NewzIntel.com

Category: Global

  • MIL-Evening Report: The graver Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, the quieter the BBC grows

    ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

    The BBC’s news verification service, Verify, digitally reconstructed a residential tower block in Mandalay earlier this week to show how it had collapsed in a huge earthquake on March 28 in Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia largely cut off from the outside world.

    The broadcaster painstakingly pieced together damage to other parts of the city using a combination of phone videos, satellite imagery and Nasa heat detection images.

    Verify dedicated much time and effort to this task for a simple reason: to expose as patently false the claims made by the ruling military junta that only 2000 people were killed by Myanmar’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake.

    The West sees the country’s generals as an official enemy, and the BBC wanted to show that the junta’s account of events could not be trusted. Myanmar’s rulers have an interest in undercounting the dead to protect the regime’s image.

    The BBC’s determined effort to strip away these lies contrasted strongly with its coverage — or rather, lack of it — of another important story this week.

    Israel has been caught in another horrifying war crime. Late last month, it executed 15 Palestinian first responders and then secretly buried them in a mass grave, along with their crushed vehicles.

    Israel is an official western ally, one that the United States, Britain and the rest of Europe have been arming and assisting in a spate of crimes against humanity being investigated by the world’s highest court. Fourteen months ago, the International Court of Justice ruled it was “plausible” that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, is a fugitive from its sister court, the International Criminal Court. Judges there want to try him for crimes against humanity, including starving the 2.3 million people of Gaza by withholding food, water and aid.

    Israel is known to have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them women and children, in its 18-month carpet bombing of the enclave. But there are likely to be far more deaths that have gone unreported.

    This is because Israel has destroyed all of Gaza’s health and administrative bodies that could do the counting, and because it has created unmarked “kill zones” across much of the enclave, making it all but impossible for first responders to reach swathes of territory to locate the dead.

    The latest crime scene in Gaza is shockingly illustrative of how Israel murders civilians, targets medics and covers up its crimes — and of how Western media collude in downplaying such atrocities, helping Israel to ensure that the extent of the death toll in Gaza will never be properly known.

    Struck ‘one by one’
     Last Sunday, United Nations officials were finally allowed by Israel to reach the site in southern Gaza where the Palestinian emergency crews had gone missing a week earlier, on March 23. The bodies of 15 Palestinians were unearthed in a mass grave; another is still missing.

    All were wearing their uniforms, and some had their hands or legs zip-tied, according to eyewitnesses. Some had been shot in the head or chest. Their vehicles had been crushed before they were buried.

    Two of the emergency workers were killed by Israeli fire while trying to aid people injured in an earlier air strike on Rafah. The other 13 were part of a convoy sent to retrieve the bodies of their colleagues, with the UN saying Israel had struck their ambulances “one by one”.

    Even the usual excuses, as preposterous as they are, simply won’t wash in the case of Israel’s latest atrocity — which is why it initially tried to black out the story

    More details emerged during the week, with the doctor who examined five of the bodies reporting that all but one — which had been too badly mutilated by feral animals to assess — were shot from close range with multiple bullets. Ahmad Dhaher, a forensic consultant working at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, said: “The bullets were aimed at one person’s head, another at their heart, and a third person had been shot with six or seven bullets in the torso.”

    Bashar Murad, the Red Crescent’s director of health programmes, observed that one of the paramedics in the convoy was in contact with the ambulance station when Israeli forces started shooting: “During the call, we heard the sound of Israeli soldiers arriving at the location, speaking in Hebrew.

    “The conversation was about gathering the [Palestinian] team, with statements like: ‘Gather them at the wall and bring some restraints to tie them.’ This indicated that a large number of the medical staff were still alive.”

    Jonathan Whittall, head of the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs in Palestine, reported that, on the journey to recover the bodies, he and his team witnessed Israeli soldiers firing on civilians fleeing the area. He saw a Palestinian woman shot in the back of the head and a young man who tried to retrieve her body shot, too.

    Concealing slaughter
     The difficulty for Israel with the discovery of the mass grave was that it could not easily fall back on any of the usual mendacious rationalisations for war crimes that it has fed the Western media over the past year and a half, and which those outlets have been only too happy to regurgitate.

    Since Israel unilaterally broke a US-backed ceasefire agreement with Hamas last month, its carpet bombing of the enclave has killed more than 1000 Palestinians, taking the official death toll to more than 50,000. But Israel and its apologists, including Western governments and media, always have a ready excuse at hand to mask the slaughter.

    Israel disputes the casualty figures, saying they are inflated by Gaza’s Health Ministry, even though its figures in previous wars have always been highly reliable. It says most of those killed were Hamas “terrorists”, and most of the slain women and children were used by Hamas as “human shields”.

    Israel has also destroyed Gaza’s hospitals, shot up large numbers of ambulances, killed hundreds of medical personnel and disappeared others into torture chambers, while denying the entry of medical supplies.

    Israel implies that all of the 36 hospitals in Gaza it has targeted are Hamas-run “command and control centres”; that many of the doctors and nurses working in them are really covert Hamas operatives; and that Gaza’s ambulances are being used to transport Hamas fighters.

    Even if these claims were vaguely plausible, the Western media seems unwilling to ask the most obvious of questions: why would Hamas continue to use Gaza’s hospitals and ambulances when Israel made clear from the outset of its 18-month genocidal killing rampage that it was going to treat them as targets?

    Even if Hamas fighters did not care about protecting the health sector, which their parents, siblings, children, and relatives desperately need to survive Israel’s carpet bombing, why would they make themselves so easy to locate?

    Hamas has plenty of other places to hide in Gaza. Most of the enclave’s buildings are wrecked concrete structures, ideal for waging guerrilla warfare.

    Israeli cover-up
     Even the usual excuses, as preposterous as they are, simply won’t wash in the case of Israel’s latest atrocity — which is why it initially tried to black out the story.

    Given that it has banned all Western journalists from entering Gaza, killed unprecedented numbers of local journalists, and formally outlawed the UN refugee agency Unrwa, it might have hoped its crime would go undiscovered.

    But as news of the atrocity started to appear on social media last week, and the mass grave was unearthed on Sunday, Israel was forced to concoct a cover story.

    It claimed the convoy of five ambulances, a fire engine, and a UN vehicle were “advancing suspiciously” towards Israeli soldiers. It also insinuated, without a shred of evidence, that the vehicles had been harbouring Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters.

    Once again, we were supposed to accept not only an improbable Israeli claim but an entirely nonsensical one. Why would Hamas fighters choose to become sitting ducks by hiding in the diminishing number of emergency vehicles still operating in Gaza?

    Why would they approach an Israeli military position out in the open, where they were easy prey, rather than fighting their enemy from the shadows, like other guerrilla armies — using Gaza’s extensive concrete ruins and their underground tunnels as cover?

    If the ambulance crews were killed in the middle of a firefight, why were some victims exhumed with their hands tied? How is it possible that they were all killed in a gun battle when the soldiers could be heard calling for the survivors to be zip-tied?

    And if Israel was really the wronged party, why did it seek to hide the bodies and the crushed vehicles under sand?

    ‘Deeply disturbed’
     All available evidence indicates that Israel killed all or most of the emergency crews in cold blood — a grave war crime.

    But as the story broke on Monday, the BBC’s News at Ten gave over its schedule to a bin strike by workers in Birmingham; fears about the influence of social media prompted by a Netflix drama, Adolescence; bad weather on a Greek island; the return to Earth of stranded Nasa astronauts; and Britain’s fourth political party claiming it would do well in next month’s local elections.

    All of that pushed out any mention of Israel’s latest war crime in Gaza.

    Presumably under pressure from its ordinary journalists — who are known to be in near-revolt over the state broadcaster’s persistent failure to cover Israeli atrocities in Gaza — the next day’s half-hour evening news belatedly dedicated 30 seconds to the item, near the end of the running order.

    This was the perfect opportunity for BBC Verify to do a real investigation, piecing together an atrocity Israel was so keen to conceal

    The perfunctory report immediately undercut the UN’s statement that it was “deeply disturbed” by the deaths, with the newsreader announcing that Israel claimed nine “terrorists” were “among those killed”.

    Where was the BBC Verify team in this instance? Too busy scouring Google maps of Myanmar, it would seem.

    If ever there was a region where its forensic, open-source skills could be usefully deployed, it is Gaza. After all, Israel keeps out foreign journalists, and it has killed Palestinian journalists in greater numbers than all of the West’s major wars of the past 150 years combined.

    This was the perfect opportunity for BBC Verify to do a real investigation, piecing together an atrocity Israel was so keen to conceal. It was a chance for the BBC to do actual journalism about Gaza.

    Why was it necessary for the BBC to contest the narrative of an earthquake in a repressive Southeast Asian country whose rulers are opposed by the West but not contest the narrative of a major atrocity committed by a Western ally?

    Missing in action
     This is not the first time that BBC Verify has been missing in action at a crucial moment in Gaza.

    Back in January 2024, Israeli soldiers shot up a car containing a six-year-old girl, Hind Rajab, and her relatives as they tried to flee an Israeli attack on Gaza City. All were killed, but before Hind died, she could be heard desperately pleading with emergency services for help.

    Two paramedics who tried to rescue her were also killed. It took two weeks for other emergency crews to reach the bodies.

    It was certainly possible for BBC Verify to have done a forensic study of the incident — because another group did precisely that. Forensic Architecture, a research team based at the University of London, used available images of the scene to reconstruct the events.

    It found that the Israeli military had fired 335 bullets into the small car carrying Hind and her family. In an audio recording before she was killed, Hind’s cousin could be heard telling emergency services that an Israeli tank was near them.

    The sound of the gunfire, most likely from the tank’s machine gun, indicates it was some 13 metres away — close enough for the crew to have seen the children inside.

    Not only did BBC Verify ignore the story, but the BBC also failed to report it until the bodies were recovered. As has happened so often before, the BBC dared not do any reporting until Israel was forced to confirm the incident because of physical evidence.

    We know from a BBC journalist-turned-whistleblower, Karishma Patel, that she pushed editors to run the story as the recordings of Hind pleading for help first surfaced, but she was overruled.

    When the BBC very belatedly covered Hind’s horrific killing online, in typical fashion, it did so in a way that minimised any pushback from Israel. Its headline, “Hind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help”, managed to remove Israel from the story.

    Evidence buried
     A clear pattern thus emerges. The BBC also tried to bury the massacre of the 15 Palestinian first responders — keeping it off its website’s main page — just as Israel had tried to bury the evidence of its crime in Gaza’s sand.

    The story’s first headline was: “Red Cross outraged over killing of eight medics in Gaza”. Once again, Israel was removed from the crime scene.

    Only later, amid massive backlash on social media and as the story refused to go away, did the BBC change the headline to attribute the killings to “Israeli forces”.

    But subsequent stories have been keen to highlight the self-serving Israeli claim that its soldiers were entitled to execute the paramedics because the presence of emergency vehicles at the scene of much death and destruction was “suspicious”.

    In one report, a BBC journalist managed to shoe-horn this same, patently ridiculous “defence” twice into her two-minute segment. She reduced the discovery of an Israeli massacre to mere “allegations”, while a clear war crime was soft-soaped as only an “apparent” one.

    Notably, the BBC has on one solitary occasion managed to go beyond other media in reporting an attack on an ambulance crew. The footage incontrovertibly showed a US-supplied Apache helicopter firing on the crew and a young family they were trying to evacuate.

    There was no possibility the ambulance contained “terrorists” because the documentary team were filming inside the vehicle with paramedics they had been following for months. The video was included near the end of a documentary on the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, seen largely through the eyes of children.

    But the BBC quickly pulled that film, titled Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, after the Israel lobby manufactured a controversy over one of its child narrators being the son of Gaza’s deputy Agriculture Minister, who served in the Hamas-run civilian government.

    Wholesale destruction
     The unmentionable truth, which has been evident since the earliest days of the 18-month genocide, is that Israel is intentionally dismantling and destroying Gaza’s health sector, piece by piece.

    According to the UN, Israel’s war has killed at least 1060 healthcare workers and 399 aid workers — those deaths it has been possible to identify — and wrecked Gaza’s health facilities. Israel has rounded up hundreds of medical staff and disappeared many of them into what Israeli human rights groups call torture chambers.

    One doctor, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, has been held by Israel since he was abducted in late December. During brief contacts with lawyers, Dr Safiya revealed that he is being tortured.

    Other doctors have been killed in Israeli detention from their abuse, including one who was allegedly raped to death.

    Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and execution of medical personnel is part of the same message: there is nowhere safe, no sanctuary, the laws of war no longer apply

    Why is Israel carrying out this wholesale destruction of Gaza’s health sector? There are two reasons. Firstly, Netanyahu recently reiterated his intent to carry out the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

    He presents this as “voluntary migration”, supposedly in accordance with US President Donald Trump’s plan to relocate the enclave’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians to other countries.

    There can be nothing voluntary about Palestinians leaving Gaza when Israel has refused to allow any food or aid into the enclave for the past month, and is indiscriminately bombing Gaza. Israel’s ultimate intention has always been to terrify the population into flight.

    Israel’s ambassador to Austria, David Roet, was secretly recorded last month stating that “there are no uninvolved in Gaza”— a constant theme from Israeli officials. He also suggested that there should be a “death sentence” for anyone Israel accuses of holding a gun, including children.

    Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has threatened the “total devastation” of Gaza’s civilian population should they fail to “remove Hamas” from the enclave, something they are in no position to do.

    Not surprisingly, faced with the prospect of an intensification of the genocide and the imminent annihilation of themselves and their loved ones, ordinary people in Gaza have started organising protests against Hamas — marches readily reported by the BBC and others.

    Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and execution of medical personnel is part of the same message: there is nowhere safe, no sanctuary, the laws of war no longer apply, and no one will come to your aid in your hour of need.

    You are alone against our snipers, drones, tanks and Apache helicopters.

    Too much to bear
     The second reason for Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s health sector is that we in the West, or at least our governments and media, have consented to Israel’s savagery — and actively participated in it — every step of the way. Had there been any meaningful pushback at any stage, Israel would have been forced to take another course.

    When David Lammy, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, let slip in Parliament last month the advice he has been receiving from his officials since he took up the job last summer — that Israel is clearly violating international law by starving the population — he was immediately rebuked by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office.

    Let us not forget that Starmer, when he was opposition leader, approved Israel’s genocidal blocking of food, water and electricity to Gaza, saying Israel “had that right”.

    In response to Lammy’s comments, Starmer’s spokesperson restated the government’s view that Israel is only “at risk” of breaching international law — a position that allows the UK to continue arming Israel and providing it with intelligence from British spy flights over Gaza from a Royal Air Force base in Cyprus.

    Our politicians have consented to everything Israel has done, and not just in Gaza over the past 18 months. This genocide has been decades in the making.

    Three-quarters of a century ago, the West authorised the ethnic cleansing of most of Palestine to create a self-declared Jewish state there. The West consented, too, to the violent occupation of the last sections of Palestine in 1967, and to Israel’s gradual colonisation of those newly seized territories by armed Jewish extremists.

    The West nodded through waves of house demolitions carried out against Palestinian communities by Israel to “Judaise” the land. It backed the Israeli army creating extensive “firing zones” on Palestinian farmland to starve traditional agricultural communities of any means of subsistence.

    The West ignored Israeli settlers and soldiers destroying Palestinian olive groves, beating up shepherds, torching homes, and murdering families. Even being an Oscar winner offers no immunity from the rampant settler violence.

    The West agreed to Israel creating an apartheid road system and a network of checkpoints that kept Palestinians confined to ever-shrinking ghettoes, and building walls around Palestinian areas to permanently isolate them from the rest of the world.

    It allowed Israel to stop Palestinians from reaching one of their holiest sites, Al-Aqsa Mosque, on land that was supposed to be central to their future state.

    The West kept quiet as Israel besieged the two million people of Gaza for 17 years, putting them on a tightly rationed diet so their children would grow ever-more malnourished. It did nothing — except supply more weapons — when the people of Gaza launched a series of non-violent protests at their prison walls around the enclave, and were greeted with Israeli sniper fire that left thousands dead or crippled.

    The West only found a collective voice of protest on 7 October 2023, when Hamas managed to find a way to break out of Gaza’s choking isolation to wreak havoc in Israel for 24 hours. It has been raising its voice in horror at the events of that single day ever since, drowning out 18 months of screams from the children being starved and exterminated in Gaza.

    The murder of 15 Palestinian medics and aid workers is a tiny drop in an ocean of Israeli criminality — a barbarism rewarded by Western capitals decade after decade.

    This genocide was made in the West. Israel is our progeny, our ugly reflection in the mirror — which is why Western leaders and establishment media are so desperate to make us look the other way. That reflection is too much for anyone with a soul to bear.

    Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and media critic, and author of many books about Palestine. He is a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. Republished from the Middle East Eye and the author’s blog with permission.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: 4 actions to support a sustainable democracy: No heroism required

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Wolfgang Linden, Professor Emeritus in Clinical and Health Psychology, University of British Columbia

    The media make an urgent case that democracy is threatened and autocrats are gaining ground. Democracy fatigue is in large part attributable to an inherently slow process, requiring many compromises and engagement by citizens. I argue that we are not helpless and offer action strategies to make the effort required to maintain democracy more palatable.

    As a researcher in psychology, I discovered (as have others) that the basic principles driving human behaviour are remarkably similar across a wide range of domains. They include child development, social psychology, psychotherapy and also politics. Now, as an emeritus professor, I am applying this knowledge to the wider-reaching application of ways to strengthen democracy.

    Using research-based and realistic views of the degree of control we have over politics, I propose four actions for individuals in support of strengthening democracy.

    1. Make voting social and celebratory

    A yardstick of a healthy democracy is election participation, which has dropped over time and hovers around two-thirds of eligible voters, with slightly higher rates in Canada than in the United States. Human beings are by nature social and seek company, and that alone is a perfect reason to go voting together with family and friends; make it an event.

    We know that couples go voting together and thus have greater participation rates than singles. Also, efforts to mobilize reluctant voters have possible spillover effects to other hesitant voters in their nearby environment. Lastly, it makes especially good sense to engage any first-time eligible voter because starting a voting habit early builds habitual voting. You could even encourage this first-time voter to get a (paid) job in the polling station!

    2. Reframe voting probabilities

    Sentiments like “my vote counts for little” are common. Nevertheless, we often see cliff-hanger results where tiny pools of votes count a lot.

    In 2024 in British Columbia, for example, three out of 93 races showed the two leading parties apart by fewer than 225 votes. One of these battles was ultimately won with a 22-vote difference, which really mattered because it was the one seat needed to swing the entire election towards winning a majority in the legislature.

    3. Use the word ‘us,’ challenge use of ‘they’

    Some politicians use fearmongering as a deliberate strategy and label non-supporters or people who differ from them as dangerous. “They” get blamed for the world’s ills, and can be excluded, or worse.

    When people around you overdo the divisiveness, ask them who are “they” and in what ways are they really different? Ultimately, when studied worldwide, all of “us” seek physical safety, supportive social networks, and stable, decent-paying jobs. We hope for fairness and want to support our families.

    Also, when dealing with issues like pollution, for example, remember that dirty air and water or radioactive waste don’t care about politically defined borders. They are all “our” garbage and “our” problem.

    4. How to shift from ‘they’ to ‘we’

    One proposition to help shift from “they” to “we” is to engage in new hobbies that excite you but involve people who are predictably unlike you. If you are a desk jockey by day, you might meet people with very different backgrounds when you join a hiking group or a woodworking co-op.

    Once you build this bridge and better understand others’ worlds, it becomes easier to work on solutions for joint social problems. At the workplace, hiring people with very diverse expertise has been shown to lead to more creative and satisfactory solutions than by drawing experts from a narrow pool.

    Also, by seeking consensus with others, you strengthen your own conflict-resolution skills. They can then be used in other places like marriage, condominium self-government, workplace politics or in holding groups of friends together.

    Yet another way of actively adopting the idea of “us” is to join advocacy groups that work on topics important to you and your community. Participedia is a global platform for anyone interested in public participation and democratic innovation. They have explored hundreds of organizations in 159 countries.

    Bottom line, neither heroic behaviour nor exceptional courage is required to engage in these readily available building blocks of a sustainable democracy.

    Wolfgang Linden is affiliated with Council of Canadians, Fair Vote Canada; both not for profit, not aligned with a political party

    – ref. 4 actions to support a sustainable democracy: No heroism required – https://theconversation.com/4-actions-to-support-a-sustainable-democracy-no-heroism-required-248748

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: 5 tips from an expert for choosing a self-help book that will actually work

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Joanna Pozzulo, Chancellor’s Professor, Psychology, Carleton University

    With over 15,000 self-help books published yearly, sifting through so many books can be challenging. (Shutterstock)

    The wellness industry is one of the fastest growing markets, with an estimated global value of US$6.3 trillion in 2023. Gen Z and millennials are driving much of this growth, spending more on wellness products and services than older generations.

    The challenge, however, is that the wellness industry has few guardrails, allowing social media influencers and media personalities to position themselves as experts on well-being — sometimes without scientific backing.

    In a space where personal opinions and untested strategies are often presented as facts, it can be difficult to distinguish between helpful guidance and misleading information.

    Self-help books and bibliotherapy

    One form of self-help that has gained attention is bibliotherapy, which uses books to support well-being. If you’re looking to improve your well-being, you may find yourself at your local bookstore or library scouring the shelves for a self-help book.

    The self-help category is one of the largest non-fiction book categories. But not all self-help books contain strategies that are actually tested to determine their efficacy.

    With over 15,000 self-help books published yearly in the United States alone, sifting through so many books can be challenging.

    As a professor of psychology and founder of a book club that selects evidence-based books on well-being and self-improvement, I identify self-help books that rely on research rather than personal opinions or commercialized wellness trends.

    Ready to make a change? The Quarter Life Glow-up is a new, six-week newsletter course from The Conversation’s UK and Canada editions.

    Every week, we’ll bring you research-backed advice and tools to help improve your relationships, your career, your free time and your mental health – no supplements or skincare required. Sign up here to start your glow-up at any time.

    5 tips for choosing self-help books

    Here are five key tips for choosing self-help books that are grounded in reliable evidence:

    1. Consider the author’s credentials

    Check the qualifications of an author before assuming their book is evidence-based. Keep in mind that writing a book doesn’t qualify an author as an expert.

    Some self-help books are based on personal experiences rather than scientific research, and while lived experience can be valuable, it is not the same as strategies that have been tested to determine their efficacy.

    Look for authors with academic credentials, like a PhD or doctor of medicine from a reputable school, rather than those claiming expertise solely through personal experience.

    Many professional writers simply summarize existing research rather having conducted the research they are writing about. This can sometimes lead to oversimplification or misrepresentation of scientific findings.

    A quick online search can help determine whether an author has the necessary expertise to offer credible, science-based advice.

    The self-help category is one of the largest non-fiction book categories.
    (Shutterstock)

    2. Don’t judge a book by its popularity

    Just because a book is a bestseller or endorsed by celebrities doesn’t mean it’s grounded in science or evidence-based. Unlike academic research, which undergoes peer review before publication, self-help books are not always vetted for accuracy.

    A book’s success may be driven by marketing, emotional appeal or trendy ideas rather than solid scientific evidence.

    3. Consider where a book is shelved

    Bookstores and libraries categorize self-help books in a variety of sections, including health, wellness, well-being and new age. While some books in these categories are evidence-based, you might consider looking under the science and nature section instead.

    Exploring beyond traditional self-help sections can increase the likelihood of you finding books based on credible, scientific evidence.

    4. Be open to different topics

    Self-improvement is not limited to a single aspect of life. Well-being is a multifaceted construct with some experts including nine or more dimensions, including but not limited to physical, emotional, social, intellectual, spiritual, financial, environmental, occupational and cultural.

    When searching for a self-help book, consider exploring a well-being dimension that you may not know much about to expand your knowledge. This can contribute to a more well-rounded sense of personal development. Or, consider a topic that you want to know more about from a scientific perspective.

    You might consider looking for wellness books outside the health, wellness, well-being and new age categories.
    (Shutterstock)

    5. Think critically about what you read

    Even evidence-based books may report findings that are surprising or contradictory. If you read something that seems contrary in a book, seek out additional sources to verify the claims for yourself.

    The most credible self-help books will include a list of references to original studies that allow you to verify claims for yourself and draw your own conclusions. The extra-benefit of these references is that they can also serve as a gateway to additional resources on the topic.

    A pathway to better health and well-being

    Reading offers a number of benefits for well-being, including helping cognitive function, reducing stress, improving sleep quality and quantity, improving mood, and decreasing blood pressure.

    Although reading is often considered a solitary activity, it can also be a way to connect with others. Being part of a community can help reduce social isolation, decrease loneliness and increase connectedness.

    Book clubs, in particular, can provide a way for you to reap the benefits of reading and community. I created the the Reading for Well-Being Community Book Club at Carleton University.

    I select evidence-based books on various aspects of well-being and self-improvement as Professor Pozzulo’s Picks. I also interview the authors of the books I select on my Reading for Well-Being podcast.

    Each month, members receive a newsletter announcing my pick and a link to the digital platform where my review is posted including a discussion board where club members can share their thoughts about the book. There are no fees and all are welcome to join.

    Whether reading alone or with a group, the benefits of books extend far beyond their pages. So pick up a book and start your journey toward a healthier and more connected life.

    Happy reading!

    Joanna Pozzulo receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

    – ref. 5 tips from an expert for choosing a self-help book that will actually work – https://theconversation.com/5-tips-from-an-expert-for-choosing-a-self-help-book-that-will-actually-work-252596

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Woman-to-woman marriage in west Africa: a vanishing tradition of power and agency

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Bright Alozie, Assistant Professor, Portland State University

    Marriage in west Africa has played a central role in shaping aspects of society, and has evolved over time. While traditional heterosexual unions dominate discussions, a lesser-known but significant practice – woman-to-woman marriage – has existed for centuries.

    In my research, I examined this institution, which allows a woman to assume the role of a husband by marrying another woman. There’s evidence of woman-to-woman marriage in more than 40 societies across west Africa, including the Igbo of Nigeria, the Frafra of Ghana and the Dahomeans of present-day Benin.

    How it works is that a woman – often wealthy or of high status – pays a bride price and takes on a wife who is expected to bear children. A male relative or chosen partner, known as the genitor, fathers the children. The children will legally belong to the female husband and are considered part of her lineage. This reinforces kinship structures, or family ties within traditional communities and clans, vital to west African societies.

    Unlike romantic same-sex unions, these are social contracts. They aim to preserve lineage, secure inheritance, and enhance a woman’s economic and political agency.

    Female husbands gain significant control over property by assuming the role of head of household. This enables them to own and manage assets independently, a right typically reserved for men.

    Securing heirs through their wives ensures the continuation of their lineage and the inheritance of their property and status. It solidifies their long-term agency and influence within the community.

    The union also grants them more legal standing – they can enter into contracts, resolve disputes, and represent their family in legal matters, further empowering them in a patriarchal society.

    This all translates into considerable influence. Female husbands can hold positions of authority, and command respect. They challenge traditional gender roles.

    Colonial distortions and modern misconceptions have obscured the meaning and function of this historically prevalent practice. Despite its important role, it has declined over time. With growing stigma, the old customs have become less common.

    My research seeks to underscore the historical value of woman-to-woman marriage. It offers a lens for understanding the complexities of African gender systems, female agency and social structures.

    Tradition rooted in kinship and social stability

    Using a combination of oral interviews, archival research and literature reviews, I found that there are various scenarios in which woman-to-woman marriage is practised in west Africa.

    In Okrika, in Nigeria’s Rivers State, for example, I was told how a married woman who has no male child in her family is allowed to marry a woman so that a male child can be born into the family. If her marriage does not produce a male child and she has money, the culture allows her to marry more than one wife as long as she can take care of them and the union can produce a male child to carry the name of her family.

    In my interview with Chief Nkemjirika Njoku, of the Mbaise Igbo in Nigeria, he described another scenario. He explained that if a man died without male heirs, his daughters could pay a bride price for a woman to bear children in his name. This ensured his lineage did not disappear.

    Similarly, among the Frafra people of Ghana one study shows how:

    a wealthy woman may marry one or more women for her husband by providing the bridewealth. These women bear children in her name in the event of her being childless or to offer extra labour.

    These accounts illustrate how marriage and kinship complement each other and how this practice provided women with economic influence and social mobility, often rivalling men’s.

    Colonial disruptions and modern challenges

    Despite the tradition’s important role, during the 19th century European colonial officials and Christian missionaries misunderstood and condemned the practice.

    Viewing it through a Victorian moral framework – rigid and conservative values of 19th-century Britain which emphasised strict gender roles, sexual restraint and moral purity – they mistakenly equated it with homosexuality and sought to outlaw it. For instance, in 1882 British colonial authorities in Ghana criminalised same-sex relations. These laws included woman-to-woman marriages, despite their deeply rooted cultural significance.

    The practice persisted in various forms, however, but did become less prevalent.

    In some cases, the unions were subtly restructured to avoid colonial scrutiny. Participants framed them more as business partnerships or familial arrangements rather than marriages. For instance, many prominent traders would use the unions to expand their wealth and business networks. Among the Hausa-Fulani textile traders of the Sokoto Caliphate, for example, a wealthy widow could marry a woman to manage her trade. This ensured that children born within the union inherited her wealth.

    Subverting or reinforcing patriarchy?

    Today, woman-to-woman marriage remains misunderstood. Some argue it reinforces patriarchal structures, while others conflate it with lesbian relationships.

    The growing influence of Christianity and Islam has led to its stigmatisation. Meanwhile modern legal systems fail to recognise the unions, leaving female husbands and their children vulnerable in inheritance disputes.

    Advancements in reproductive technology provide alternative means for childbearing, reducing the need for these marriages.

    In my opinion, though, this tradition remains a valuable and powerful system. It highlights the ingenuity of African societies in creating alternative structures of power, kinship and economic security – especially for women.

    Based on my research I concluded that woman-to-woman marriage is an example of flexible African gender constructs. Gender is not strictly tied to biological sex but to social roles and responsibilities. African societies have creatively adapted marriage and kinship to meet economic and social needs.

    More than a marriage practice, woman-marriage has been an assertion of female agency, an economic strategy, and a means of preserving lineage.

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

    – ref. Woman-to-woman marriage in west Africa: a vanishing tradition of power and agency – https://theconversation.com/woman-to-woman-marriage-in-west-africa-a-vanishing-tradition-of-power-and-agency-251919

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Do African MPs reflect the people who vote for them? We studied 17 countries to find out

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Robert Mattes, Professor in Government and Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, and Adjunct Professor in the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, University of Cape Town, University of Strathclyde

    By the end of 2025, 42 African countries will have held national elections in the previous 24 months. But do these elections produce parliaments that accurately reflect the societies they serve? Aside from studies of women in Africa’s legislatures, there is surprisingly little information about this important issue.

    Elected parliaments are the essence of representative democracy. Law makers are more likely to know what voters need and want if they are alike in age, gender, language, education or occupation.

    As scholars of African politics, we wanted to find out if African legislators actually represented their voters. We compared the results of two separate surveys conducted between 2009 and 2012 across the same 17 African countries.

    The first comes from the African Legislatures Project. This interviewed 823 elected representatives (MPs). The second was produced by Afrobarometer, a pan-African research network.

    Our study found wide gaps between citizens and their representatives in some respects, but a high degree of similarity in others.

    Compared to ordinary African citizens, African legislators possess much higher levels of education. They are also far more likely to be older, male and to come from professional or business backgrounds. Yet the overall profile of legislators closely matches that of the voters in terms of ethnicity and religion.

    Religion and ethnicity

    One of the most striking findings is the match between the religious, language and ethnic make-up of African legislatures and voters.

    Across all 17 countries, the proportion of law makers who are either Muslim or Christian closely resembles their electorates. They are also similar at the level of religious denomination (for example Catholic, Methodist or Pentecostal).

    Legislatures closely mirror the languages spoken by citizens in their countries. In some countries the overlap is very high. In Lesotho, for example, almost all MPs and citizens speak the same language (Sesotho). In Zimbabwe, the distribution of Shona and Ndebele speaking MPs is much the same as it is for the public.

    There’s less overlap in Tanzania (where many more parliamentarians point to Swahili as their home language than Kisukuma, which most citizens speak). And in Namibia and South Africa, most MPs claim English as their home language rather than the otherwise dominant Oshiwambo or Zulu, respectively.

    Many scholars argue that proportional representation voting systems (where people vote for party lists, rather than candidates) are necessary to reflect ethnic diversity. Our findings demonstrate that this is not necessarily the case. We found high levels of correspondence in diverse societies that elect members from “first past the post” single member districts, such as Zimbabwe, Ghana, Malawi and Uganda. This is because political parties will strategically select candidates who reflect the religious and ethnic identities of specific constituencies so that candidates are seen as “one of us”.

    Where presented with a choice between candidates of differing religious or ethnic backgrounds, voters will tend to prefer the one similar to them. They feel that candidates who come from their area, or speak their language, are more likely to understand their needs and preferences.

    Education and occupation

    Our study also established that African elections produce legislatures that are older, more male, far more educated and wealthier than their voters.

    While only 9% of citizens possessed a university degree across these 17 countries in the years under review, 58% of MPs had one. In Uganda, this figure climbed to 90%: a substantial educational disparity.

    Occupational backgrounds also reveal a pronounced skew. A large proportion of parliamentarians come from business (24%) or professional (27%) sectors. Average citizens are likely to be blue collar or agricultural workers.

    Gender and age

    Despite making up roughly 50% of African societies, just 18% of the parliamentarians we interviewed were women.

    Proportional representation voting systems do increase gender balance. This shows in Mozambique (40% of parliamentarians are female), Namibia (35%) and South Africa (28%). But other mechanisms such as gender quotas in the governing party nomination process (Tanzania, 32%), or reserved seats (Uganda, 27%), also increase women’s representation.

    Finally, elected legislatures are almost always older than their electorate. But African legislators appear to be especially venerable. While the median age of the over-18 citizen population across these 17 societies is 33, the median age of our sample of MPs was 53. This raises questions about the ability of older legislators to fully understand and address the concerns of younger generations.

    Are parliamentarians an unaccountable ‘power elite’?

    We also wondered whether the social and economic advantages provided by higher education and experience in business and the professions might keep MPs in power, and out of touch with the needs of citizens.

    Two factors appear to work against this outcome.

    First, we examined potential markers of status and influence: university education; high-status occupational background; and previously held positions in party leadership, national government, or local government. It turns out that the average MP had only accumulated two of these things.

    Second, consistent with other studies of African legislatures that find surprising levels of turnover of individual parliamentarians, the typical law maker in our surveys had been in office for just five years. Whatever status or privilege they carry with them into the legislative chamber does not guarantee a long stay.

    What can we learn from this?

    These results provide some insights for the continent’s next election season.

    Most ruling parties were humbled at the polls in 2024, and several lost their majority in parliament (Botswana, Ghana, Mauritius, Senegal and South Africa). The trend of high legislator turnover seems likely to continue.

    Thus, newly elected parliamentarians are unlikely to form a coherent “power elite”. The real challenge seems to be to harness the impressive skills African MPs bring to their jobs to enable them to play a more meaningful role in writing laws and holding their executives to account.

    Robert Mattes is co-founder and Senior Advisor to Afrobarometer.

    Matthias Krönke is affiliated with Afrobarometer.

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

    – ref. Do African MPs reflect the people who vote for them? We studied 17 countries to find out – https://theconversation.com/do-african-mps-reflect-the-people-who-vote-for-them-we-studied-17-countries-to-find-out-252055

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Fiji solidarity group condemns Rabuka plans for embassy in Jerusalem

    Asia Pacific Report

    A Fiji-based Pacific solidarity group supporting the indigenous Palestine struggle for survival against the Israeli settler colonial state has today issued a statement condemning Fiji backing for Israel.

    In an open letter to the “people of Fiji”, the Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network (F4P) has warned “your government openly supports Israel despite its genocidal campaign against Palestinians”.

    “It is directly complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and history will not forgive their inaction.”

    The group said the struggle resonated with all who believed in justice, equality, and the fundamental rights of every human being.

    Fijians for Palestine has condemned Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s coalition government plans to open a Fijian embassy in Jerusalem with Israeli backing and has launched a “No embassy on occupied land” campaign.

    The group likened the Palestine liberation struggle to Pacific self-determination campaigns in Bougainville, “French” Polynesia, Kanaky and West Papua.

    Global voices for end to violence
     The open letter on social media said:

    “Our solidarity with the Palestinian people is a testament to our shared humanity. We believe in a world where diversity, is treated with dignity and respect.

    “We dream of a future where children in Gaza can play without fear, where families can live without the shadow of war, and where the Palestinian people can finally enjoy the peace and freedom they so rightly deserve.

    “We join the global voices demanding a permanent ceasefire and an end to the violence. We express our unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people.

    “The Palestinian struggle is not just a regional issue; it is a testament to the resilience of a people who, despite facing impossible odds, continue to fight for their right to exist, freedom, and dignity. Their struggle resonates with all who believe in justice, equality, and the fundamental rights of every human being.

    “The images of destruction, the stories of families torn apart, and the cries of children caught in the crossfire are heart-wrenching. These are not mere statistics or distant news stories; these are real people with hopes, dreams, and aspirations, much like us.

    “As Fijians, we have always prided ourselves on our commitment to peace, unity, and humanity. Our rich cultural heritage and shared values teach us the importance of standing up for what is right, even when it is not popular or convenient.

    “We call on you to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people this Thursday with us, not out of political allegiance but out of a shared belief in humanity, justice, and the inalienable human rights of every individual.

    “There can be no peace without justice, and we stand in unity with all people and territories struggling for self-determination and freedom from occupation. The Pacific cannot be an Ocean of Peace without freedom and self determination in Palestine, West Papua, Kanaky and all oppressed territories.

    “To the Fijian people, please know that your government openly supports Israel despite its genocidal campaign against Palestinians. It is directly complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and history will not forgive their inaction.”

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Trump funding cuts on media impacts on independent Asia Pacific outlet

    Pacific Media Watch

    One of the many casualties of the Trump administration’s crackdown on “soft power” that enabled many democratic media and truth to power global editorial initiatives has been BenarNews, a welcome contribution to the Asia-Pacific region.

    BenarNews had been producing a growing range of insightful on powerful articles on the region’s issues, articles that were amplified by other media such as Asia Pacific Report.

    Managing editor Kate Beddall and her deputy, Imran Vittachi, announced the suspension of the decade-old BenarNews editorial operation this week, stating in their “Letter from the editors”:

    “After 10 years of reporting from across the Asia-Pacific, BenarNews is pausing operations due to matters beyond its control.

    “The US administration has withheld the funding that we rely on to bring our readers and viewers the news from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, the Philippines and island-states and territories in the Pacific.

    “We have always strived to offer clear and accurate news on security, politics and human rights, to shed light on news that others neglect or suppress, and to cover issues that will shape the future of Asia and the Pacific.

    “Only last month, we marked our 10th anniversary with a video showcasing some of the tremendous but risky work done by our journalists.

    “Amid uncertainty about the future, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank our readers and viewers for their loyalty and trust in BenarNews.

    “And to Benar journalists, cartoonists and commentary writers in Washington, Asia, Australia and the Pacific, thank you for your hard work and passion in serving the public and helping make a difference.

    “We hope that our funding is restored and that we will be back online soon.”


    BenarNews: A decade of truth in democracies at risk.    Video: BenarNews

    One of the BenarNews who has contributed much to the expansion of Pacific coverage is Brisbane-based former SBS Pacific television journalist Stefan Ambruster.

    He has also been praising his team in a series of social media postings, such as Papua New Guinea correspondent Harlyne Joku — “from the old school with knowledge of the old ways”. Ambruster writes:

    “Way back in December 2022, Harlyne Joku joined Radio Free Asia/BenarNews and the first Pacific correspondent Stephen Wright as the PNG reporter to help kick this Pacific platform off.

    “Her first report was Prime Minister James Marape accusing the media of creating a bad perception of the country.

    “Almost 90 stories in just over two years carry Harlyne’s byline, covering politics, geopolitics, human and women’s rights, media freedom, police and tribal violence, corruption, Bougainville, and also PNG’s sheep.

    “Her contacts allowed BenarNews Pacific to break stories consistently. She travelled to be on-ground to cover massacre aftermaths, natural disasters and the Pope in Vanimo (where she broke another story).

    “Particularly, Harlyne — along with colleagues Victor Mambor in Jayapura and Ahmad Panthoni and Dandy Koswaraputra in Jakarta — allowed BenarNews, to cover West Papua like no other news service. From both sides of the border.

    “And it was noticed in Indonesia, PNG and the Pacific region.

    “Last year, she was barred from covering President Probowo Subianto’s visit to Moresby, a move condemned by the Media Council of Papua New Guinea.

    “At press conferences she questioned Marape about the failure to secure a UN human rights mission to West Papua, as a Melanesian Spearhead Group special envoy, which led to an eventual apology by fellow envoy, Fiji’s Prime Minister Rabuka, to Pacific leaders.”

    PNG correspondent Harlyne Joku (right) with Stefan Armbruster and Rado Free Asia president Bay Fang in Port Moresby in February 2025. Image: Stefan Armbruster/BN

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: 100 children killed or wounded every day since Gaza ceasefire broken

    Asia Pacific Report

    The chief of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has described Gaza as “no land” for children, as two rallies were held in New Zealand’s largest city Auckland today to mark Palestine Children’s Day.

    Citing the UN agency for children UNICEF, Phillipe Lazzarini said that “at least 100 children are reported killed or injured every day in Gaza” since Israel broke the truce with Hamas on March 18.

    “The ceasefire at the beginning of the year gave Gaza’s children a chance to survive and be children,” said Lazzarini, who is Commissioner-General of UNRWA.

    “The resumption of the war is again robbing them of their childhood. The war has turned Gaza into a ‘no land’ for children. This is a stain on our common humanity.

    The two Auckland Palestinian solidarity events today marking April 5 — one a children’s activities gathering in Albert Park and the other a regular weekly rally at “Palestine Corner” in downtown Te Komititanga Square — were among 25 activist happenings across the country on week 78 of continuous protests.

    In Albert Park, one of the organisers said the children “had lots of fun — painting, drawing, listening to stories, making collages, playing games with Palestinian themes and some families had picnics.”

    In “Palestine Corner”, several teachers spoke of the realities of the genocide in Gaza, protesters carried placards with photos and names of children killed by the Israeli bombing, while children coloured pictures and blew bubbles.

    Adults holding pictures of children killed in the bombing of Gaza since the ceasefire was broken by the Israeli forces this week. Image: APR

    Huge toll on children
    Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reports that children have been among the most severely affected by the continuing Israeli war on Gaza.

    “Many of them have been killed, injured and orphaned and we can see that thousands of children have lost their limbs and they are suffering from severe trauma,” he said.

    “As the UNRWA spokesperson stated: 51 percent of Gaza’s population are children and they make up the largest proportion of those that were killed since the war began back on October 7, 2023.

    A girl drawing at the Rotunda in Auckland’s Albert Park today. In the foreground are olive trees with the slogan “Free Palestine”. Image: Del Abcede/APR

    “For many children here in Gaza, displacement has taken a very heavy, huge toll on them.

    “They have been repeatedly displaced, forced to flee their homes and right now they are forced to live in overcrowded shelters and tents and on the rubble of their destroyed homes and residential buildings.”

    The Palestinian Human Rights Organisations Council (PHROC) — made up of nine groups — has written to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk to demand action on Israel in protest over the killing of children.

    Israeli forces continued to kill Palestinians on a genocidal scale in Gaza and had created “conditions of life unfit for human survival,” the council told Turk.

    Israel’s “intent to eliminate and eventually destroy Palestinians across unlawfully occupied Palestine” is also evident in occupied West Bank, the council said.

    The council called on Turk to clearly label Israel’s conduct as genocide, pressure the Israeli government to end its genocide, ensure accountability for Israeli perpetrators, and mobilise the UN to implement a plan to end genocide against Palestinians across the occupied territory.

    Boys decorating pictures with Palestinian poppies at the Rotunda in Auckland’s Albert Park today. Image: Del Abcede/APR

    Albanese’s mandate renewed
    Meanwhile, Francesca Albanese will continue to serve as Special Rapporteur until 30 April 2028, a spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Council announced after the vote today in Geneva by the UNHRC to retain her.

    The UN Human Rights Council defied the efforts of Israel, the US, The Netherlands and other Western countries trying to unseat Albanese, who has been special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 for the past three years.

    Albanese had faced a smear campaign for many months by deniers of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, which she had warned about in October 2023.

    She documented the crimes against humanity, notably in her devastating report Anatomy Of A Genocide in April 2024.

    Children painting and drawing Palestinian themes in the Rotunda at Auckland’s Albert Park today. Image: Del Abcede/APR
    “Palestinian kids matter” . . . images of the 500 children who have been killed by Israeli forces since the ceasefire was broken by the IDF at the start of last month. Image: Del Abcede/APR

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: With Hasbara failing, Israel placed Hossam Shabat on a kill list

    While public opinion of Israel plummets, each day the genocide continues without significant repercussions only reinforces that they can ignore this opinion, writes Alex Foley.

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Alex Foley

    Israel announced that Hossam Shabat was a “terrorist” alongside six other Palestinian journalists. Hossam predicted they would assassinate him.

    He survived several attempts on his life. He wrote a brief obituary for himself at the age of 23, carried on reporting, and then on March 24, 2025, Israel killed him.

    For those of us outside of Gaza, helpless to stop the carnage but unable to look away, a begrudging numbness has set in, a psychic lidocaine to cope with the daily images of the shattered bodies of dead children.

    The other pro-Palestinian advocates and activists I speak with all mention familiar brain fogs and free-floating agitations.

    By this point, I am accustomed to opening my phone and steeling myself for the horrors. But learning of Hossam’s death cut through me like a warm knife.

    Through whatever fluke of the internet, many of the friends I have made over the course of the genocide are from the city of Beit Hanoun, like Hossam Shabat.

    One was his classmate. Another walked with him through the bombed-out ruins of the North. Looking upon his upturned face, splattered with three stripes of crimson blood, I could not help but imagine each of them lying there in his place.

    To quote my dear friend Ibrahim Al-Masri:

    “Hossam Shabat wasn’t alone. He carried the grief of Beit Hanoun, the cries of children trapped under rubble, the aching voices of mothers queuing for bread, and the gasps of the wounded in hospitals that no longer functioned as hospitals.”

    Many will remember the video of 14-year-old aspiring journalist Maisam Al-Masri greeting Hossam Shabat in his car, elated that he had not been killed when the occupation first took the North.

    Separated from family
    Hossam remained in Northern Gaza throughout the genocide, separated from his family, in full knowledge that staying and working was a death sentence. His reports were an invaluable insight into the occupation’s crimes, and for that they killed him.

    In death, his eyes remained open, bearing witness one last time.

    The Israeli account is, of course, very different. The Israeli army has claimed that Hossam Shabat was a “Hamas sniper” with the Beit Hanoun Battalion.

    It is the kind of paper-thin lie we have grown accustomed to, dutifully repeated by the Western press. I am no military tactician, but I find it hard to believe that a young man with a high profile who reported his location frequently, including in live broadcasts, would be an effective sniper.

    In the weeks before he was assassinated, Hossam Shabat was tweeting up to a dozen times a day.

    Hasbara killed Hossam Shabat because it’s losing the PR war
     A qualitative shift has occurred over the course of the genocide; Israel no longer seems interested in or capable of convincing the rest of the world that its actions are just. Rather, they are preoccupied with producing increasingly flimsy justifications with the sole aim of quelling internal dissent.

    The Hasbara machine is foundering.

    How could it not? For 17 months we have experienced a daily split screen between the endless stream of atrocities committed against the Palestinians and the screeching histrionics of Zionist influencers. While the people of Gaza endure blockade and bombing, Noa Tishby and Michael Rapaport moan about campus demonstrations.

    The campus encampments are also the subject of a new documentary, October 8, currently in theatres throughout the US. Originally titled October H8te, the film claims to be a “searing look at the eruption of antisemitism in America that started the day after Hamas’ attack on Israel”.

    The trailer is a series of to-camera interviews of the usual suspects, all decrying the lack of support Zionists discovered in the wake of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. They cite social media censorship and foreign interference as reasons for Zionism’s wild unpopularity among college students.

    It never seems to occur to them that it might be Israel’s actions doing the damage.

    In a recently shared clip, former Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, leans into the victim role, fighting through tears that do not come while relaying a story of asking a close friend if she would hide her while the pair were on a walk. Sandberg attributes her friend’s confusion at the question to the woman not being Jewish and not to the fact that it is a frankly absurd thing for a woman worth over $2 billion to ask.

    ‘Disappearing’ student protesters
    The reality is, while Sandberg talks about how unsafe she feels in the US because of the university encampments, the government itself has begun “disappearing” student protesters on her behalf.

    Plainclothes ICE agents are continuing to abduct student activists like Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk at the behest of Betar USA, a far-right militant movement founded by Jabotinsky that has been providing the Trump administration with deportation lists.

    The violent fantasies that Sandberg argues warrant a global outpouring of sympathy for Zionists are being enacted on an almost daily basis against the very students she claims are a threat.

    The hysteria around the encampments has reached a new ludicrous pitch with a lawsuit filed by a group including the families of hostages taken on October 7 against students at Columbia, among them Khalil, whom they allege have been coordinating with Hamas.

    The “bombshell” filing includes such evidence as an Instagram post by Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine published three minutes before Hamas’ attack that stated, “We are back!!” after the account was dormant for several months.

    The reasonable person might note that the inactivity on the account coincided with the Summer holidays. They might point out that it seems unlikely Hamas was coordinating with student groups in the US about an operation that required the element of surprise.

    They might even question what the American students could provide that would make such a risk worth it.

    Securing flow of weapons
    But Hasbara is no longer concerned with the reasonable person; its sole purpose is securing the flow of weapons. Despite the government announcing earlier this year that they are spending an additional $150 million on “international PR,” Israel seems increasingly uninterested in convincing anyone other than the Western governments that still back them.

    While public opinion of Israel plummets, each day the genocide continues without significant repercussions only reinforces that they can ignore this opinion.

    This is reflected in the degree to which the goalposts have shifted. First, we were told Israel would never bomb a hospital, then we were shown elaborate schematics of nonexistent subterranean command centres, and now they execute and bury first responders without so much as a shrug.

    The perverse result of Hasbara falling apart is more brazen, ruthless killing.

    While legacy media may still run interference for Israel and universities continue to roll over for the Trump administration, Israel is facing a real threat. It can kill and kill — the number of journalists they have slain far outstrips other major conflicts — but for every Hossam Shabat they kill, there is a Maisam waiting in the wings, ready to shed light on their crimes.

    Alex Foley is a researcher and painter living in Brighton, UK. They have a background in molecular biology of health and disease. They are the co-founder of the Accountability Archive, a web tool preserving fragile digital evidence of pro-genocidal rhetoric from power holders. Follow them on X:@foleywoley Republished from The New Arab under Creative Commons.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Taiwan’s latest computer chip has serious implications for technology – and the island’s security

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Domenico Vicinanza, Associate Professor of Intelligent Systems and Data Science, Anglia Ruskin University

    Aslysun / Shutterstock

    On April 1, 2025, the Taiwanese manufacturer TSMC introduced the world’s most advanced microchip: the 2 nanometre (2nm) chip. Mass production is expected for the second half of the year, and TSMC promises it will represent a major step forward in performance and efficiency – potentially reshaping the technological landscape.

    Microchips are the foundation of modern technology, found in nearly all electronic devices, from electric toothbrushes and smartphones to laptops and household appliances. They are made by layering and etching materials like silicon to create microscopic circuits containing billions of transistors.

    These transistors are effectively tiny switches, managing the flow of electricity and allowing computers to work. In general, the more transistors a chip contains, the faster and more powerful it becomes.

    The microchip industry consistently endeavours to pack more transistors into a smaller area, leading to faster, more powerful, and energy efficient technological devices.

    Compared to the previous most advanced chip, known as 3nm chips, TSMC’s 2nm technology should deliver notable benefits. These include a 10%-15% boost in computing speed at the same power level or a 20-30% reduction in power usage at the same speed.

    Additionally, transistor density in 2nm chips is increased by about 15%, over and above the 3nm technology. This should enable devices to operate faster, consume less energy, and manage more complex tasks efficiently.

    Taiwan’s microchip industry is closely tied into its security. It is sometimes referred to as the “silicon shield”, because its widespread economic importance incentivises the US and allies to defend Taiwan against the possibility of Chinese invasion.

    TSMC recently struck a US$100 billion deal (£76 billion) to build five new US factories. However, there is uncertainty over whether the 2nm chips can be manufactured outside Taiwan, as some officials are concerned that could undermine the island’s security.

    Established in 1987, TSMC, which stands for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, manufactures chips for other companies. Taiwan accounts for 60% of the global “foundry” market (the outsourcing of semiconductor manufacturing) and the vast majority of that comes from TSMC alone.

    TSMC’s super-advanced microchips are used by other companies in a wide range of devices. It manufactures Apple’s A-series processors used in iPhones, iPads, and Macs, it produces NVidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) used for machine learning and AI applications. It also makes AMD’s Ryzen and EPYC processors used by supercomputers worldwide, and it produces Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors, used by Samsung, Xiaomi, OnePlus, and Google phones.

    In 2020, TSMC started a special microchip miniaturisation process, called 5nm FinFET technology, that played a crucial role in smartphone and high-performance computing (HPC) development. HPC is the practice of getting multiple processors to work simultaneously on complex computing problems.

    Two years later, TSMC launched a 3nm miniaturisation process based on even smaller microchips. This further enhanced performance and power efficiency. Apple’s A-series processor, for example, is based on this technology.

    TSMC makes the world’s most advanced microchips.
    Michael Vi / Shutterstock

    Smartphones, laptops and tablets with 2nm chips could benefit from better performance and longer battery life. This will lead to smaller, lighter devices without sacrificing power.

    The efficiency and speed of 2nm chips has the potential to enhance AI-based applications such as voice assistants, real time language translation, and autonomous computer systems (those designed to work with minimal to no human input). Data centres could experience reduced energy consumption and improved processing capabilities, contributing to environmental sustainability goals.

    Sectors like autonomous vehicles and robotics could benefit from the increased processing speed and reliability of the new chips, making these technologies safer and more practical for widespread adoption.

    This all sounds really promising, but while 2nm chips represent a technological milestone, they also pose challenges. The first one is related to the manufacturing complexity.

    Producing 2nm chips requires cutting-edge techniques like extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. This complex and expensive process increases production costs and demands extremely high precision.

    Another big issue is heat. Even with relatively lower consumption, as transistors shrink and densities increase, managing heat dissipation becomes a critical challenge.

    Overheating can impact chip performance and durability. In addition, at such a small scale, traditional materials like silicon may reach their performance limits, requiring the exploration of different materials.

    That said, the enhanced computational power, energy efficiency, and miniaturisation enabled by these chips could be a gateway to a new era of consumer and industrial computing. Smaller chips could lead to breakthroughs in tomorrow’s technology, creating devices that are not only powerful but also discreet and more environmentally friendly.

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

    – ref. Taiwan’s latest computer chip has serious implications for technology – and the island’s security – https://theconversation.com/taiwans-latest-computer-chip-has-serious-implications-for-technology-and-the-islands-security-251633

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Ireland’s neolithic passage tombs were not just the burial place of the elite – new research

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Neil Carlin, Lecturer in Archaeology, University College Dublin

    In County Meath in eastern Ireland sits the world heritage site of Brú na Bóinne. The late 4th millennium BC megalithic tombs have been labelled “passage tombs” by archaeologists because they typically feature a narrow passage leading to an internal chamber, covered by a large circular mound. Centuries of antiquarians and archaeologists thought they were burial places for the elite of Neolithic Irish society.

    Genetic analysis of human remains within several of the tombs initially seemed to reinforce this. But our latest research has overturned this idea.

    By integrating exciting new results from ancient DNA into archaeological models, combining archaeological and biomolecular data, we have been able to draw out a rich and complex picture of daily life, interactions, and social structure in Neolithic Ireland. Together, this evidence deconstructs the myth that only important individuals were socially active, which downplays the contribution made by collective action in the deep past.

    What our research reveals is a complex pattern of small, mobile groups who moved frequently with their animals and gathered seasonally. These groups would meet with their extended community at their shared monuments to progress funerary rites for some of their dead, renew old relationships and form new ones. In this way, they built their kin networks over hundreds of kilometers and many generations through communal feasting, ceremonies, and work, as well as through having children together.

    Burial within even the largest examples of “developed” passage tombs does not seem to have been restricted to venerated chiefs. Instead, it was part of a long sequence of rites and rituals that included cremation, the exposure or circulation of parts of bodies, and the eventual interment of partial sets of remains, some of which were later removed.

    Genetic analysis revealed evidence of close biological relations, the kind of which is expected from the final resting-places of a dynastic lineage: from grandparents to grandchildren, siblings, uncles and aunts, nieces, nephews and first cousins. However, we have shown that only a few examples of these close family links occur, and not within passage tombs, but exclusively in smaller and earlier Neolithic tombs.

    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.

    Instead, in passage tombs, most biological relationships tend to have been distant (fifth degree or further, meaning second cousins or a great-great-great grandparent). This tells us that burial was not strongly determined by biological relatedness.

    Nevertheless, there is something genetically distinctive about passage tombs.

    Most of the individuals genetically sequenced from these monuments were more closely biologically related to each other than to the wider Irish population at this time. This means they formed a genetic cluster.

    We argue that rather than this being evidence for an elite class in Neolithic Ireland, something else is responsible for this genetic patterning. Crucially, these individuals all postdate 3600BC.

    By this time, people’s lifestyles had shifted, possibly becoming more mobile. Houses were temporary and modest in size, farming practices seemed to focus more on animal husbandry, while forests expanded and evidence for cereals reduced. This is the period when the Newgrange-style passage tombs were emerging. Compared to earlier tombs, Newgrange-style tombs were more architecturally complex, much larger and situated in more elevated, visible locations but at a remove from the everyday world of settlement and pasture. Their construction peaked between 3300 to 3000 BC.

    Their complexity reflects multiple phases of construction and rebuilding stretching over generations and centuries of seasonal gatherings of widely dispersed communities. In tandem with this new style, social networks became more expansive, spanning ever-greater parts of the island.

    Chemical signals locked in human bone and tooth enamel indicate that the people interred in these large monuments came from many different parts of Ireland, as did the artefacts placed in them and the materials from which they were built. People probably brought building materials with them as part of collective journeys to participate in rites that included both burying and building. Such repeated large-scale gatherings involving communal acts of labour contributed to a sense of shared identity and kinship by interconnecting participants with other people, places and things.

    The distinct genetic clustering in individuals from passage tombs is likely to have emerged within the context of the extended kin groups created and maintained by such interactions. The genetic analysis shows that people within communities who used passage tombs more frequently chose to have children with each other rather than with people who used other tomb types for their funerary rites. These were sizeable but dispersed communities with extensive interaction networks.

    We suggest it may simply have been easier to meet and connect with people who shared the same beliefs, cultural practices and seasonal cycles. Nevertheless people met, mingled, and had children with each other throughout the Irish Neolithic period, regardless of how they buried their dead. There is no evidence that patterns of marriage or reproduction within a given group were enforced or exclusive or that who your parents were reflected differences in status, rank, or importance.

    More work, including more ancient DNA samples, is vital to achieve a fuller understanding of the social changes occurring in Ireland at the time of Newgrange. Yet, by interrogating the archaeological evidence in light of genetic findings, we are getting ever closer to understanding how peoples’ relationships changed through time.

    Neil Carlin receives funding from Research Ireland

    Catherine J. Frieman receives funding from Australian Research Council Future Fellowship FT220100024 ‘Kin and Connection: ancient DNA between the science and the social’.

    Jessica Smyth receives funding from Research Ireland (Consolidator Laureate IRCLA/2017/206 ‘Passage Tomb People: investigating the social drivers of passage tomb construction’)

    – ref. Ireland’s neolithic passage tombs were not just the burial place of the elite – new research – https://theconversation.com/irelands-neolithic-passage-tombs-were-not-just-the-burial-place-of-the-elite-new-research-253774

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Even just thinking you’re hungry could change your immune system – new research in mice

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Giuseppe D’Agostino, Senior Lecturer, Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology & Gastroenterology, University of Manchester

    The synthetic hunger state led to a marked drop in specific immune cells in the mice’s blood. IhorL/ Shutterstock

    Feeling hungry doesn’t just make you reach for a snack – it may also change your immune system.

    In a recent study in mice, we found that simply perceiving hunger can change the number of immune cells in the blood, even when the animals hadn’t actually fasted. This shows that even the brain’s interpretation of hunger can shape how the immune system adapts.

    Our new research published in Science Immunology challenges the long-standing idea that immunity is shaped primarily by real, physical changes in nutrition, such as changes in blood sugar or nutrient levels. Instead, it shows that perception alone (what the brain “thinks” is happening) can reshape immunity.

    We focused on two types of highly specialised brain cells (AgRP neurons and POMC neurons) that sense the body’s energy status and generate the feelings of hunger and fullness in response. AgRP neurons promote hunger when energy is low, while POMC neurons signal fullness after eating.

    Using genetic tools, we artificially activated the hunger neurons in mice that had already eaten plenty of food. Activating this small but powerful group of brain cells triggered an intense urge to seek food in the mice. This finding builds on what multiple previous studies have shown.

    To our surprise, though, this synthetic hunger state also led to a marked drop in specific immune cells in the blood, called monocytes. These cells are part of the immune system’s first line of defence and play a critical role in regulating inflammation.

    Conversely, when we activated the fullness neurons in fasted mice, the monocyte levels returned close to normal, even though the mice hadn’t eaten.
    These experiments showed us the brain’s perception of being hungry or fed was on its own enough to influence immune cell numbers in the blood.

    To understand how this axis between the brain and the immune system works, we then looked at how the brain communicates with the liver. This organ is important in sensing energy levels in the body. Research has also shown the liver communicates with bone marrow – the soft tissue inside bones where blood and immune cells are made.

    We found a direct link between the hunger neurons and the liver via the sympathetic nervous system, which plays a broad role in regulating functions like heart rate, blood flow, and how organs respond to stress and energy demands. When the hunger neurons were turned on, they dialled down nutrient-sensing in the liver by reducing sympathetic activity.

    This suggests that the brain can influence how the liver interprets the body’s energy status; essentially convincing it that energy is low, even when actual nutrient levels are normal. This, in turn, led to a drop in a chemical called CCL2, which usually helps draw monocytes into the blood. Less CCL2 meant fewer monocytes circulating.

    We also saw that hunger signals caused the release of a stress hormone called corticosterone (similar to cortisol in humans). This hormone on its own didn’t have a big effect on immune cell numbers, at least not at the levels that would typically be released while fasting.

    Much higher levels of stress hormones are usually needed to affect the immune system directly. But in this case, the modest rise in corticosterone worked more like an amplifier. While it wasn’t enough to trigger immune changes by itself, it was crucial for allowing the response to happen when cooperating with signals coming from the brain.

    This further illustrate how the body’s stress system and immune changes are scalable and how they adjust depending on the nature and intensity of the stressful event.

    Why might this happen?

    Why would the brain do this? Although we haven’t formally tested this, we think one possibility is that this complex, multi-organ communication system evolved to help the body anticipate and respond to potential shortages. By fine-tuning energy use and immune readiness based on perceived needs, the brain would be able to coordinate an efficient whole-body response before a real crisis begins.

    If the brain senses that food might be limited (for example, by interpreting environmental cues previously associated with food scarcity) it may act early to conserve energy and adjust immune function in advance.

    If these findings are confirmed in humans, this new data could, in future, have real-world implications for diseases where the immune system becomes overactive – such as cardiovascular diseases, multiple sclerosis, and wasting syndrome in cancer patients.

    This is of further relevance for metabolic and eating disorders, such as obesity or anorexia. Not only are these disorders often accompanied by chronic inflammation or immune-related complications, they can also alter how hunger and fullness are computed in the brain.

    And, if the brain is able to help dial the immune system up or down, it may be possible to develop new brain-targeted approaches to aid current immuno-modulatory therapies.

    Still, there’s much we don’t know. We need more studies investigating how this mechanism works in humans. These studies could prove challenging, as it isn’t possible yet to selectively activate specific neurons in the human brain with the same precision we can in experimental models.

    Interestingly, more than a century ago a Soviet psychiatrist, A. Tapilsky, conducted an unusual experiment where he used hypnosis to suggest feelings of hunger or fullness to patients. Remarkably, immune cell counts increased when patients were told they were full and decreased when they were told they were hungry.

    These early observations hinted at a powerful connection between the mind and body, well ahead of today’s scientific understanding and are eerily prescient of our current ability to use powerful genetic tools to artificially generate internal sensations like hunger or fullness in animal models.

    What’s clear is that the brain’s view of the body’s energy needs can shape the immune system – sometimes even before the body itself has caught up. This raises new questions about how conditions such as stress, eating disorders and even learned associations with food scarcity might drive inflammation and disease.

    Giuseppe D’Agostino receives, or have received, research funding from the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organisation (ECCO), the Wellcome Trust (via the University of Aberdeen), Novo Nordisk, and Eli Lilly and Co. The funders had no involvement in the writing of this article or in the decision to publish it.

    Joao paulo Cavalcanti de Albuquerque received funding from “British Society for Neuroendocrinology” (BSN). The funders had no involvement in the writing of this article or in the decision to publish it.

    – ref. Even just thinking you’re hungry could change your immune system – new research in mice – https://theconversation.com/even-just-thinking-youre-hungry-could-change-your-immune-system-new-research-in-mice-253501

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The International Space Station is too clean – what does that tell us about how to co-exist with bugs on Earth?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Samuel J. White, Associate Professor & Head of Projects, York St John University

    One of the cleanest places beyond Earth may be making its residents ill. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have had rashes, allergies and the odd infection, and scientists now believe the station’s environment is too clean. Researchers recently concluded that the ISS is so sterile it may be damaging astronauts’ health and have even suggested it might be time to make the station deliberately “dirtier”.

    This might seem surprising. We’re constantly told to avoid germs, not embrace them. But the findings from space highlight a growing concern among scientists: that extreme cleanliness can sometimes do more harm than good.

    The ISS lacks many of the environmental microbes, the sort found in soil, water and plants, that humans have evolved alongside for millennia. Instead, the microbial life floating around the station comes mainly from the astronauts themselves, such as bacteria shed from the skin.

    In an environment sealed off from the natural world, the only microbes astronauts are exposed to are the ones they bring with them. Even though the crew stopped cleaning for a period before the study, scientists still found large amounts of chemical cleaning residues across the station’s surfaces.

    The ISS is a microbial bubble: no fresh microbial input from outside and constant sterilisation from within. In such an environment, the immune system may struggle to function normally. That could help explain why astronauts commonly suffer immune-related issues like fungal infections, cold sores and unexplained skin conditions while in orbit.

    For those of us back on Earth, this space station discovery offers a timely lesson. Modern life has given us a remarkable ability to control our surroundings. Homes are climate-controlled and filled with antibacterial sprays. Hand sanitisers are used regularly. Children’s toys, floors and worktops are scrubbed spotless.

    But, as with all things, there may be a tipping point. Too much hygiene can interfere with how our bodies learn to defend themselves.

    Our immune system isn’t just a shield against germs, it’s a complex network that needs training. From the moment we’re born, we begin learning how to respond to different microbes. Many of these are harmless and some are beneficial.

    Early and repeated exposure to a broad range of microbes helps the immune system understand what is a genuine threat and what isn’t. Without that exposure, the system can overreact, triggering allergies, asthma and even autoimmune conditions.

    There’s growing evidence for this idea. Children who grow up with pets or on farms, for example, tend to have lower rates of asthma and allergies. The thinking is that regular contact with soil, animal dander and a wider variety of bacteria helps build a more tolerant immune system. In contrast, children raised in more sterile, urban homes, with limited exposure to the microbial world, are more likely to develop allergic diseases.

    Targeted hygiene

    This isn’t a call to abandon cleanliness altogether. Handwashing, proper food hygiene and general sanitation have saved countless lives and remain essential. But there’s a difference between good hygiene and indiscriminate sterilisation. Not all microbes are enemies; many are part of our natural environment and play a key role in keeping us well.

    One sensible approach is known as targeted hygiene. This means cleaning where it really matters, after using the toilet, before eating or preparing food, and when someone is ill while allowing more relaxed standards in lower-risk areas.

    It might also mean accepting that a bit of outdoor mud, the presence of pets, or letting children get dirty now and then isn’t just harmless – it’s beneficial.

    Some scientists are now exploring the idea of introducing friendly microbes into our homes and workplaces to restore microbial balance. There are cleaning products containing beneficial bacteria designed to crowd out harmful ones.

    Other research is looking at how indoor environments, especially in places like hospitals, schools and public transport, could be made more microbially diverse without compromising safety.

    Which brings us back to the ISS. If astronauts are becoming unwell due to a lack of microbial exposure, it may be time for space agencies to rethink their hyper-clean protocols.

    The researchers behind the ISS study have proposed introducing safe, beneficial microbes into the station to replicate the sort of environmental exposure humans would naturally get on Earth. Future space missions may even incorporate microbial “gardens” or systems to reintroduce natural microbial communities.

    Here on Earth, we don’t need to float in orbit to learn from this. The lesson is clear: balance is key. A world that is too dirty spreads disease. But a world that is too clean may leave us vulnerable in other ways.

    The best defence may lie not in eradicating microbes entirely but in learning to live with the right ones. For astronauts and Earth dwellers alike, it may be time to welcome a little bit of good, clean dirt back into our lives.

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

    – ref. The International Space Station is too clean – what does that tell us about how to co-exist with bugs on Earth? – https://theconversation.com/the-international-space-station-is-too-clean-what-does-that-tell-us-about-how-to-co-exist-with-bugs-on-earth-253563

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Shop smarter, not harder. How gentle messaging can help the planet more than tough talk

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jasmine Mohsen, Doctoral Researcher in Consumer Psychology and Consumer Behaviour, University of Leeds

    Heavy-handed messaging? Andy Soloman/Shutterstock

    Fast fashion is booming, but so is its environmental toll. With up to 10% of global carbon emissions linked to the industry, the over-consumption of cheap clothing has made sustainability campaigns more vital than ever. Yet, even as awareness of fast fashion’s environmental harm grows, many consumers remain resistant to changing their shopping habits.

    My recent research investigated a surprising obstacle to these campaigns: the language used to drive change. I explored how assertive messages such as: “Stop shopping to save the planet!” fare when pitted against softer suggestions along the lines of: “Consider shopping less for a greener future.”

    The results reveal that pushy messaging not only fails but actively backfires, triggering anger and resistance that can undermine the campaign’s goals.

    At the heart of this resistance lies psychological reactance – a defensive reaction to perceived threats to personal freedom. Humans value autonomy, and messages that come across as commands (“must”, “stop”, “don’t”) can spark a “boomerang effect”, prompting people to defy the directive – even if they agree with its underlying intent.

    This reluctance may be attributed to the fact that buying clothes is frequently linked to self-esteem, social desirability and confidence. Shopping is often an enjoyable and empowering experience, driven by personal choice and satisfaction. But when marketing relies on guilt or pressure, this positive engagement can shift to discomfort and resistance. Rather than nurturing real connections with brands’ messages, forceful campaigns risk weakening trust and consumer loyalty.

    In the study, 196 participants in the US were shown posters designed as part of a campaign to reduce consumption. One group saw an assertive poster demanding they stop shopping to help the environment. The other saw a suggestive poster encouraging wise shopping for the same goal. Participants then completed surveys assessing their emotional responses and willingness to alter their behaviour.

    The findings were clear. Assertive messages provoked stronger feelings of anger and defensiveness in the face of a perceived threat than suggestive ones. These negative emotions led to lower compliance with the campaign’s goals, showing that pushy language can diminish – rather than enhance – effectiveness.

    The role of anger

    The emotional fallout of assertive messaging doesn’t stop there. The study found that anger, sparked by perceived restrictions, affects consumer behaviour. Participants who felt their freedom was threatened were not only less likely to reduce shopping but also more likely to dismiss the campaign altogether. Anger adds another barrier to encouraging sustainable habits.

    However, this anger can also fuel a desire to regain autonomy, pushing consumers toward action that reaffirms their independence. This could be resisting the message or making choices that feel self-directed – it may even drive consumers towards unsustainable choices.

    The findings uncovered several insights for anyone designing campaigns to encourage sustainable consumption.



    Read more:
    Five consumer myths to ditch in 2025

    First, go with suggestion over command. Messages framed as friendly suggestions, such as “consider” or “you might”, are less likely to provoke resistance and more likely to inspire positive change.

    Second, focus on empowerment. Highlighting the autonomy of the consumer and the benefits of participation can encourage them to cooperate without threatening their individual freedom.

    Third, educate with empathy. Campaigns that inform consumers about the environmental impact of their habits, without using forceful language, are better received.

    In 2011, outdoor clothing brand Patagonia launched an advert with the message “Don’t Buy This Jacket” – a good example of assertive language and reverse psychology. The campaign sent a message about buying less and taking care of the environment. As a strategy, this is known as “demartketing”.

    Interestingly, although it used the “don’t” command, Patagonia was giving people a choice to ignore the message or question why they were buying the jacket in the first place. Although Patagonia’s sales jumped by 30% the following year, the campaign was about more than selling. The company wanted to encourage people to think about the impact of Black Friday as well as their wider buying habits, and to consider repairing things, reusing them or buying clothing that would last longer.

    Of course, these insights extend beyond fast fashion. Judgemental messaging has been shown to fail in areas such as smoking cessation, exercise and diet campaigns, suggesting that softer approaches may work better across a range of public health and environmental initiatives.

    The environmental cost of fast fashion is undeniable, with millions of tons of clothing wasted annually and more than a billion tons of greenhouse gases emitted each year. Encouraging consumers to embrace sustainable habits, from buying secondhand to adopting minimalism, is vital. However, as our research shows, how we ask for that change makes all the difference.

    If we want people to shop less for the planet’s sake, it might be worth abandoning the “here’s what you must do” messaging in favour of strategies that respect their freedom. This could be a powerful way to shift behaviour towards a sustainable future – one suggestion at a time.

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

    – ref. Shop smarter, not harder. How gentle messaging can help the planet more than tough talk – https://theconversation.com/shop-smarter-not-harder-how-gentle-messaging-can-help-the-planet-more-than-tough-talk-249217

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: ‘Signalgate’: how the US government creates and guards its secrets

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kaeten Mistry, Associate Professor of American History, University of East Anglia

    DC Studio/Shutterstock

    The conundrum of when classified information is not deemed top secret is at the heart of the recent “Signalgate” controversy in which the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, shared plans for a military attack on Yemen using Signal, a messaging app.

    The recipients were other national security leaders and Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of US magazine The Atlantic, who had been accidentally added to the chat. Goldberg published a story about the incident, omitting several details he believed were highly sensitive and secret.

    The Donald Trump administration has denied that the information was classified. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of US national intelligence, told members of the Senate intelligence oversight committee that “no classified material” was shared in the group. CIA director John Ratcliffe did likewise.

    Hegseth dismissed the idea that any secrets were discussed on the group chat. And Trump also stated that the information “wasn’t classified”. But many disagreed, especially after Goldberg published another piece that included the full transcript of the chat.

    The Trump administration denies wrongdoing and has been on the attack. Meanwhile, critics argue that this is the latest example of misdemeanour and incompetence.

    So, what does this episode tell us about the US secrecy system and how classified information can be revealed?

    The US’s classification system

    The modern system of national security information classification emerged in the early years of the cold war. Many US presidents make small adjustments to the rules, but the basic structure remains the same as the 1950s, when a pair of executive orders established the system and regulated access to secrets.

    Information “related to the national defense” is labelled under three categories: confidential, secret and top secret. Confidential is the lowest rung of the ladder and the most sensitive material is tagged top secret, where an unauthorised disclosure would cause “exceptionally grave damage” to US national security.

    Every government agency that deals with national security matters is responsible for classifying its information. They also decide what, if anything, can be declassified.

    The number of secrets has grown exponentially since the second world war, and more people now have access to them. The exact size of the secrecy state remains unclear (it is, after all, secret), but there are billions of state secrets.

    The most recently available data reveals that more than 5 million Americans possess some level of security clearance, and it costs over US$18 billion (£14 billion) annually to maintain the system.

    The key legal tool to protect state secrets is the Espionage Act. Curiously, the law was passed in 1917, over three decades before the classification system was created.

    On the surface, the Espionage Act is clear-cut. It makes it a crime to disclose secret information to anyone not authorised to receive it. But, in reality, it was of limited value for prosecuting breaches during the 20th century, leading to the development of further tools and laws.

    In the 21st century, the Espionage Act reemerged as the weapon of choice for prosecuting leakers and whistleblowers. Yet punishment has overwhelmingly targeted mid- to lower-tier national security officials. No senior leader in the US has been prosecuted for revealing secrets.

    Similar to the UK?

    The US approach to secrecy is similar to the British approach. But there are key differences.

    The UK passed the first Official Secrets Act in 1889, which was revised several times over the next century. The Official Secrets Acts provide the main legal protection “against espionage and the unauthorised disclosure of official information”.

    It covers all current or former employees of the security and intelligence service, as well as Crown servants and government contractors. But anyone can be bound by it. As a law, everyone who comes across classified information is subject to the Official Secrets Acts.

    While similar secrecy legislation is common in many countries around the world, the US is a notable exception. This is because the first amendment to the constitution prevents laws that impinge on freedom of speech, the press, and the right of people to assemble and petition the government.

    However, recognising the utility of categorising and securing defence information, US military authorities copied the British approach toward classification in the early 20th century. Labelling and safeguarding secrets were critical during the two world wars. The question was how to do so in peacetime.

    The resolution was a US secrecy system that upholds the first amendment while allowing significant government control over secrets. Classification is based on executive orders while legislation outlaws exposure.

    The political stakes?

    The development of the US secrecy regime, like national security generally, has been a bipartisan effort. Democratic and Republican leaders, both in the White House and Congress, created the system over the 20th century. They have consistently sought to uphold and safeguard it.

    But politics is never absent. And in the current hyper-partisan times, Signalgate has been used as a stick against the Trump administration. Democratic lawmakers began calling for resignations and investigations into the leak. Republicans have increased pressure on Hegseth, calling for an independent probe. The Pentagon has said it will review Hegseth’s use of Signal.

    The Trump administration continues to dismiss the notion that this is a political scandal, and is trying to make it a story about media bias. “If you think you’re going to force the president of the United States to fire anybody you’ve got another thing coming,” US vice-president J.D. Vance declared. “We are standing behind our entire national security team.”

    However, there are some signs of unrest. Trump reportedly mulled over firing Mike Waltz, the national security adviser who added Goldberg to the Signal group chat. Growing numbers of voters think Hegseth should go.

    The politics may be uncertain. But the modern secrecy system allows the executive branch tremendous room for manoeuvre. It allows senior officials to claim that exposed details of top secret messages, like military attack plans, are not classified.

    Such a justification would not be plausible for lower level national security officials to evade censure. And Goldberg himself could have been caught in the crosshairs had it not been for the fact the information shared with him came from the very top of the secrecy system.

    Kaeten Mistry has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

    – ref. ‘Signalgate’: how the US government creates and guards its secrets – https://theconversation.com/signalgate-how-the-us-government-creates-and-guards-its-secrets-253569

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Here’s how to create a more nature-literate society

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Seirian Sumner, Professor of Behavioural Ecology, UCL

    stuartjames worcs/Shutterstock

    Spring is the time of year when my friends remember what a strange job I have, because a stripy insect has just appeared in their kitchen and they are panicking. “It’s huge!” one squeals. “Help! What do I do? I swear it’s that murder hornet I saw on social media.”

    I explain to my friend that this is a common wasp queen, freshly emerged from hibernation. She’s lost 40% of her body weight and needs sugar. She will soon build a nest – using wood from my friend’s garden fence – lay eggs and rear them to adulthood by feeding them caterpillars, flies, aphids and spiders. If she survives, she might lay 10,000 eggs through the summer producing 10,000 worker wasps that will hunt more of these so-called pests and pollinate plants in my friend’s garden.

    By now, my friend is offering the wasp some honey. As he watches her feed and fly away, he is contemplating the benefits that this single insect will bring to his garden this summer.

    My friend is not unusual: like many people, he lacks the words to describe nature and knowledge to name it. Without such nature literacy, is it any wonder that many people don’t know how to care for the natural world or why we should bother?

    Humans are more disconnected from nature than ever, partly because technology means we have fewer reasons to spend time in nature – this is what ecologists call the “extinction of experience”. Fewer than half of UK adults feel highly connected with nature; most children can’t identify stinging nettles, bumblebees or robins. People don’t understand what the term natural history means or why it matters.

    I witnessed this recently while lecturing. In a class survey, my bioscience students summed up natural history as: “old Victorian gentlemen”, “museums”, “dinosaurs” and “old-fashioned”. They also rated natural history as not relevant or of little relevance to their degree programmes, with only a few people rating it as quite or very important.

    We weren’t always like this. Natural history is the study of nature: it is the oldest science. Natural selection ensured that early humans were brilliant naturalists, in order to find food and not become food. Nature inspired some of our most influential scientists, from Aristotle to Charles Darwin.

    Non-biologists were also deeply influenced by nature. In the words of physicist Albert Einstein: “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” English mathematician Isaac Newton considered himself “a natural philosopher” – only the nature-curious would bother watching an apple fall.

    Having the language to name and describe nature is a gateway to curiosity-driven innovation, creativity and discovery. This matters because our food, health and wellbeing, innovations and creativity depend on observation, curiosity and understanding of the natural world. From termite-mound inspired air-conditioning technology to burr-mimicking Velcro, and ant-led town planning.

    Without noticing how nature has solved problems and without the ability to name, recognise and share the source with others in order to replicate the observations, none of these breakthroughs would have happened. Where will our next innovations come from, if we’ve lost the inclination and ability to notice, name and know nature?

    Knowledge about nature also makes us more pro-environmental and more likely to make planet-friendly decisions. This is critical as we continue to exceed planetary boundaries, driving climate change and nature loss. As things stand, our continuing divorce from nature means that the next generation are ill equipped for the future. Nature literacy helps us reconnect and make the right decisions.

    Growing nature literacy

    Becoming a nature-literate society starts with three key steps.

    1. Notice. Relearn how to be deliciously distracted by nature, curious about the ordinary, and redevelop the sense of awe and wonder that has inspired science, innovation and the arts for centuries.

    2. Name. Embrace the joys of learning to name nature. Can you tell a beech tree from an oak? A bee-fly from a bumble-bee? By being able to name something, we develop a connection with it and crave knowledge about it – be it for wasps or weeds.

    3. Nurture. With names and knowledge come care, responsibility and the determination to take action to protect nature, such that future generations have the biodiversity needed for future learning and inspiration.

    Have you ever seen an elephant hawkmoth caterpillar?
    Simon T May/Shutterstock

    Noticing and naming nature means we’re more likely to nurture it. Sharing our nature knowledge with others helps nudge the nature literacy agenda from below the boots of old Victorian gentlemen and into the 21st century. Even when that bit of nature involves gorgeous wasps.



    Read more:
    A new natural history GCSE is welcome – but climate change needs to be part of the whole curriculum

    And after 11 years of campaigning, environmentalist and author Mary Colwell has nudged nature literacy on to the agenda of the UK government with the approval of an examination-level qualification for secondary school children – the natural history GCSE. This is an important first step forward in shifting the baseline of nature literacy among the next generation in the UK.

    But nature literacy needs to become much more embedded across society. Nature-based jobs are the future. In industry and academia, tech startups and government, frontline roles are now focusing on “green” or “nature-based” jobs to deliver the nature-based solutions needed for a sustainable future. Demands for these jobs is booming, but the the lack of necessary nature-literacy skills is well-recognised. A recent report identified biodiversity knowledge as the most important technical skill identified by nature-based solutions employers globally.

    We need to shift cultural norms and societal expectations so that nature literacy is taught and valued by everyone – not just ecologists. Government and educators owe the future of our planet a nature-literate workforce.

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

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

    Seirian Sumner receives funding from the UK government’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). She is a Trustee and Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, and author of the book ‘Endless Forms: Why We Should Love Wasps’

    – ref. Here’s how to create a more nature-literate society – https://theconversation.com/heres-how-to-create-a-more-nature-literate-society-253373

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The hidden power of marathon Senate speeches: What history tells us about Cory Booker’s 25-hour oration

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Charlie Hunt, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Boise State University

    Sen. Cory Booker walks toward reporters after delivering a record-setting 25-hour speech for the U.S. Senate at the Capitol on April 1, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Win McNamee/Getty Images

    Democratic U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey made history on April 1, 2025, when he stood on the Senate floor and spoke for 25 hours and five minutes, delivering the longest floor speech in the history of the U.S. Senate.

    Booker’s speech detailed his concerns about President Donald Trump’s new executive orders, other policies and approach to government in his second term.

    “I rise tonight because silence at this moment of national crisis would be a betrayal of some of the greatest heroes of our nation. Because at stake in this moment is nothing less than everything that we brag about, that we talk about, that makes us special,” Booker said.

    Although Booker’s speech was not technically a filibuster, meaning a prolonged action at the Senate in order to delay or stop a vote on a legislative action, it was clearly a monumental physical achievement. Booker stood, wearing a black suit, for the entirety of his speech and did not pause to take bathroom or meal breaks.

    What does the subject matter of Booker’s speech, as well as his style of giving it, say about its potential effectiveness? Could it succeed where filibusters have failed?

    Many other long Senate speeches in history offer a variety of useful historical hints about the political significance of Booker’s record-breaking speech.

    U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina is kissed by his wife after talking for 24 hours and 18 minutes in opposition to the Civil Rights Act in August 1957.
    Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images

    Booker’s speech was a wide-ranging protest

    One unusual element of Booker’s oration is that it was not focused on just one narrow issue.

    Most of the lengthiest filibusters from across Senate history are focused on bills that cover important but specific issues. In 1953, Sen. Wayne Morse of Oregon, for example, set a record for the longest filibuster when he spoke for 22 hours and 26 minutes. Morse protested a bill involving the transfer of land and oil rights between coastal states and the federal government. The bill passed, despite Morse’s filibuster.

    Sen. Strom Thurmond, the South Carolina politician who broke Morse’s record just four years later, infamously – and unsuccessfully – protested the Civil Rights Act of 1957 with a 24-hour, 18-minute speech.

    Booker’s speech came in the midst of a vote to confirm Matthew Whitaker as the U.S. ambassador to NATO. Whitaker was confirmed shortly after Booker’s speech concluded.

    Booker and the procession of Senate colleagues who asked him questions referenced this and other appointments in their remarks. But Booker largely used the speech to build a much bigger case against the Trump administration, most notably that the administration had wrested from Congress much of its constitutionally mandated budgetary authority by extensively cutting federal staff, grants and spending without congressional approval.

    “These are not normal times in America,” Booker said toward the beginning of his address, “and they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate.”

    The rules and culture of the Senate have always been more lax when it comes to what congressional experts call “germaneness” – in other words, how relevant a Senator’s action is to whatever is being debated.

    For example, the Senate often allows nongermane amendments, meaning those that have little or nothing to do with the bill being debated. Booker leveraged that Senate tradition to make a larger point about what he called an ongoing “crisis” in American democracy.

    Booker stuck to the issues

    Booker may have covered a wide variety of areas in his speech, ranging from proposed Republican cuts to Medicaid to mass firings of federal workers, but there’s no question that he stayed focused on his critique of the Trump administration – a difficult task to stick to for 25 straight hours.

    Booker’s predecessors in the pursuit of Thurmond’s record have demonstrated this difficulty in keeping a marathon speech focused.

    For example, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas diverted from his argument when he gave a 21-hour, 19-minute speech protesting President Obama’s signature piece of legislation, the Affordable Care Act, in 2013.

    Cruz, who still serves with Booker in the Senate, took the opportunity to tell his young daughters a bedtime story on the Senate floor, reading aloud from Dr. Seuss’ children’s book “Green Eggs and Ham.”

    Louisiana Sen. Huey Long, meanwhile, shared recipes for southern fried oysters during his 1937 protest of the federal appointments process.

    Booker, on the other hand, almost uniformly kept his focus on his grievances against the Trump administration and used only notes designed to reinforce his central argument that Trump is not leading in the best interest of the country.

    According to an April 1 press release from Booker’s office, the senator drew from over 1,000 pages of prepared material assembled by his Senate aides, including stories from more than 200 Americans who had written to Booker protesting Trump’s actions.

    In many instances, Booker also spoke extemporaneously about the administration’s actions. At other times, his fellow senators broke in for a lengthy question, but even these kept the conversation, and Booker’s attention, focused on taking Trump — and occasionally Elon Musk – to task.

    In all instances, Booker used his speech to rally the public.

    “My voice is inadequate. My efforts today are inadequate to stop what they are trying to do,” he said at one point. “But we the people are powerful, and we are strong.”

    Sen. Cory Booker speaks on the Senate floor on April 1, 2025.
    Senate Television/Associated Press

    Lasting effects

    Of course, with few tangible results to show for lengthy Senate speeches, people might be tempted to view these long orations as little more than trivia or political theater.

    On some occasions, filibusters have made a legislative impact. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato of New York, for example, filibustered a budget bill in 1986 for nearly 23½ hours to protest an amendment that would have killed funding for a jet trainer plane manufactured in his state. His filibuster didn’t stop the bill entirely, but he did secure a concession that prolonged the project’s life.

    For the most part, however, lengthy filibusters throughout history have been largely fruitless efforts legislatively. Even so, the symbolism of these speeches, including Booker’s, can have effects on politics and representation that last beyond the legislation the senator is protesting.

    It’s difficult to know yet just how effective Booker’s efforts will be in motivating an anti-Trump coalition to stand up to the administration, either in Congress or among voters.

    But politically speaking, Booker’s timing was fortuitous – on April 2, the same evening Booker wrapped up his address, liberals secured a crucial Wisconsin Supreme Court seat in a high-turnout election, when Judge Susan Crawford beat Judge Brad Schimel. Schimel is a Trump supporter and received nearly US$20 million in donations from organizations supported by Musk.

    Democratic politicians also outperformed expectations in two special elections to the U.S. House in Florida, though they lost the races.

    Taken together with Booker’s herculean effort, these events could serve as a catalyst for Trump’s opponents to strike back in the coming months.

    The symbolic significance of Booker’s achievement has also not gone unnoticed. Booker, who is Black and reflected on ancestors who were both enslaved or enslavers in his speech, was himself mindful of the historical relevance.

    “To be candid, Strom Thurmond’s record always just really irked me,” Booker said after his speech in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

    “The longest speech on our great Senate floor was someone who was trying to stop people like me from being in the Senate.”

    If nothing else, Booker took that record from Thurmond and made it his own.

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

    – ref. The hidden power of marathon Senate speeches: What history tells us about Cory Booker’s 25-hour oration – https://theconversation.com/the-hidden-power-of-marathon-senate-speeches-what-history-tells-us-about-cory-bookers-25-hour-oration-253695

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Consumers are boycotting US goods around the world. Should Trump be worried?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alan Bradshaw, Professor of Marketing, Royal Holloway University of London

    US alcohol has been removed from sale in the Canadian province of British Columbia. lenic/Shutterstock

    As politicians around the world scramble to respond to US “liberation day” tariffs, consumers have also begun flexing their muscles. “Boycott USA” messages and searches have been trending on social media and search engines, with users sharing advice on brands and products to avoid.

    Even before Donald Trump announced across-the-board tariffs, there had been protests and attacks on the president’s golf courses in Doonbeg in Ireland and Turnberry in Scotland in response to other policies. And in Canada, shoppers avoided US goods after Trump announced he could take over his northern neighbour.

    His close ally Elon Musk has seen protests at Tesla showrooms across Europe, Australia and New Zealand. New cars have been set on fire as part of the “Tesla take-down”, while Tesla sales have been on a deep downward trend. This has been especially noticeable in European countries where electric vehicles sales have been high, and in Australia.

    This targeting of Trump and Musk’s brands are part of wider boycotts of US goods as consumers look for ways to express their anger at the US administration.

    Denmark’s biggest retailer, Salling Group, has given the price label of all European products a black star, making it easy for customers to avoid US goods.

    Canadian shoppers are turning US products upside down in retail outlets so it’s easier for fellow shoppers to spot and avoid them. Canadian consumers can also download the Maple Scan app that checks barcodes to see if their grocery purchases are actually Canadian or have parent companies from the USA.

    Who owns what?

    The issue of ostensibly Canadian brands being owned by US capital illustrates the complexity of consumer boycotts – it can be difficult to identify which brands are American and which are not.

    In the UK, for example, many consumers would be surprised to learn how many famous British brands are actually American-owned – for example, Cadbury, Waterstones and Boots. So entwined are global economies that attempts by consumers to boycott US brands may also damage their local economies.

    This complexity is also present in Danish and Canadian Facebook groups that are dedicated to boycotting US goods. Consumers exchange tips on how to swap alternatives for American products.

    The fact that Facebook is a US-based company only demonstrates how deeply embedded consumer culture is in US technologies. European businesses often depend on American operating systems and cloud storage while consumers rely on US-owned social media platforms for communication.

    Even when consumers succeed in weeding out American products, if they pay using Visa, Mastercard or Apple Pay, a percentage of the price will nonetheless be rerouted to the US. If a touch payment is made with Worldpay, the percentage could be even greater.

    These American financial services show just how embedded US businesses are in retail in ways that consumers may not appreciate. In practice, an absolute boycott of US business is almost unimaginable.

    All-American brands

    But American branding is not always subtle. In addition to brands directly connected to the US administration – such as the Trump golf courses and Tesla – many other companies have always been flamboyantly American. Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Budweiser are just some examples where their American identities and proudly on show.

    As such, it’s possible that consumers will increasingly avoid blatantly American brands. They may be less concerned about the complexities and contradictions of a more comprehensive boycott.

    Consumer actions where the goal is political change are known as “proxy boycotts” because no particular company is the ultimate target. Rather, the brands and firms are targeted by consumers as a means to an end.

    Do boycotts work?

    A classic example of a proxy boycott took aim at French goods, particularly wine, in the mid-1990s. This was in response to president Jacques Chirac’s decision to conduct nuclear tests in the Pacific. The large-scale consumer boycotts contributed to France’s decision to abandon its nuclear tests in 1996.

    In Britain, for example, French wines in all categories lost market share as demand fell during the boycott. At the time, it cost the French wine sector £23 million (about £46 million today).

    These boycotts are a reminder that the interplay between corporations, brands and consumer culture are inevitably embedded in politics. The current political impasse demonstrates that consumers can participate in politics, not just with their votes, but also with their buying power.

    Trump clearly wants to demonstrate American strength. The “liberation day” tariffs, which were higher than most observers expected, bear this out. But many US corporations will now be worrying about how consumers in the US and around the world might respond. Trump could see a mass mobilisation of consumer power in ways that will give the president something to think about.

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

    – ref. Consumers are boycotting US goods around the world. Should Trump be worried? – https://theconversation.com/consumers-are-boycotting-us-goods-around-the-world-should-trump-be-worried-253389

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: AI is automating our jobs – but values need to change if we are to be liberated by it

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Robert Muggah, Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow na Bosch Academy e Co-fundador, Instituto Igarapé

    Artificial intelligence may be the most significant disruptor in the history of mankind. Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai famously described AI as “more profound than the invention of fire or electricity”. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman claims it has the power to cure most diseases, solve climate change, provide personalized education to the world, and lead to other “astounding triumphs”.

    AI will undoubtedly help solve vast problems, while generating vast fortunes for technology companies and investors. However, the rapid spread of generative AI and machine learning will also automate vast swathes of the global workforce, eviscerating white-collar and blue-collar jobs alike. And while millions of new jobs will surely be created, it is not clear what happens when potentially billions more are lost.

    The Insights section is committed to high-quality longform journalism. Our editors work with academics from many different backgrounds who are tackling a wide range of societal and scientific challenges.

    Amid the breathless promises of productivity gains from AI, there are rising concerns that the political, social and economic fallout from mass labour displacement will deepen inequality, strain public safety nets, and contribute to social unrest.

    A 2023 survey in 31 countries found that over half of all respondents felt “nervous” about the impacts of AI on their daily lives and believed it will negatively impact their jobs. Concerns are also mounting about the ways in which AI is being weaponized and could hasten everything from geopolitical fragmentation to nuclear exchanges. While experts are sounding the alarm, it is increasingly clear that governments, businesses and societies are unprepared for the AI revolution.

    The coming AI upheaval

    The idea that machines would one day replace human labour is hardly new. It features in novels, films and countless economic reports stretching back over centuries. In 2013, Carl-Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne of the University of Oxford attempted to quantify the human costs, estimating that “47% of total US employment is in the high risk category, meaning that associated occupations are potentially automatable”. Their study triggered a global debate about the far-reaching consequences of automation not just for manufacturing jobs, but also service and knowledge-based work.

    Fast forward to today, and AI capabilities are advancing faster than almost anyone expected. In November 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, which dramatically accelerated the AI race. By 2023, Goldman Sachs projected that “roughly two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation” and that up to 300 million jobs worldwide could be displaced or significantly altered by AI.

    A more detailed McKinsey analysis estimated that “Gen AI and other technologies have the potential to automate work activities that absorb up to 70% of employees’ time today”. Brookings found that “more than 30% of all workers could see at least 50% of their occupation’s tasks disrupted by generative AI”. Although the methodologies and estimates differ, all of these studies point to a common outcome: AI will profoundly upset the world of work.

    While it is tempting to compare the impacts of AI automation to past industrial revolutions, it is also short-sighted. AI is arguably more transformative than the combustion engine or Internet because it represents a fundamental shift in how decisions are made and tasks are performed. It is not just a new tool or source of power, but a system that can learn, adapt, and make independent decisions across virtually all sectors of the economy and aspects of human life. Precisely because AI has these capabilities, scales exponentially, and is not confined by geography, it is already starting to outperform humans. It signals the advent of a post-human intelligence era.

    Goldman Sachs estimates that 46% of administrative work and 44% of legal tasks could be automated within the next decade. In finance and legal sectors, tasks such as contract analysis, fraud detection, and financial advising are increasingly handled by AI systems that can process data faster and more accurately than humans. Financial institutions are rapidly deploying AI to reduce costs and increase efficiency, with many entry-level roles set to disappear. Global banks could cut as many as 200,000 jobs in the next three to five years on account of AI.

    Ironically, coding and software engineering jobs are among the most vulnerable to the spreading of AI. While there are expectations that AI will increase productivity and streamline routine tasks with many programmers and non-programmers likely to benefit, some coders confess that they are becoming overly reliant on AI suggestions (which undermines problem-solving skills).

    Anthropic, one of the leading developers of generative AI systems, recently launched an Economic Index based on millions of anonymised uses of its Claude chatbot. It reveals massive adoption of AI in software engineering: “37.2% of queries sent to Claude were in this category, covering tasks like software modification, code debugging, and network troubleshooting”.

    AI is also outperforming humans in a growing array of medical imaging and diagnosis roles. While doctors may not be replaced outright, support roles are particularly vulnerable and medical professionals are getting anxious. Analysts insist that high-skilled jobs are not at risk even as AI-driven diagnostic tools and patient management systems are steadily being deployed in hospitals and clinics worldwide.

    Meanwhile, the creative sectors also face significant disruption as AI-generated writing and synthetic media improve. The demand for human journalists, copywriters, and designers is already falling just as AI-generated content (including so-called “slop”: the growing amount of low-quality text, audio and video flooding social media) expands. And in education, AI tutoring systems, adaptive learning platforms, and automated grading could reduce the need for human teachers, not only in remote learning environments.

    Arguably the most dramatic impact of AI in the coming years will be in the manufacturing sector. Recent videos from China offer a glimpse into a future of factories that run 24/7 and are nearly entirely automated (except a handful in supervising roles). Most tasks are performed by AI-powered robots and technologies designed to handle production and, increasingly, support functions.

    Unlike humans, robots do not need light to operate in these “dark factories”. CapGemini describes them as places “where raw materials enter, and finished products leave, with little or no human intervention”. Re-read that sentence. The implications are profound and dizzying: efficiency gains (capital) that come at the cost of human livelihoods (labor) and rapid downward spiral for the latter if no safeguards are put in place.

    Some have confidently argued that, as with past technological shifts, AI-driven job losses will be offset by new opportunities. AI enthusiasts add that it will mostly handle repetitive or boring tasks, freeing humans for more creative work — like giving doctors more time with patients, teachers more time to engage with students, lawyers more time to concentrate on client relationships, or architects more time to focus on innovative design. But this historical comfort overlooks AI’s radical novelty: for the first time, we’re confronted with a technology that is not just a tool but an autonomous agent, capable of making decisions and directly shaping reality. The question is not just what we can do with AI, but what AI might do to us.

    AI will certainly save time. Machine learning already interprets scans faster and cheaper than doctors. But the idea that this will give professionals more time for creative or human-centered work is less convincing. Already doctors are not short on technology; they are short on time because healthcare systems prioritise efficiency and cost-cutting over “time with patients”. The rise of technology in healthcare has coincided with doctors spending less time with patients, not more, as hospitals and insurers push for higher throughput and lower costs. AI may make diagnosis quicker, but there is little reason to think it will loosen the grip of a system designed to maximise output rather than human connection.

    Nor is there much reason to expect AI to liberate office workers for more creative tasks. Technology tends to reinforce the values of the system into which it is introduced. If those values are cost reduction and higher productivity, AI will be deployed to automate tasks and consolidate work, not to create breathing room. Workflows will be redesigned for speed and efficiency, not for creativity or reflection. Unless there is a deliberate shift in priorities — a move to value human input over raw output — AI is more likely to tighten the screws than to loosen them. That shift seems unlikely anytime soon.

    AI’s uneven impacts

    AI’s impact on employment will not be felt equally around the world. It will impact different countries differently. Disparities in political systems, economic development levels, labour market structures and access to AI infrastructure (including energy) are shaping how regions are preparing for and are likely to experience AI-driven disruption. Smaller, wealthier countries are potentially in a better position to manage the scale and speed of job displacement. Some lower-income societies may be cushioned by the disruption owing to limited market penetration of AI services altogether. Meanwhile, high and medium income countries may experience social turbulence and potentially unrest as a result of rapid and unpredictable automation.

    The United States, the current leader in AI development, faces significant exposure to AI-driven disruption, particularly in services. A 2023 study found that highly educated workers in professional and technical roles are most vulnerable to displacement. Knowledge-based industries such as finance, legal services, and customer support are already shedding entry-level jobs as AI automates routine tasks.

    Technology companies have begun shrinking their workforces, using that also as signals to both government and business. Over 95,000 workers at tech companies lost their jobs in 2024. Despite its AI edge, America’s service-heavy economy leaves it highly exposed to automation’s downsides.

    Asia stands at the forefront of AI-driven automation in manufacturing and services. It is not just China, but countries like South Korea that are deploying AI in so-called “smart factories” and logistics with fully automated production facilities becoming increasingly common. India and the Philippines, major hubs for outsourced IT and customer service, face pressure as AI threatens to replace human labour in these sectors. Japan, with its shrinking workforce, sees AI more as a solution than a threat. But the broader region’s exposure to automation reflects its deep reliance on manufacturing and outsourcing, making it highly vulnerable to AI-driven job displacement in a geopolitically turbulent world.

    Europe is taking early regulatory steps to manage AI’s labour market impact. The EU’s AI Act aims to regulate high-risk AI applications, including those affecting employment. Yet in Eastern Europe, where manufacturing and low-cost labour underpin economic competitiveness, automation is already cutting into job security. Poland and Hungary, for example, are seeing a rise in automated production lines. Western Europe’s knowledge-based economies face risks similar to those in America, particularly in finance and professional services.

    Oil-rich Gulf states are investing heavily in AI as part of diversification efforts away from a dependence on hydrocarbons. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar are building AI hubs and integrating AI into government services and logistics. The UAE even has a Minister of State for AI. But with high youth unemployment and a reliance on foreign labour, these countries face risks if AI reduces demand for low-skill jobs, potentially worsening inequality.

    In Latin America, automation threatens to disrupt manufacturing and agriculture, but also sectors like mining, logistics, and customer service. As many as 2-5% of all jobs in the region are at risk, according to the International Labor Organization and World Bank. And it is not just young people in the formal service sectors, but also human labour in mining operations, logistics and warehouse workers. Call centers in Mexico and Colombia face pressure as AI-powered customer service bots reduce demand for human agents. And AI-driven crop monitoring, automated irrigation, and robotic harvesting threaten to replace farm labourers, particularly in Brazil and Argentina. Yet the region’s large informal labour market may cushion some of the shock.

    While most Africans are optimistic about the transformative potential of AI, adoption remains low due to limited infrastructure and investment. However, the continent’s rapidly growing digital economy could see AI play a transformative role in financial services, logistics, and agriculture. A recent assessment suggests AI could boost productivity and access to services, but without careful management, it risks widening inequality. As in Latin America, low wages and high levels of informal employment reduce the financial incentive to automate. Ironically, weaker economic incentives for automation may shield these economies from the worst of AI’s labour disruption.

    No one is prepared

    The scale and speed of recent AI developments have taken many governments and businesses by surprise. To be sure, some are proactively taking steps to prepare workforces for the transformation. Hundreds of AI laws, regulations, guidelines, and standards have emerged in recent years, though few of them are legally binding. One exception is the EU’s AI Act, which seeks to establish a comprehensive legal framework for AI deployment, addressing risks such as job displacement and ethical concerns. China and South Korea have also developed national AI strategies with an emphasis on industrial policy and technological self-sufficiency, aiming to lead in AI and automation while boosting their manufacturing sectors.

    Notwithstanding recent attempts to increase oversight over AI, the US has adopted an increasingly laissez-faire approach, prioritising innovation by reducing regulatory barriers. This “minimal regulation” stance, however, raises concerns about the potential societal costs of rapid AI adoption, including widespread job displacement, the deepening of inequality and undermining of democracy.

    Other countries, particularly in the Global South, have largely remained on the sidelines of AI regulation, lacking the awareness, capabilities or infrastructure to tackle these issues comprehensively. As such, the global regulatory landscape remains fragmented, with significant disparities in how countries are preparing for the workforce impacts of automation.

    Businesses are under pressure to adopt AI as fast and deeply as possible, for fear of losing competitiveness. That’s, at least, the hyperbolic narrative that AI companies have succeeded in putting forward. And it’s working: a recent poll of 1,000 executives found that 58% of businesses are adopting AI due to competitive pressure and 70% say that advances in technology are occurring faster than their workforce can incorporate them.

    Another new survey suggests that over 40% of global employers planned to reduce their workforce as AI reshapes the labour market. Lost in the rush to adopt AI is a serious reflection on workforce transition. Financial institutions, consulting firms, universities and nonprofit groups have sounded alarms about the economic impact of AI but have provided few solutions other than workforce up-skilling and Universal Basic Income (UBI). Governments and businesses are wrestling with a basic challenge: how to manage the benefits of AI while protecting workers from displacement.

    AI-driven automation is no longer a future prospect; it is already reshaping labour markets. As automation reduces human workforces, it will also diminish the power of unions and collective bargaining furthering entering capital over labour. Whether AI fosters widespread prosperity or deepens inequality and social unrest depends not just on the imperatives of tech company CEOs and shareholders, but on the proactive decisions made by policymakers, business leaders, union representatives, and workers in the coming years.

    The key question is not if AI will disrupt labour markets — this is inevitable — but how societies will manage the upheaval and what kinds of “new bargains” will be made to address its negative externalities. It is worth recalling that while the last three industrial revolutions created more jobs than they destroyed, the transitions were long and painful. This time, the pace of change will be faster and more profound, demanding swift and enlightened action.

    At a minimum, governments must prepare their societies to develop a new social contract, prioritise retraining programs, bolster social safety nets, and explore UBI to help workers displaced by automation. They should also proactively foster new industries to absorb the displaced workforce. Businesses, in turn, will need to rethink workforce strategies and adopt human-centric AI deployment models that prioritise collaboration between humans and machines, rather than substitution of the former by the latter.

    The promise of AI is immense, from boosting productivity to creating new economic opportunities and indeed helping solving big collective problems. Yet, without a focused and coordinated effort, the technology is unlikely to develop in ways that benefit society at large.

    Dr. Robert Muggah is the co-founder of the Igarapé Institute, an independent think and do tank that develops research, solutions and partnerships to address global public, digital and climate security challenges. Dr. Muggah is also a principal of the SecDev Group, and an advisor to the United Nations, the IMF and the World Bank. An advisor to AI start-ups and a climate tech venture firms, Dr. Muggah has experience developing new technologies and testing AI systems for security and governance. He also coordinated a global task force on predictive analytics and AI in the Global South since in 2023.

    Bruno Giussani não presta consultoria, trabalha, possui ações ou recebe financiamento de qualquer empresa ou organização que poderia se beneficiar com a publicação deste artigo e não revelou nenhum vínculo relevante além de seu cargo acadêmico.

    – ref. AI is automating our jobs – but values need to change if we are to be liberated by it – https://theconversation.com/ai-is-automating-our-jobs-but-values-need-to-change-if-we-are-to-be-liberated-by-it-253806

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What politicians could actually do about the issues raised in Adolescence

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Robert Lawson, Associate Professor in Sociolinguistics, Birmingham City University

    Mounir Taha/Shutterstock

    Netflix hit Adolescence has ignited conversations across the UK about contemporary masculinity, online radicalisation and violence against women and girls. It has also raised questions about the interventions needed at home, in schools and by the government to counter the seductive power of harmful content on social media.

    The series suggests the key to solving some of these issues is parents and teachers understanding the “manosphere”. This is a collection of websites, influencers and communities where men talk about “men’s issues”. But, as I’ve explored in my research, anti-women and anti-feminist sentiment also prevails.

    In an interview about the series, Adolescence writer Jack Thorne says:

    Jamie is not a simple product of the ‘manosphere’. He is a product of parents that didn’t see, a school that couldn’t care and a brain that didn’t stop him. Put 3,000 kids in the same situation and they wouldn’t do what he did. Yet spend any time on forums on 4chan or Reddit, spend any time on most social media platforms and you end up, quite quickly, in some dark spaces. Parents can try to regulate this, schools can stop mobile phone access but more needs to be done.

    Successive UK governments have attempted to counter online misogyny and violence against women and girls through legislation and public education schemes. But what would really work?

    Adolescence attaches much importance to language and emojis used by teens to obscure meaning, though there is undoubtedly some creative license behind the depictions of the emojis used to mean “incel” (involuntary celibate).

    But focusing on “slang parents and teachers need to know” is misguided. Every generation finds ways of talking about their lives in coded ways. And teen language is frequently tied to moral panics about what it potentially hides. Research has shown that regular, open and supportive conversations between parents and children are much more important.

    The role of schools

    The prime minister has suggested that Adolescence should be shown in schools. And Netflix has made the series available to secondary schools across the UK.

    In December 2024, education minister Bridget Phillipson announced new teaching guidance about incel culture and online misogyny. She argued that it was “vital to recognise the signs of these dangerous ideas as early as possible”.

    It’s encouraging to see the government take these issues seriously, but there are pitfalls. Teachers are under substantial pressure, struggling with workload and staffing. How many have the capacity to lead meaningful and supportive discussions, especially with limited training on these topics?

    Some research suggests that female teachers encounter explicit misogyny in their classrooms. This makes it even more difficult to facilitate conversations about gender and violence. Sessions on countering misogyny also pose the danger of alienating boys, making them feel like they are being vilified for the actions of other men and boys.



    Read more:
    Adolescence in schools: TV show’s portrayal of one boyhood may do more harm than good when used as a teaching tool

    Ultimately, interventions to reduce gender-based violence and misogyny need a “whole-school” approach that integrates gender equality across the curriculum, rather than isolating it within relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) classes. This content could also be covered in initial teacher training courses.

    Researchers have developed resources to challenge dangerous gender norms for use in schools, community groups and other forums. These include toolkits from Dublin City University, University of Liverpool and the MascNet research network, which focus on improving critical thinking, unpacking dominant ideas of masculinity and reflecting on different ways of being a man.

    My own work on A-level English curricula also offers suggestions. Improving digital literacy is key to helping young men identify the mechanisms of manipulation in the content they consume and resist the siren call of manosphere influences. This can encourage young men to rethink their assumptions about gender politics and masculinity, with the ultimate aim of reducing gender-based violence.

    Other discussions have focused on recruiting more male teachers and the importance of models of masculinity based on caring, empathy and emotional vulnerability. Again, these are appealing solutions, but the evidence that male role models improve outcomes for young people is mixed.

    Perhaps the trickiest debate concerns the regulation of media and technology. Adolescence writer Thorne has backed the UK following Australia’s approach to ban social media for under-16s, and some argue the government should ban smartphones for teenagers entirely. Experts say that such bans could do more harm than good.

    The UK’s new online safety laws may go some way to holding social media companies to account for moderating illegal or harmful content and algorithms through fines. This covers intimate image abuse, cyberflashing and some other forms of online misogyny, but there are likely to be gaps when it comes to male supremacist and manosphere content.

    And there are serious concerns about how the law will affect free speech and undermine privacy online.

    Investing in youth

    The problem with many of these strategies is that they fail to acknowledge the material reality of many young boys’ lives. There have been significant cuts over the past 20 years to youth provision, from clubs and community centres to mental health support.

    Boys’ prospects in terms of educational attainment and secure employment lag behind girls’. These inequalities become even more pronounced across regions and social classes, and won’t be solved by banning social media.

    Add to this disconnected communities and a potent combination of insecurity, precarity and frustrated expectation, it is no surprise that many young men find solace in an online world which gives them validation, belonging and a sense of community.



    Read more:
    Blaming absent dads for the crisis of masculinity is too simplistic – many men want to be more involved

    Thankfully, a number of organisations offer better solutions. Charities like Beyond Equality, the Manhood Academy, AndysManClub and Progressive Masculinity have provided outreach, mentoring and mental health provision for boys and young men across the UK for years.

    Similarly, the S.M.I.L.E-ing Boys Project supports boys from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities to develop their emotional intelligence, with positive outcomes in terms of navigating relationships and interpersonal conflict. Government investment would help these organisations reach more young men, alongside improving access for underserved communities.

    Adolescence has started some important conversations among parents, teens and politicians. But to make a difference in how young men navigate the world, how they deal with rejection, and how they negotiate the difficulties that life throws at them, these conversations need to be backed up with investment and concrete action.

    Robert Lawson is a Research Fellow in the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism.

    – ref. What politicians could actually do about the issues raised in Adolescence – https://theconversation.com/what-politicians-could-actually-do-about-the-issues-raised-in-adolescence-252978

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: More than just chips: Chinese threats and Trump tariffs could disrupt lots of ‘made in Taiwan’ imports − disappointing US builders, cyclists and golfers alike

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jay L. Zagorsky, Associate Professor Questrom School of Business, Boston University

    A cargo ship and containers are seen at the Port of Keelung in Taiwan on April 3, 2025. I-HWA CHENG/AFP via Getty Images

    What would the United States stand to lose economically if its current access to the Taiwanese market were upended or totally restricted?

    This seemingly theoretical question about the longtime U.S. trading partner has taken on more relevance in the past several weeks. First, longtime fears about a potential Chinese invasion of the island – which Beijing claims as its own – were magnified as China increased military pressure by sending patrols, firing live ammunition nearby, practicing blockading the island and even publicly revealing the existence of new barges that might be used in an invasion. If China uses force, Taiwan’s manufacturing capacity could be destroyed.

    Then on April 2, 2025, President Donald Trump announced a new 32% tariff on imports from Taipei, excluding semiconductors. Taiwan described the new tariffs, part of a radical upending of U.S. trade practices, as “deeply unreasonable.” They could also be deeply painful to U.S. consumers given the outsize role Taiwan imports play.

    The U.S. State Department calls Taiwan an important U.S. partner in “semiconductors and other critical supply chains.” But as I learned studying trade data and visiting the small but thriving island last fall, the U.S. depends on Taiwan for more than just sophisticated computer chips. In 2024, Taiwanese products constituted 3.6% of all U.S. imports.

    Overall trade figures

    Trade figures are known in detail because almost every government carefully tracks the contents of all shipping containers, cargo flights and bulk deliveries that legally leave and enter their borders. These figures are published online and broken down into very fine detail using a system called the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, or HTS. The HTS shows the tax or duty that must be paid for each kind of item and from every kind of country.

    In 2024, the U.S. exported US$1.7 trillion worth of goods to the world. Since few of us can conceptualize trillions, that is about $5,000 for every man, woman and child in the U.S.

    For its part, Taiwan in 2024 exported about that same amount per resident of the island just to the U.S., $5,000 – or about $90 billion overall. The U.S. is Taiwan’s second-biggest trading partner, after mainland China. Looking at their total exports, Taiwan shipped to the entire world about $20,000 worth of items for every resident.

    The vital technology component

    Not surprisingly, Taiwan’s biggest exports to the U.S. are computers, chips and other electronic hardware such as power supplies. These computer chips are so important that they were specifically excluded from the new tariffs.

    However, $90 billion of exports dramatically underestimates the amount of Taiwanese electronics that end up in U.S. hands. For example, the main chip inside all Apple iPhones is Taiwanese. However, these chips are sent from Taiwan to mainland Chinese factories where the phones are assembled. When these iPhones are exported from mainland China, the value of the chips inside the phone is not counted as U.S. imports from Taiwan. Instead, the whole phone is counted as an import from mainland China and slapped with a tariff.

    The building industry

    But while high-technology equipment often gets the headlines, imports from Taiwan are far broader – and the U.S. would face several economic shocks if Taiwan suddenly stopped exporting.

    First, the U.S. building industry could grind to a halt because Taiwan is a major producer of drywall screws. Though small and cheap, that’s a very significant product, given the prominence of drywall in the interior walls of almost every house, office and factory.

    Microchip and Taiwanese flag displayed on a phone screen.
    Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

    Overall, the U.S. uses a massive amount of drywall for new construction and remodeling. In 2024, the country consumed about 28 billion square feet of wallboard. That amount is enough to cover almost the state of Rhode Island.

    To hang drywall, every 100 square feet of the sheets needs about 125 screws. And the vast majority came last year from Taiwan. The U.S. imported over two-thirds of a billion dollars’ worth of the screws; the screws weighed over half a billion pounds.

    While the U.S. does make screws, domestic screw manufacturers primarily focus on high-value parts such as screws needed for airplanes, rocket ships and other performance vehicles, not lower-value screws whose wholesale cost is slightly more than a dollar a pound.

    Beyond screws, Taiwan is a major producer of tools. For example, approximately two-thirds of all socket wrenches, band saws, blowtorches, air compressors and grinders imported into the U.S. come from that island. Losing access to tools is not as crucial as losing access to the screws because many tools last a long time. But finding new suppliers is not trivial.

    The other basket of imports

    Finally, Taiwan is also a big U.S. supplier of sports goods.

    The country is a major producer of bicycles, with manufacturers such as Giant. In 2024, the U.S. imported from Taiwan over a quarter of a billion dollars in just bike parts, which U.S. manufacturers such as Specialized and Trek use when assembling bikes.

    Moreover, Taiwan controls a few key parts of the bike market. For example, over half of all bicycle crank sets, derailleurs and brake parts came from Taiwan. Without these products it is impossible to pedal, shift and even stop a bike.

    Taiwan is also one of the world’s leading suppliers of golf clubs, with the U.S. in 2024 importing about a quarter of a billion dollars’ worth of clubs from the island. To go along with the clubs, Taiwan also sent half a billion golf balls. Given that about 25 million people play on golf courses in the U.S. each year, that works out to 20 balls per player in just 2024.

    Finally, the island sent over a third of a million lacrosse sticks last year, which is almost one new stick for every member of the USA Lacrosse federation.

    All together, the data shows that not just Silicon Valley should be worried about geopolitical factors that disrupt imports from Taiwan. Taiwan might be a small island, but as the story of David and Goliath reminds us, size and impact are not related.

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

    – ref. More than just chips: Chinese threats and Trump tariffs could disrupt lots of ‘made in Taiwan’ imports − disappointing US builders, cyclists and golfers alike – https://theconversation.com/more-than-just-chips-chinese-threats-and-trump-tariffs-could-disrupt-lots-of-made-in-taiwan-imports-disappointing-us-builders-cyclists-and-golfers-alike-253729

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Abolition wasn’t fueled by just moral or economic concerns – the booming whaling industry also helped sink slavery

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Topher L. McDougal, Professor of Economic Development & Peacebuilding, University of San Diego

    An engraving of whalers at sea attacking a whale with a harpoon from 1820. Kean Collection/Getty Images

    Historians have long debated whether the end of slavery in the United States was primarily driven by moral campaigns or economic changes. But what if both perspectives are looking at only part of the puzzle?

    We are experts in economic development and social movements. Our new research uncovers what we believe to be a surprising and overlooked factor in the decline of slavery in the U.S. – the rise of the whaling industry.

    Starting around 1650, whaling expanded along the Northeast coast of the British American colonies. Whaling expeditions killed whales and brought back to port valuable animal products like oil, used for lamps and other items, and whalebone, used for products ranging from corsets to combs.

    Whalers also brought spermaceti, a waxy substance that comes from a sperm whale’s head and is used to produce candles and lubricants for precision machinery like watches and clocks.

    At its peak, in the 1850s, the American whaling industry alone employed 50,000 to 70,000 workers who worked on an estimated 700 to 800 ships.

    In the decades before cheap oil helped many industries truly take off, whaling played an important, but often overlooked, role in laying the groundwork for the antislavery movement.

    Black sailors made up perhaps 20% to 30% of whaling crews. Of these sailors, some were enslaved and used their hard-won earnings to buy their freedom. Some of these sailors went on to finance abolitionist efforts. Others built houses of worship.

    The whaling industry that produced oil to illuminate 19th-century lamps also added fuel to the fire of the antislavery movement. The city motto of New Bedford, Massachusetts – lucem diffundo, or “I diffuse light” in Latin – referred to the candles and lamps the whaling industry lit, as well as the moral clarity some whalers aspired to promote.

    Three Black whalers stand on a wharf in New Bedford, Mass., in an 1880 drawing.
    Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

    The missing link between whaling and abolition

    Slavery in the American colonies began in 1619 with a small enslaved population that grew to about 500,000 by the American Revolution in 1775. As slavery became institutionalized in law and American culture, the number of enslaved people grew, primarily in the South, to as many as 4 million in the years leading up to the Civil War in 1861.

    The first half of the 1800s saw a surge of abolitionist activism, rooted in early Quaker efforts and Indigenous wisdom. Abolitionism reshaped American politics into a fuller democracy, linking Black resistance, feminist struggles and labor rights to the broader fight for democracy and human rights.

    The decline and eventual abolition of slavery has been portrayed as the result of tireless activism and moral persuasion by early Quaker advocates like Benjamin Lay who considered slavery one of the worst sins. Abolitionists like Frederick Douglass would later go on to advocate for the Civil War to force a moral reckoning on the South.

    The result was an antislavery moral high ground from which the United Kingdom, and later the U.S., could measure other countries and monitor the high seas.

    Another common explanation for the end of slavery is the economic argument that slavery declined as fossil fuel-powered machinery replaced enslaved labor on farms and even in factories.

    Our research challenges this binary by showing that before steam engines transformed industry, whaling played an overlooked role in challenging the proposition that slavery was America’s most economically profitable form of labor organization at the time.

    Increased whaling, decreased slavery

    We analyzed data from U.S. Census records and the logbooks of American whaling voyages from 1790 to 1840 – systematized in a dataset maintained by the Mystic Seaport Museum and New Bedford Whaling Museum.

    This data came from well before the 1859 discovery and exploitation of oil in Pennsylvania.

    The results were striking: When the whaling industry brought back more oil, bone and spermaceti to specific ports, the proportion of enslaved people in the corresponding states declined.

    Statistically speaking, we saw a nearly perfect 1-to-1 inverse relationship between whaling and slavery.

    When whaling products went up 1%, slavery proportions went down by almost the same amount in that state in the following years. What’s more, we mapped these findings geographically and discovered that the more whaling occurred, the more widely decreases in slavery occurred in nearby states.

    In other words, our statistics suggest that increases in whaling led to decreases in slavery, and this effect diffused across state lines.

    Why whaling mattered

    Whaling was the first global industry in the colonies that eventually became the U.S.

    Whaling hubs like the Massachusetts towns of Nantucket and New Bedford and the island of Martha’s Vineyard became some of the wealthiest communities in the country.

    Whaling was also one of the few industries where Black Americans, both free and formerly enslaved, could make money and become wealthy. Individuals of all backgrounds could rise through the whaling industry ranks based on skill rather than birth.

    It also required a risk-embracing and entrepreneurial mindset, as immortalized in a song that the writer Herman Melville has the crew sing in the 1851 book Moby-Dick: “So, be cheery, my lads! may your hearts never fail! / While the bold harpooner is striking the whale!”

    By contrast, the plantation economy relied on rigid racial hierarchies and hereditary enslavement.

    Prince Boston was one example of an enslaved whaler, who, in 1773 at the age of 23, won the right in the local Nantucket court to purchase his own freedom from his owner, who lived locally, with the money he earned on a harpoon crew.

    This watershed moment saw the court make a precedent that was probably illegal at the time, but which supported and defended both the whaling industry as well as the aspirations of the people needed to make it thrive. Prince Boston’s free-born nephew, Absolom Boston, become the first Black whaling captain in 1822 – one of approximately 50 Black and Native captains in the American whaling industry throughout its history.

    Financing the fight against slavery

    The economic power generated by whaling helped fund the abolitionist movement in tangible ways.

    Wealthy Quaker merchants in whaling towns, like Martha’s Vineyard, were some of the earliest and most fervent supporters of abolition.

    Elihu Coleman, a Nantucket Quaker, wrote one of the first antislavery pamphlets in America in 1733. Douglass, the famed abolitionist and formerly enslaved man from Maryland, found refuge in New Bedford, a whaling town with a strong antislavery tradition.

    Whaling profits financed the construction of meeting houses and schools for free Black communities in these towns. The African Baptist Society in Nantucket, for example, was built by Black whalers who had achieved financial independence through their trade.

    Whalers cut pieces from a small whale on Long Island, N.Y., in 1900.
    Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images

    Whaling’s vital role in ending slavery

    As an industry, whaling provided a meritocratic career path before fossil fuel mechanization made slavery obsolete. While industrialization eventually made enslaved labor less profitable by the mid- and late-1800s, whaling had already eroded slavery’s economic and social foundations decades earlier.

    Of course, whaling itself was not a morally pure endeavor. It was dangerous and devastating to whale populations. The American whaling industry killed perhaps 32,000 whales over the 74 years between 1835 and 1909. The global harvest of whales was many times greater. The U.S. officially outlawed whaling in 1971.

    Yet, whaling’s role in funding abolition and providing economic opportunities for free Black Americans is undeniable. It was, in many ways, a bridge between the world of forced labor and the energy-driven economy of the modern age.

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

    – ref. Abolition wasn’t fueled by just moral or economic concerns – the booming whaling industry also helped sink slavery – https://theconversation.com/abolition-wasnt-fueled-by-just-moral-or-economic-concerns-the-booming-whaling-industry-also-helped-sink-slavery-250980

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Florida is home to about 341,000 immigrants from Venezuela and Haiti who may soon lose residency, work permits

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mercedes Vigon, Associate professor of Journalism, Florida International University

    An activist protests the lifting of TPS status for Venezuelans in Doral, Fla. AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell

    Florida leads the nation in the number of immigrants with Temporary Protected Status, or TPS.

    Soon after taking office, the Trump administration moved to scale back protections for the largest groups of these immigrants – those from Haiti and Venezuela.

    TPS applies to immigrants from designated countries that the Department of Homeland Security considers dangerous due to armed conflicts, environmental disasters, epidemics or other conditions. There are currently 17 countries on the list. The most recent country added was Lebanon on Oct. 16, 2024.

    According to a federal report published in December 2024, nearly a third of the roughly 1.1 million TPS recipients live in Florida. Of those, 59% are Venezuelan and 35% are Haitian, with the other 6% coming from other TPS nations.

    I’m a professor of investigative journalism at Florida International University in Miami. For the past 24 years, I’ve worked with students to report how various waves of immigrants have integrated into Florida, and also on the impact of historical immigration crackdowns on the state’s workforce.

    Because so many TPS recipients live here, ending TPS may affect Florida more than any other state – but it is still hard to say if and when that will happen.

    Uncertain TPS expiration dates

    Temporary Protected Status allows beneficiaries to stay and work in the U.S. for a designated period, typically ranging from six to 18 months. This time period can be extended if conditions in the affected country remain unstable. It does not provide a permanent legal pathway to stay in the United States.

    President Joe Biden’s administration created two TPS designations for Venezuelans – one in 2021 and a second in 2023.

    In early February 2025, Trump’s Homeland Security director, Kristi Noem, rolled back extensions of TPS for Venezuelans that the outgoing Biden administration had issued on Jan. 17, 2025. Then, two days later, she issued a termination notice that canceled TPS for 2023 Venezuelan recipients altogether.

    Noem’s orders meant that almost 250,000 Venezuelans covered by the 2023 designation were expected to lose their residence and work permits on April 7, 2025. Another 256,000 Venezuelans who requested their TPS under the earlier designation were expected to lose their protections on Sept. 10, 2025.

    But Venezuelans got some breathing room on March 31, when U.S. District Judge Edward Chen blocked the change in their immigration status, writing that Noem’s decision “smacks of racism.” As a result, they will keep their TPS protections while the case moves through the courts.

    Noem has said that having Venezuelans in the country “is contrary to the national interest” and accused them without proof of gang affiliations.

    The judge’s ruling doesn’t affect the more than 520,000 Haitian immigrants nationwide expected to lose their TPS protection on Aug. 3, 2025.

    The expiration of TPS potentially affects 341,000 immigrants in Florida. But it doesn’t mean all of these people will leave the country. TPS rules allow immigrants to apply for a change of immigration status, and some will apply for asylum or student visas. Others will go underground.

    Local economic effects

    These policies won’t just affect Venezuelan and Haitian TPS holders personally. It will likely cause some big waves in the Florida economy.

    The non-profit American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy group, estimates that 95% of TPS holders in Florida age 16 and older are currently employed.

    They paid approximately US$485.9 million in local and Florida state taxes, according to the same report.

    Although the public often associates immigrants with work in the construction, agricultural and meatpacking industries, most are employed in education and health care.

    Fewer home health aides

    Immigrants account for 64% of all home health aides in Florida, according to the American Immigration Council.

    Nationwide, 1 in 4 direct care workers are immigrants, according to a policy brief from PHI, an advocacy group for elder care and disability service workers.

    Not all of these workers are TPS holders, but an estimated 7% of foreign-born caregivers are from Haiti. Additionally, the research from PHI suggests that the actual percentage of home health aides who are immigrants is likely higher, as many immigrant workers in this sector operate in the “gray market.” These workers receive direct payment from the people they work for, which makes their employment hard to track.

    PHI projects that the long-term care sector in the U.S. will need to fill 9.3 million new direct care job openings by 2031 due to the country’s aging population.

    School staff a concern

    The public school system is another area where the sudden loss of TPS recipients will likely be deeply felt.

    Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the third-largest school district in the country, is experiencing an ongoing shortage of teachers and staff. The district had nearly 700 education and support positions unfilled in August 2024, according to a district-by-district count done by the Florida Education Association.

    “It is not only teachers,” an administrator told me in March 2025, explaining that the vacancies are also among registrars, custodians, paraprofessionals and other roles. These “high stakes” education jobs, as he described them to me, are difficult for Miami-Dade County schools to fill.

    The Miami-Dade school district doesn’t report on the nationality of its employees – or their immigration status. But unfilled positions in the school district dropped after an influx of Venezuelans and Haitians in 2019, the administrator told me.

    Losing these workers would likely mean South Florida’s persistent education and home health care labor shortages would worsen – making it increasingly difficult for families with school-age children, the elderly and individuals with special needs to access affordable essential services.

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

    – ref. Florida is home to about 341,000 immigrants from Venezuela and Haiti who may soon lose residency, work permits – https://theconversation.com/florida-is-home-to-about-341-000-immigrants-from-venezuela-and-haiti-who-may-soon-lose-residency-work-permits-251791

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The Trump administration says Tren de Aragua is a terrorist group – but it’s really a transnational criminal organization. Here’s why the label matters.

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ernesto Castañeda, Professor, and Director, Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, American University

    Venezuelan immigrants, whom the Trump White House says are members of the Tren de Aragua gang, arrive in El Salvador on March 31, 2025. El Salvador Press Presidency Office/Anadolu via Getty Images

    The U.S. State Department declared on Feb. 20, 2025, that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, as well as some Mexican drug cartels, are now considered foreign terrorist organizations.

    Is the new label warranted?

    Tren de Aragua is at the center of a controversial immigration case that the Supreme Court is going to consider.

    The Trump administration is using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to justify deporting more than 100 of the 238 Venezuelan and Salvadoran male immigrants it sent to a prison in El Salvador on March 15. The administration says that these immigrants are members of gangs such as Tren de Aragua and are foreign enemies, so they can be sent away with just an order from the White House.

    The administration uses a checklist of items, including physical markers like tattoos, to determine these individuals’ association with Tren de Aragua. Although in reality, the Tren de Aragua gang members do not use any specific tattoos.

    Family members and lawyers representing some of the Venezuelan immigrants say that they are not actually associated with the gang, and that some of them were living in the U.S. legally.

    I am an expert on immigration, and I think it is important to understand why classifying Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization has sparked debate among observers.

    One important reason is that Tren de Aragua is primarily a profit-driven group, not an ideological one – placing the organization more firmly in the transnational organized crime category rather than a political terrorist group.

    Venezuelan immigrants deported from the U.S. arrived in El Salvador in March 2025.
    El Salvador Press Presidency Office/Anadolu via Getty Images

    Understanding Tren de Aragua

    Tren de Aragua originated as a small prison gang in the early 2000s within Tocorón prison in Venezuela’s state of Aragua, located near the country’s capital, Caracas.

    Over the past 25 years, Tren de Aragua has expanded rapidly across South and Central America, and evolved into a transnational criminal organization under the leadership of Hector Guerrero Flores. Also known as Niño Guerrero, Flores is a 41-year-old Venezuelan who first served time in Tocorón prison in 2010 for killing a police officer before he escaped for the first time in 2012. His current location is not known.

    Flores is wanted by the U.S. and Colombia for various crimes related to expanding the group’s criminal network throughout South and Central America.

    Today, an estimated 5,000 people are affiliated with Tren de Aragua, which is mainly focused on human trafficking and other crimes targeting migrants. The gang has also been linked to other criminal organizations in Latin America and is involved with extortion, kidnapping, money laundering and drug smuggling. The number of active members in the United States is in the low hundreds, and clearly the great majority of Venezuelans here are not members.

    Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrives at the presidential palace in San Salvador, El Salvador, to discuss the deportation of Venezuelan immigrants to the country on March 26, 2025.
    Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images

    Different end goals

    Tren de Aragua has expanded in part because of its ability to exploit weak governance within the state of Aragua, and eventually across Venezuela, which faces political instability and a weak economy. An expansion beyond Venezuela has allowed the gang to connect with other transnational criminal networks.

    Most accepted definitions of terrorism say it is a kind of violence, usually used against civilians, motivated by political and ideological beliefs and goals. Tren de Aragua does not fit that definition. It does not have a political ideology and therefore is not an actual terrorist organization.

    The U.S. government considers a foreign terrorist organization a foreign group that engages in terrorist activity, or plans to do so, in a way that threatens the security of U.S. nationals or the country more broadly.

    Tren de Aragua is among the eight groups that the State Department first classified as foreign terrorist organizations in the first few months of 2025 after Donald Trump’s inauguration. The other new groups put on the list primarily include Latin American drug trafficking organizations, like the Mexican Sinaloa cartel.

    While transnational criminal organizations and foreign terrorist organizations both engage in violence and illicit activities, their end goals are different.

    Foreign terrorist organizations such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State group seek political, religious or ideological change – or all three – as they try to use violence to reshape the political landscape of their regions.

    Terrorist groups and transnational criminal organizations are not the same

    Tren de Aragua, as well as other transnational criminal groups like MS-13 – which originated in Los Angeles but now operates throughout the Americas – and the Sinaloa cartel, carry out illegal, violent activities across borders in order to make money.

    These groups do not have political or ideological motives beyond creating conditions to maximize their own profits. They do not aim to take political power in the U.S. or elsewhere, or try to remake society in their own image. That is beyond their purview and capabilities.

    Properly distinguishing between terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations is crucial for devising effective policies and responses to their violence. Mislabeling these groups can lead to inappropriate responses such as putting aside civil liberties, due process and human rights.

    Incorrectly classifying Tren de Aragua and other criminal groups as terrorist organizations could shift U.S. foreign policy and resources toward counterterrorism efforts and away from decreasing the power and violence exercised by organized crime and drug cartels in many parts of Latin America.

    However, the way in which many Venezuelans and other immigrants have been deported from the country over the past few months without passing through immigration court seems to indicate that the main rationale for the talk about alien enemies and these terrorist designations is to aid in the goal of mass deportations, rather than to fight domestic or international terrorism.

    If the U.S. truly wants to curb undocumented immigration and reduce drug and human trafficking, then I believe that it should ensure that its classification of these organizations is accurate and aligned with its actual objectives.

    Melissa Vasquez, a graduate student at American University studying international affairs and the Northern Triangle in Central America, contributed to this piece.

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

    – ref. The Trump administration says Tren de Aragua is a terrorist group – but it’s really a transnational criminal organization. Here’s why the label matters. – https://theconversation.com/the-trump-administration-says-tren-de-aragua-is-a-terrorist-group-but-its-really-a-transnational-criminal-organization-heres-why-the-label-matters-252793

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Life-size sculptures uncovered in Pompeii show that ancient women didn’t just have to be wives to make a difference

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Emily Hauser, Senior Lecturer in Classics, University of Exeter

    Visitors to the site of Pompeii, the ancient Roman town buried (and so preserved for thousands of years) by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD, don’t often think to look beyond the city walls. And it’s easy to understand why: there’s plenty on offer within this monumentally well-preserved town, from jewel-like wall paintings of myths and legends like Helen of Troy, to the majestic amphitheatre and sumptuously stuccoed baths.

    But step outside the gates for a moment, and you’re in a very different – yet no less important – world.

    For the ancient Romans, the roads and paths leading into and out of cities were crucial: not just for getting places, but as a very real kind of “memory lane”. Tombs lined these ancient byways – some simply bearing inscriptions to the memories of loved ones lost, others, more grand, accommodating space for friends and family to feast in remembrance of the dead.

    Some of the tombs even address the passerby directly, as if its occupant could speak again, and pass on what they’ve learned. Take one Pompeiian example, set up by the freedman Publius Vesonius Phileros, which opens with ineffable politeness: “Stranger, wait a while if it’s no trouble, and learn what not to do.”

    Going into Pompeii, and leaving it, was about being reminded of ways of living and ways of dying – as well as an invitation to tip your hat to those who trod the path before you, and to learn from their example.

    Which is why the recent discovery of a monumental tomb crowned by life-size sculptures of a woman and man, just outside the gates on the east side of the town, isn’t just a fascinating find in and of itself. It’s also a reminder to stop, and to remember the people who once lived and died in this bustling Italian town.

    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.

    The tomb’s main feature is a large wall, peppered with niches where cremated remains would have been placed, and surmounted by the astonishing relief sculpture of the woman and man. They’re standing side by side, but not touching.

    I rather like that she’s slightly taller than him, standing at 1.77m, while he’s 1.75m. She’s draped in a modest tunic, cloak and veil (symbols of Roman womanhood), and boasts a pronounced crescent-moon-shaped pendant at her neck called a lunula, that (through the age-old link with lunar cycles) tells a story about female fertility and birth. He, meanwhile, is dressed in the quintessentially Roman toga that instantly identifies him as a proud male citizen of Rome.

    Who do the statues depict?

    The status quo in archaeology, when a woman and a man are presented next to each other in tombs and burials like this, has always been to assume that she’s his wife. Yet here, there’s an unmissable clue that there’s more going on. That’s because, in her right hand, she’s holding a laurel branch – which was used by priestesses to waft the smoke of incense and herbs in religious rituals.

    Priestesses, in the Roman world, held unusual levels of power for women – and it’s been suggested that this woman might have been a priestess of the goddess Ceres (Roman equivalent of Demeter).

    So this high-status priestess is shown alongside a man. The inclusion of the symbols of her status (as priestess) alongside his (as a togatus, or “toga-wearing man”), shows that she’s there in her own right, as a contributing member of Pompeiian society. She might be his mother; she might even have been more important than him (which would explain why she’s taller). Without an inscription, we don’t know for sure. The point is: a woman doesn’t have to be a wife to be standing next to a man.

    What’s fascinating is this isn’t unique to Pompeii. In my new book, Mythica, which looks at the women not of Rome but of Bronze age Greece, I’ve found that new discoveries in archaeology are overturning the assumptions that used to be made about a woman’s place in society, and the value of their roles, all the time.

    One fascinating example is a royal burial in Late Bronze Age Mycenae: a woman and a man who’d been buried together in the royal necropolis, around 1700 years before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius decimated Pompeii. As is typical, this woman was immediately labelled, by the archaeologists who uncovered her, as the man’s wife. But then DNA analysis came into the picture.

    As recently as 2008, both skeletons were sampled for DNA – and came up with the game-changing result that they were, in fact, brother and sister. She’d been buried here as a member of a royal family by birth, not by marriage, in other words. She was there on her own terms.

    From golden Mycenae to the ash-blasted ruins of Pompeii: the remains from the ancient world are telling us a different story from the one we always thought. A woman didn’t have to be a wife to make a difference.

    So I think it’s worth listening to the advice of our friend Publius. Let’s look at the burials of the past, and learn.

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

    – ref. Life-size sculptures uncovered in Pompeii show that ancient women didn’t just have to be wives to make a difference – https://theconversation.com/life-size-sculptures-uncovered-in-pompeii-show-that-ancient-women-didnt-just-have-to-be-wives-to-make-a-difference-253863

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Peers elevated to the House of Lords after a career in the House of Commons are often merely being rewarded for loyalty – new study

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stephen Holden Bates, Senior Lecturer in Political Science, University of Birmingham

    CC BY-NC-ND

    House of Lords reform is being debated once again with the passage of the bill to end hereditary peerages. But far more wide-reaching reform is needed. Our research reveals potential flaws in the appointments system. Far from being a representative chamber filled with those from all walks of life, we found evidence to suggest that the House of Lords contains a large constituency of former MPs – who are often there as a reward for their partisan loyalty.

    Since the introduction of life peers in 1958 and especially since the removal of all except 92 hereditary peers in 1999, former MPs have become an increasingly important constituency in the House of Lords. They make up about a third of the approximate 1,600 life peers who have been created since 1958. The others have largely been appointed because of their specialist skills or life experiences or, apparently, because of how much money they donated to political parties.

    The Lords is getting more and more crowded.
    House of Lords/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

    At present, around a fifth of all peers and coming up to a quarter of life peers sat at one time or another in the House of Commons. And nearly a fifth of all MPs who sat in and subsequently left the Commons between 1979 and 2019 went on to become a peer at some point afterwards.

    These ex-MPs became peers having been nominated in a dissolution honours list prior to a general election, a resignation honours list when a prime minister departed from office, or a political list, which is used to top up the strengths of the three main parties in the chamber. A handful have been appointed as a government minister and therefore needed a seat in parliament.

    Becoming a peer is an attractive option for many ex-MPs. Not only do they become part of the titled nobility, but they also have membership of the House of Lords for life, access to a generous allowances system, and the ability to maintain (and expand) outside interests.

    Our research shows that MPs who become peers are whiter and older than those MPs who don’t make it to the upper chamber. They are more likely to be heterosexual and a member of the aristocracy. They are also more likely to be the child or grandchild of a former MP and to have been educated at a public school, attended university – in particular, Oxford or Cambridge – and have studied PPE (philosophy, politics and economics) at Oxford. They are less likely to have a PhD but also less likely to have had a manual occupation as their first career.

    We also found that serving on the front bench as an MP and resisting the temptation to rebel against your party makes you more likely to be elevated to the House of Lords after serving in the House of Commons.

    For elevated MPs who had served on the frontbench in the House of Commons, their length of frontbench tenure and whether or not they became a minister were the most important indicators of them later becoming a peer. But time served is not necessarily an indicator of excellence. As former MP Rory Stewart has argued, promotion to the frontbench “has nothing to do with expertise. It’s about loyalty and defending the indefensible”. To the extent that experience matters then, it can be said to be more in the sense of direct personal participation rather than accumulated knowledge.

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

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

    For those MPs who had remained backbenchers throughout their time in the Commons, their loyalty was the strongest indicator of their chances of becoming a peer. There is also some evidence, albeit weak, that familial links for backbenchers and aristocratic links for frontbenchers increase the likelihood of receiving a peerage. There are different pathways from the House of Commons into the House of Lords and some MPs appear to find it easier than others to travel along them.

    Our results suggest that for ex-MPs, almost certainly the largest sub-group in the House of Lords, elevation to the peerage is not based on merit alone. Loyalty and, to a lesser extent, nepotism also appear to matter and help to win you a ticket to the Lords.

    Fresh impetus for reform

    Overall, we believe our findings call into question the continued use of appointments to the Lords that are wholly based on the patronage of party leaders.

    The work of parliament is not enhanced by elevating ex-MPs who are in the upper chamber for reasons other than merit or expertise. Neither is it enhanced in the lower chamber through dangling the possibility of elevation to the peerage to encourage loyalty. Both of these sub-optimal situations are only made possible by the House of Lords’ size, which allows for a substantial number of MPs to be elevated in the first place, and it being entirely appointed.

    Every upper chamber in the world except the House of Lords is smaller than the lower chamber of its parliament. And a sizable majority of these upper chambers use elections, either direct or indirect, as the principal mode of designation of members.

    If we truly want to enhance the work of parliament, perhaps it is finally time for the UK to iron out some of its idiosyncratic constitutional kinks and fit in more with the crowd.

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

    – ref. Peers elevated to the House of Lords after a career in the House of Commons are often merely being rewarded for loyalty – new study – https://theconversation.com/peers-elevated-to-the-house-of-lords-after-a-career-in-the-house-of-commons-are-often-merely-being-rewarded-for-loyalty-new-study-251968

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: US and Russia squabble over Arctic security as melting ice opens up shipping routes

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

    “You cannot annex another country.” This was the clear message given by the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, at a recent press conference with the outgoing and incoming prime ministers of Greenland. It did not appear aimed at Russian president Vladimir Putin, but at Donald Trump, the president of one of her country’s closest allies, who has threatened to take over Greenland.

    Frederiksen, speaking in Greenland’s capitak Nuuk, was stating something that is obvious under international law but can no longer be taken for granted. US foreign policy under Trump has become a major driver of this uncertainty, playing into the hands of Russian, and potentially Chinese, territorial ambitions.

    The incoming Greenlandic prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, made it clear that it was for Greenlanders to determine their future, not the United States. Greenland, which is controlled by Denmark, makes its own domestic policy decisions. Polls suggest a majority of islanders want independence from Denmark in the future, but don’t want to be part of the US.

    Trump’s interest in Greenland is often associated with the island’s vast, but largely untapped, mineral resources. But its strategic location is arguably an even greater asset. Shipping routes through the Arctic have become more dependable and for longer periods of time during the year as a result of melting sea ice. The northwest passage (along the US and Canadian shorelines) and the northeast passage (along Russia’s Arctic coast) are often ice free now during the summer.


    Breaking the Ice: Arctic Development and Maritime Transportation, ArcticPortal.org

    This has increased opportunities for commercial shipping. For example, the distance for a container ship from Asia to Europe through the northeast passage can be up to three times shorter, compared to traditional routes through the Suez Canal or around Africa.

    Similarly, the northwest passage offers the shortest route between the east coast of the United States and Alaska. Add to that the likely substantial resources that the Arctic has, from oil and gas to minerals, and the entire region is beginning to look like a giant real estate deal in the making.

    Arctic assets

    The economic promise of the Arctic, and particularly the region’s greater accessibility, have also heightened military and security sensitivities.

    The day before J.D. Vance’s visit to Greenland on March 28, Vladimir Putin, gave a speech at the sixth international Arctic forum in Murmansk in Russia’s high north, warning of increased geopolitical rivalry.

    While he claimed that “Russia has never threatened anyone in the Arctic”, he was also quick to emphasise that Moscow was “enhancing the combat capabilities of the Armed Forces, and modernising military infrastructure facilities” in the Arctic.

    Equally worrying, Russia has increased its naval cooperation with China and given Beijing access, and a stake, in the Arctic. In April 2024, the two countries’ navies signed a cooperation agreement on search and rescue missions on the high seas.


    National Snow & Ice Data Center, Arctic Portal

    In September 2024, China participated in Russia’s largest naval manoeuvres in the post-cold war era, Ocean-2024, which were conducted in north Pacific and Arctic waters. The following month, Russian and Chinese coastguard vessels conducted their first joint patrol in the Arctic. Vance, therefore, has a point when he urges Greenland and Denmark to cut a deal with the US because the “island isn’t safe”.

    That the Russia-China partnership has resulted in an increasingly military presence in the Arctic has not gone unnoticed in the west. Worried about the security of its Arctic territories, Canada has just announced a C$6 billion (£3.2 billion) upgrade to facilities in the North American Aerospace Defense Command it operates jointly with the United States.

    It will also acquire more submarines, icebreakers and fighter jets to bolster its Arctic defences and invest a further C$420 million (£228 million) into a greater presence of its armed forces.



    Read more:
    Arctic breakdown: what climate change in the far north means for the rest of us

    Svalbard’s future role?

    Norway has similarly boosted its defence presence in the Arctic, especially in relation to the Svalbard archipelago (strategically located between the Norwegian mainland and the Arctic Circle). This has prompted an angry response from Russia, wrongly claiming that Oslo was in violation of the 1920 Svalbard Treaty which awarded the archipelago to Norway with the proviso that it must not become host to Norwegian military bases.

    Under the treaty, Russia has a right to a civilian presence there. The “commission on ensuring Russia’s presence on the archipelago Spitzbergen”, the name Moscow uses for Svalbard is chaired by Russian deputy prime minister Yury Trutnev, who is also Putin’s envoy to the far eastern federal district. Trutnev has repeatedly complained about undue Norwegian restrictions on Russia’s presence in Svalbard.

    From the Kremlin’s perspective, this is less about Russia’s historical rights on Svalbard and more about Norway’s – and Nato’s – presence in a strategic location at the nexus of the Greenland, Barents and Norwegian seas. From there, maritime traffic along Russia’s northeast passage can be monitored. If, and when, a central Arctic shipping route becomes viable, which would pass between Greenland and Svalbard, the strategic importance of the archipelago would increase further.

    From Washington’s perspective, Greenland is more important because of its closer proximity to the US. But Svalbard is critical to Nato for monitoring and countering Russian, and potentially Chinese, naval activities. This bigger picture tends to get lost in Trump’s White House, which is more concerned with its own immediate neighbourhood and cares less about regional security leadership.

    Consequently, there has been no suggestion – so far – that the US needs to have Svalbard in the same way that Trump claims he needs Greenland to ensure US security. Nor has Russia issued any specific threats to Svalbard. But it was noticeable that Putin in his speech at the Arctic forum discussed historical territorial issues, including an obscure 1910 proposal for a land swap between the US, Denmark and Germany involving Greenland.

    Putin also noted “that Nato countries are increasingly often designating the Far North as a springboard for possible conflicts”. It is not difficult to see Moscow’s logic: if the US can claim Greenland for security reasons, Russia should do the same with Svalbard.

    The conclusion to draw from this is not that Trump should aim to annex a sovereign Norwegian island next. Maritime geography in the north Atlantic underscores the importance of maintaining and strengthening long-established alliances.

    Investing in expanded security cooperation with Denmark and Norway as part of Nato would secure US interests closer to home and send a strong message to Russia. It would also signal to the wider world that the US is not about to initiate a territorial reordering of global politics to suit exclusively the interests of Moscow, Beijing and Washington.

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

    – ref. US and Russia squabble over Arctic security as melting ice opens up shipping routes – https://theconversation.com/us-and-russia-squabble-over-arctic-security-as-melting-ice-opens-up-shipping-routes-253493

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The women who shaped Sigmund Freud and a hero who can’t feel pain – what to watch, read and do this week

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna Walker, Senior Arts + Culture Editor

    Think of Sigmund Freud, the “father of psychoanalysis”, and a few images probably come to mind. A smouldering cigar. His small wire-frame glasses. And of course, his psychoanalytic couch – the divan his patients would lie on during sessions. While the couch has become an enduring symbol of Freud’s practice, and indeed for therapy more generally, few people know that it was originally a gift from one of his wealthy woman patients, Madame Benvenisti.

    It’s on show at London’s Freud Museum as part of the exhibition Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists. Until May 5, the space will be packed with works that celebrate the women in Freud’s life.

    Throughout the exhibition, images, film footage and artworks are brought together to ask questions about the women of psychoanalysis. Whether they are patients, analysts, friends and family, or artistic inheritors of its legacy, the show offers much food for thought.

    Marie Bonaparte, great-grandniece to Napoleon, intervened to save Freud from the Nazis. She is remembered through previously undisplayed correspondence. Portuguese artist Paula Rego’s work speaks to Freud’s ideas about the family. And contributions to the wider field of psychoanalysis by American-born Maria Battle Singer, Britain’s first black psychoanalyst, are finally celebrated.

    Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists is at the Freud Museum until May 5.



    Read more:
    Freud Museum exhibition uses art to explore the psychoanalyst’s often contradictory relationships with women

    The dance of death

    White Lotus Mondays have become a ritual in my household. If you’ve been watching season three, you probably have the same questions as me. Who is going to die? Who is going to kill them? And what on Earth is going on with those brothers?

    For most viewers, this season, set on the Thai island of Ko Samui, has been a slower burn than the previous one. And who isn’t missing Jennifer Coolidge’s unforgettable turn as the eccentric heiress Tanya McQuoid? But, for my money, series three has now more than earned our trust. The latest episode delivered confrontations, realisations and some jaw-dropping escalations.

    The trailer for the final episode of The White Lotus season three.

    As we head into Monday’s 90-minute final episode, we’ve been reflecting on the way the show’s creator Mike White has engaged with Buddhist philosophy. Brooke Schedneck, an expert in contemporary Buddhism and religious tourism in Thailand, explains what the show gets right and wrong about common Buddhist practices.

    White Lotus is streaming on Sky Atlantic and Now TV.



    Read more:
    What ‘The White Lotus’ gets wrong about the meaning and goals of common Buddhist practices

    One thing most of this season’s White Lotus characters have in common is a love for a good dance – whether neon-daubed at a full-moon party, dripping with sweat in a mega club or vibing on the decks of a super yacht.

    Thailand’s dance culture has its roots in a movement that began in dingy bars in the UK, before spreading to Ibiza, eastern Europe and finally Asia. We asked the experts behind new book Transatlantic Drift, which tracks the emergence, evolution and global spread of nightclubs, to explain the history of dance music and the spaces it’s enjoyed in. As they explain, from basements to beaches, dancefloors have always mirrored social change.

    Transatlantic Drift by Katie Milestone and Simon A. Morrison is out now.



    Read more:
    A brief history of dance music – from basements to beaches, dancefloors have mirrored social change

    The pain of uncertainty

    Another book on our reading lists this week is Embracing Uncertainty by entrepreneur Margaret Heffernan. As our world faces a perfect storm of environmental, societal and economic challenges, the need to support innovation and champion persistence has seldom felt greater. Heffernan’s book explores how writers, musicians and artists can thrive in our unpredictable world.

    We asked professor of cognitive neuroscience David Pearson for his take. He found Heffernan to be an engaging storyteller and thought the book’s hopeful and inspiring stories pointed the way to a more optimistic future.

    Embracing Uncertainty by Margaret Heffernan is out now.



    Read more:
    Embracing Uncertainty: what we can all learn from how artists thrive in an unpredictable world

    Jack Quaid – son of Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan – has quietly been making a name for himself as an actor to watch. I greatly enjoyed his work in Companion, an AI-gone-wrong thriller that deserved far more attention. And he showed his romcom chops in 2019’s wedding caper, Plus One.

    The trailer for Novocaine.

    Now he’s turning to another genre, action, as the lead in Novocaine. Quaid plays Nathan, a man who feels no pain and is on a mission to save the girl of his dreams from the bank robbers who have taken her hostage. He takes bullets without flinching, grabs a hot pan with his bare hands and fishes a gun from a deep frier – all without feeling a thing.

    As far as the movie goes, it’s a recipe for zany, if gory, fun. But in real life this condition, known as congenital insensitivity to pain, is far from a superpower. Pain may not feel nice, but it saves lives, as our medical expert explains.

    Novocaine is in cinemas now.



    Read more:
    Novocaine: the movie action hero with a real-life syndrome that makes him immune to pain

    – ref. The women who shaped Sigmund Freud and a hero who can’t feel pain – what to watch, read and do this week – https://theconversation.com/the-women-who-shaped-sigmund-freud-and-a-hero-who-cant-feel-pain-what-to-watch-read-and-do-this-week-253773

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why ChatGPT is a uniquely terrible tool for government ministers

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Deepak Padmanabhan, Senior Lecturer in AI, Queen’s University Belfast

    Shutterstock/Prachova Nataliia

    The news that Peter Kyle, secretary of state for science and technology, had been using ChatGPT for policy advice prompted some difficult questions.

    Kyle apparently used the AI tool to draft speeches and even asked it for suggestions about which podcasts he should appear on. But he also sought advice on his policy work, apparently including questions on why businesses in the UK are not adopting AI more readily. He asked the tool to define what “digital inclusion” means.

    A spokesperson for Kyle said his use of the tool “does not substitute comprehensive advice he routinely receives from officials” but we have to wonder whether any use at all is suitable. Does ChatGPT give good enough advice to have any role in decisions that could affect the lives of millions of people?

    Underpinned by our research on AI and public policy, we find that ChatGPT is uniquely flawed as a device for government ministers in several ways, including the fact that it is backward looking, when governments really should be looking to the future.

    1. Looking back instead of forward

    Where government ministers should ideally be seeking new, fresh ideas with a view to the future, the information that comes out of an AI chatbot is, by definition, from the past. It’s a very effective way of summarising what has already been thought of but not equipped to suggest genuinely new ways of thinking.

    ChatGPT responses are not based on all past equally. The ever-increasing digitisation over the years steers ChatGPT’s pattern-finding mechanism to the recent past. In other words, when asked by a minister to provide advice on a specific problem in the UK, ChatGPT’s responses would be more anchored in documents produced in the UK in recent years.

    And notably, in Kyle’s case, that means that not only will a Labour minister be accessing information from the past, but he’ll be advised by an algorithm leaning heavily on advice given to Conservative governments. That’s not the end of the world, of course, but it’s questionable given that Labour won an election by promising change.

    Kyle – or any other minister consulting ChatGPT – will be given information grounded in the policy traditions reflecting the Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson, Theresa May and David Cameron eras. They are less likely to receive information grounded in the thinking of the New Labour years, which were longer ago.

    If Kyle asks what digital inclusion means, the answer is more likely to reflect what these Tory administrations think it means rather than thoughts of governments more aligned with his values.

    Amid all the enthusiasm within Labour to leverage AI, this may be one reason for them to distance themselves from using ChatGPT for policy advice. They risk Tory policy – one they so like to criticise – zombieing into their own.

    2. Prejudice

    ChatGPT has been accused of having “hallucinations” – generating, uncanny, plausible-sounding falsehoods.

    There is a simple technical explanation for this, as alluded to in a recent study. The “truth model” for ChatGPT – as for any large language model – is one of consensus. It models truth as something that everyone agrees to be true. For ChatGPT, its truth is simply the consensus of views expressed across the data it has been trained on.

    This is very different from the human model of truth, which is based on correspondence. For us, the truth is what best corresponds to reality in the physical world. The divergence between the truth models could be consequential in many ways.

    For example, TV licensing, a model that operates only within a few nations, would not figure prominently within ChatGPT’s consensus model built over a global dataset. Thus, ChatGPT’s suggestions on broadcast media policy are unlikely to substantially touch upon TV licensing.

    Besides explaining hallucinations, divergences in truth models have other consequences. Social prejudices, including sexism and racism, are easily internalised under the consensus model.

    Consider seeking ChatGPT advice on improving conditions for construction workers, a historically male dominated profession. ChatGPT’s consensus model could blind it from considerations important to women.

    The correspondence model of truth enables humans to continuously engage in moral deliberation and change. A human policy expert advising Peter Kyle could illuminate him on pertinent real-world complexities.

    For example, they might highlight how recent successes in AI-based diagnostics could help tackle distinct aspects of the UK’s disease burden in the knowledge that one of Labour’s priorities is to cut NHS waiting times.

    3. Pleasing narratives

    Tools such as ChatGPT are designed to give engaging, elegant narratives when responding to questions. ChatGPT managed this partly by weeding out bad quality text from its training data (with the help of underpaid workers in Africa).

    These poetic pieces of writing work well for engagement and help OpenAI to keep users hooked on their product. Humans enjoy a good story, and particularly one that offers to solve a problem. Our shared evolutionary history has made us story-tellers and story-listeners unlike any other species.

    But the real world is not a story. It is a constant swirl of political complexities, social contradictions and moral dilemmas, many of which can never be resolved. The real world and the decisions government ministers have to make on our behalf are complex.

    There are competing interests and irreconcilable differences. Rarely is there a neat answer. ChatGPT’s penchant for pleasing narratives stands at odds with the public policy imperative to address messy real-world conditions.

    The very features that make ChatGPT a useful tool in many contexts are squarely incompatible with the considerations of public policy, a realm that seeks to make political choices to address the needs of a country’s citizens.

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

    – ref. Why ChatGPT is a uniquely terrible tool for government ministers – https://theconversation.com/why-chatgpt-is-a-uniquely-terrible-tool-for-government-ministers-253294

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The problem with Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center isn’t the possibility of ‘Cats’

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Joanna Dee Das, Associate Professor of Dance, Washington University in St. Louis

    Donald Trump visits the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on March 17, 2025. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

    When President Donald Trump announced that he was assuming control of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, he described the move as a triumph over “wokey” programming. He subsequently fired the 17 board members appointed by President Joe Biden and installed himself as chairman.

    Some critics have reacted to the move by suggesting Trump doesn’t understand art.

    One protester declared that Trump has “no artistic bones in his body.” Theater aficionados claim that he misinterprets his favorite musicals, “Cats” and “Les Misérables.”

    The New Yorker magazine’s satirical description of the Kennedy Center’s 2025 programming under Trump included a fictional show called “Forbidden Branson.” The title plays on the show “Forbidden Broadway,” replacing New York’s storied theater district with the popular Ozarks tourist destination that has been maligned as a mecca of bad taste.

    To me, these responses play right into Trump’s hands, reinforcing his claims that liberals are out-of-touch elitists.

    I’ve spent the past seven years researching and writing a book about Branson, Missouri, a town that offers a plethora of live entertainment, including magic shows, country music performances and variety shows. Many of the productions have a conservative, Christian slant. In my view, a Branson-style show could – and should – belong among the offerings at the Kennedy Center.

    Rather than ridiculing the president’s taste, I think responses to the takeover would be better placed focusing on more fundamental questions about the role of the U.S. government in the nation’s artistic life.

    How can a national arts institution best reflect the country’s diverse range of people and interests? Prior to Trump, how well was the Kennedy Center doing at that?

    Historical opposition to arts funding

    For most of U.S. history, government had a very limited role in the arts.

    European royals had long patronized the arts. In contrast, the founders of the United States, fearful of tyranny, created a weak federal government that could barely impose taxes, let alone establish a national theater.

    Instead, artists of the 18th and 19th centuries operated in a for-profit marketplace. Their audiences rejected elitist cultural norms and watched Shakespeare mixed in with minstrel songs and comedy acts on the same program.

    At the end of the 19th century, the Second Industrial Revolution created a class of ultra-wealthy Americans who sought to imitate European royalty and their tradition of patronage. New cultural distinctions emerged. Opera, ballet and classical music were designated as high art; variety shows featuring comedians, popular songs and acrobatics were designated as low art. Musicals eventually found an uneasy niche as “middlebrow.” Performers who wished to avoid the grind of the commercial marketplace could now turn to private patrons. Nonwhite and working-class performers who lacked social connections to the upper crust had fewer opportunities to do so.

    The Great Depression compelled the U.S. government to fund artists for the first time. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established Federal Project Number One, which included visual art, theater, music and writing programs. Its primary goal was to provide work for the unemployed. Its secondary purpose involved creating art that would be accessible to ordinary Americans both in terms of location – like murals in public buildings – and content, such as plays like “One Third of a Nation” that spoke to housing concerns.

    An audience enjoys a public Federal Theatre Project performance in New York in the late 1930s.
    Dick Rose/Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

    Heated controversies over the program ensued. If the main criterion to receive a grant was need, not skill, would government funding churn out bad art?

    Conservative congressmen argued that Federal One artists were taking “unbridled license to ridicule American ideals and to suggest rebellion against our government.” In 1938, the newly formed House Committee on Un-American Activities accused the head of Federal One’s Theatre Project of supporting communism.

    Soon thereafter, the Federal One programs ended.

    The Cold War and the Kennedy Center

    The Cold War created a new opportunity for arts funding as the United States scrambled to counteract the Soviet Union’s depiction of America as “culturally barren.” Under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the State Department began to sponsor American artists and fund international tours of their work.

    Even this modest attempt at public arts patronage – European nations were spending 20 to 40 times as much on the arts – faced pushback from conservatives, who cast the tours as a waste of taxpayer money. Nonetheless, Eisenhower persisted. In 1958, he signed the National Cultural Center Act to authorize a national arts complex.

    The act failed to provide enough money to actually build the center. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy embarked on a campaign to raise US$30 million in private money. Part of those fundraising efforts involved reassuring donors that their high-art tastes would be reflected.

    The Kennedy Center finally opened its doors in September 1971. Given the need for constant fundraising ever since, philanthropists have dominated its board.

    Today, the Kennedy Center receives $43 million as a public subsidy, or 16% of its budget. Ticket sales, facility rentals and donations comprise the other 84%. No government funds go to artistic programming, which has blunted potential criticism about censorship or propaganda. But this has also precluded the ability of regular people across the nation to weigh in about what appears onstage.

    With members of the Kennedy family looking on, President Lyndon B. Johnson shovels dirt during the groundbreaking ceremonies for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1964.
    Bettmann/Getty Images

    An uncertain future

    The Kennedy Center staff has attempted to work within the constraints of a philanthropy model to reach a broad audience and challenge high/middle/low distinctions. In its first year, the center appointed renowned choreographer Katherine Dunham as a technical adviser in intercultural communication. She aimed to “make the center more responsible to the community” and establish a model of local engagement in Washington that could be replicated throughout the country.

    It didn’t materialize. Programming remained in the traditional high art category until Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter expanded into genres like hip-hop and comedy in the 2010s. In 2020, the center made progress toward Dunham’s vision with its Social Impact initiative, which focused on free performances and transportation to arts events for local Washington communities. Trump has since dissolved it.

    By declaring himself chairman and personally overseeing the programming, Trump has followed in the footsteps of Russian czars or monarchs like Louis XIV of France, who established arts institutions as extensions of royal power. In effect, it realizes 18th-century Americans’ fears about government involvement in the arts as a form of control.

    At the same time, the private philanthropy model has been far from perfect. It has left the Kennedy Center vulnerable to attacks of elitism. Perhaps future leaders can imagine more robust models of public support and stewardship that reflect America’s diverse and multifaceted national landscape – if they’re ever given an opportunity to do so.

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

    – ref. The problem with Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center isn’t the possibility of ‘Cats’ – https://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-trumps-takeover-of-the-kennedy-center-isnt-the-possibility-of-cats-253196

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –