 for an “ad limina” (obligatory visit) with the bishops from Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, she was lost for words.
“When I was there in front of him, it’s like a blur, I couldn’t say anything,” she said.
Sister Vaifale said although she was speechless, she thought of her community back home in Samoa.
“In my heart, I brought everyone, I mean my country, my people and myself. So, in that time . . . I was just looking at him and I said, ‘my goodness’ I’m here, I’m in front of the Pope, Francis . . . the leader of the Catholic Church.”
At Easter celebration Sister Vaifale said she was at the Easter celebration in St Peter’s Square where Pope Francis made his last public appearance.
However, the next day it was announced that Pope Francis died.
The news shattered Sister Vaifale who was on a train when she heard what had happened.
“Oh, I cried, yeah I cried . . . until now I am very emotional, very sad.”
“He passed at 7:30 . . . I am very sad but like we say in Samoa: ‘maliu se toa ae toe tula’i mai se toa’.. so, it’s all in God’s hands.”
Pope Francis with Fatima Leung Wai in Krakow, Poland in 2016. Image: Fatima Leung Wai/RNZ Pacific
Siblings pay final respects The Leung-Wai family from South Auckland are in Rome and joined the long queue to pay their final respects to Pope Francis lying in state at St Peter’s Basilica.
Fatima Leung-Wai along with her siblings Martin and Ann-Margaret are proud of their Catholic faith and are active parishioners at St Peter Chanel church in Clover Park.
The family’s Easter trip to Rome was initially for the canonisation of Blessed Carlo Acutis — a young Italian boy who died at the age of 15 from leukemia and is touted to be the first millennial saint.
Leung Wai siblings in St Peter’s Basilica were among the thousands paying their final respects to Pope Francis. Image: Leung Wai family/RNZ Pacific
Plans changed as soon as they heard the news of the Pope’s death.
Leung-Wai said it took an hour and a half for her and her siblings to see the Pope in the basilica and the crowd numbers at St Peter’s Square got bigger each day.
Despite only seeing Pope Francis’ body for a moment, Leung-Wai said she was blessed to have met him in 2016 for World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland.
She said Pope Francis was well-engaged with the youth.
“I was blessed to have lunch with him nine years ago,” Leung-Wai said.
“Meeting him at that time he was like a grandpa, he was like very open and warm and very much interested in what the young people and what we had to say.”
Leung Wai siblings with their parents, mum Lesina, and dad Aniseko. Image: Leung Wai family/RNZ Pacific
Back in 1998, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan was widely acclaimed for the bloody realism of its opening scenes. In Warfare, co-directors Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland have achieved something very similar for the Iraq war (2003-2011).
This time, however, the assault on the senses lasts for almost the entire duration of the film – around 95 mins. The result is an unrelenting depiction of 21st-century battle which both invokes and disrupts the generic conventions of the combat film.
Warfare begins by staking a claim to authenticity. The opening credits tell us that it is based entirely on the memories of those who were there: the members of a US Navy Seal platoon involved in an operation in the immediate aftermath of the 2006 Battle of Ramadi.
In pre-release interviews, Mendoza – a Seal veteran and former member of the platoon – explained that Warfare was made as a purposeful attempt to provide a visual account of what happened for a comrade (Elliott Miller, played in the film by Cosmo Jarvis) who lost his memory after a horrific battlefield injury.
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.
It is by no means the only war film to find inspiration in the memories of veterans. From The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) to Lone Survivor (2013), traumatic first-hand experiences have long informed Hollywood’s depictions of war and its aftermath.
But in Warfare this framing has a very deliberate consequence. It telescopes the action so that questions of broader political context are necessarily sidelined in favour of the visceral experiences of those on the ground. The Seals are there because they are there – no other rationale for their mission is offered.
Towards the start, Warfare also follows some well-trodden ground when it pointedly lingers on the boredom before battle. This is reminiscent of another work of filmic war memoir, 2005’s Jarhead.
The Seals sweat and swear until, suddenly, chaos is catalysed. What follows is among the most intense depictions of combat ever seen on the big screen. Besieged by an ever-present, yet largely out-of-sight enemy, the embattled soldiers fight to protect one another, rescue their wounded and escape. As they do so, the fog of war descends.
This is where the film most clearly reveals its debt to the war film genre. Indeed, for all the originality of its screenplay Warfare actually invokes several familiar generic motifs of the combat film. The most obvious is the focus on a platoon, but two others also stand out.
The trailer for Warfare.
One concerns the film’s narrative centre: a band of isolated and outnumbered American warriors battling heroically against the odds. A popular motif in American culture since at least the 1836 Battle of the Alamo (during the Texas Revolution), it has been used and reused over the years in countless westerns and war films, perhaps most explicitly in 2016’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. In its underlying structure, the story told by Warfare is informed by this very same trope.
A second familiar motif is the film’s Shakespearean meditation on the brotherhood of battle. Like 2001’s HBO mini-series Band of Brothers (about a company of second world war paratroopers), this is a story of men at war. Blood is shed and unbreakable bonds are forged.
It is here though that Garland and Mendoza also disrupt. For where Henry V offers his “happy few” a validating cause, no such higher purpose reveals itself in Warfare.
In fact, these undoubtedly brave warriors are clearly unwelcome invaders. The fraught interactions with the frightened (and unnamed) Iraqi civilians whose home they have occupied makes this obvious, as do the persistent attempts by Iraqi insurgents to kill them.
Whatever happens, therefore, one thing is certain: these Seals, unlike their second world war predecessors, will not be greeted as liberators by flag-waving locals casting garlands of flowers.
This is where Warfare reveals that for all its telescoped focus it is not apolitical after all. Quite the contrary; the film is inescapably a product of its moment.
The fighting “out there”, says Warfare, offered no redeeming purpose and so for veterans all that is left are memories of the love and the loyalty between those who went into battle, together.
Seen like this, Warfare’s place in the genre also now becomes clear. This is a Band of Brothers for those who fought the war on terror. It’s a point made especially apparent in the closing credits which feature photos of the real Seal veterans next to those of the actors who played them (not unlike how each episode of Band of Brothers included veterans’ testimony).
Warfare’s structure, focus, and elisions speak volumes about the chasm in American culture – particularly in the eyes of veterans – that separates the “good war” of the 1940s from the far less popular conflicts of the early 21st century.
Sam Edwards has previously received funding from the ESRC, the US-UK Fulbright Commission, the US Army Military History Institute, and the US Naval War College. Sam is a Trustee of The D-Day Story (Portsmouth) and of Sulgrave Manor (Northamptonshire), he is a Governor of The American Library (Norwich), he is Co-Editor of the British Journal for Military History, and he is Vice-Chair of the Transatlantic Studies Association.
Politicians and economists have been pretty vocal in their response to the ongoing saga of Donald Trump’s tariffs. But much less has been heard from the world’s poorest workers about how they will be affected.
For when the US president first set out his reciprocal tariffs – later paused for 90 days – some of the highest rates were for countries like Vietnam (46%), Bangladesh (37%) and Cambodia (49%).
These are places that make huge amounts of the clothes we wear, and even the reduced 10% tariff could be a big blow to their economies – and the people who depend on them.
Because aside from the well known sweatshop conditions suffered by many workers in these places, brands and manufacturers often offset new costs by passing them on to workers in the form of lower wages and higher demands.
And those working conditions are already challenging. The minimum wage for one of Cambodia’s 1 million garment workers (from a total population of 16 million) is just US$208 (£155.50) per month.
Around 80% of those workers are women, whose wages often support children and elderly parents, who don’t have the security of a state pension safety net.
It is these workers and their families who may end losing the most in Trump’s trade war. But they are used to geopolitics affecting their everyday lives, having suffered the impact of tariffs fairly recently – from the EU.
In 2020, Cambodia’s duty-free, quota-free access to the EU market (usually granted to developing countries) was partially revoked as a punitive response to human rights concerns. Tariffs averaging 11% were added to some product lines, mostly clothing and footwear, which covered about 20% of Cambodia’s total exports to the EU.
The Cambodian government immediately responded by cutting public holidays and workplace benefits to try offset any increase in costs.
It has since slowed the rate of minimum wage growth to below inflation. Both actions slashed real wages and made the challenge of economic survival even harder for those who depend on the industry.
Now, as Trump’s latest tariffs take hold – even at the lower rate of 10% – many garment and footwear industry workers will fear for their jobs.
But even those “lucky” enough to keep them will face mounting pressures to produce more, and more quickly, to offset rising costs – at the direct expense of their own financial security and wellbeing.
The idea that tariffs will ultimately bring jobs back to the US ignores that fact that these jobs – precarious, underpaid and frequently dangerous – are not the kind of jobs that any American would want.
And the evidence suggests that if even if they did want them, international manufacturing supply chains are more deeply embedded than people might think.
After the EU imposed its tariffs on Cambodia for example, brands could have looked to circumvent those added costs by relocating production. As it turned out, the volume of trade between Cambodia and the EU has remained steady since – because sometimes there’s no alternative.
With Cambodia, companies have not been willing or able to shift production to competitors like Bangladesh, Myanmar or Sri Lanka, partly due to the political volatility in those countries.
Added to this is the fact that clothes production has become highly specialised geographically. Cambodia’s distance from the EU means it focuses mainly on seasonal fashion “basics” such as T-shirts and knitwear.
Closer countries like Turkey and Morocco concentrate on the latest fast fashion trends, as their shorter shipping routes mean they can be quicker to respond to changing tastes.
It is not that easy to unsettle the systems and markets that are already in place.
As a result, in the global garment industry at least, Trump’s tariffs may not trigger a complete restructuring of the world’s supply chains. In the short term, they are instead likely to cause great uncertainty, reducing investors’ appetite for long-term planning, and reducing their confidence.
Orders may slow and prices may rise. And Cambodians making the world’s T-shirts and trainers will face even more pressure on their wages and working conditions.
Sabina Lawreniuk receives funding from UKRI through a Future Leaders Fellowship (grant ref MR/ W013797/1).
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Eva Marquis, Research Fellow in Critical Minerals and Circular Economy, University of Exeter
On February 18, contamination in the Kafue river, Zambia, led to a mass death of fish. Its water turned a deathly grey and adjacent farmland was poisoned. The drinking water it supplied to half a million residents of the town of Kitwe was suddenly cut off.
Reports suggest that this catastrophe was caused by the failure of the Chambishi tailings storage facility. Tailings are mixed liquid-solid mine wastes that remain after the valuable materials are removed from the crushed ores.
But tailings storage facilities can and do fail. The Chambishi failure was caused by a break in a wall between two tailings ponds containing acidic water. Fifty million litres of this water, equivalent to 20,000 Olympic swimming pools, spilled into a tributary of the Kafue river, and then into the river itself.
The Kafue is a lifeline, flowing through 990 miles (1,600km) of Zambia, providing water for around 5 million people and supporting fishing and agriculture. That lifeline is still threatened by the ongoing damage of this failure.
Tailings are a produce of society’s voracious appetite for metals and materials. With growing demand for technologies for the energy transition, digitalisation and development, production of metals and materials and the volumes of tailings are set to vastly increase.
Identifying suitable sites for safe storage is likely to become more challenging. Space will become more of a premium as more tailings are produced, and risks will evolve with changing climate and growing global population. For instance, storage facility plans developed before mining begins may no longer be suitable for their intended use over the life of the operation.
The ability to safely store and manage tailings is a key factor in the development of metals projects. By extension, that’s fundamental to enabling an equitable and responsible energy transition.
A broad range of technical, social and environmental uncertainties have been linked to the management of tailings storage facilities. These uncertainties, combined with financial practices such as discounting future costs, can result in future costs (such as long-term tailings management and rehabilitation) being underestimated in mining project cash flows, and sizeable costs for future generations.
Without a fully understanding of the true long-term costs, making the economic case for improved tailings management becomes that much harder.
Reducing risks and improving outcomes
Improved mechanisms for quantifying the cost of tailings in the short, medium and long term, whether tailings storage facilities fail or not, are essential for adequately financing these long-term legacies of mining. Mechanisms to reduce volumes of waste produced not only have the potential to improve project economics over the lifetime of a mine but can also enhance social and environmental outcomes both during and beyond the life of a mine.
Tailings can be used as sources of aggregate materials for construction and critical metals for the green transition, and for carbon capture and storage. These opportunities will be context specific, however, and there will not be a one-size-fits-all approach to tailings reduction and responsible management.
Innovations in tailings storage, like using tailings to fill worked-out underground mining tunnels, can remove tailings from the surface environment, eliminating risk from landslides, dust, seepages and other hazards. Even with these efforts, tailings storage facilities will continue to be used and will need to be managed.
Reducing, reclaiming and regenerating the environments that have been negatively affected by tailings will require collaborative approaches. Financing is a clear barrier to responsible tailings management. Without knowing the true social, environmental and economic costs of tailings legacies, the ability to overcome this barrier to responsible management is hampered.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Eva Marquis receives funding from EPSRC, NERC, and Innovate UK.
Karen Hudson-Edwards receives funding from NERC, BBSRC, EPSRC, the Technology Strategy Board (Innovate UK), the Royal Society and the EU Horizon 2020 programme.
However, when asked in the same survey what proportion of others in their country would be willing to do the same, the average estimate was only 43%. This underestimation of others’ concern is known as pluralistic ignorance.
This fuels a vicious cycle: silence begets silence. People hesitate to advocate for policies like cycle lanes or meat taxes, fearing social isolation, while politicians avoid championing measures seen as “career-limiting”. The result is a democracy trapped by unspoken consensus.
Research on UK MPs reveals how this plays out. Even climate-conscious politicians frame low-carbon lifestyles such as avoiding flying or eating meat as extreme, wary of hypocrisy accusations if their personal choices fall short. This “greenhushing” isn’t just political caution – it’s a failure to recognise that most people are primed to follow bold examples.
When leaders visibly adopt low-carbon behaviour, they can help address pluralistic ignorance. For instance, MPs who cycle or opt for the train instead of taking short-haul flights don’t just reduce emissions; they signal that such choices are normal, desirable, and shared.
The invisible transition
While individual actions matter, systemic change requires policies to steer collective transformation. Consider the UK’s early phase-out of inefficient lightbulbs: a 1.26 million tonne annual CO₂ reduction achieved not through personal sacrifice, but by banning the sale of halogen bulbs that emitted more heat than light.
Progress on lightbulbs, renewable electricity or more efficient fridges are all part of an “invisible transition” towards a lower-carbon society – a series of changes already woven into our economy that often go unnoticed by the public. Reframing these achievements as collective victories – your home insulation, our renewable grid – can build momentum for tougher measures.
For decades, fridges got bigger yet became more efficient and used less electricity. Prostock-studio / shutterstock
Building on progress
Public willingness to make sacrifices for climate action is closely tied to perceptions of fairness and necessity. Crucially, people want to see that their own efforts are being matched by others, especially those with larger carbon footprints. This is why leaders and other high-profile people should visibly lead by example, demonstrating commitment and helping to establish new social norms.
Research shows that public support for subsidies for heat pumps, solar panels, electric vehicles and other low-carbon technologies often depends on whether these subsidies are perceived as fair and inclusive.
Most agree that subsidies must help ensure that all households, especially those with lower incomes, can be involved. This makes it especially important for wealthy and high profile people to lead by example.
Coalitions of the visible: uniting everyday leaders
Leaders who take low-carbon actions are seen as more credible, not less. The most effective leadership frames climate action as pragmatic and rooted in everyday life, rather than as a test of virtue.
Research by the NGO Climate Outreach demonstrates that shared, relatable stories – such as parents campaigning for solar panels at their children’s schools – can shift social norms and build momentum for collective action. These “narrative workshops” have shown that people respond most strongly when climate solutions are presented through the lens of their own values and aspirations, rather than as abstract technical fixes.
The Green Salon Collective’s Mirror Talkers initiative is another creative example: by placing climate conversation prompts on salon mirrors, hairdressers are empowered to spark everyday discussions with clients. This kind of grassroots engagement helps normalise climate conversations in places you wouldn’t expect.
Overcoming pluralistic ignorance requires leaders to articulate a new story – one that acknowledges the “invisible transition” already underway while inviting everyone to help finish the job.
This means equipping leaders at every level with the tools and confidence to adopt and advocate for low-carbon choices. It also means normalising the reality that climate leadership is not about perfection, but about consistency and transparency.
Figures like Clover Hogan, founder of Force of Nature, and Christiana Figueres, former UN climate chief, openly share their own “climate confessions” – acknowledging the challenges, contradictions and imperfect choices that come with striving for a low-carbon life. By embracing and communicating their imperfections, they demonstrate that visible, relatable climate leadership is about honesty and persistence, helping to shift expectations and inspire others to take action in their own lives.
Authentic climate leadership can transform public understanding of climate solutions. By illuminating the transition already in progress – and their own part in it – leaders can transform pluralistic ignorance into pluralistic action.
The task is not to convince people to care about climate change, but to show them that they already do, and to make visible the collective progress that is often hidden in plain sight.
Sam Hampton receives funding from the Economics and Social Research Council. He is affiliated with the University of Oxford and University of Bath.
Tina Fawcett currently receives funding from UKRI.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the first Moomin tale, The Moomins and the Great Flood. In the book, Moomintroll and his friends embark on a journey to find their home after a great flood devastates Moominvalley, meeting odd creatures and new friends along their journey.
The book was first published in creator Tove Jansson’s native Swedish in 1945. However, the first Moomin book to have an English edition was in fact the third of the Moomin books, Trollkarlens Hatt (The Hobgoblin’s Hat). It was translated by Jansson’s friend Elizabeth Portch and reached its widest English-speaking audience when it was published by Puffin Books in 1961 as Finn Family Moomintroll.
At the beginning of the story Moomintroll finds a magical top hat. It can transform anything that is placed inside of it into something else entirely – and so the adventures begin.
This is part of a series of articles celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Moomins. Want to celebrate their birthday with us? Join The Conversation and a group of experts on May 23 in Bradford for a screening of Moomins on the Riviera and a discussion of the refugee experience in Tove Jansson’s work. Click here for more information and tickets.
Unlike the Swedish-language edition, Portch’s translation of Finn Family Moomintroll begins with a letter from Moominmamma. It’s written in a curly cursive and dotted with love-hearts and an image of an apparently “hand-drawn” troll. The letter is addressed to a “dear child” who is “overseas”.
In it, Moominmamma expresses disbelief at the idea that there may not be any Moomins “there over” and that the child she is addressing may “not even know what a troll is” (hence the illustration).
Moominmamma’s wonder at the differences in custom between her own land and “your country” is based on an assumption that the two must be somewhat alike. Similarly, her explanation of what Moomintrolls are depends on their difference from the “usual common trolls”, which means there must be familial similarity between them.
The Moomins and the Great Flood was Jansson’s first Moomins book.
Both Moominmamma’s wonder at and explanation of difference assume an underlying essential similarity or sameness between Moominvalley, where she lives, and the reader’s home. This is significant in a story that explores ideas of foreignness and translation, change and transformation.
Though the adventures in Finn Family Moomintroll might be said to only truly begin on the spring morning when Moomintroll, Sniff and Snufkin find “a tall black hat”, the book opens with the Moomins settling down for their winter hibernation and closes with the valley in autumn.
The changes wrought by the Hobgoblin’s hat are “quite different” because “you never know beforehand” what they will be. However, their extreme nature is framed and contained by a world in which there are known and predictable changes in the seasons, as well as routine – though sometimes dramatic – changes in the weather.
The Hemulen is unperturbed by the hat’s transformation of eggshells into fluffy little clouds that Moomintroll and his friends are able to ride. That’s because he is “so used to [them] doing extraordinary things”. But when Moomintroll is transformed by the hat into “a very strange animal indeed”, so much so that his friends do not recognise him, it’s a very different matter.
A moment of real jeopardy occurs when Moomintroll’s own mother does not seem to recognise him either. But this is soon dispelled when Moominmamma looks “into his frightened eyes for a very long time” and quietly declares: “Yes, you are my Moomintroll.”
This moment of recognition breaks the spell and Moomintroll changes back into “his old self again”. One of the crucial features of the hat is the changes it makes are only temporary and this, together with Moominmamma’s reassurance that she will “always know [Moomintroll], whatever happens”, suggests an ultimately unchanging essence to things that cannot be denied.
Changelessness as deadening
On the other hand, the book suggests that some change is to be embraced.
Sniff’s desire for things to stay the same “for ever and ever” is portrayed as immature and wrong-headed. As is the Muskrat’s obsessive quest for peace and stillness which ends up with his apparent, though temporary, transformation into a monster.
Snufkin’s point that “life is not peaceful” offers a gentle rebuke to the Hemulen, who also wishes to “live his life in peace and quiet”. But perhaps the clearest indication of the book’s attitude to changelessness is the monstrous Groke. She is motivated by an unwavering drive to recover the “King’s Ruby”, not because this thing which “changes colour all the time” is “the most beautiful thing in the world”, but because it is “the most expensive”.
The Groke’s inability to appreciate the ruby aesthetically is presented as being rooted in her own immutability. That the Groke’s hostility to change is itself deadening, becomes evident when she sits “motionless” before the Moomins and their friends, staring at them in a way that makes them feel “she would wait for ever” and eventually departs leaving the ground behind her frozen in the wrong season.
This, then, is key. Adventure, transformation and change in Finn Family Moomintroll are both necessary and desirable, but they are also contained within a reassuring frame of reliable predictability. The final lines of the English translation are: “It is autumn in Moomin Valley, for how else can spring come back again?”
Sue Walsh 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.
If you’ve been unfortunate enough to scroll through TikTok lately, the algorithm may have convinced you that cortisol, your body’s main stress hormone, is ruining your life.
Yes, according to social media content creators, stress is giving you a repulsive “cortisol belly” and puffing up your sad “cortisol face.” And, of course, this is what’s holding us all back from achieving the full influencer, ideal dream life. If it weren’t for my raging cortisol levels, I’m sure I’d be knee-deep in Lamborghinis and beating off admirers with a stick by now.
But is there any scientific evidence behind the cortisol craze? After all, this is just the latest in a long line of reasons social media has given us to believe we are inferior to the living gods of TikTok. Or maybe, just maybe, this is another grift designed to harvest likes, sell dodgy merch and drive engagement. Surely not.
Cortisol is a natural hormone produced by your adrenal glands, located just above your kidneys. For millennia, humans have relied on cortisol – in fact, we can’t survive without it. Most of the time, it helps regulate our daily rhythms and behaviour.
And yes, it’s true that stress (whether caused by an approaching sabre toothed tiger or having a high-pressure job) rapidly and reliably triggers cortisol release. But this isn’t bad. Cortisol isn’t trying to ruin your summer body, it’s trying to keep you alive and give you the energy to run or fight.
So yes, cortisol has its downsides – but then again, so does everything in excess. Even TikTok.
Research shows that people with sustained high cortisol levels tend to store more fat in the abdominal area and around the face. This was first described nearly a century ago – in 1932, by neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing (don’t bother looking him up, he’s not on socials).
But this applies to Cushing’s disease, a rare medical disorder. The cortisol released from everyday stress doesn’t even come close to the levels or duration seen in Cushing’s.
Also, let’s not pretend your face or belly fat is solely cortisol’s fault. Fat distribution is the result of a complex mix of genetics, diet, sleep, exercise and hormones. Blaming one hormone for everything is like blaming the rise of air fryers for global warming.
Chill out about cortisol
If you’re genuinely concerned about stress or its effects on your health, I have good news: you don’t need to buy anything or follow the “cortisol detox” advice of social media influencers.
Here are some stress-reducing tips. They are simple. They are boring. And they work:
“Cortisol belly” and “cortisol face” might sound catchy, but they reduce incredibly complex biological processes into bite-sized insecurities. Social media’s obsession with cortisol isn’t about health, it’s about content and clicks.
Stress is real, but don’t let a billionaire influencer who wakes up at 3:53am to mainline turmeric tell you your face is “hormonal” and your stomach is “inflamed”.
You don’t need to fix yourself with trendy hacks. Just put the phone down and chill. Which, ironically, might be the most effective cortisol-lowering advice of all.
Craig Doig has received funding from The Physiological Society, Society for Endocrinology and the Defence Medical Services.
India has taken the highly significant step of suspending the 1960 Indus waters treaty, which governs water sharing with Pakistan, as part of its response to the April 22 terrorist attack in Kashmir that killed at least 26 people.
India’s foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, said that “the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 will be held in abeyance with immediate effect, until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism”.
India holds Pakistan responsible for the attack, and has responded by putting in place several other measures including telling Pakistani nationals to leave the country.
The attack happened in Pahalgam in the part of Kashmir controlled by India. Both India and Pakistan claim the region, which has been the site of several military conflicts since 1947 and a long-running insurgency since the 1990s.
The thorny question of shared rivers — a legacy of the partition of India and Pakistan at independence from British rule in 1947 — is now entangled with the larger, and escalating, dispute between the counties.
A formal letter from India’s water resources ministry cited both “sustained cross border terrorism by Pakistan” and Pakistan’s refusal to renegotiate the terms of the treaty as key reasons for its suspension.
The treaty suspension could harm Pakistani agriculture in the short term, and seriously disrupt downstream irrigation water supplies to farmers. Significantly, the decision abruptly changes the treaty’s status from an agreement that has been largely (if not fully) insulated from the decades-long conflict between India and Pakistan.
The 1960 treaty splits the management of the transnational Indus River basin between the two countries. India gained full rights over the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, three tributaries of the Indus River known collectively as the eastern rivers. Pakistan gained most of the rights over three western rivers – the Indus main stem and two more tributaries, the Jhelum and Chenab.
More recently, growing disagreement has stemmed from India’s right to build some hydropower plants on the western rivers. Pakistan has objected to Indian project designs, arguing that they breach the terms of the treaty. India has accused Pakistan of intransigence in blocking its projects.
Since 2023, when India demanded amendments to the treaty, the two countries have held inconclusive talks. The suspension of the treaty is a new move, but also a logical development of increasing bilateral tensions over the treaty, which was kept separate from security issues for decades.
Indian politicians threatened to reduce water supplies to Pakistan in response to terrorist attacks in 2016 and 2019. The threat to punish Pakistan is likely to play well in India while public shock and anger over the attack is fresh. It also distracts attention from questions about possible Indian intelligence failures.
But previous threats stopped short of putting the Indus waters treaty into abeyance, so the suspension now needs to be taken seriously.
The impact will vary depending on how long it lasts. With the treaty suspended, India could change the way it operates existing water-control infrastructure on the western rivers.
Its engineers could flush sediment out of the reservoir of the upstream Kishenganga hydroelectric project and then refill the reservoir over a period of days. Previously, under the treaty, this could only be done during the peak monsoon period when water levels are highest.
It could now happen earlier, refilling reservoirs just when downstream farmers in Pakistan, who depend heavily on river water for irrigation, need a plentiful supply at the beginning of the crop-sowing season. India could also stop sharing water-flow data with Pakistan, making it harder for the latter to plan the management of its own hydropower and flood-control infrastructure.
Longer term, India could construct bigger projects on the western rivers that do not need to comply with the Indus waters treaty’s restrictions, more seriously reducing water availability in Pakistan. It would take years, though, for India to build these projects.
What does India hope to gain?
India stands to gain from using the treaty as leverage. The demand that Pakistan “abjure its support for cross-border terrorism” holds the resumption of water cooperation hostage to progress on a wider point of bilateral conflict, and strengthens India’s hand in renegotiating the treaty.
Internationally, treaty suspension may seem a comparatively measured response by India. Other forms of signalling displeasure, such as nuclear posturing, are too reputationally risky for a country that has worked hard to project itself as a responsible nuclear-armed state.
But Indian leaders will be aware that stopping the flow of the Indus waters is a potential red line for Pakistan and that Indian decisions about water sharing could goad Pakistan into nuclear threats.
India’s decision to suspend the water treaty has already predictably pushed Pakistan to make a subtle nuclear threat on April 24. It suggested that blocking or diverting water allocated to Pakistan under the treaty would be an “act of war,” and that it would consider the “complete spectrum of national power” as a response.
An escalation of rhetoric has already ensued between the two countries, with Pakistan announcing that it would “exercise the right to hold all bilateral agreements with India… in abeyance”, including the Simla agreement that ended the 1971 war between India and Pakistan.
Fears of escalation
There are fears that the current crisis could follow the path of the dangerous escalation seen in 2019, when Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, authorised an airstrike on Pakistani soil following a terror attack that killed dozens of Indian security personnel. Pakistan responded with airstrikes on Indian-administered Kashmir before both sides found a way to deescalate the situation.
Today, the US, a traditional mediator between these two nations at crisis moments, may play a hands-off role. However, new facilitators such as China, Saudi Arabia and the UAE seemingly played a part in winding down tensions in 2019, and could step in again.
On concluding the Indus waters negotiations in 1960, then Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, spoke of the treaty as “a happy symbol not only in this domain of the use of the Indus valley waters, but in the larger co-operation between the two countries”. The logic is now reversed. The current Indian government has woven water sharing and conflict back together.
Daniel Haines has received funding from United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) for his work on South Asian history and water politics via a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship and an AHRC-ESRC-FCO Knowledge Exchange Fellowship.
Kate Sullivan de Estrada 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.
The Jordanian authorities have banned the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition movement in the kingdom, in a major new crackdown. On Wednesday April 23, security forces raided Brotherhood offices, confiscating assets and property, and outlawed all of the group’s activities.
One week earlier, 16 Brotherhood members were arrested for allegedly plotting attacks on targets inside Jordan using rockets and drones. The Brotherhood, whose members Jordanian interior minister Mazen al-Faraya says “operate in the shadows and engage in activities that could undermine stability and security”, has denied any links to the attack plots.
The ban on the Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that wants a greater role for religion in public life, comes at a time when the Jordanian government is facing intense pressure over the war in Gaza.
The Brotherhood organised months of demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinians. It has also been vocal in its support for the Palestinian armed group Hamas, and has demanded the cancellation of Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel.
At the same time, Jordan’s King Abdullah II has come under heavy pressure from the Donald Trump administration in the US to resettle Palestinians from the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank. If he were to agree, the move would risk being seen as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause.
The Jordanian authorities have had an uneasy relationship with the Brotherhood since the late 1980s, when the kingdom’s political system opened up. They have looked to curb its influence.
In 2016, the Brotherhood’s headquarters in the capital, Amman, was closed and its assets were transferred to a new organisation called the Association of the Society of the Muslim Brotherhood, known as the “permitted” Muslim Brotherhood. As ideological splits emerged in the movement, the authorities have tried to exploit internal divisions.
The latest crackdown represents a striking repressive turn. It marks a shift away from containing the movement to excluding it from public life.
Yet the Brotherhood remains popular. In September 2024, the Islamic Action Front, the political party affiliated with the movement, surprised observers by winning parliamentary elections. It took 31 seats in the 138-seat parliament, securing victory in constituencies across the country in its best election performance in more than three decades.
Its success was largely down to the Brotherhood’s demonstrations in support of Palestinians. These demonstrations resonated in Jordan, where around half the population is of Palestinian origin. The party also benefited from changes in the electoral laws prior to the election, which gave more weight to political parties and less to independent candidates.
But under Jordan’s authoritarian system, the king holds most of the power, especially in internal security and foreign affairs. The palace tightly controls political life. So the Islamic Action Front was not invited to join the new government, which is made up of pro-monarchy parties.
The key question now is whether the authorities will also ban the Islamic Action Front, despite its electoral gains.
Conflict with the crown
Even before the latest crackdown, Islamists in Jordan feared a confrontation with the authorities. Many suspected the palace wanted to close the Brotherhood movement and leave a weakened party that might be more easily contained.
During a visit to Jordan shortly after the elections in September, one senior Islamic Action Front figure told me: “They [the monarchy] just want a party in a superficial form. A party without any presence.”
Although the Brotherhood had been under pressure, it was still able to operate most of its activities. Senior party members even took part in a royal committee on “political modernisation” in 2021, which drew up reforms to change the electoral laws to strengthen political parties.
Yet many in the Brotherhood feared a confrontation with the palace was coming. One senior Brotherhood figure told me in October 2024: “The Brotherhood is a vast, widespread organisation with a social and a political presence. A clash between the state and the Brotherhood would have negative effects on society and on the legitimacy of the political system.”
Jordan’s Brotherhood is not alone in facing a crisis. Other Islamist organisations across the region are experiencing political setbacks, more than a decade after the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings seemed to offer them new opportunities.
In Tunisia, where a democratic transition has been sharply reversed since 2021, dozens of leaders from the Islamist Ennahda party have been jailed.
The arrests were part of a broad wave of repression against regime critics, including politicians, judges, lawyers and human rights activists. Ennahda, which spent a decade in government between 2011 and 2021, has suffered internal splits.
In Morocco, the Justice and Development party, an Islamist party which also spent a decade in government from 2011, suffered a heavy defeat in the most recent elections in 2021.
The party’s losses were partly a result of restrictions at the time of the vote. These included new rules about how seats were apportioned and the fact that some party candidates were disqualified from running.
But the losses were also because of internal disputes after Prime Minister Saadeddine Othmani signed a normalisation agreement with Israel in 2020 to avoid a confrontation with the monarchy, which controls foreign affairs.
In Kuwait, parliament was suspended in 2024 because the ruling emir, Sheikh Meshal al-Ahmad al-Sabah, complained about political gridlock. This kept all opposition parties, including Islamists, out of the political process. And in Algeria, Islamist parties have been co-opted or marginalised since the bitter civil war of the 1990s.
Opinion polls show that many people in the Middle East want to see a significant role for religion in public life. But rulers across the region are increasingly wary of Islamist parties, which want not only to introduce a more conservative social agenda but to challenge undemocratic regimes.
Rory McCarthy receives funding for his academic research from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dafydd Townley, Teaching Fellow in US politics and international security, University of Portsmouth
Throughout the 2024 presidential election campaign, Donald Trump denied claims he intended to shape his second administration’s policies around Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a renewed conservative America. But despite his repeated denials, Trump 2.0 has adopted much of Project 2025 into the White House’s agenda.
The Heritage Foundation, the right-wing Washington think tank which published Project 2025, has provided policy guidance for Republican presidents since the Reagan administration. Despite the foundation’s longevity, Project 2025 has met with opposition from many quarters.
The 900-page publication, Mandate for Leadership: the Conservative Promise, was published in 2023. It went largely under the radar until Democrats and civil liberty champions established Stop Project 2025 during the presidential campaign. Essentially, Project 2025 consists of policy recommendations for each department of the executive branch.
The project has several broad objectives. It aims to reassert presidential power by removing federal agencies’ independence and appointing political loyalists rather than career civil servants. It sets out to dismantle the administrative state by cancelling initiatives and projects that do not match conservative aims.
It reinforces traditional conservative family values and rolls back on LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights. It removes regulatory constraints aligned with climate and environmental protections and weakens consumer protection laws. And it calls for increased deportations of illegal aliens and the imposition of harsh immigration restrictions.
Even before he had taken office, Trump and his team sought to replace career-long specialists in federal agencies with those that matched his own beliefs. His transition team used Project 2025 to guide its appointment of officials for the forthcoming administration. Reports quoting insiders within Trump’s team say that the team consulted a database of Trump loyalists created by the Heritage Foundation to fill vacancies.
Contributors to Project 2025 were also appointed to key roles. These have included including border tsar, Tom Homan, and CIA director John Ratcliffe. Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Committee, wrote a chapter of Project 2025 on the committee.
The principal author of Project 2025, Russ Vought, has been appointed as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) – the nerve centre of the federal government’s expenditure. Vought’s influence within the administration has led one journalist to call him “the real mastermind behind Trump’s imperial presidency”.
How is Donald Trump’s presidency shaping up after 100 days? Here’s what the experts think. If you like what you see, sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter.
The alignment of Trump’s policy decisions and Project 2025’s objectives continued after he was inaugurated on January 20. The raft of executive orders issued by Trump during the first few weeks reflected many of Project 2025’s ambitions.
CNN analysed the 53 executive orders signed by Trump in his first week as president and concluded that 36 of those orders mirrored proposals within the Heritage Foundation’s brief. The alignment spread across numerous departments.
Trump’s controversial reciprocal tariffs on US imported goods match Project 2025’s desire for free trade and its belief that the World Trade Organization’s most favoured nation principle is unfair. Although both Trump tariffs and Project 2025 have a foundation in economic nationalism, Trump has favoured a broad and aggressive approach compared to Project 2025’s more targeted aims.
The savings to federal expenditure proposed by Doge, the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk, are also broadly covered within the paper. A theme running throughout Project 2025 is ensuring value for taxpayers by reducing unnecessary government expenditure.
But while a large amount of Project 2025 has already been incorporated into the administration’s policies, there is still a significant number of recommendations and initiatives that remain to be implemented.
What’s still to come?
While Trump has already ended the use of federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion through Executive Order 14182, Project 2025 calls for stronger initiatives to support a pro-life position by threatening to withhold funding to states if they fail to adhere to new guidelines. These penalties could be incurred through states failing to report to the Center for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC) data on how many abortions take place within the state, for example.
The administration has also not yet matched Project 2025’s calls for increasing the defence budget to 5% of GDP. Earlier this month, however, Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, promised that their next budget proposal would include a $1 trillion defence budget. Hegseth posted on X that the money would be spent on ‘lethality and readiness.’
Trump’s recent criticisms of the refusal by Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, to lower interest rates might suggest that he agrees with Project 2025’s criticism of the Federal Reserve and its recommendation that it be abolished. But the market’s negative reaction to Trump’s attack on Powell looks likely to end any prospect of eradicating the Fed.
Perhaps a greater concern to Americans is Project 2025’s designs for social security. As part of the focus on fiscal stability, the authors of Project 2025 have recommended that the retirement age be increased from 67 to 69. Social security reforms have been discussed by the administration but yet to be put into place.
When questioned, Republican legislators have stopped short of telling constituents that Social Security is safe from change. After all, Trump maintained that he has no plans to either reduce social security payments or increase the retirement age.
However, just this week, Trump and Doge have announced cuts to the Social Security Administration (SSA), the body that administers payments. This has led to concerns for the former SSA director, Martin O’Malley, who suggested that the cuts would mean that future payments of vital benefits might be delayed.
Where the administration turns next is unclear. There are hundreds of policy recommendations within the 900-page document, some of which have been implemented in full, others only in part.
Nonetheless, Project 2025 has acted as a blueprint for much of the new Trump administration’s policies, even though the White House has shown some reluctance to incorporate all of the recommendations within the project.
There are signs, however, that the administration has not yet finished with Project 2025 and that the conservative wishlist continues to influence the administration’s policymaking decisions.
Dafydd Townley 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.
