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Category: Reportage

  • MIL-OSI Global: As the stars of hip-hop’s golden age approach their golden years, some confront questions about whether old blood can make new music

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By A.D. Carson, Associate Professor of Hip-Hop, University of Virginia

    52-year-old rapper Common performs on Sept. 11, 2024, in Atlanta. Paras Griffin/Getty Images

    It’s always awkward telling people what I do for a living. I’m a rapper. I also work as a professor of hip-hop.

    I work at the intersection of artmaking and academic research. I write music as part of a greater effort to challenge antiquated ideas about learning, teaching and expertise.

    But I assume the awkwardness in conversations about work is related to stereotypes of hip-hop culture. Among many, one of those assumptions is that hip-hop is only made for and by young people.

    It’s no surprise that ageism exists in and about hip-hop culture; in the U.S., ageism is everywhere. But I would argue that ageism in hip-hop is especially strong because the first generation of rappers is only now reaching their golden years.

    New rap categories

    In August 2024, music producer 9th Wonder proposed a new “Adult Contemporary” category for rap music. A month prior, 52-year-old Common and 54-year-old producer Pete Rock had released “The Auditorium, Vol. 1.”

    In response to 9th Wonder, legendary hip-hop artist Q-Tip warned on the social platform X that hip-hop fans might be turned off by a category with “adult” in the name. He suggested “Traditional Hip-Hop” instead, arguing that the music should all appear in “one pot,” lest it turn off younger listeners.

    Whether it’s called Adult Contemporary or Traditional Hip-Hop, several hip-hop legends have recently released new music that could fit into this category. In July 2024, the legendary lyricist Rakim, who’s 56 years old, released “G.O.D.’S NETWORK (REB7RTH),” his first album in 15 years. Two months later, 54-year-old MC Lyte released “1 of 1,” her ninth studio album, and 56-year-old LL Cool J released “The Force,” his 14th studio album and his first in 11 years.

    Growing pains

    Since hip-hop emerged as a cultural force more than 50 years ago, people still seem to pigeonhole rap as music made by and for young people.

    And it’s true that in hip-hop’s early days, teenagers were at the forefront of the fledgling movement.

    A 1973 back-to-school party organized by a 15-year-old girl from the Bronx named Cindy Campbell is often credited with birthing hip-hop. Grand Wizzard Theodore was just 12 years old when he invented record scratching in 1977. The hip-hop careers of artists like Roxanne Shanté, Run-DMC and Ice Cube all began when they were teens.

    Being closely intertwined with the perception of youth culture isn’t necessarily a good thing. It can compel critics to treat the music and its practitioners less seriously.

    Rappers, no matter their age, can be dismissed or treated as childish or immature.

    Call it growing pains: Unlike, say, classical or country, 50 years is a blip in the history of music. And for much of that time, critics regarded hip-hop as a passing fad. Then it was seen as an emergent subculture.

    It’s only been a category at the Grammys since 1989, and only recently has it been recognized as a commercial and cultural force with a global reach.

    Nowadays, equating hip-hop with youth culture confines it to an arena it has long outgrown.

    Imposter syndrome grows

    Nonetheless, as rappers age, some can seem uncomfortable about participating in a form that can be so easily dismissed.

    In 2015, filmmaker Paul Iannacchino Jr. released a documentary, “Adult Rappers,” about working-class rap artists.

    All the people interviewed for the film rap professionally but aren’t famous. They are mostly men. Most of them admit that they sidestep questions about what they do for a living. One unshakable takeaway is the embarrassment about their age.

    Even famous rappers aren’t immune to this feeling. Before his move to instrumental flute music, André 3000, one of the greatest rappers of all time, lamented becoming the old rapper still making music beyond his prime.

    “I remember, at like 25, saying, ‘I don’t want to be a 40-year-old rapper,’” he told The New York Times in 2014. “I’m 39 now, and I’m still standing by that. I’m such a fan that I don’t want to infiltrate it with old blood.”

    André 3000 has been a gifted lyricist for decades, and remains so. If he feels this way, I can imagine that many other artists might feel that, at a certain age, they don’t belong to the culture anymore.

    Or the culture no longer belongs to them.

    Andre 3000, who’s 49 years old, has worried that his ‘old blood’ wouldn’t jibe with rap culture.
    Per Ole Hagen/Redferns via Getty Images

    Forever young?

    Despite the fact that audiences have aged alongside the artists, it can still feel like there’s pressure to stay tapped in to youth culture, lest they create music that, to quote André 3000 more recently, lacks “fresh ingredients.”

    This might encourage some aging artists to attempt to maintain a youthful sheen that will resonate with young audiences. Think of it as a pop culture version of Oscar Wilde’s novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”

    In the novel, a man sells his soul for youth. Rather than physically aging, a painting of him ages instead, taking on the physical signs of his transgressions and pleasures.

    It’s still easy to think of hip-hop as confined to a frame that bears all the marks of youthful longings, rebellion and sins: juvenile vitality, sprightly beauty and vigorous hedonism.

    The expectations lead audiences to assume all artists have similar youthful aims and concerns. They can also lead artists to perform like they’re young and write about the concerns they had as youngsters, despite their respective ages. The hip-hop artists who can’t or choose not to pretend to be “forever young” are expected to “evolve” into moguls, actors, podcasters or reality TV personalities.

    Of course, those assumptions only end up limiting what artists of all ages can accomplish.

    Rappers at whatever level of celebrity you observe, famous and not famous, continue to create while embracing the inevitability of age. Nas, whose debut album, “Illmatic,” was released in 1994, has had an outstanding run of albums in the 2020s.

    Jay-Z’s “4:44” showcased the rapper’s changing sensibilities that have seemingly evolved as he has aged.

    North Carolina duo Little Brother’s entire catalog displays awareness of the absurdity of avoiding adulthood – outstandingly so, I might add, on their 2019 album, “May the Lord Watch.”

    Even emerging rappers like Conway the Machine and 7xvethegenius seem to be able to balance burgeoning careers without caving to youth-obsessed pretenses.

    Creating new, cleverly named musical categories to sidestep biases against aging probably won’t solve the issue. In hip-hop, as in so many American industries, ageism isn’t going away.

    For that reason, my embrace of being an adult rapper will probably continue to make for awkward introductions.

    But I’d rather have that conversation than pretend I’m something I’m not.

    A.D. Carson 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. As the stars of hip-hop’s golden age approach their golden years, some confront questions about whether old blood can make new music – https://theconversation.com/as-the-stars-of-hip-hops-golden-age-approach-their-golden-years-some-confront-questions-about-whether-old-blood-can-make-new-music-240077

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Political bickering and policy uncertainty take a toll on business investment, research shows

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Charles Sims, Professor of Economics, University of Tennessee

    Factionalism isn’t great for the bottom line. Sefa Ozel/E+ via Getty Images

    Partisan squabbling isn’t just annoying – it’s also bad for business.

    That’s what my colleagues and I found in a recent study on how uncertainty in environmental policy affects business investment.

    First, we analyzed more than 300 million newspaper articles, looking for keywords related to environmental policy uncertainty. We found that this uncertainty spikes around election seasons and has nearly doubled over the past decade.

    Then we looked at business investment rates – a common way to gauge a company’s financial health – at companies in affected sectors, such as those in the agriculture, mining, energy and automotive industries. We found that environmental policy uncertainty lowered those companies’ business investment rates by 0.010%.

    That might not sound like a lot, but as economists like me know, small sums add up over time.

    For example, the rise in environmental policy uncertainty in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election was linked with a one-time drop of the investment rate of 25% for companies affected by environmental policy, we found. This effect was larger than the uncertainty associated with defense, health and finance policy.

    But my team also found a silver lining. Policy uncertainty had much less of an effect on business investment when control of Congress was divided and policy changes required bipartisan support, we discovered.

    When the same political party controlled both chambers of Congress, environmental policy uncertainty was associated with a 0.013% decrease in investment rates. But when Congress was split, this decrease shrank to a much smaller 0.002%.

    Why it matters

    Because policy uncertainty tends to spike around elections, our results suggest that the current political environment is creating headwinds for business investment.

    Our study also suggests that policies designed to spur business investment may be less effective than previously thought, because of the uncertainty they introduce.

    Take, for example, the Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2021, and the bipartisan infrastructure law of 2022. Both were crafted to encourage investment in clean-energy technologies.

    But uncertainty over whether these packages would pass in the first place – and, if so, what these policies would include – may have deterred investment before they went into effect. And uncertainty about what aspects of the laws will continue after the election could also depress business investment.

    A degree of uncertainty may be built into the democratic process. After all, the faster and more secretive a government is, the less accountable it is to the public. If you think of it that way, some uncertainty is an unavoidable cost of a healthy policymaking process.

    Our study puts a price tag on these costs and reminds policymakers that political infighting is a drag on the economy. Our results do suggest one promising path forward: bipartisanship.

    What’s next

    Because there’s so much variety in environmental policies, our team is now doing research to see whether businesses respond differently to uncertainty in “carrot” policies – such as subsidies or tax breaks – versus “stick” policies, such as fines or other punishments.

    Answering this question will help policymakers minimize the effects of uncertainty.

    It’s also an open question whether newspaper articles convey information to business leaders or simply reflect the information they already have. If it’s the latter, media coverage may not be a great measure of the uncertainty businesses face.

    To address this concern, we’re working to develop ways to measure uncertainty based on earnings call transcripts instead of newspaper articles. These could be a more direct way to gauge the uncertainties influencing business decisions.

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

    Charles Sims 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. Political bickering and policy uncertainty take a toll on business investment, research shows – https://theconversation.com/political-bickering-and-policy-uncertainty-take-a-toll-on-business-investment-research-shows-242657

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Svalbard Global Seed Vault evokes epic imagery and controversy because of the symbolic value of seeds

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Adriana Craciun, Professor of English and Emma MacLachlan Metcalf Chair of Humanities, Boston University

    The entrance to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Martin Zwick/REDA&CO/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    Two-thirds of the world’s food comes today from just nine plants: sugar cane, maize (corn), rice, wheat, potatoes, soybeans, oil-palm fruit, sugar beet and cassava. In the past, farmers grew tens of thousands of crop varieties around the world. This biodiversity protected agriculture from crop losses caused by plant diseases and climate change.

    Today, seed banks around the world are doing much of the work of saving crop varieties that could be essential resources under future growing conditions. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway supports them all. It is the world’s most famous backup site for seeds that are more precious than data.

    Tens of thousands of new seeds from around the world arrived at the seed vault on Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, in mid-October 2024. This was one of the largest deposits in the vault’s 16-year history.

    And on Oct. 31, crop scientists Cary Fowler and Geoffrey Hawtin, who played key roles in creating the Global Seed Vault, received the US$500,000 World Food Prize, which recognizes work that has helped increase the supply, quality or accessibility of food worldwide.

    The Global Seed Vault has been politically controversial since it opened in 2008. It is the most visible site in a global agricultural research network associated with the United Nations and funders such as the World Bank.

    These organizations supported the Green Revolution – a concerted effort to introduce high-yielding seeds to developing nations in the mid-20th century. This effort saved millions of people from starvation, but it shifted agriculture in a technology-intensive direction. The Global Seed Vault has become a lightning rod for critiques of that effort and its long-term impacts.

    I have visited the vault and am completing a book about connections between scientific research on seeds and ideas about immortality over centuries. My research shows that the Global Seed Vault’s controversies are in part inspired by religious associations that predate it. But these cultural beliefs also remain essential for the vault’s support and influence and thus for its goal of protecting biodiversity.

    The Global Seed Vault gives scientists the tools they may need to breed crops that can cope with a changing climate.

    Backup for a global network

    Several hundred million seeds from thousands of species of agricultural plants live inside the Global Seed Vault. They come from 80 nations and are tucked away in special metallic pouches that keep them dry.

    The vault is designed to prolong their dormancy at zero degrees Fahrenheit (-18 degrees Celsius) in three ice-covered caverns inside a sandstone mountain. The air is so cold inside that when I entered the vault, my eyelashes and the inside of my nose froze.

    The Global Seed Vault is owned by Norway and run by the Nordic Genetic Resources Centre. It was created under a U.N. treaty governing over 1,700 seed banks, where seeds are stored away from farms, to serve as what the U.N. calls “the ultimate insurance policy for the world’s food supply.”

    This network enables nations, nongovernmental organizations, scientists and farmers to save and exchange seeds for research, breeding and replanting. The vault is the backup collection for all of these seed banks, storing their duplicate seeds at no charge to them.

    The seed vault’s cultural meaning

    The vault’s Arctic location and striking appearance contribute to both its public appeal and its controversies.

    Svalbard is often described as a remote, frozen wasteland. For conspiracy theorists, early visits to the Global Seed Vault by billionaires such as Bill Gates and George Soros, and representatives from Google and Monsanto, signaled that the vault had a secret purpose or benefited global elites.

    In fact, however, the archipelago of Svalbard has daily flights to other Norwegian cities. Its cosmopolitan capital, Longyearbyen, is home to 2,700 people from 50 countries, drawn by ecotourism and scientific research – hardly a well-hidden site for covert activities.

    The vault’s entrance features a striking installation by Norwegian artist Dyveke Sanne. An illuminated kaleidoscope of mirrors, this iconic artwork glows in the long Arctic night and draws many tourists.

    Because of its mission to preserve seeds through potential disasters, media regularly describe the Global Seed Vault as the “doomsday vault,” or a “modern Noah’s Ark.” Singled out based on its location, appearance and associations with Biblical myths such as the Flood, the Garden of Eden and the apocalypse, the vault has acquired a public meaning unlike that of any other seed bank.

    The politics of seed conservation

    One consequence is that the vault often serves as a lightning rod for critics who view seed conservation as the latest stage in a long history of Europeans removing natural resources from developing nations. But these critiques don’t really reflect how the Global Seed Vault works.

    The vault and its sister seed banks don’t diminish cultivation of seeds grown by farmers in fields. The two methods complement one another, and seed depositors retain ownership of their seeds.

    Another misleading criticism argues that storing seeds at Svalbard prevents these plants from adapting to climate change and could render them useless in a warmer future. But storing seeds in a dormant state actually mirrors plants’ own survival strategy.

    Dormancy is the mysterious plant behavior that “protects against an unpredictable future,” according to biologist Anthony Trewavas. Plants are experts in coping with climate unpredictability by essentially hibernating.

    Seed dormancy allows plants to hedge their bets on the future; the Global Seed Vault extends this state for decades or longer. While varieties in the field may become extinct, their banked seeds live to fight another day.

    Storing more than seeds

    In 2017, a delegation of Quechua farmers from the Peruvian Andes traveled to Svalbard to deposit seeds of their sacred potato varieties in the vault. In songs and prayers, they said goodbye to the seeds as their “loved ones” and “endangered children.” “We’re not just leaving genes, but also a family,” one farmer told Svalbard officials.

    The farmers said the vault would protect what they called their “Indigenous biocultural heritage” – an interweaving of scientific and cultural value, and of plants and people, that for the farmers evoked the sacred.

    People from around the world have sought to attach their art to the Global Seed Vault for a similar reason. In 2018, the Svalbard Seed Cultures Ark began depositing artworks that attach stories to seeds in a nearby mine.

    Pope Francis sent an envoy with a handmade copy of a book reflecting on the pope’s message of hope to the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Japanese sculptor Mitsuaki Tanabe created a 9-meter-long steel grain of rice for the vault’s opening and was permitted to place a miniature version inside.

    Seeds sleeping in Svalbard are far from their home soil, but each one is enveloped in an invisible web of the microbes and fungi that traveled with it. These microbiomes are still interacting with each seed in ways scientists are just beginning to understand.

    I see the Global Seed Vault as a lively and fragile place, powered not by money or technology but by the strange power of seeds. The World Food Prize once again highlights their vital promise.

    Adriana Craciun 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. Svalbard Global Seed Vault evokes epic imagery and controversy because of the symbolic value of seeds – https://theconversation.com/svalbard-global-seed-vault-evokes-epic-imagery-and-controversy-because-of-the-symbolic-value-of-seeds-240086

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Osteoporosis, the silent disease, can shorten your life − here’s how to prevent fractures and keep bones healthy

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ting Zhang, Research Scholar of Orthopedics, University of Pittsburgh

    With some simple lifestyle changes, you can lower your risk of osteoporosis. Capifrutta/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    Because there are typically no symptoms until the first fracture occurs, osteoporosis is considered a silent disease. Some call it a silent killer.

    Osteoporosis is a bone disease characterized by decreased bone density and strength, leading to fragile, brittle bones that increase the risk of fractures, especially in the spine, hips and wrists.

    The National Osteoporosis Foundation estimates that more than 10 million Americans have osteoporosis. Another 43 million have low bone mass, which is the precursor to osteoporosis. By 2030, the number of adults with osteoporosis or low bone mass is estimated to increase by more than 30%, to 71 million.

    The reasons for the increase include lifestyle issues, particularly smoking, lack of physical activity and alcohol abuse. Our aging population, along with the insufficient attention paid to this disease, are also why osteoporosis is on the rise.

    An illustration of osteoporosis of the spine. Note the sponge-like tissue, which is partially destroyed.
    BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    If you are older, it may be discouraging to read those statistics. But as orthopedic specialists who have studied this disease, we know that osteoporosis is not inevitable. The key to having healthy bones for a lifetime is to take some simple preventive measures – and the earlier, the better.

    Although the symptoms are not obvious early on, certain signs will indicate your bones are becoming weaker. The most serious complications of osteoporosis are fractures, which can lead to chronic pain, hospitalization, disability, depression, reduced quality of life and increased mortality. Worldwide, osteoporosis causes nearly 9 million fractures annually. That’s one osteoporotic fracture every three seconds.

    Height loss, back pain

    Minor bumps or falls may lead to fractures, especially in the hip, wrist or spine. These types of fractures are often the first sign of the disease.

    If you notice that you’re getting shorter, the cause could be compression fractures in the spine; this too is a common symptom of osteoporosis.

    Although it’s typical for most people to lose height as they age – about 1 to 1½ inches (2.5 to 3.8 centimeters) over a lifetime – those with osteoporosis who have multiple spinal fractures could lose 2 to 3 inches or more in a relatively rapid time frame.

    Curved posture, or noticeable changes in posture, may lead to a hunched back, which could be a sign that your spine is weakening and losing density.

    Persistent back pain is another indicator – this too is the result of tiny fractures or compression of the spine.

    A healthy diet and exercise are two ways to build up bone density.

    Calcium and vitamin D

    Osteoporosis cannot be completely cured, but certain lifestyle and dietary factors can lower your risk.

    Calcium and vitamin D are essential for bone health. Calcium helps maintain strong bones, while vitamin D assists in calcium absorption. Women over age 50 and men over 70 should consume at least 1,200 milligrams of calcium daily from food and, if necessary, supplements.

    The easy way to get calcium is through dairy products. Milk, yogurt and cheese are among the richest sources. One cup of milk provides about 300 milligrams of calcium, one-fourth of the daily requirement. If you are vegan, calcium is in many plant-based foods, including soy, beans, peas, lentils, oranges, almonds and dark leafy greens.

    Adults should aim for two to three servings of calcium-rich foods daily. Consuming them throughout the day with meals helps improve absorption.

    Vitamin D is obtained mostly from supplements and sunlight, which is the easiest way to get the recommended dose. Your body will produce enough vitamin D if you expose your arms, legs and face to direct sunlight for 10 to 30 minutes between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., two to three times a week.

    Although it’s best to wear short-sleeve shirts and shorts during this brief period, it’s okay to wear sunglasses and apply sunscreen to your face. Sunlight through a window won’t have the same effect – glass reduces absorption of the UV rays needed for vitamin D production. People with darker skin, or those living in less sunny regions, may need more sunlight to get the same effect.

    If a doctor has given you a diagnosis of osteoporosis, it’s possible the calcium and vitamin D that you’re getting through food and sun exposure alone is not enough; you should ask your doctor if you need medication.

    Chickpeas, sesame seeds and dark green vegetables, such as kale, arugula and broccoli, are good sources of calcium.

    Dance, jog, lift weights and avoid alcohol

    Regular exercise is an excellent activity that can help stave off osteoporosis. Weight-bearing exercises, such as brisk walking, jogging and dancing, are great for increasing bone density. Strength training, such as lifting weights, helps with stability and flexibility, which reduces the risk of falling.

    Aim for 30 minutes of weight-bearing exercise at least four days a week, combined with muscle-strengthening exercises at least twice a week.

    Particularly for women, who lose bone density during and after menopause, regular exercise is critical. Working out prior to menopause will reduce the risk of osteoporosis in your later years.

    And avoid harmful habits – smoking and heavy alcohol consumption can weaken bone density and increase the risk of fractures.

    Fall prevention strategies and balance training are crucial and can help reduce the risk of fractures.

    Screening and treatment

    Women should start osteoporosis screening at age 65, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Men should consider screening if they have risk factors for osteoporosis, which include smoking, alcohol use disorder, some chronic diseases such as diabetes, and age. Men over 70 are at higher risk.

    Medical imaging such as a bone density scan and spinal X-rays can help confirm osteoporosis and detect compression fractures. These basic tests, combined with age and medical history, are enough to make a clear diagnosis.

    Managing osteoporosis is a long-term process that requires ongoing commitment to lifestyle changes. Recognizing the early warning signs and making these proactive lifestyle changes is the first step to prevent the disease and keep your bones healthy.

    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. Osteoporosis, the silent disease, can shorten your life − here’s how to prevent fractures and keep bones healthy – https://theconversation.com/osteoporosis-the-silent-disease-can-shorten-your-life-heres-how-to-prevent-fractures-and-keep-bones-healthy-241547

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: I’m a Muslim immigrant and a psychiatrist living in Michigan – I haven’t decided how to vote yet

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Farha Abassi, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Michigan State University

    My three daughters and I arrived in Michigan from Pakistan in 2000.

    Moving here was my choice, and I followed the legal process. Before the move, I had often been to the United States. I was familiar with the culture and spoke fluent English, so I thought I was prepared.

    Resuming my career as a physician in the U.S. was arduous, but I finally passed all the qualifying exams and completed a psychiatry residency at Michigan State University in 2006. After finishing my studies, I stayed on as faculty.

    Of course, there is nothing new or particularly unique about my family’s experience. Immigration, whether it is out of choice or forced by conflict, has always been part of the American experience. After all, the U.S. Constitution was signed by seven first-generation immigrants.

    Experts will tell you that immigration makes our country stronger economically, culturally and in fields like science and medicine. Since I’m a doctor, I’m well aware that 26% of licensed U.S. physicians and surgeons are immigrants.

    But it is also true that immigrants like me face stresses that harm our
    psychical and mental health.

    I teach cultural psychiatry to medical students and residents, specifically how to provide culturally appropriate care to Muslim patients. After more than 20 years in Michigan, I’m deeply rooted in the Muslim and immigrant community, and I’ve seen firsthand how anxious and uncertain my community is about the 2024 presidential election.

    Panic attacks and depression

    Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has called immigrants “bloodthirsty criminals” and the “most violent people on Earth.” He claims that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” Research shows, and I’ve seen personally, how this kind of talk can cause anxiety and depression in immigrants both undocumented and legal.

    Undocumented immigrants and their families, who live in precarious conditions and in fear of being deported, are especially vulnerable to Trump’s calls for mass deportations.

    History has taught us that a politician’s hateful words can lead to violence.

    In the first half of 2024, the Michigan Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations documented 239 complaints of discrimination against Muslims, an 81% increase over the same period in 2023. In the report, CAIR-MI Executive Director Dawud Walid attributed the uptick to “policies of elected officials, rhetoric of candidates running for office, along with victim blaming by some political pundits.”

    Adding to the situation are the deepening crises in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, which are making Muslims in Michigan, especially those with relatives in the Middle East, reel with palpable grief.

    This rise in Islamophobia and fear of an uncertain future is taking a toll. American Muslims are twice as likely to attempt suicide compared with people from other faiths.

    Anxiety in the voting booth

    Like 73% of all Americans, immigrants are anxious about the election.

    With the politicization of baseless claims of undocumented immigrants voting, the fact is that naturalized citizens – who have every right to take part in the election – are a formidable voting bloc, making up 1 in 10 of the nation’s eligible voters and about 5% in Michigan.

    What’s more, naturalized citizens tend to vote at higher rates than native-born citizens.

    Still, for many Muslims in Michigan, it is hard to know how to vote this year. I don’t trust either of the major parties.

    Michigan’s Muslims are feeling devalued and disenfranchised.

    A key Arab American political action committee based in Michigan refused to endorse either candidate this cycle. Although the PAC typically backs Democrats, this year it said “neither candidate represents our hopes and dreams as Arab Americans.”

    In late September, a national group of three dozen Muslim American scholars and imams signed an open letter calling on Muslims not to vote for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

    “We want to be absolutely clear,” the letter reads, “don’t stay home and skip voting. This year, make a statement by voting third party for the presidential ticket.”

    A group called Listen to Michigan gained attention during the primaries by attracting more than 100,000 people to vote “uncommitted” as a protest against President Joe Biden’s funding of the war in Gaza. The group has stopped short of endorsing Harris but urged voters “not to cast their ballot for anyone but her.”

    Still, some of my neighbors have decided to back Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

    I know my vote is my voice, and I fully intend to participate in the electoral process. But I can’t trust any of the candidates to create a safe haven for my family – a place where my daughters and I can thrive and live our American dream.

    Farha Abassi 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. I’m a Muslim immigrant and a psychiatrist living in Michigan – I haven’t decided how to vote yet – https://theconversation.com/im-a-muslim-immigrant-and-a-psychiatrist-living-in-michigan-i-havent-decided-how-to-vote-yet-241333

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How can Jupiter have no surface? A dive into a planet so big, it could swallow 1,000 Earths

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Benjamin Roulston, Assistant Professor of Physics, Clarkson University

    A photo of Jupiter taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft in September 2023. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS, image processing by Tanya Oleksuik

    Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

    Why does Jupiter look like it has a surface – even though it doesn’t have one? – Sejal, age 7, Bangalore, India

    The planet Jupiter has no solid ground – no surface, like the grass or dirt you tread here on Earth. There’s nothing to walk on, and no place to land a spaceship.

    But how can that be? If Jupiter doesn’t have a surface, what does it have? How can it hold together?

    Even as a professor of physics who studies all kinds of unusual phenomena, I realize the concept of a world without a surface is difficult to fathom. Yet much about Jupiter remains a mystery, even as NASA’s robotic probe Juno begins its ninth year orbiting this strange planet.

    Jupiter’s mass is two-and-a-half times that of all the other planets in the solar system combined.

    First, some facts

    Jupiter, the fifth planet from the Sun, is between Mars and Saturn. It’s the largest planet in the solar system, big enough for more than 1,000 Earths to fit inside, with room to spare.

    While the four inner planets of the solar system – Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars – are all made of solid, rocky material, Jupiter is a gas giant with a composition similar to the Sun; it’s a roiling, stormy, wildly turbulent ball of gas. Some places on Jupiter have winds of more than 400 mph (about 640 kilometers per hour), about three times faster than a Category 5 hurricane on Earth.

    A photo of the southern hemisphere of Jupiter, taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft in 2017.
    NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstadt/Sean Doran

    Searching for solid ground

    Start from the top of Earth’s atmosphere, go down about 60 miles (roughly 100 kilometers), and the air pressure continuously increases. Ultimately you hit Earth’s surface, either land or water.

    Compare that with Jupiter: Start near the top of its mostly hydrogen and helium atmosphere, and like on Earth, the pressure increases the deeper you go. But on Jupiter, the pressure is immense.

    As the layers of gas above you push down more and more, it’s like being at the bottom of the ocean – but instead of water, you’re surrounded by gas. The pressure becomes so intense that the human body would implode; you would be squashed.

    Go down 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers), and the hot, dense gas begins to behave strangely. Eventually, the gas turns into a form of liquid hydrogen, creating what can be thought of as the largest ocean in the solar system, albeit an ocean without water.

    Go down another 20,000 miles (about 32,000 kilometers), and the hydrogen becomes more like flowing liquid metal, a material so exotic that only recently, and with great difficulty, have scientists reproduced it in the laboratory. The atoms in this liquid metallic hydrogen are squeezed so tightly that its electrons are free to roam.

    Keep in mind that these layer transitions are gradual, not abrupt; the transition from normal hydrogen gas to liquid hydrogen and then to metallic hydrogen happens slowly and smoothly. At no point is there a sharp boundary, solid material or surface.

    An illustration of Jupiter’s interior layers. One bar is approximately equal to the air pressure at sea level on Earth.
    NASA/JPL-Caltech

    Scary to the core

    Ultimately, you’d reach the core of Jupiter. This is the central region of Jupiter’s interior, and not to be confused with a surface.

    Scientists are still debating the exact nature of the core’s material. The most favored model: It’s not solid, like rock, but more like a hot, dense and possibly metallic mixture of liquid and solid.

    The pressure at Jupiter’s core is so immense that it would be like 100 million Earth atmospheres pressing down on you – or two Empire State buildings on top of each square inch of your body.

    But pressure wouldn’t be your only problem. A spacecraft trying to reach Jupiter’s core would be melted by the extreme heat – 35,000 degrees Fahrenheit (20,000 degrees Celsius). That’s three times hotter than the surface of the Sun.

    An image taken of Jupiter by Voyager 1. Note the Great Red Spot, a storm large enough to hold three Earths.
    NASA/JPL

    Jupiter helps Earth

    Jupiter is a weird and forbidding place. But if Jupiter weren’t around, it’s possible human beings might not exist.

    That’s because Jupiter acts as a shield for the inner planets of the solar system, including Earth. With its massive gravitational pull, Jupiter has altered the orbit of asteroids and comets for billions of years.

    Without Jupiter’s intervention, some of that space debris could have crashed into Earth; if one had been a cataclysmic collision, it could have caused an extinction-level event. Just look at what happened to the dinosaurs.

    Maybe Jupiter gave an assist to our existence, but the planet itself is extraordinarily inhospitable to life – at least, life as we know it.

    The same is not the case with a Jupiter moon, Europa, perhaps our best chance to find life elsewhere in the solar system.

    NASA’s Europa Clipper, a robotic probe launching in October 2024, is scheduled to do about 50 fly-bys over that moon to study its enormous underground ocean.

    Could something be living in Europa’s water? Scientists won’t know for a while. Because of Jupiter’s distance from Earth, the probe won’t arrive until April 2030.

    Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

    And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

    Benjamin Roulston 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. How can Jupiter have no surface? A dive into a planet so big, it could swallow 1,000 Earths – https://theconversation.com/how-can-jupiter-have-no-surface-a-dive-into-a-planet-so-big-it-could-swallow-1-000-earths-231901

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Visions of development have shifted in Africa over the past two decades: study explores how Rwanda and Ethiopia tried to shape the future

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Barnaby Joseph Dye, Lecturer, King’s College London

    Contemporary economic challenges in Africa appear to be shifting the continent into a new era of development. From COVID-19 to war-induced inflation, many countries in Africa are facing significant economic challenges. The crises of recent years come on top of longer-term increases in debt, especially after the 2014 commodity price shock.

    These circumstances have been the backdrop to recent conflicts, coups, and regime changes. But these contemporary crises follow a period of relatively successful state-led development in the first two decades of the 21st century, resulting in a hype about the new “African lions” and the emergence of an “Africa rising” narrative.

    Two cases stand out as emblematic of this era: Rwanda’s vision of a Dubai-style financial and service hub, and Ethiopia’s rapid manufacturing and infrastructure ambitions.

    Much has been written about the international factors behind this era of state-led development. The focus has been on the extension of private finance and the growth of “new” lenders such as China, India and Brazil. But these perspectives often overlook important questions. What has inspired ambitious African national plans over the last two decades? What assumptions were made about how development happens and how it should look?

    In new research published in a special issue of a journal, we analyse these modernising visions. We unpick their differences and commonalities using cases from multiple countries.

    Our emphasis is on understanding ideas, beliefs, and norms in shaping development plans. Such perspectives are often overlooked in the study of Africa. Scholars have often presumed that ruling elites are primarily interested in narrow material power or self-enrichment. We argue that ideas and beliefs underpin the goals and content of development plans.

    The research covered in the special issue covers Angola, Eritrea and Tanzania, but in this article we will unpack our analysis of Ethiopia and Rwanda.

    20th century modernist development

    Many of the elements of development this century look like resurgent 20th century “high modernism”. This is a term coined by scholar James Scott to describe top-down, state-led, authoritarian programmes of economic development. These programmes typically used infrastructure and technology to engineer supposedly “backward”, “traditional” people and landscapes into efficient, modern, rational alternatives.

    Perhaps the chief examples here are large dams. Historically, dams were viewed as the hallmark projects of modernisation. They could tame nature and deploy technology, whether electricity or irrigation, to found modern economies and workers. Ghana’s Akosombo Dam is one such project.

    But building dams paused from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s as the World Bank and other major funders withdrew. Dam projects were seen as having too-high social and economic costs and as not performing well. Such negative impacts also generated significant protests.

    Rwanda’s case

    Underpinning Rwanda’s model is a concentrated Leninist-style power structure. The president and associated elites chart the path to progress. The party, with its affiliated companies and investment funds, is all powerful – not solely the state. Rwanda also revived mid-century plans, from dams to an east African railway corridor. Electricity was deemed central, resulting in a rapid, but overambitious five-fold increase in over 15 years.

    This recent period was not just a reproduction of the 1960s, however. It had new elements. A Dubai-style aesthetic is central to the reinvented capital, Kigali, where the goal is to create a new corporate service hub, replete with skyscraper, conference centres, shopping malls and a new international airport. This replaces the 20th century obsession with industrial sites and brutalist concrete.

    Rather than the state-led programmes of the 20th century, pro-market reforms have been incorporated. There’s an embrace of private enterprise, a stock market and investment. The country’s electricity boom was largely enacted by private firms and Rwanda consistently ranks as one of the top countries in the Ease of Doing Business index. It takes hours, not weeks, to set up a company and there’s a speedy regulatory bureaucracy.



    Read more:
    Rwanda is creating shiny, modern cities after the genocide – but this won’t help communities heal from the past

    In some cases, “neoliberal” reforms have been brought in, with private enterprise and investment in previously state-controlled domains. Rwanda embraced corporate investment and ownership while making business-friendly, low-tax reforms. The private sector was given a big role in Rwanda’s boom to build over 40 microhydro plants in 15 years.

    New public management techniques, with individual incentives and civil service targets, were adopted.

    Ethiopia’s case

    Ethiopia focused on investments in large agricultural plantations and industrial parks. The result evoked 20th century modernisation drives. A broad-based infrastructure boom and an industrialisation strategy that moved agricultural produce up the value chain would transform the structure of the economy. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the Addis-Djibouti Railway and other megaprojects became symbols of this vision. The aim was to maintain state control of the commanding heights of the economy (electricity, water, telecommunications and aviation, among others), while building an industrial base that would absorb the surplus agricultural labour.

    This was coupled with investments in education and health. In 2016, Ethiopia had the third highest ratio of public investment to GDP, but also one of the fastest economic growth rates globally.

    Unlike Rwanda, this ideology has not survived. Progress in health, education and income was achieved but political tensions grew. By the mid 2010s, the material reality of people’s livelihoods could no longer keep up with the promises the ruling party had evoked. Dissent was not tolerated and led to mass protests, riots, and the eventual demise of the party. Since 2018, there has been a dramatic shift in ideology and vision with an openness to liberalisation, and a focus away from industrialisation to the service sector.

    Continuity and change

    Overall, our analysis reveals a combination of continuity and change during this period. It marks the triumph of an “African left”, with old titans like Tanzania’s Chama Cha Mapinduzi or Mozambique’s Frelimo joined by new revolutionary parties also inspired by Marxism.

    The language of communism or socialism is not used explicitly. But a belief endures that top-down schemes and mega-infrastructure can catapult people into an “enlightened” future. Structural economic barriers are surmountable through technology and engineering.

    Simultaneously, one cannot escape the language of the Davos establishment about the supremacy of markets, importance of foreign investment and pledges to tackle climate change and poverty. This illustrates the degree to which these illiberal modernisers are connected to international policymaking.

    Our publication conceptualises this pattern of continuity and change, as a 10-point “illiberal modernisers” manifesto. Although holding considerable variation between countries, we argue that these these hegemonic ruling parties shared common goals of transforming society through an elite-defined programme.

    Ultimately, the pattern of continuity and change demonstrates the importance of analysing ideas, beliefs, and values. Elites in Africa, just as elsewhere, are not only interested in power but are influenced by ideas about development.

    Barnaby Joseph Dye receives funding from the Economic and Social Science Research Council (UK).

    Biruk Terrefe received funding from the Heinrich Böll Foundation (Germany).

    – ref. Visions of development have shifted in Africa over the past two decades: study explores how Rwanda and Ethiopia tried to shape the future – https://theconversation.com/visions-of-development-have-shifted-in-africa-over-the-past-two-decades-study-explores-how-rwanda-and-ethiopia-tried-to-shape-the-future-224988

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Namibia’s game-changing 2024 elections: Swapo might face defeat for the first time since independence in 1990

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria

    The former liberation movement South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo) has been in firm political control of Namibia since independence in 1990.

    Support for the party in the national assembly and presidential elections reached a high point in November 2014. The 2019 elections marked a turning point, however: Swapo lost its two-thirds-majority in parliament. President Hage Geingob was re-elected with the worst result yet – 56% – from 87% in 2014. This reflected disappointment over the unfulfilled promises he had made. Votes shifted to his Swapo comrade Panduleni Itula. After being expelled from the party in 2020, Itula founded the Independent Patriots for Change.

    Itula, contesting as an “independent candidate” without party nomination, managed to snatch 30% of the votes from Geingob. Swapo’s downward trend was confirmed by a dramatic decline in support in the 2020 regional and local elections.

    Despite these shifting grounds, democracy stood the test of time. The smooth transition following the death of Geingob in February 2024 was a sign of political stability. Previous vice-president Nangolo Mbumba became interim president.

    But Swapo faces a new quality of opposition.

    I have followed and analysed policy in Namibia since independence. In my view, the national assembly and presidential elections of 27 November 2024 signify a new political scenario. For the first time a clear victory for Swapo seems less certain.

    Swapo

    The Swapo election manifesto pays tribute to Geingob. But it doesn’t mention his Harambee Prosperity Plan. Nor does it feature his metaphor of the “Namibian house”, in which nobody is left behind.

    This signifies an abrupt closing of a chapter. Mbumba declared himself a caretaker, not interested in the position for a long term. He therefore does not feature prominently in the election manifesto.

    As decided by the party congress in December 2023 the Swapo presidential candidate is Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, also known as “NNN”. Born in 1952, she was a Swapo Youth League activist from her school days and joined Swapo in exile in the mid-1970s. As a liberation struggle veteran she became part of the party leadership and has been a cabinet member since independence.

    Nandi-Ndaitwah would be the first female Namibian head of state if elected. But she faces strong competition from Itula.

    Namibia’s president is directly elected by a 50% + 1 vote from the electorate. There are several presidential candidates nominated by parties with notable followings. This raises the possibility of no candidate achieving an absolute majority in the first round, for the first time. There would then be a second-round presidential election between the two candidates with most votes.

    While not yet in parliament, Itula’s party, Independent Patriots for Change, made inroads in the 2020 regional and local government elections. In 2019, the Popular Democratic Movement won 16 out of the 96 parliamentary seats, becoming the official opposition. The newcomer Landless People’s Movement won four seats, making it the third strongest party.

    Despite all these recent gradual shifts, hopes for visible transformation were largely unfulfilled. Namibian politics remained business as usual. As Rui Tyitende, a political scientist at the University of Namibia, recently wrote:

    Namibia’s opposition parties are marred by political promiscuity, factionalism, internal conflicts and a perennial struggle for power … Even though Swapo is dysfunctional, the opposition needs to earn the right to govern.

    The manifestos

    This year’s election campaigns started much earlier than usual, testifying to new dynamics. While often lacking substance beyond personalised insults, electioneering remained peaceful. Notably, since independence, Namibia has not recorded a single politically motivated killing.

    Despite early campaigning, party manifestos were released only from mid-September. These kept the media watching out for often dubious promises. Swapo wants to allocate about N$85.7 billion (U$4.9 billion) over five years for mass employment. It does not explain where the funds will come from. But it projects this will create 256,538 jobs.

    The other parties’ manifestos make similarly unrealistic promises. The Independent Patriots for Change and
    the Popular Democratic Movement promise drastic reduction of poverty, unemployment and informal settlements.

    The Landless People’s Movement claims to be Marxist, but includes a commitment to promoting a free market economy, and investment by multinationals. It also wants to send the first Namibian satellite into space.

    Arguably, election manifestos have no serious impact on voting behaviour. For example, among the older generation, political party loyalties remain influenced to some extent by the liberation struggle history, and regional and ethnic identities.

    In contrast, Namibians who were born after independence make up more than half of the country’s three million people, with an average age of 21 years. Many of the younger electorate live in urban areas, and have become an increasingly decisive factor. For them, the anti-colonial struggle and ethnicity provide little influence. This might be a factor in voting behaviour.

    It seems that Swapo continues to attract the biggest crowds at rallies. However, it remains a matter of speculation if this signals huge electoral support, or is due to the entertainment by popular artists. Entertainment has always played a role in Namibian elections.

    Free T-shirts, food and drinks are also incentives for people attending rallies, many of whom are not yet of voting age. While facing financial constraints, Swapo still has the most funds and donors. Another advantage is that it has a functioning operational structure throughout the country, with a regional and local presence of activists.

    Something new or more of the same?

    Swapo has comparative advantages but there is growing frustration among voters. Its dominance since independence has resulted in a form of democratic authoritarianism or authoritarian democracy. But voter support has still declined.

    Similarly authoritarian leadership in the opposition parties and factional in-fighting provide no hope of alternative policies or political culture. Their political coalitions ended in disarray. This might come to Swapo’s rescue.

    An unlikely but possible scenario would be an elected president coming from outside Swapo, while Swapo dominates the national assembly. The head of state has far-reaching executive powers. But he or she would then have to work with ministers and deputy ministers drawn from a parliament dominated by Swapo.

    Such a constellation would complicate governance. It risks making a non-Swapo president a lame duck. It would be the biggest test for Namibia’s constitutional democracy and rule of law since independence.

    As South Africa’s case shows, a former liberation movement can still have a future despite losing its outright majority.

    Swapo could get beyond the nostalgic liberation struggle mindset and reinvent itself as a modern political party. This could – as happened in South Africa – pave the way to enter coalition politics in the best interest of the people.

    Henning Melber is a member of Swapo since 1974.

    – ref. Namibia’s game-changing 2024 elections: Swapo might face defeat for the first time since independence in 1990 – https://theconversation.com/namibias-game-changing-2024-elections-swapo-might-face-defeat-for-the-first-time-since-independence-in-1990-241723

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: I research sexual perversions and paraphilas – here’s what we’ve learned about them

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mark Griffiths, Director of the International Gaming Research Unit and Professor of Behavioural Addiction, Nottingham Trent University

    Hollywood actor Armie Hammer was accused of sending messages detailing cannibalistic fantasies in 2021. DFree/Shutterstock

    After allegedly sending messages detailing cannibalistic fetishes, Hollywood actor Armie Hammer hopes to relaunch his career with a new podcast and movie.

    Following the 2021 social media cannibal scandal, Hammer was also accused of rape and abuse by various women, but consistently denied any criminal behaviour and was not charged.

    Now, it seems, Hammer is laughing off the cannibalism allegations. Speaking to his first podcast guest, Tom Arnold, Hammer says, “I’m not gonna lie. I’m just like, Hey, I’m a cannibal!”

    But being sexually aroused by the fantasy – or reality – of cannibalism is real. I should know, as it’s one of the subjects I discuss in my latest book Sexual Perversions and Paraphilias: An A-Z

    Paraphilias are uncommon types of sexual expression often described as sexual deviations, sexual perversions or disorders of sexual preference.

    They are typically accompanied by intense sexual arousal to unconventional or non-sexual stimuli such as enemas (klismaphilia), statues (agalmatophilia), teeth (odontophilia) and vomit (emetophilia).

    To many people paraphilias may seem bizarre or socially unacceptable, representing the extreme end of the sexual continuum – and in some cases, such as zoophilia (having sex with animals) and necrophilia (having sex with dead people), may be illegal.

    Paraphilias may be laughed off, dismissed or leave some people disgusted, but there’s a pressing need for more research into uncommon sexual behaviour given how little we know.

    Sexual fantasies and behaviour are a fundamental part of the human experience. What is considered immoral or even illegal changes according to the social and temporal context. But whatever sexual desires are considered illicit or depraved in a particular time and place are also stigmatised.

    Researching paraphilias, even the most distasteful or criminal, is essential to help safeguard vulnerable groups. Research can also help minimise the discrimination faced by those with uncommon sexual interests, helping ensure their access to sexual health care and psychological support, which can be lacking.

    Vorarephilia

    Vorarephilia – or “vore” – refers to being sexually aroused by the idea of being eaten, eating another person or observing this process for sexual gratification.

    Most of the fantasies of vorarephiliacs involve being the ones eaten. Devouring someone could be viewed as the ultimate act of dominance by a predator and the ultimate act of submission by the prey.

    The most infamous vorarephiliac is arguably Armin Meiwes from Germany.

    Meiwes had allegedly been fantasising about cannibalism since his childhood and frequented cannibal fetish websites. He posted around 60 online adverts asking if anyone would like to be eaten by him.

    In March 2002, Bernd Jürgen Brandes responded to Meiwes. They met up only once. Meiwes bit off Brandes’ penis, which the two of them cooked and ate.

    Brandes was videotaped being stabbed to death by Meiwes in his bath. The body was then stored for Meiwes to eat.

    Meiwes was eventually convicted of murder and imprisoned for life. However, it’s worth nothing that although some paraphilias are illegal, most cause no psychological or behavioural problems when they are engaged by consenting adults.

    Dacryphilia

    Dacryphilia is getting sexual arousal from seeing someone cry.

    I have published a number of studies on dacryphilia. One involved interviews with eight dacryphiles: six women and two men, from the US, UK, Romania and Belgium.

    It showed there were sub-types of dacryphilia, even among such a small group. Based on the interviews, I identified three types of dacryphile.

    Compassionate dacryphiles are sexually aroused by the compassion of comforting a crier.

    Dominant or submissive dacryphiles are sexually aroused by either causing tears in a consenting submissive partner or by being made to cry by a consenting dominant partner.

    “Curled lip” dacryphiles are sexually aroused by the curling of a protruded bottom lip during crying.

    Eproctophilia

    Eproctophilia involves being sexually aroused by flatulence.

    In 2013, I published the first case study of an eproctophile. The case concerned a 22-year-old single man, Brad*, an American from Illinois.

    Brad recalled that in middle school he had a crush on a girl who had farted in the class. Brad said:

    This blew my mind [I] knew by simple biology that girls farted, but hearing that the girl I had been fawning over was capable of such a thing sparked a strange interest in me.

    Brad first engaged in an eproctophilic act with a male friend in his mid-teens. Up to that point he had considered himself heterosexual. However, this changed when he heard his male friend fart.

    Brad said it was “appealing in sound” and that he began fixating on it. He set up a bet with the wager being the right to fart in the loser’s face for a week. He continued to lose such bets once every few weeks for about two years.

    Apotemnophilia

    Apotemnophilia refers to being sexually aroused by the fantasy or reality of being an amputee.

    Some apotemnophiles may pretend to be amputees but, for a minority, the behaviour involves obsessive scheming to convince a surgeon to perform a medically unnecessary amputation.

    To most people, this might seem like a type of masochism, but case studies suggest that there is no erotisation of pain – only of the healed amputated stump.

    Salirophilia

    Salirophilia is sexual arousal from soiling or dishevelling someone attractive, which can include tearing or damaging the desired person’s clothing, covering them in mud or filth or messing up their hair or make-up.

    My 2019 case study involved Jeff*, a 58-year-old Australian heterosexual. Jeff recounted that when he was young he wanted to masturbate in strange places such as lying under a cabinet in a dirty garage.

    Jeff said that he engaged in solitary salirophilic practices regularly but very infrequently with female partners because it was difficult to find like-minded women.

    He was also a fan of the television show Fear Factor in which contestants perform revolting tasks for prize money, such as eating rotting food or being submerged in foul fluids. These were a source of sexual arousal for Jeff. He told me: “I just find the defilement of an attractive woman’s body erotic.”

    *The names of case study participants in this article have been changed.

    Dr. Mark Griffiths has received research funding from a wide range of organizations including the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy and the Responsibility in Gambling Trust. He has also carried out consultancy for numerous gambling companies in the area of player protection, social responsibility and responsible gaming.. Views expressed here are his own and not those of these funding bodies.

    – ref. I research sexual perversions and paraphilas – here’s what we’ve learned about them – https://theconversation.com/i-research-sexual-perversions-and-paraphilas-heres-what-weve-learned-about-them-238446

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Undoing the ‘deep state’ means Trump would undo over a century of progress in building a federal government for the people and not just for rich white men

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Joseph Patrick Kelly, Professor of Literature and Director of Irish and Irish American Studies, College of Charleston

    If elected, Donald Trump has vowed to demolish what he calls the “deep state” – a conspiratorial term for the American federal bureaucracy. A second Trump administration, running mate JD Vance has said, should fire thousands of civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists.

    Trump has said he would tap the billionare Elon Musk as the hatchet man to lead his proposed government commission on “efficiency” in government.

    Compared with the other fireworks of the campaign – like Trump’s promise to criminally prosecute his political rivals and suppress news organizations – threats to gut the United States’ vast federal bureaucracy don’t get much attention. But doing so is a big a threat to democracy.

    For years, conservatives have claimed that taking power from government agencies gives it back to the people. Yet while it might seem counterintuitive, Americans actually exercise their sovereignty through the administrative state.

    The American administrative state was established almost 100 years ago by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As a historian of American democracy, I think it’s valuable to remember what the old deal looked like while Trump rails against the New Deal.

    The Gilded Age

    Around 1900, America was not really democratic. The federal government did not rule by the consent of the governed. As historian Heather Cox Richardson recently argued, the American government was an oligarchy.

    Millions of working-class Slavs, Jews, Italians, Asians and Scotch-Irish Appalachians toiled mercilessly in death-trap sweatshops, suffocating mines and fiery steel mills. Cotton farmers in the Black Belt lived like peons.

    These people were America’s “other half,” as the social reformer Jacob Riis called them in 1890. And they were effectively excluded from the social contract.

    Meanwhile, for rich white men like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller it was, as Mark Twain quipped, a “Gilded Age.” Robber barons ran their industrial empires with impunity.

    When their employees tried to organize or protest, industrialists got sheriffs and police to suppress them. Or they hired private armies of “detectives,” like the Pinkertons, as Carnegie did when steelworkers struck in Homestead, Pennsylvania.

    Governors called in the National Guard, as Ephraim Morgan did in 1921 to suppress a labor dispute in West Virginia. Sometimes, it was the regular Army, as in 1919, when soldiers from Camp Pike propped up the peonage system of tenant farming by indiscriminately machine-gunning Black farmers hiding in the woods outside Elaine, Arkansas.

    ‘We stand at Armageddon’

    Forced by popular clamor, Congress decided to act.

    It created the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887 and told its commissioners to compel railroads, which were gouging some customers and favoring others, to charge fair rates to everyone.

    This was the start of federal regulation.

    In 1895, the New York Legislature passed the Bakeshop Act, making it illegal to force an employee to work more than 10 hours a day or 60 hours a week.

    The Supreme Court, however, was still friendly to business. In its 1905 decision in Lochner v. New York, the court ruled against the Bakeshop Act. No one could regulate the workday or work week. The decision stripped Congress and state legislatures of their nascent regulatory powers. That enraged President Teddy Roosevelt.

    “(T)he right of the people to rule,” Roosevelt later thundered, had been usurped by the corporations. With apocalyptic fury he predicted, “We stand at Armageddon!”

    That was in 1912. The Lochner era, as historians call this period when workers and the public had few protections from exploitative businesses, lasted another 20 years.

    Then, in 1929, the U.S. economy collapsed.

    One-quarter of Americans had no work. Starving and desperate migrants wandered across the country. An army of veterans marched on Washington.

    The apocalyptic misery of the Great Depression finally made American oligarchy untenable.

    Liberal democracy

    In 1932, the people rewrote the social contract: They elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal in a landslide.

    It was, in essence, a revolution. After nearly 60 years of corporate domination, the 1932 election would “return America to its own people,” to use Roosevelt’s words.

    Of course, it was not really a “return.” In the precorporation world, most Americans – notably women and Black people – couldn’t participate in their own government. But 1932 was a giant step toward democracy. And the great innovation that would usher in this modern, liberal democracy was the administrative state: a meritocracy of career civil servants dedicated to carrying out the law.

    Have you ever wondered why a green light means “go” in every state? In 1935, the Bureau of Public Roads – now the Federal Highway Administration – wrote and enforced its first Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways.

    That’s the administrative state in action. It’s how 122 million people cooperated to make complex, modern society work – without surrendering their sovereignty to some dictator like Benito Mussolini or Josef Stalin.

    But the Supreme Court kept striking down New Deal laws and regulations.

    After a massive electoral victory in 1936, FDR threatened to “pack” the court by raising the number of justices from nine to 15. Finally, the court relented. In a 5-4 decision, it allowed the state of Washington’s Industrial Welfare Committee to establish a minimum wage – $14.50 for a 48-hour work week.

    Most history textbooks don’t mention this milestone, but that’s when liberal democracy was secured.

    To be sure, it would take almost 30 more years before the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s brought democracy to the Jim Crow South. But even that victory depended on the Justice Department’s power to regulate elections in historically white supremacist states.

    The administrative state has been protecting the rights of ordinary Americans and executing the sovereignty of the people for the past 87 years.

    Who grounded Boeing airplanes when a door blew off a 737 in midflight? It was civil servants in the Federal Aviation Administration, a government agency founded by Congress in 1958 “to regulate civil aviation.”

    Why does the U.S. have cleaner air and water today than it did in the 1960s? Because in 1970, Congress passed the Clean Air Act, and a new Environmental Protection Agency was empowered to write and perpetually rewrite regulations that execute Congress’ antipollution laws.

    The alternative

    This system produces the occasional injustice or overreach.

    A farmer’s puddling acre, for example, might be overregulated as a “wetland.” A fishing company might be ordered to maintain a government-appointed herring counter at a cost of $710 a day.

    But gutting regulatory agencies and replacing a meritocratic bureaucracy with MAGA loyalists won’t help small farmers or family-owned fishing boats. It will empower big corporations to pollute, exploit their workers, price-gouge customers, cut corners on safety – and to corrupt the political system.

    It’s also illegal. Congress has deliberately protected those bureaucrats from the volatility of presidential politics.

    Unlike presidential appointees, who serve at the pleasure of the president, civil servants work for the people. They are empowered by Congress, and the president cannot fire them. At least for now.

    Joseph Patrick Kelly has previously volunteered as an officer at the county and precinct level in the Democratic Party.

    – ref. Undoing the ‘deep state’ means Trump would undo over a century of progress in building a federal government for the people and not just for rich white men – https://theconversation.com/undoing-the-deep-state-means-trump-would-undo-over-a-century-of-progress-in-building-a-federal-government-for-the-people-and-not-just-for-rich-white-men-234421

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Only 3% of South Africans can name all five national animals and plants. Why these symbols matter

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Charlie Shackleton, Professor & Research Chair in Interdisciplinary Science in Land and Natural Resource Use for Sustainable Livelihoods, Rhodes University

    The springbok is best known, thanks to it being a name for sports teams. A Oosthuizen/iStock/Getty Images

    Alongside a national flag, anthem and coat of arms, most countries have one or more plant and animal species that they designate as national symbols. The national animal of China, for example, is the giant panda, a nation-wide source of pride and diplomacy. Americans salute the bald eagle as a symbol of strength and freedom.

    But how do South Africans relate to their official national symbols? Do they even know what they are? It’s a country with an enviable variety of ethnicities, cultures, languages, histories, landscapes and biodiversity. It’s also a country fractured by colonialism and apartheid.

    South Africa is still in the process of building a unified and national identity as it moves beyond apartheid, an oppressive system of legislated racial division that formally ended with the advent of democracy in 1994.

    The process of nation building includes developing a shared history, identity, pride and values of what it means to be South African. One dynamic in this process is the shaping of a collective identity around particular national icons, symbols, activities and personalities. The national anthem, flag, sports stars, artists and the like. Things that make citizens proud of their country and its people, despite a divided past.

    King protea.
    Carol Phillips/iStock/Getty Images

    Reflecting its mega-biodiversity status, South Africa boasts five national animal and plant symbols. These are the national animal (springbok), fish (galjoen), bird (blue crane), flower (king protea) and tree (real yellowwood). Yet, their usefulness in helping build a national identity depends on South Africans actually knowing what they are. Sadly, this seems not to be the case.

    As environmental scientists we’re intrigued by the relationships between humans and nature. Environmental scholars Ondwela Tshikombeni, Monde Ntshudu and I recently conducted a study to find out how much South Africans know about the five biodiversity symbols. We found that only a tiny fraction could name all of them. The level of knowledge about them was generally low.

    This indicates that these symbols can’t be effectively used to help build a common South African identity. Nor will they add value to biodiversity conservation campaigns in a time when the need to protect nature increases due to the impacts of human development and climate change.

    National animals and plants

    The process of choosing a species as a national symbol is different depending on the country and may even be contested. In Turkey, for example, the national animal is the grey wolf. It can be a symbol of pride or be rejected because it’s the controversial name of a rightwing political group.

    Many national symbols are rooted in history and could stem from the emblems of the political, colonial or economic elites of the past. Or they may be more recent and based on lobbying by certain groups or even via public vote. Britain, for example, asked the public to choose a national bird. The robin won.

    Galjoen.
    Biodiversity Heritage Library/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

    The first national animal to be used as a symbol in South Africa was the springbuck (or springbok), proposed in 1906 as a name for the country’s rugby team ahead of a tour of Europe. The most recent addition was the galjoen in 1992.

    Our study

    We surveyed 382 urban dwellers in four towns spanning three provinces: Mossel Bay, Kariega (formerly Uitenhage), Gcuwa (formerly Butterworth) and Kokstad. In each town we set out to interview 25 adults across low-, medium- and high-income areas and the central business district.

    Blue crane.
    Knowsley Hall/Wikimedia Commons

    As part of the survey, we asked people to name each of the five national biodiversity symbols. After that, we presented them with photos of four different species (one of which was the national one) and asked them to correctly identify the national species.

    What we found

    Only 11 of the respondents (3%) could name all five symbols, while almost half (48%) could not correctly name a single one. The most widely known were the springbok (40%) and the king protea (40%), perhaps because they correspond to the names of national sporting teams. The blue crane was mentioned by only 16% of the respondents and the galjoen (8%) and yellowwood (6%) fared even worse.

    The numbers were slightly better when respondents were asked to identify each species from a photo of four choices – 58% identified the protea, 51% the blue crane, 45% the springbok, 26% the galjoen and 16% the real yellowwood.

    Real yellowwood.
    Abu Shawka/ Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

    To benchmark these knowledge levels, we also asked a few questions about the national flag and coat of arms. Only eight people knew the meaning of the phrase at the base of the coat of arms (ǃke e꞉ǀxarraǁke, meaning “diverse people unite” in the |Xam language of the country’s original inhabitants). Only 29% correctly knew that the Y-shape in the middle of the national flag was green. This indicates that the low knowledge of national symbols is not limited to just biodiversity symbols.

    What can be done about it

    It’s clear that a great deal more effort is needed to popularise the national biodiversity symbols if they’re to be used to help shape a national identity in South Africa. They could be promoted in schools where other national symbols, like the flag and anthem, are common.



    Read more:
    Should Graaff-Reinet be renamed Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe? Residents of the South African town say no – study

    The South African National Biodiversity Institute and the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture could promote them during September’s heritage month celebrations. They could engage the public by popularising their names in the different official languages of the country and their roles in folklore and indigenous knowledge. They could also be featured in national and international tourism promotions.

    Ondwela Tshikombeni and Monde Ntshudu contributed to this article

    Charlie Shackleton received funding from the National Research Foundation under the SARChI Chairs programme for this work.

    – ref. Only 3% of South Africans can name all five national animals and plants. Why these symbols matter – https://theconversation.com/only-3-of-south-africans-can-name-all-five-national-animals-and-plants-why-these-symbols-matter-241284

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Big companies profit from poverty but aren’t obliged to uphold human rights. International law must change – scholar

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Bonita Meyersfeld, Associate Professor, University of the Witwatersrand

    There is some disagreement among legal practitioners and scholars about whether corporations have duties under international law.

    Many argue that only states are bound by international law, and it is those states which are obliged to regulate how businesses operate within their borders. Corporations have only a voluntary responsibility to avoid committing human rights violations through their operations.

    I have been doing research in the area of corporate accountability for human rights violations since 2006. My most recent paper looks at the role of multinational corporations (multinationals) in benefiting from and perpetuating structural poverty in the global south.

    I argue that international law can no longer exempt corporations from liability for human rights violations, including those arising from poverty. Under certain circumstances, corporations should have duties under international law to ensure human rights are fulfilled. I argue that this is particularly true when it comes to socio-economic rights such as the rights to housing, education, food, water and healthcare.

    International human rights law must be developed to impose duties directly on multinational corporations to alleviate poverty in the developing countries where they operate.

    This is not an absolute duty – it would only arise in certain circumstances and for specific periods of time, as I show in my paper.

    Poverty and corporations

    Some estimate that as many as 1.3 billion people live in poverty – more than 10% of the world’s population, the vast majority in the global south.

    Poverty is also deadly. It is estimated that at least 21,300 people die every day as a result of poverty and inequality. Poverty is a human rights violation, affecting the rights to dignity, life, food and water.

    Businesses have a long history of profiting from human rights abuses. Finance and transport companies have acknowledged ties to the slave trade. European banks reportedly assisted South Africa’s apartheid government to procure arms.



    Read more:
    UK-Rwanda migrant deal challenges international protection law

    Even when they are not directly responsible for human rights violations, multinational corporations may be complicit. Multinationals based in the global north tend to exploit developing countries for their cheap labour, natural resources and weak regulatory frameworks. In other words, corporations benefit from poverty.

    International law

    In 2005, Professor John Ruggie was appointed as the United Nations secretary-general’s special representative on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. He developed the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. This framework adopts the position that only states are subjects and have duties under international human rights law.

    The UN guiding principles are organised around three pillars, known as Protect, Respect and Remedy. The first pillar relates to states’ obligations to uphold human rights. It includes the duty to regulate businesses to ensure they do not violate rights through their operations. The second pillar refers to corporations’ responsibility to respect human rights. This is voluntary and not a legal obligation. The third pillar ensures that victims of human rights violations have access to effective remedies.

    This framework relies on three factors: states which have the interests of their citizens at heart, corporations complying with human rights standards, and effective remedial systems. If all three work together, then the UN guiding principles can address corporate accountability for rights violations.

    In practice, however, this is not the case. Many states, particularly those in the developing world with high levels of poverty, rely on foreign investment. This creates a power imbalance when negotiating with large multinational corporations. Multinationals are able to demand favourable investment conditions, including relaxing laws that might protect human rights.



    Read more:
    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is illegal under international law: suggesting it’s not is dangerous

    Under the UN guiding principles, if states do not impose obligations on corporations to comply with human rights, they do not have such obligations.

    Next steps

    Not all corporations should have the same duties as states. I propose a set of factors that would determine when a corporation might have a duty under international human rights law to fulfil socio-economic rights. These factors are:

    • the extent of the violation

    • the position or vulnerability of the victim

    • the urgency of the situation

    • whether the corporation is the only actor that can fulfil the right.

    For example, let us imagine a scenario in which a company operates a mine in the Central African Republic. It has built a hospital for its workers and management. Surrounding the mining operations are indigent communities who resided in the area before the operations began.

    One day, a child from one of the settlements is knocked over by a car. Her injuries are not life-threatening, but they are severe and the child is in terrible pain. The closest hospital is the mine-owned private hospital. There is a public hospital, but it is far away and travelling there would take time and be costly. The child’s family rushes her to the mine’s hospital for emergency treatment. Does the hospital have a legal duty to admit the child and pay for her treatment?

    Applying a combination of the factors, the answer is yes. The child is vulnerable by virtue of her age and poverty, the situation is urgent, and the mine hospital is the only entity that can fulfil the right under the circumstances.



    Read more:
    The CAR provides hard lessons on what it means to deliver real justice

    Using this framework, I argue that international human rights law should be developed to mitigate the harm of poverty in the global south, by imposing duties on corporations that benefit from poverty. Some corporations have a perverse incentive to keep communities poor. International law has a role to play in overturning this state of affairs.

    Ultimately, my proposal seeks to review what we think of as a fair and just economy. Nothing will change if only states have obligations under international law. The global economic market is neither free nor fair. It has created the most severe human rights violations of our age. International human rights law must address this.

    Bonita Meyersfeld has received funding from the National Research Foundation as part of her NRF rating.

    – ref. Big companies profit from poverty but aren’t obliged to uphold human rights. International law must change – scholar – https://theconversation.com/big-companies-profit-from-poverty-but-arent-obliged-to-uphold-human-rights-international-law-must-change-scholar-241398

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Financial skills like managing debt are key to success, but Ghana’s small businesses don’t have them

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Samuel Adomako, Associate Professor of Strategy and Innovation, University of Birmingham

    Mongta Studio/Shutterstock

    Financial literacy is vital for individuals and households. Simply put, it’s the ability to understand and effectively use various financial skills: budgeting, managing debt, making sound investments, and understanding financial statements.

    These skills are crucial for businesses, too – especially small and medium enterprises. Small and medium enterprises are widely recognised as the backbone of many low-income countries’ economies. The World Bank estimates that these businesses account for between 60% and 70% of jobs in sub-Saharan Africa and approximately 40% of low-income countries’ GDPs globally.

    Ghana is one of the countries whose economy relies heavily on small and medium enterprises. Much emphasis has been placed on how important it is for these businesses to access finance. But far less has been discussed about the value of financial literacy. In Ghana, as is the case in many other countries, the reality is that many small and medium enterprises still fail to grow as expected, even when they have access to capital. This surprising outcome suggests that access to finance, while crucial, is not the sole factor determining business success. The missing piece of the puzzle? Financial literacy.

    We conducted a study to find out whether managers at small and medium enterprises in Ghana believed that financial literacy would help them to improve their growth after accessing finance. CEOs and senior financial managers who self-identified as being financially literate told us that their businesses had grown as a result, explicitly linking growth and financial literacy.

    It is clear from this study that financial literacy empowers the managers of small and medium enterprises to make informed decisions, make the best use of their resources, and avoid common pitfalls that can derail business growth. It enables them not only to access finance but also to use it effectively for sustainable growth and long-term success.

    Our findings have wider implications. Small and medium enterprises are vital for economic growth. But their potential is being undermined by a lack of financial literacy. This isn’t just a problem for businesses themselves: it’s a problem for the entire economy they are part of. When small and medium enterprises fail to grow, job creation stalls, innovation slows down, and the economy as a whole suffers.

    The study

    There is no single public register for small and medium enterprises in Ghana. So we drew our participants from a range of resources, including the national company register, the Ghana Export Promotion Authority, the Association of Ghana Industries and the Ghana Business Directory.

    We defined small and medium enterprises in the same way as Ghana’s Statistical Service does: companies that have 250 or fewer employees.

    Ultimately, 201 firms across the manufacturing and services sectors took part in the study. The vast majority of responses were from CEOs and senior finance managers, which is important since people in these positions ought to have comprehensive knowledge about a firm’s growth and performance.

    The respondents saw a clear link between financial literacy and access to finance for growing their businesses. One CEO said:

    Understanding financial principles is the foundation of our business decisions. Without financial literacy, we wouldn’t have been able to secure the necessary funding to expand our operations. It’s not just about getting access to finance but knowing how to manage it effectively that drives growth.

    A senior financial manager told us:

    Before improving our financial literacy, we struggled to convince lenders of our potential. Learning how to present our financials clearly and manage our cash flow gave us the credibility we needed to secure financing and invest in our growth.

    Some interviewees discussed how not being financially literate had hampered their ability to properly use funding. A finance manager said that, after securing an initial round of funding. “we quickly realised we couldn’t manage cash flow effectively”, adding:

    It felt like we were putting out fires every day. I didn’t understand terms like ‘liquidity ratios’ or ‘debt management’ until I started learning about financial literacy. It was eye-opening.

    These lessons happened in various ways, some more formal than others. One CEO, realising their own financial management skills needed work, hired a financial officer with strong abilities in this area and learned a great deal from them.

    Some CEOs signed themselves up for financial management workshops; others organised short courses for their entire teams. One told us: “We took a financial literacy course designed for entrepreneurs, and it gave us new insights into how to manage loans and investments. It wasn’t just about survival but also about how to leverage what we had to grow. Now, we budget better, monitor our cash flow closely, and even started saving for unexpected expenses.”



    Read more:
    Battling to make ends meet? Financial planning expert offers 5 tips on how to build your budget

    Addressing the issues

    There are several ways to improve financial literacy among small and medium enterprises.

    First, policymakers should incorporate mandatory financial literacy training into existing support programmes for these businesses. It should cover essential financial management skills such as budgeting, cash flow management and investment planning.



    Read more:
    Corruption hurts businesses but digital tools offer the hope of fighting it, say manufacturers in Ghana and Nigeria

    Policymakers could also facilitate partnerships between banks, microfinance institutions and educational organisations to offer targeted financial literacy workshops for managers at small and medium enterprises. This would equip businesses to manage the financial support they receive.

    Finally, policymakers should introduce incentives, such as reduced interest rates or preferential loan terms, for small and medium enterprises that complete certified financial literacy courses. This would motivate managers to enhance their financial management skills, leading to more sustainable business growth and improved economic outcomes.

    Samuel Adomako 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. Financial skills like managing debt are key to success, but Ghana’s small businesses don’t have them – https://theconversation.com/financial-skills-like-managing-debt-are-key-to-success-but-ghanas-small-businesses-dont-have-them-241955

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Is Donald Trump preying on his supporters’ death fears? What terror management theory offers us

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Sarah Elizabeth Wolfe, Professor, School of Environment and Sustainability, Royal Roads University

    Death and destruction from climate crises — flooding, fires, hurricanes and heat.

    Then there’s the multimedia firehose of tragic accidents, gruesome images from devastating wars, seemingly random local street violence, warnings of a Third World War and grim distress signals about the dangers of rising authoritarianism on the eve of the United States presidential election and the possible return to power of climate-change skeptic Donald Trump.



    Read more:
    ‘Each bears his own ghosts’: How the classics speak to these days of fear, anger and presidential candidates stalking the land

    Combine these stressors with our own personal mortality reminders: that new grey hair, an unexpected medical diagnosis, the COVID-19 related deaths of our friends or colleagues, and we’re left grappling with surprising and unwelcome fear.

    But trying to get through our days as mostly functional, civilized adults while paralyzed with fear about our unavoidable death isn’t optimal or sustainable. Thankfully, our brains have a hardwired, helpful strategy that’s explained by “terror management theory.”

    Defence mechanisms

    Terror management researchers have shown that we all have predictable defences aimed at repressing our death awareness. Unfortunately, those defences can also contribute to destructive social forces.

    Recognizing and understanding how these defences work is essential to making them less dangerous. These defences depend a lot on our pre-existing identities and whether death awareness operates within our conscious or subconscious mind.

    When death fears are conscious, our defences include denial, rationalization, distraction and self-esteem-building , often via consumption or consumerism. We build ourselves up by gathering or protecting our resources — think negotiating higher incomes or trying to avoid paying taxes — and shopping for necessities to keep our families safe.



    Read more:
    Joe Biden’s refusal to step aside illustrates the political dangers of ‘death denial’

    Death fears also trigger conspicuous consumption to signal our social status and bolster our self-esteem. In terror management theory, money is valued because money buys safety, and safety means the avoidance of death, at least for a little while longer.

    When death fears are unconscious or just “background noise,” the situation gets more complex and problematic. Some of us will harden our identities and ideas about what we believe is right or just, what we are entitled to and with whom we’ll share resources, opportunities and power.

    Sometimes we’ll show greater antagonism towards groups who are unlike us in looks or practice: immigrants, religious minorities or even international students. As these defences emerge and coalesce, we’ll blame “others” for both the big and small troubles we experience or perceive.

    The result is increased social fragmentation and polarization rather than capitalizing on people’s diverse ideas, perspectives and experiences.

    Authoritarian playbook

    When mortality awareness is infused throughout a society — say, during a deadly pandemic or climate disasters — manipulating people’s death fears becomes a seductive route to power for authoritarians or would-be authoritarians like Trump.

    Some people will become receptive to a charismatic figure’s promises of safety, rules, and a return to a better time.

    German psychology professor Immo Fritsche and colleagues have identified clear evidence that climate change has increased authoritarian attitudes and support for authoritarian leadership styles.



    Read more:
    Time to freak out? How the existential terror of hurricanes can fuel climate change denial

    Other researchers found that individuals who did not have prior authoritarian tendencies — after controlling for their political affiliation and ideology — expressed greater support for authoritarian leadership when they experienced mortality awareness.

    In a subsequent study, Fritsche’s results were more dire: death awareness defences created “prejudice, stereotyping, aggression, and racism, which, in turn, can lead to the escalation of violent intergroup conflict and, thus, the escalation of war.”

    While this trajectory isn’t guaranteed, ignoring the influence of mortality defences on social dynamics seems both short-sighted and foolish.

    Be a hero

    So, what can we do to avoid the worst outcomes of polarization, antagonism against marginalized and racialized communities, authoritarianism and potential violence?

    Some good news: first, positive world views and identities can be strengthened even when we feel threatened by death. People who see the world as a collective, are willing to welcome others and work to maintain civil society may intensify their efforts when their mortality is salient. These people need to be supported and celebrated.

    Second, a final defence against mortality fears is to build up our self-esteem through positive “hero projects.” Through these activities — philanthropy, raising children, works of art or literature, teaching, protest or activism for social change — we commit to an action that may not be in our immediate self-interest but we persist despite difficulties, discomfort and often daunting odds.



    Read more:
    How the altruistic response to far right riots reveals the innate goodness in human beings

    In our hero projects, we may take less but give more, and direct our energy to outcomes that will, hopefully, benefit our communities long after we’re gone.

    The authoritarians among us are already adept at manipulating our mortality fears for their own benefit. We can accept their preferred power trajectory, or we can recognize the influence of mortality fears and create alternatives in the days, weeks, months and years to come.

    Sarah Elizabeth Wolfe gratefully acknowledges two decades of funding from Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The author 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 her academic appointment.

    – ref. Is Donald Trump preying on his supporters’ death fears? What terror management theory offers us – https://theconversation.com/is-donald-trump-preying-on-his-supporters-death-fears-what-terror-management-theory-offers-us-242568

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How some South Asian countries are embracing colonialism by moving citizens to disputed areas

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Hari Har Jnawali, Instructor, Global Governance, Wilfrid Laurier University

    South Asian countries Bangladesh and India are using settler colonial policies as they resettle citizens in contested territories.

    The intention is to reduce the demographic strength of ethnic minorities, minimize their influence over their ancestral lands and eliminate their demands for internal autonomy.

    Population resettlement is the practice of relocating members of the ethnic-majority population to disputed ethnic territories to undermine ethnic solidarity and obtain territorial control over those regions.

    Population resettlement was an integral part of European colonialism. European colonizers settled their people in countries like India, bought up large swaths of land, established institutions that served their interests and achieved the territorial domination of the countries they colonized.

    But even following the decline of European colonialism, the inclination towards colonial policy has not decreased in South Asia. My preliminary research is finding that population resettlement has become a part of the region’s post-colonial playbook.

    The scene in South Asia

    Over the years, South Asian countries have advanced population resettlement projects in their contested ethnic territories.

    Nepal, for instance, launched its organized population resettlement program in 1961, relocating the Pahadi people from the hilly areas of the country to the Tarai lowlands, the contested homeland of the Madheshi, Tharu and Indigenous Peoples.

    In the 1990s, nearby Bhutan evicted around a million Nepali-speaking ethnic Lhotsampas from its southern region and offered incentives to the majority Bhutanese people to settle in the area.

    In 2019, the Indian government amended the country’s constitution to allow non-Kashmiri people from elsewhere in India to settle in India-administered Kashmir. The Muslim majority region has been divided into Indian, Pakistani and Chinese controlled areas for decades.



    Read more:
    India is using the G20 summit to further its settler-colonial ambitions in Kashmir

    Kashmiris fear India is seeking more territorial control over the disputed region by changing its demographic makeup. Since 2019, it’s issued more than four million domicile certificates allowing outsiders to settle in Kashmir in an effort to expedite the settlement of the majority Hindu people in the region.

    Pakistan hasn’t embarked on population resettlement to this scale, but its treatment of ethnic minorities is also troubling. The extreme oppression of ethnic groups in East Pakistan prompted Bengali minorities to fight for independence, leading to the formation of modern Bangladesh in 1971.

    Bangladesh, in turn, continued Pakistan’s oppressive policies against its Indigenous minorities. Not only did it refuse to recognize Indigenous Peoples in its constitution, it also advanced the military-assisted population transfer programs in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, a region inhabited by Indigenous Peoples.

    It provided the settlers with money, land, grain and arms to facilitate their settlements in Indigenous territory.

    Currently, Sri Lanka has been resettling Sinhalese people to Tamil areas 14 years after the end of a devastating and prolonged civil war between Tamil separatists and the Sri Lankan state.

    Timing of population resettlement

    South Asian countries pursued these settlement policies as ethnic minorities — the Madheshis in Nepal, the Lhotshampas in Bhutan, the Kashmiris in Kashmir, the Paharis in Bangladesh and the Tamils in Sri Lanka — were demanding autonomy and self-determination in their ancestral territories.

    The governments in these countries fear autonomy will eventually lead to secession. They’ve pursued settler colonial policies to resettle citizens in these regions to prevent that from happening.



    Read more:
    Canada-India crisis: India’s post-colonial era explains why it’s on edge about Sikh separatism

    Despite official claims that resettlements foster greater economic development and inter-ethnic harmony, population relocation causes real harms to ethnic cohesion, solidarity and collective rights.

    It suggests these South Asian governments have internalized colonialism, although they didn’t all share the same experiences with European colonialism.

    Choosing a questionable path

    India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka experienced direct British colonial occupation. While Nepal and Bhutan were not under direct colonial rule, they had indirect encounters with the British.

    Nepal faced threats to its territorial integrity from the British government and fought against the potential encroachment during the Anglo-Nepal War of 1814-1816. It signed a humiliating treaty with the British government and ceded its sovereign rights over some of its territories.

    Bhutan signed a treaty in 1910, allowing the British government to oversee its external affairs.

    South Asian countries emulated the settler colonial mentalities of their former colonizers and are resorting to practices that hurt the marginalized communities living within their national borders.

    Governments often insist they’ve adopted resettlement projects to enhance economic growth, development and inter-ethnic harmony. However, it is often ethnic minorities who are displaced and face threats to their cultures, traditions and languages. The displacement of Indigenous Paharis in Bangladesh is a glaring example.

    Tarnishing reputations

    Granting autonomy to ethnic minorities that would allow them to exercise their right to self-determination internally could prevent these human rights violations, but some South Asian governments have not taken this route.

    Instead, they’re opting to move non-ethnic minority citizens into ethnic territories.

    In an era when inclusion has become something aspirational in many countries, this colonial population resettlement practice is likely to hurt the credibility and reputations of South Asian states — and probably won’t end well. The nationalist dreams and aspirations of ethnic minorities don’t vanish in the face of adversity; quite the contrary.

    Hari Har Jnawali receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to work on the project “Population Resettlements in Ethnic Territories of South Asia: Why and How States Pursue Internal Colonialism?”

    – ref. How some South Asian countries are embracing colonialism by moving citizens to disputed areas – https://theconversation.com/how-some-south-asian-countries-are-embracing-colonialism-by-moving-citizens-to-disputed-areas-242361

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Without a One Health plan, Canada is vulnerable to future pandemics

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Dominique Charron, Visiting Scholar in One Health, University of Guelph

    One Health is based on an understanding that our health and that of animals, plants and ecosystems are interdependent.
     (Shutterstock)

    November 3 is World One Health Day. One Health brings all parts of society and governments together to tackle joint problems of human, animal, plant and ecosystem health.

    Canada needs a One Health plan now to better face worsening climate change, accelerating biodiversity loss, pandemic threats, and threats from superbugs resistant to antibiotics. Canada’s actions on these issues are reactive rather than preventive, and aren’t well co-ordinated or funded. This undermines our readiness and response.

    One Health is based on an understanding that our health and that of animals, plants and ecosystems are interdependent. It presents a way to promote the health of all and to navigate the inevitable trade-offs.

    The current avian flu threat

    A look to our southern border highlights the urgency for action. On March 25, a strain of Avian Influenza A:H5N1 virus that had caused outbreaks in wild birds and poultry in Canada and the United States since 2021, suddenly infected dairy cows in Texas.

    The virus had never been reported in cows before. Its detection was slow and too little was done to stop the spread. As of Nov. 1, H5N1 had spread quickly to 404 dairy farms across 14 states, costing millions in lost milk production and spilling back into poultry and wildlife, killing millions more birds.

    It is concerning that H5N1 has also infected at least 39 people, primarily farm workers, fortunately causing only mild symptoms.

    Canada’s response to the outbreak ramped up after H5N1 reports in U.S. dairy cows. No cases of H5N1 have yet been detected in Canadian cows, but there is need for vigilance because of ongoing H5N1 outbreaks across North America. Authorities in both countries have confirmed that pasteurized milk products are safe.



    Read more:
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    H5N1 is a growing threat because it infects many species, including seals, mink, bears, foxes, coyotes, dogs and cats. Influenza viruses that jump species pose a greater pandemic threat because of the mixing that may occur when different influenza viruses infect the same animal or person. This can produce new, more severe strains of human flu.

    No one wants to face another pandemic. Canada’s actions to keep ahead of this threat would be enhanced by national One Health planning and co-ordination.

    One Health around the world

    National One Health plans of other countries, like Rwanda, Thailand and Bangladesh, have been shown to help prevent human and animal disease outbreaks. Global Affairs Canada and the International Development Research Centre have invested $40 million since 2021 to support One Health internationally, including in hotspots of disease emergence.

    The U.S. has a One Health Act and recently launched its national co-ordination platform. However, Canada has just begun this work at home. Canada created a high level steering committee to oversee the Pan-Canadian Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR). Time and effort were taken to involve federal, provincial and territorial agencies, Indigenous people, civil society and researchers to arrive at an inclusive framework with the right objectives, responsibilities and outputs. It’s an ideal model for a new Canadian One Health action plan.

    Canada has a mixed track record of working across sectors, whether to fight past outbreaks of Mad Cow Disease, avian or swine flu, or co-ordinating actions by people from different departments and agencies on H5N1 or COVID-19 today. There are problems: nationally, collaboration is informal and focused on single issues, more reactive than preventive, and not supported by any overarching plan, decision-making structure or resources to ensure consistent, ongoing co-operation across threats and issues.

    The risks of not putting these measures in place include information not reaching decision-makers, resources and expertise not being used optimally, trade-offs being misread by other agencies or partners, duplication and gaps, and too little getting done to prevent health threats.

    Implementing One Health

    Without a national One Health plan, Canada risks being vulnerable to new threats, including pandemics.
    (Shutterstock)

    There is guidance. In 2021, the World Health Organization, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, UN Environment, and the World Organisation for Animal Health agreed to work together on a One Health Joint Plan of Action and implementation guidance.

    With gender equality, inclusiveness and equity, and the importance of local and traditional knowledge at the fore, countries should start implementing One Health by assessing capacities and programs already in place, setting up and funding national co-ordination, setting priorities for action, then producing and putting into action their national plan.

    Canada should mirror what it has done to manage antibiotic-resistant microbes by developing and governing our own national One Health action plan, similar to the Pan-Canadian Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance.

    It needs to engage Indigenous perspectives and knowledge to strengthen One Health prevention, readiness and response capabilities. A national One Health action plan, and the co-ordination and resources to go with it, could help Canada achieve other goals — such as the National Climate Adaptation Strategy, biodiversity commitments under the Kunming-Montreal Protocol, and the Pan-Canadian Action Plan on Anti-Microbial Resistance — and to collaborate more effectively with other countries on shared issues.

    Without a national One Health plan, Canada risks being vulnerable to new threats (including pandemics), investing too little in prevention and having a suboptimal response. It’s time for Canada’s One Health action plan.

    This article was co-authored by Andrea Ellis, DVM, MSc., a consultant currently supporting One Health work with the World Organisation for Animal Health. She is the former Senior Veterinary Advisor to the Chief Veterinary Officer and World Organisation for Animal Health Delegate for Canada.

    Dominique Charron is affiliated with the McEachran Institute and START.org. She is a member of the One Health High Level Expert Panel that advises the World Health Organization, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, UN Environment, and World Organisation for Animal Health. She is a former Vice-President, Programs and Partnerships, of the International Development Research Centre.

    Cate Dewey is currently working on a community One Health project in Rwanda. The project is managed by Veterinarians without Borders, North America and is funded by Global Affairs Canada

    – ref. Without a One Health plan, Canada is vulnerable to future pandemics – https://theconversation.com/without-a-one-health-plan-canada-is-vulnerable-to-future-pandemics-242378

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The racist ‘one-drop rule’ lives on in how Trump talks about Black politicians and whiteness in America

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Marya T. Mtshali, Lecturer in Studies in Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Harvard University

    Donald Trump watches a video of Vice President Kamala Harris during a campaign rally in Las Vegas on Sept. 13, 2024. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

    Americans who heard former President Donald Trump claim that Vice President Kamala Harris previously identified as “not Black” in a July 2024 interview may wonder why he continuously emphasized former President Barack Obama’s blackness during his first presidential campaign.

    As a scholar focused on race and gender issues, I recognize that these seemingly inconsistent definitions of blackness are not inconsistent at all. They demonstrate a consistent position on whiteness.

    In both cases, Trump implies that the race of his opponent is all voters need to know to determine their characters. It is an ideology that normalizes the dominance and privilege of white Americans within a racial hierarchy.

    Making whiteness great again

    In the American imagination, white people are often perceived as being more authentically American than other racial groups.

    Additionally, Trump and some of his followers see many of America’s strides on civil rights as detrimental to white people. Trump has said that “anti-white feeling” is a significant problem in America. And Republican voters, who are overwhelmingly white, are more likely than the general population to view racism as a bigger problem for white people.

    Trump has said he believes America was at its best in the 1940s and 1950s. However, Trump’s long-standing inflammatory rhetoric around race — including his recent racist comments degrading Haitian refugees in Springfield, Ohio — do not simply glorify a time immediately before the civil rights era. They recall an older era.

    Calls to “Make America Great Again” hearken back to colonialism, when whiteness — particularly white, male power — was at its peak. The period from 1500 to the 1960s was a time when white men could exercise control over people of color by racially classifying their bodies. And they protected whiteness by passing laws that declared “one drop” of Black blood as enough to declare someone Black.

    Whiteness is property, as the legal scholar Cheryl Hines has argued. It’s an asset for those who possess it. It offers benefits like white privilege and the idea of being white as moral and superior.

    One-drop statutes, such as the Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924, attempted to scientifically define who was Black based on how much African ancestry a person had. Passed in dozens of states in the 20th century, these laws were about maintaining white purity.

    More specifically, one-drop statutes reflected a fear that people who were considered white in terms of their appearance but had Black ancestry could reproduce with other white people. This, in turn, would result in the supposed degeneration of the white race.

    These laws attempted to legally define Blackness.

    Power and dominance

    Harris and Obama, the children of immigrants, both have mixed-race backgrounds. Harris is the child of a Black Jamaican father and an Indian mother. Obama is the son of a Black Kenyan father and a white American mother.

    However, Trump insists that Harris was “Indian all the way,” while Obama was a “Black president.” For me, this perspective reveals another aspect of Trump’s racial thinking: He appears to believe in the impenetrability and power of whiteness.

    Trump sees Harris as capable of dancing back and forth between being Indian and being Black. Yet he has never implied that Obama can dance between being Black and being white.

    In a society that often ties physical characteristics to racial identity, many people might find it difficult to imagine Obama as identifying as white. That’s because our society associates his skin tone and hair texture with Blackness.

    However, I argue that the inability to view this hypothetical racial dance as possible for Harris and not for Obama is tied to white supremacist beliefs.

    These beliefs defend whiteness as being imbued with dominance over other racial groups. This power is reflected in the ability to define the race of others, regardless of how they may identify themselves. And it is reflected in the desire to also limit who can count as white.

    Trump does both of those things.

    Donald Trump answers questions at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention in Chicago on July 31, 2024.
    Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images

    A foil to white identity

    “She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black,” Trump said in July at a gathering of Black journalists.

    He added: “So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black? I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went – she became a Black person.”

    By suggesting that Harris has strategically identified as Black for political gain, Trump implies that there’s a political advantage to being Black in America.

    This notion aligns with the racist belief, fueled by white racial resentment, that Black Americans are afforded privileges over whites and Asian Americans.

    The sociologist Arlie Hochschild has shown that many white Trump supporters believe circumstances in America have gotten worse for whites in recent decades. They believe many of the gains for people of color — affirmative action and other diversity policies — have been at the expense of the rights of white people.

    Simultaneously, Trump’s comments emphasize his own whiteness by using Harris’ and Obama’s race as a foil to his white identity. Research on the construction of race in America shows that whiteness is devoid of meaning without something to define itself against.

    For white people who feel many things have been taken away from them in an increasingly multiracial America, Trump is their warrior. He campaigns to protect the white population and culture of America.

    Marya T. Mtshali 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 racist ‘one-drop rule’ lives on in how Trump talks about Black politicians and whiteness in America – https://theconversation.com/the-racist-one-drop-rule-lives-on-in-how-trump-talks-about-black-politicians-and-whiteness-in-america-236467

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Massachusetts could be the next state to get rid of the ‘subminimum wage’ for tipped workers

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jeannette Wicks-Lim, Research Professor, Political Economy Research Institute, UMass Amherst

    A Massachusetts ballot initiative would get rid of the state’s tipped minimum wage. AP Photo/Marta Lavandier

    The federal minimum wage for tipped workers has stood at US$2.13 an hour since 1991. Back then, it amounted to half the $4.25 regular minimum wage. But Congress has failed to increase the tipped minimum while periodically raising the regular wage floor. Today, the tipped rate is less than one-third of the $7.25 federal full minimum wage.

    As of October 2024, 30 states and Washington, D.C., had instituted their own, higher, regular minimum wages. The number of states taking this step keeps rising in part because Congress hasn’t raised the federal minimum wage since 2009. Over the years, many states have also adopted higher wages for tipped workers. Seven states have no tipped minimum wage at all, which means that employers must pay at least the state-mandated minimum wage to all workers, including those who earn tips.

    If Massachusetts voters approve a ballot initiative on Nov. 5, 2024, their state will gradually raise the state’s tipped minimum wage until it matches the state minimum wage. That is, it will rise from $6.75 to $15 per hour by 2029.

    Massachusetts would be joining eight states that require – or are on their way to requiring – the full minimum wage for tipped workers: Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Michigan. Two major cities, Chicago and Washington, D.C., have similar measures on their books, too.

    To inform the debate about tipped wages, we – a labor economist and a sociologist – analyzed the potential impacts of implementing a full minimum wage for workers, businesses and consumers in Massachusetts. We found more evidence of potential upsides than downsides.

    Tipped minimum earners’ demographics

    For our study, we analyzed labor market data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We found that tipped workers are largely waiters, bartenders, hosts and bussers employed in bars and restaurants. They tend to earn low wages. Most are women, and they are disproportionately people of color.

    In Massachusetts, tipped workers typically earn low pay: On average, they take home $20.30 per hour, including what they get in gratuities. That’s about two-thirds of the state average hourly pay of $31.50.

    About 66% of tipped workers are women, compared with 49% in the state’s workforce as a whole. Some 43% are people of color, compared with 29% of all people employed in Massachusetts.

    Teens also make up a disproportionate share of Massachusetts’ tipped workers: 15%, versus 4% for the broader workforce. But the vast majority of tipped workers are at least 20 years old.

    Arguments for and against

    Proponents argue that eliminating the tipped minimum wage would boost pay for tipped workers and better ensure that workers are not subjected to wage theft. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts wants the federal government to take this step.

    Opponents argue that scrapping the lower minimum wage could backfire for tipped workers if their customers give smaller tips once they know employers have to pay tipped workers more – or some jobs are eliminated. They also worry that business costs would spike, raising prices. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, opposes the measure.

    In Arizona, voters will cast their ballots on another ballot initiative that calls for a different type of tipped minimum wage reform. It calls for pegging the state’s tipped minimum wage to 25% below the full minimum wage. If approved, Arizona would effectively lower its tipped minimum wage, which currently stands at $11.35 an hour, to $10.76. Today, Arizona’s tipped minimum wage is $3.00 below the state’s full minimum wage of $14.35.

    Prone to wage theft

    When tipped workers’ base wages plus their tips do not add up to at least the state’s minimum wage, employers are supposed to make up the shortfall. This makes these workers particularly vulnerable to being underpaid, a form of wage theft.

    The consequences of this vulnerability are plain to see in restaurants and hotels. The hospitality industry, which employs the highest share of tipped workers, accounts for less than 6% of employed workers in Massachusetts.

    However, it accounts for nearly 14% of all complaints workers lodged with the Massachusetts attorney general’s office in 2023, including disproportionately high levels of complaints about minimum wage violations, the nonpayment of wages and tip violations.

    The hospitality industry also accounts for over 36% of all enforcement actions – investigations that produced evidence of labor violations – found by the Massachusetts attorney general’s office.

    The Massachusetts ballot initiative has stirred controversy in the state.

    Effects on earnings

    Two peer-reviewed economic studies that examined three decades of data found that tipped workers earn measurably more money as subminimum wage rates increase.

    Current wage rates that we observe in Bureau of Labor Statistics data reinforce those findings.

    Consider, for example, the $18.79 average hourly wage of tipped workers in states that treat tipped employees like other workers. This is 21.2% higher than the average $15.50 among tipped workers in states where the federal $2.13 subminimum wage remains in effect.

    Only part of this difference can be explained by the 15.7% difference in average wages for all workers in those different clusters of states.

    What could happen with business costs

    To be sure, more than doubling the $6.75 tipped rate in Massachusetts to $15.00 may sound like it could cause business costs to soar. A couple of factors, however, would soften the blow.

    First, we have calculated that the average tipped worker in Massachusetts restaurants earns about $11.75 an hour, before tips. Raising this rate to $15.00 is equal to a 28% increase – a much smaller lift than increasing the wage from $6.75 to $15.00. In addition, raising a worker’s wage from $11.75 to $15.00 by 2029 is equivalent to raising it to $13.00 in today’s dollars, or a 10% boost, after adjusting for projected inflation.

    Second, as we explained in our study, since tipped workers make up about 30% of Massachusetts restaurant workers, and the payrolls of these businesses typically amount to about 30% of their revenue, these numbers imply that eliminating the tipped minimum wage by 2029 would increase the average Massachusetts restaurant’s costs by 1%.

    Employers may also provide some other workers with raises, although they are not required to do so. That suggests the cost increase is more likely to be about double that, or 2% of sales.

    Expected impact on prices and jobs

    If the average Massachusetts restaurant were to pass its entire labor cost increase onto the consumer through higher prices, this would mean that restaurant prices would rise about 2%.

    This is equal to a $50 restaurant meal instead costing $51 – arguably a small price increase.

    The two studies mentioned above, which reviewed decades of data to see whether tipped workers earned more, also looked at whether businesses in states that increased their tipped minimum wage cut more jobs compared with businesses in states that didn’t.

    Although both research teams looked at basically the same data, one study found evidence of more job losses and the other did not, due to the different statistical choices they made. These studies, that is, produced inconclusive results about what raising the tipped minimum wage does to employment.

    There’s far more research on whether increasing the regular minimum wage has caused significant job losses. Studies have found that when it has gone up, employers have faced cost increases that are similar to what we’ve estimated for Massachusetts employers, if the state were to eliminate its tipped minimum wage. And that evidence points to no significant job losses.

    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. Massachusetts could be the next state to get rid of the ‘subminimum wage’ for tipped workers – https://theconversation.com/massachusetts-could-be-the-next-state-to-get-rid-of-the-subminimum-wage-for-tipped-workers-242097

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Election anxiety doesn’t need to win − here are 3 science-backed strategies from a clinical psychologist to rein in the stress

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Shannon Sauer-Zavala, Associate Professor of Psychology & Licensed Clinical Psychologist, University of Kentucky

    The world won’t end if you stop scrolling. georgeclerk/E+ via Getty Images

    Uncertainty about the election getting to you? Is anxiety the dominant feature of your emotional landscape, maybe with a small sprinkling of impending doom?

    You are not alone. A recent survey found 69% of American adults are seriously stressed about the 2024 presidential election.

    It’s difficult not to be worked up about politics in today’s polarized climate. Regardless of which side of the political aisle you sit on, you may find yourself glued to your browser or TV, gobbling up every tiny tidbit of news and feeling your stress levels skyrocket.

    I’m a psychologist who develops and tests strategies for combating anxiety. As I constantly tell my stressed-out clients, when it comes to election news, there’s a fine line between being well informed and being oversaturated with information.

    If you’re ready to short-circuit your stress spiral, here are three science-backed strategies for coping with anxiety in times of uncertainty.

    Approach your emotions with mindfulness

    Being mindful refers to the quality of awareness you bring to your experiences – specifically, nonjudgmental attention focused on what’s happening right now.

    Mindfulness practices originated in Eastern spiritual traditions, including Buddhism. Over the past several decades, mindfulness has gained popularity as a powerful tool for managing anxiety. For instance, meditation apps such as Headspace and Calm incorporate it. Even if meditation isn’t your thing, though, you can still apply nonjudgmental awareness, focused on the present, to election-related anxiety.

    Be present. Anxiety can draw you into an uncomfortable spiral of “what-ifs” about the future. When you make a point to be present, you remind yourself what is actually happening right now, rather than letting hypothetical fears take over.

    Although you may have serious concerns about the fate of the nation, those outcomes have not yet come to bear. As I tell my patients, “We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it. For now, focus on the step right in front of you.”

    If you notice yourself getting carried away by thoughts of the future, you can pull yourself back to the present by bringing awareness to simple sensations – the feel of your feet on the floor, the rhythm of your breath, or the sounds around you – and remind yourself that you are safe in the current moment.

    Pay nonjudgmental attention. Many people are hard on themselves for feeling strong emotions. This critical mindset might look like telling yourself that you’re overreacting, or that it’s weak to let others see that you’re upset. You might even view that uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach as evidence that negative outcomes are right around the corner.

    Making judgments about your emotions only serves to make you feel worse. In fact, researchers find that pushing away emotions or beating yourself up for having them leads to more frequent and stronger anxiety.

    Instead, try giving yourself a break. Tell yourself, “This election is high stakes, so it makes sense I’m anxious.” Then, notice if your anxiety is driven by a fear about the future, and bring yourself back to the present.

    Pull your thoughts back to the here and now.
    supersizer/E+ via Getty Images

    Get flexible with your thinking

    Cognitive flexibility is the ability to shift away from rigid, all-or-nothing thinking about the future.

    When people are anxious, they tend to focus on the worst-case scenario. For example, you might be telling yourself, “With this candidate in office, things will be terrible and I won’t be able to cope.”

    In this scenario, I encourage my patients to move past that initial thought of how awful it will be and instead consider exactly how they will respond to the inauguration, the next day, week, month and so on.

    Cognitive flexibility allows you to explore how you will cope, even in the face of a negative outcome, helping you feel a bit less out of control. If you’re experiencing a lot of anxiety about the election, try thinking through what you’d do if the undesirable candidate takes office – thoughts like “I’ll donate to causes that are important to me” and “I’ll attend protests.”

    Choose your actions with intention

    Another tool for managing your anxiety is to consider whether your behaviors are affecting how you feel.

    Remember, for instance, the goal of 24-hour news networks is to increase ratings. It’s in their interest to keep you riveted to your screens by making it seem like important announcements are imminent. As a result, it may feel difficult to disconnect and take part in your usual self-care behavior.

    Try telling yourself, “If something happens, someone will text me,” and go for a walk or, better yet, to bed. Keeping up with healthy habits can help reduce your vulnerability to uncontrolled anxiety.

    It’s not on your shoulders to solve every single problem in the world.
    AP Photo/John Hanna

    Post-Election Day, you may continue to feel drawn to the news and motivated to show up – whether that means donating, volunteering or protesting – for a variety of causes you think will be affected by the election results. Many people describe feeling guilty if they say no or disengage, leading them to overcommit and wind up overwhelmed.

    If this sounds like you, try reminding yourself that taking a break from politics to cook, engage with your family or friends, get some work done or go to the gym does not mean you don’t care. In fact, keeping up with the activities that fuel you will give you the energy to contribute to important causes more meaningfully.

    Shannon Sauer-Zavala receives funding from the National Institute of Mental Health.

    – ref. Election anxiety doesn’t need to win − here are 3 science-backed strategies from a clinical psychologist to rein in the stress – https://theconversation.com/election-anxiety-doesnt-need-to-win-here-are-3-science-backed-strategies-from-a-clinical-psychologist-to-rein-in-the-stress-242717

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why ancient Mesopotamians would have used a sheep’s liver to predict Donald Trump’s election odds

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Selena Wisnom, Lecturer in the Heritage of the Middle East, University of Leicester

    With one week to go, the US presidential election race is on a knife-edge. Jonah Elkowitz / Shutterstock

    I’m standing in a basement kitchen prodding at a sheep’s liver, looking for marks on its smooth surface. People crowd around to film the proceedings, since I’m here to ask a question that everyone wants to know the answer to: will Donald Trump win the US election?

    I’m following instructions that were first written down by the ancient Babylonians 4,000 years ago, and still survive today. Every crease on the liver has a meaning, and cuneiform tablets discovered in modern-day Iraq explain how to interpret them.

    Armed with this knowledge, it’s possible to calculate the answer to any question, so long as it is yes or no, by adding up the number of positive or negative signs and seeing which comes out on top.

    Since this liver had an overwhelming number of bad omens in it, I concluded that it declared no for Trump this time. Though in 2016 this method predicted a win well before he had won the Republican nomination, and in 2020 foretold that he would not be reelected that year.

    Will Trump win the US election?

    What started as an entertaining talk for a university open day has since become a serious part of my research – not because I sincerely believe in it, but because it gives us some of the earliest evidence in history for how human beings reason and think.

    Looking at livers also makes a serious underlying point about how humans have coped with uncertainty throughout history, and still struggle to today. People have developed techniques as varied as astrology, tarot cards and even peering into entrails in response to the agony of not knowing, or the strain of trying to make a difficult decision.

    Given the level of feeling invested in this election, it’s a unique moment where perhaps we can appreciate that, in this respect, we are not so different from those who lived thousands of years ago, even if our methods of looking into the future are different.

    Asking the entrails

    Developed in its classic form in Babylon, entrail divination was practised throughout ancient Mesopotamia, the written history of which spans from the 3rd millennium BC to the 1st century AD.

    It was enormously important in all sections of society – a standard part of political decision-making at the royal court, but accessible to all. Budget options were even available for those who could not afford a sheep.

    People addressed their questions directly to the gods and believed that at the moment of asking, the answer would be written on the entrails. This could then be “read” by a diviner trained in this esoteric language.

    A map of Mesopotamia, a historical region in modern-day Iraq.
    aipsidtr / Shutterstock

    Sitting in the British Museum is an archive of real questions that were asked by the king of Assyria (a kingdom in northern Mesopotamia) in the 7th century BC. All kinds of affairs of state were put before the gods. Are the Egyptians going to attack? Has the enemy taken the town under siege? And will the governors return home safely?

    Reading the archive, you get a real sense of nerves on a knife-edge as the king waited for news from far away, wanting to know what had happened to his troops and trying to decide what to do next.

    Not only did he ask them about what would happen in the future, but he also consulted them on possible courses of action. Should the Assyrian army go to war? Should the king send a messenger to make peace? Asking the opinion of the gods would have helped him feel more confident in his next steps.

    The Babylonians did not have elections. But that did not mean the king could do whatever he wanted. It was important for his public image to have the gods onside, as well as for his own reassurance.

    Whenever a powerful official was appointed, the entrails would be read to ensure the gods approved. The head of the army, high priests and other important positions were all subject to this requirement. On one occasion, even the choice of crown prince – and hence the future king of Assyria – was put to this test.

    Interpreting the entrails was held to almost scientific standards of exactitude. Diviners worked in pairs or groups of up to 11, checking each other’s work to make sure they got it right. This was not a vague or woolly process, but a real attempt to ensure “accuracy” that could not be manipulated to simply come up with the answer that the king wanted to hear.

    Modern forecasting

    We all want to know what the future has in store, and have come up with ingenious ways of trying to find out, from opinion polls and data modelling to Paul the octopus, who developed a reputation for picking the winners of football matches during the 2010 World Cup. But are our methods really any better than looking inside a sheep?

    As all investors are warned, past performance does not guarantee future results. Yet the only data we have to inform our predictions comes from the past, and most of our models can’t take into account “unknown unknowns”.

    As many experts have found, predicting the future is a difficult business: opinion polls can lie and people change their minds, while economists have often been blindsided by a sudden crash.



    Read more:
    Harris nudges ahead of Trump in the polls – but could the economy prove her downfall?

    A Babylonian clay liver used for divination in Mesopotamia from 2050–1750 BC.
    Science Museum Group Collection, CC BY-NC-ND

    Since liver divination only answers “yes” or “no”, it is going to be right 50% of the time just through the law of averages. Despite its randomness, its success rate may well have seemed convincing at the time.

    And when we trust the authority of the source, it’s easy to find a way to explain away a wrong result – the prediction got halfway there, answered a different question, or would have been right if x hadn’t happened.

    We shouldn’t be blind to the weaknesses of our own methods. We are often wrong, and the Babylonians could sometimes be right.

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

    – ref. Why ancient Mesopotamians would have used a sheep’s liver to predict Donald Trump’s election odds – https://theconversation.com/why-ancient-mesopotamians-would-have-used-a-sheeps-liver-to-predict-donald-trumps-election-odds-242251

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Small Things Like These: Magdalene laundries drama is a powerful rumination on compassion – and its limits

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ruth Barton, Professor in Film Studies, Trinity College Dublin

    In 2021, Ireland’s then Taoiseach (prime minister), Enda Kenny, delivered a formal apology to the survivors of the Magdalene laundries. The laundries were religious institutions where unmarried mothers and other “fallen” women were forced into slave labour.

    “It struck me,” he said, “that for generations Ireland had created a particular portrait of itself as a good living God-fearing nation. Through this and other reports we know this flattering self-portrait to be fictitious … by any standards it was a cruel, pitiless Ireland distinctly lacking in a quality of mercy.”

    His words might well serve as a prologue to the new film adaptation of Claire Keegan’s 2020 novella, Small Things Like These. So too might a brief moment in the equally excoriating, if less nuanced film, The Magdalene Sisters (2002). In it, one of the young women begs a local delivery boy to help her escape, but in the end he lets her down.

    History films work in various ways. One is to comfort the viewer that such a time is consigned to the past. Melodramas like The Magdalene Sisters and that other notable Magdalene story, Philomena (2013), find a form of closure when their victims confront their oppressors.

    Another is to refuse a neat ending, to force us to imagine what might happen in the lives of the protagonists after the final credits have rolled. In Small Things Like These, that protagonist is coal-man, Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy), who finds himself inexplicably troubled as he is finishing off his delivery business in the days before Christmas 1985.

    All is well at home, where his five daughters quarrel amicably around the kitchen table as they do their homework under the eye of his wife, Eileen (Eileen Walsh). Money is tight but they’re getting by.

    Making a delivery to the local convent, he comes across a young woman, Sarah (Zara Devlin), locked in the coal shed. The discovery sets off his own memories of being brought up by a single mother, and, after her death, by a wealthy landowner, Mrs Wilson (Michelle Fairley). The film confronts kindly Bill with a dilemma: to shut his eyes, as do the other inhabitants of New Ross, to what is going on in the convent, or to aid the young woman.

    The mother superior, Sister Mary (Emily Watson), knows that the stooped coal-man standing uneasily in her office is no match for her. As she warns him, the future education of his younger daughters in the school adjacent to the convent is not guaranteed. Other of the villagers, who sense his confusion, tell him not to involve himself. His wife, even as she doesn’t fully understand what is going through his head, is horrified by the merest suggestion that he will disrupt the status quo.

    The price of compassion

    In a less nuanced film, this advice might prompt the viewer to further empathise with Bill, egging him on to action. But here, the suffocating moral blanket that lies over the city – visually rendered as a thick fog that merges into a drizzle and occasional snow, and the narrow, constricting streets through which he moves – remind us that nonconformity comes with a heavy price.

    The community may pile into the church for Christmas mass but, as Eileen admonishes Bill, there is no point in helping the starving child he meets on the road with the spare coins from his pocket – his father will only drink the money. What small closure comes at the film’s end is fragile and contingent.

    The trailer for Small Things Like These.

    Another risk of telling stories from history is to sacrifice the particular for the universal. Small Things Like These manages, through its visuals and its achingly believable performances (Murphy’s most of all) to be a film rooted in the Ireland that Kenny evoked in his speech. At the same time, it prompts us to question the limits of compassion – how much easier is it to conform to social norms than step outside them.

    The film ends fittingly with a tribute to the more than 56,000 young women who were sent to Magdalene institutions for “penance and rehabilitation” between the years 1922 and 1996. And the children who were taken from them.

    It is not history’s job to impose lessons on the present. But at the same time, it would be inadequate for viewers not to ask what we would have done in Bill’s place. And, more uncomfortably, what, faced with the knowledge of the multiple injustices of our own society, we ourselves are doing now.


    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.

    Ruth Barton 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. Small Things Like These: Magdalene laundries drama is a powerful rumination on compassion – and its limits – https://theconversation.com/small-things-like-these-magdalene-laundries-drama-is-a-powerful-rumination-on-compassion-and-its-limits-242057

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The next president will play a key role in shaping US trade policy – here’s what voters need to know

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Bedassa Tadesse, Professor of Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth

    From the ports of Los Angeles to the cornfields of Iowa, the U.S.’s international trade policy is a force that shapes the lives of every American. With the presidential election looming in November 2024, discussing trade policy isn’t just an academic exercise – it’s a civic responsibility.

    As an economist, I have spent years studying this topic. Trade policy has profound effects on how industries operate, from production locations to competitive dynamics. These changes impact everyday life, from the cost of your morning coffee to the job security in your local community.

    And, because the president has extensive control over trade policy, every presidential election is a referendum on the issue.

    The two most recent administrations – President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence from 2017 to 2021 and President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris from 2021 to today – have had starkly different approaches to trade policy. The contrast shows how a president’s economic philosophy can reshape the nation’s global business strategy.

    Both Trump and Harris are on the ballot in November. Harris is expected to carry on Biden’s trade policies if she wins. This comparison offers insight into how the next U.S. president will govern on trade.

    2017-2021: Trump and Pence on trade

    Trump pursued a protectionist trade agenda during his time in office.

    Protectionism refers to government policies that limit international trade to benefit domestic industries. These measures include tariffs – taxes on imported goods – quotas and regulations that make imports more expensive.

    One of Trump’s first acts in office was withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership — a colossal 12-nation pact that would have covered 40% of global output. His decision cost America both access to lucrative Asian markets and a powerful counterweight to China’s economic influence.

    Closer to home, Trump renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) into the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement,
    tightening rules for automakers. The effect? While wages for workers in the automotive industry and vehicle prices for American consumers increased, it barely spurred any additional domestic car production.

    Trump also launched a tariff-driven trade war with China and the European Union, asserting it would address unfair practices and reduce the U.S. trade deficit. The strategy, however, prompted retaliatory tariffs, resulting in higher consumer prices and job losses in U.S. industries dependent on imported components. While some sectors benefited from the approach, American farmers suffered due to export losses, necessitating government subsidies.

    Trump and his new running mate, JD Vance, have signaled their intent to revive the “America First” trade strategy. Their campaign platform calls for sweeping tariffs, including a blanket 10% tariff on all goods and a more aggressive 60% tariff specifically targeting Chinese products.

    2021-today: Biden and Harris on trade

    In contrast, the Biden-Harris administration adopted a multilateral approach emphasizing cooperation between countries.

    The administration maintained most of Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods and some on steel and aluminum imports from other countries. However, they reframed the measures as part of a broader push to rein in climate change and protect workers’ rights.

    The administration also launched initiatives like the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, or IPEF, signaling a return to Obama-era trade strategies prioritizing regional partnerships in the Pacific. The IPEF aims to strengthen economic ties with Asian countries by coordinating policies to enhance supply chain resilience and promote clean energy rather than focusing solely on tariff reductions.

    The Biden-Harris approach emphasizes international cooperation while valuing domestic job creation, particularly in clean energy and manufacturing. However, maintaining many of Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods, steel and aluminum has kept costs high for some U.S. businesses and consumers.

    Building on the Biden administration’s policies, the Harris campaign has signaled its aim to shield lower- and middle-income households from new tariffs that could raise prices while maintaining a tough stance on China through existing tariffs and trade restrictions.

    Presidential powers and influence on trade

    The president plays a critical role in setting America’s trade policy.

    The president can negotiate international trade deals, although Congress must approve them to become law. The executive branch also controls tariffs; under statutes such as the Trade Act of 1974, the president can impose them without congressional approval.

    In addition, the president can declare national emergencies related to trade, appoint trade representatives, issue executive orders to manage federal trade policies, and impose sanctions that can influence global trade dynamics.

    Free trade agreements can boost exports and promote economic growth, but they may also displace certain workers. In contrast, tariffs on imports protect some domestic industries but raise prices for American consumers. Studies show that tariffs imposed under Trump, and continued by Biden, have led to higher prices, reduced output and lower employment, harming the U.S. economy.

    Trade policies also affect diplomatic relationships and global supply chains. So, as voters sift through the candidates’ trade policy positions, they must look beyond the soundbites. Understanding how each approach affects job markets, consumer prices and global competitiveness will help voters cast an informed ballot that aligns with their vision for the country’s future.

    In the world of trade, every vote counts.

    Bedassa Tadesse 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 next president will play a key role in shaping US trade policy – here’s what voters need to know – https://theconversation.com/the-next-president-will-play-a-key-role-in-shaping-us-trade-policy-heres-what-voters-need-to-know-241301

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Tariffs are back in the spotlight, but skepticism of free trade has deep roots in American history

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Erik Guzik, Assistant Clinical Professor of Management, University of Montana

    Noted economic nationalist Alexander Hamilton. Douglas Sacha/Getty Images

    One of the more surprising developments in recent American politics has been the backlash against free trade.

    As recently as a decade ago, Democrats and Republicans alike generally favored free trade. But with the 2024 presidential election just days away, both Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris are leaning hard on protectionism. The Trump campaign in particular is promoting tariffs that would be difficult to imagine coming from a Republican presidential candidate just a decade ago.

    This new post-neoliberal moment might seem confounding. But it hearkens back to economic policies – and political parties – from around the time of the nation’s founding, and it offers clues to our divided present.

    Back in the late 18th century, the Founding Father Alexander Hamilton helped put in place a set of policies designed to encourage U.S. industry and to promote economic development and innovation.

    That arrangement, which laid the groundwork for what became known as the “American System,” emerged in part as a counterbalance to British conceptions of free trade. And the American System quickly grew as accepted economic policy as a young America developed its industrial strength.

    Hamilton’s economic nationalism

    In the early years of the republic, the U.S. didn’t have much of a trade policy at all.

    When the U.S. officially achieved independence in 1783 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, the Articles of Confederation – the nation’s first constitution – greatly limited the federal government’s powers, including its ability to regulate foreign trade.

    These restrictions reflected the reality of 13 very different states that had been more united against the British – and their trade controls – than in support of a common vision of economic development.

    The economic conditions within this loosely connected nation quickly worsened. A deepening economic crisis, rising debt, inflation, cheap British manufactured goods and rising bankruptcy soon emerged. Such changing conditions gave rise to calls for a new national economic policy.

    This economic strain was an important factor leading to the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1789. The Constitution gave the federal government the capacity to regulate trade with foreign countries and, for the first time, to collect taxes. Both were privileges once held exclusively by sovereign American states.

    The ‘second American revolution’

    A strengthened American Congress made passing a national Tariff Act one of its first tasks. When it was ratified in 1789, a national import tax replaced customs previously enacted by the states. Perhaps indicating the magnitude of this change, supporters called it “the Second American Revolution,” passed as it was on July 4, 1789. In effect, it helped create a new conception of the American political and economic system, with a much stronger role for the state in economic matters.

    Duties were levied on 30 commodities, including hemp and textiles. Perhaps foreshadowing trade policy of a future era, the Tariff Act also placed duties of 12.5% on goods imported from China and India.

    The main architect of this new industrial policy was Hamilton, who released his seminal work on economic policy, Report on Manufactures, in 1791. Hamilton’s ideas were based on transforming a predominantly agricultural nation into one defined, at least in part, by growing and diversified industry.

    Though often overlooked, Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures also contained a grander vision – it sought to encourage the development of American invention and ingenuity as a form of economic policy and argued for unlocking “the genius of the people” so that “the wealth of a nation may be promoted.”

    To promote this spirit of national enterprise, Hamilton encouraged promoting technological progress, subsidizing research, attracting migrants, supporting a new financial system and implementing a patent system to promote invention. Such policies were in many ways an extension of previous policy enshrined in Section 8 of the Constitution.

    Tariffs and their discontents

    As the use of tariffs continued in the decades following Hamilton’s plan, policymakers turned increasingly protective in an attempt to more directly promote American industry. They enacted tariffs to insulate growing American industries from foreign competition, primarily from the U.K.

    By the early 19th century, this growing protectionist movement coalesced around the powerful Kentucky legislator Henry Clay and his Whig Party. Clay, who first referred to the American System by name, and his allies were instrumental in raising average national tariff rates to 20% in 1816.

    Those sweetmeats will cost you.
    Library of Congress

    When crisis appeared during the Panic of 1819, a collapse in cotton prices, a tightening of credit, widespread foreclosures and rising unemployment followed. In response, Clay and his allies raised tariff rates again, to 50% in 1828.

    The increasing use of tariffs provoked a fierce response from some in the nation’s agricultural and slave-owning class, who objected to perceived Northern dominance and a strong federal government. One prominent Southern critic at the time referred to the 1828 tariff as the “tariff of abominations.”

    Indeed, opposition to elements of the American System was one of the chief policy goals of early Democratic politicians such as Andrew Jackson, and fights over the system presaged later sectional fights leading up to the Civil War.

    As an industrial revolution took root in American society in the decades that followed, tariffs remained a cornerstone of U.S. economic policy. By the late 1850s, tariffs had become integrated into the policy of the newly formed Republican Party and an important plank of Abraham Lincoln’s economic platform.

    Toward the end of the 19th century, a changing Democratic Party, supported increasingly by a strong agricultural populist movement, continued to largely oppose the tariff system, arguing it benefited powerful industrialists at the expense of the working class while offering little to counter economic crisis.

    The breakup of the American System − and why it matters today

    Between 1861 and 1933, tariffs were a standard tool of U.S. economic policy. During this period, tariffs on dutiable goods often averaged 40% to 50%, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. U.S. policymakers didn’t seriously question tariffs as a form of industrial policy until the deepening of the Great Depression in the 1930s.

    Following World War II, the U.S. decisively shifted away from tariffs. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was widely blamed for deepening the Great Depression and contributing to the international conflicts of the 1930s and 1940s, effectively ending the protectionist era of U.S. industrial history.

    The establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913 provided policymakers with a novel tool – monetary policy – to deal with economic downturns. The Keynesian revolution provided still another policy response for governments to consider during periods of economic crisis: spending as fiscal stimulus to create jobs and income.

    Finally, as postwar American policy embraced open global trade, American economic policy pursued more direct mechanisms to foster national innovation and entrepreneurship – effectively breaking up policy once dependent on activist trade intervention. With the elimination of tariffs, one of the great periods of American economic growth and innovation followed.

    In 2024, the Republican platform has, in many ways, returned to its origins by offering tariffs as a key economic strategy. Likewise, the Democratic platform, with its skepticism of concentrated corporate power, coupled with a renewed focus on financial support for small businesses and entrepreneurship, echoes its own earlier generation.

    As Americans head to the polls, it’s worth asking how current economic proposals with deep roots in the American System of old might help shape economic policy in the future.

    Erik Guzik 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. Tariffs are back in the spotlight, but skepticism of free trade has deep roots in American history – https://theconversation.com/tariffs-are-back-in-the-spotlight-but-skepticism-of-free-trade-has-deep-roots-in-american-history-241311

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: New Orleans schools still separate and unequal 70 years after Brown v. Board of Education

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Connie L. Schaffer, Professor of Teacher Education, University of Nebraska Omaha

    First graders led the desegregation of New Orleans’ public schools in November 1960. Bettmann via Getty

    Sixty-four years ago this November, public schools in New Orleans began to desegregate. School buildings once designated as “white” opened their doors to Black students. The integration process, which deeply divided the city, was led by four first-grade girls.

    Tessie Prevost, Leona Tate and Gail Etienne were the first Black students to attend the McDonogh 19 School. Ruby Bridges was assigned to the previously all-white William Frantz Public School. Newspapers worldwide ran photographs of the girls walking past protesters and entering the schools accompanied by federal marshals.

    When Prevost died in July 2024, she was lauded as a Civil Rights hero. Oprah Winfrey paid tribute to her at the Democratic National Convention.

    Prevost herself did not realize her role in history until high school, when a teacher assigned the class a project on Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that desegregated American schools. As she researched, she discovered her own name and story. She took this discovery to her parents, and they gave her a box of photographs and letters about her place in history, including a note from Eleanor Roosevelt praising her courage.

    To some, Prevost represents the promises of the Civil Rights Movement: integration and equality. As our research on New Orleans Public Schools shows, however, neither of these promises has ever been fully realized.

    New Orleans’schools resegregated in the late 20th century, and the city’s predominantly Black schools still lag behind white schools in many ways.

    ‘All deliberate speed’

    In the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, the justices ordered U.S. public schools to desegregate “with all deliberate speed” – language that allowed Southern cities and states to drag their heels.

    New Orleans schools did not begin desegregating for six years. Even then, only four first-grade girls out of thousands of Black students were permitted to enroll in white schools.

    The New Orleans district would subsequently desegregate one additional grade per year. As a member of that first desegregated class, Prevost was always in the grade being integrated. As such, all the grades above her remained segregated.

    Indeed, McDonogh 19 remained segregated during the first year of integration because all its white students immediately stopped attending. By December 1960, the school’s only students were the three Black girls. Two white students briefly enrolled in January, but their family succumbed to the pressure of the boycott and soon withdrew their children.

    White New Orleans residents protesting school integration in 1960.
    Bettmann / Contributor via Getty

    When Prevost, Etienne and Tate entered second grade, McDonogh 19 still had very low enrollment. In third grade, in 1962, the girls transferred to T.J. Semmes Elementary School, where enrollment of white students was much higher.

    Within that white student majority, the girls encountered many cruel classmates. White students, encouraged by some teachers and parents, tormented their Black peers. Prevost recalled this as the worst time in her life.

    “The white teachers and students did not want us there,” she said. “Every day there were beatings and cursing. They spat on us and ripped off our clothes.”

    After several years, Prevost’s parents recognized the impact of this heinous racism on their daughter and transferred her into a predominantly Black junior high school. Prevost would again be separated from most of her white peers.

    Equality in name only

    The Brown ruling also promised an equal education regardless of race. In practice, that has yet to happen.

    Most white teachers in New Orleans opposed desegregation, and the district initially allowed teachers to choose where they would teach. In 1972, however, the district reassigned many teachers to work in desegregated schools, and many quit in protest. Other white teachers struggled to connect and engage with their Black students, leading to disaffection among Black students. Their academic achievement declined, and dropout rates began to rise.

    Simultaneously, white flight was working against integration. Between 1960 and 1980, the white population of New Orleans dropped 20%, resegregating many New Orleans schools. By 2004, 50 years after the Brown ruling, McDonogh 19 – which by then had been renamed Louis Armstrong Elementary – was again effectively segregated by race: Nearly 100% of its students were Black.

    Across the district, academic performance declined in predominantly Black schools. By the 1990s, student achievement became increasingly measured by standardized tests known to be biased against students of color and poor students. Black students were also more likely to be taught by teachers with fewer years of experience and less education.

    By 1998, test scores at Louis Armstrong Elementary had fallen well below national, state and district averages. The school was also in a state of deep disrepair. In the summer of 2005, the city closed the school, and a few months later, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.

    The abandoned school building sustained heavy wind damage and flooding. Water reached halfway up the walls of the first floor, leaving toxic mud, peeling chalkboards and mold-encrusted furniture.

    A legacy

    Following Katrina, the State Board of Education stripped New Orleans Public School District of its authority to manage public education.

    The state of Louisiana and charter organizations took over city schools, making New Orleans Public Schools the first all-charter school district in the U.S. Despite the change in governance, New Orleans schools remained segregated by race. Over a decade later, in 2017, roughly 75% of schools had populations of 95% students of color, and test scores showed only incremental improvement.

    Prevost, whose married name was Tessie Williams, lived in New Orleans her whole life, working at Louisiana State University for over two decades.

    She returned to McDonogh 19 in 2022, when the restored building opened as the Tate, Etienne and Prevost Center. The site, once a symbol of resistance to civil rights, is now a community center and museum committed to advancing the unfulfilled promises of the Brown ruling.

    As an adult, when Prevost spoke publicly about desegregation, she recalled the difficulty and disappointment she and others faced. But she tended to emphasize her hope for the future.

    “The ways that we are different are things that we should celebrate,” she said in a Black History Month interview with Louisiana State University. “There is so much power and freedom when we see differences in a positive light.”

    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. New Orleans schools still separate and unequal 70 years after Brown v. Board of Education – https://theconversation.com/new-orleans-schools-still-separate-and-unequal-70-years-after-brown-v-board-of-education-235642

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Rust Belt voters aren’t all white, but election coverage of the region often ignores the concerns of people of color there

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Christabel Devadoss, Assistant Professor in Global Studies and Human Geography, Middle Tennessee State University

    Wisconsin voters lining up to cast their ballots in the 2022 midterm election, Oct. 25, 2022, in Milwaukee. Scott Olson/Getty Images

    Every four years, national media turn their attention to the Rust Belt, a term that describes Midwestern industrial and manufacturing states whose economies were decimated by the decline of those industries in the 1970s. This region contains the coveted states of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

    Many rural parts of these states have a majority of white residents. The broader Rust Belt, however, also has long and important Black and Indigenous histories and contains some of the nation’s fastest-growing minority populations – in particular Latino, Arab and Asian communities.

    Yet when reporters descend on the rural Rust Belt to understand voters, the people they talk to are almost exclusively white.

    I am a geographer who studies the experiences of communities of color in the rural Rust Belt. Rural is a relative term, but when it comes to policy research, it usually refers to nonmetropolitan areas. From 2021 to 2023, I interviewed 35 people who live or lived in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Indiana and identified as Black, Indigenous or people of color.

    I found that these Rust Belt residents have pressing concerns of political importance. Some of these issues are shared by white residents – and, as such, are well documented. But Rust Belt residents of color have additional problems that politicians and the media have long overlooked.

    Local impacts

    My interviewees described typical rural Rust Belt struggles.

    They complained of limited internet access, few or no grocery stores, declining roads and other infrastructure-related challenges. Jobs and opportunities for career advancement were scarce in their communities, while death and suicide rates were high.

    These difficulties are faced by white Rust Belt residents as well. But other struggles they mentioned are less often considered part of the rural experience.

    They described feeling socially isolated and discriminated against at work and school. Many had experienced racial or ethnic profiling by potential employers and police and been verbally harassed.

    One man, Miguel, who worked in carpentry, said his colleagues openly used racial slurs against him.

    “I was putting away some boxes, and they said, ‘Oh that’s because you w–backs are good at packing things in trucks,’” he told me.

    All names used here are pseudonyms; research ethics require me to protect the identity of my subjects.

    “A lot gets brushed under the rug,” said Bao, a Vietnamese American woman whose father also works in a hostile environment. “All the management folks are white,” so “if you speak up, you lose your job or are ignored.”

    These comments conveyed an overall sense of not “belonging.”

    As one woman from rural Pennsylvania explained, people regularly ask her, “No, really, where you from?”

    “They want to hear ‘Asian’ or ‘Korean,’” she said. “It’s very uncomfortable for me.”

    These racial tensions worsen during election periods. Some people I interviewed reported having been turned away or threatened at voting stations – harassment they attributed to their religious, cultural and political backgrounds, or the way they looked.

    Many Rust Belt voters of color already lack political power because they live in racially gerrymandered districts. When news coverage of the region ignores their voices, too, it compounds that feeling of not belonging.

    In 2017, The Washington Post visited the small town of Jefferson, Ohio, in Ashtabula County, to interview voters described as “rural Americans who fear they’re being forgotten” after Donald Trump’s election. Their coverage focused almost exclusively on white residents.

    “How did you go to Ashtabula County and not see Black people?” asked Belle, a resident who identified as African American.

    Not always Republican

    In the past three presidential elections, Ashtabula County has followed state trends: It backed Obama in 2008 and 2012, then voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.

    Trump won Ashtabula with 60% of the vote in 2020. That’s 26,890 votes, which means that 16,497 people still voted for Democrat Joe Biden. In the years since, Ashtabula County residents have also voted with the state in two Democratic-backed initiatives: to protect abortion rights and legalize marijuana.

    In other words, just because a state or district backs a Republican for president doesn’t mean everyone is Republican, or that Republican voters always vote the party line. They can split their votes, and have.

    Even Ohio’s largely Republican delegation in the House of Representatives is misleading about the state’s political makeup. Ohio is a heavily gerrymandered state where voting districts have been drawn to benefit Republican candidates.

    U.S. Senate elections show more diversity in Ohio’s voting base.

    In 2018, Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown won 53% of all votes in Ohio, including 51% of those cast in Ashtabula County. Four years later, both the state and Ashtabula County picked Republican JD Vance over Democrat Tim Ryan to replace the outgoing Republican Sen. Rob Portman.

    Why it matters

    In September 2024, Vance – now Trump’s vice presidential running mate – claimed that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were kidnapping and eating cats and dogs. After Trump echoed that false claim on the debate stage, the city got 30-plus bomb threats and other threats of violence, and had to close multiple schools.

    During the pandemic, Trump’s derogatory branding of COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” and “Kung Flu” led to increased hate crimes against immigrants and people of color.

    In my interviews, several participants mentioned how local restaurants and stores owned by Asian Americans had been vandalized. One woman, Lanh, who lived outside Springfield, said her favorite restaurant had to close.

    “They started vandalizing the restaurant, writing graffiti and set the restaurant on fire,” she said.

    The owners were from Thailand, but, Lanh said, the vandals “thought they were Chinese. Folks around the local community like my parents didn’t feel safe,” she added. “I didn’t feel safe.”

    Hateful political rhetoric is known to increase hate crimes against immigrants and people of color.

    When the Rust Belt is stereotyped as red and white, such experiences go unheard.

    So do some good news stories.

    The emergence of Black-owned bee farms in northeast Ohio, for instance, is one small example in a host of businesses started by people of color. Together, they are helping to boost the region’s beleaguered economy, much as Haitian immigrants have been fueling Springfield’s growth.

    Rural America is nuanced

    Nationwide, 24% of rural Americans identified as people of color in the 2020 census.

    That figure is probably low because the census tends to undercount nonwhite respondents – a problem that was particularly evident in 2020. Even so, that’s a quarter of rural residents who don’t fit the national stereotype of rural America.

    Rural America is white and Republican. It’s also trans, queer, Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, South Asian, Democratic and much more. Even if some are Republican, they still aren’t the rural Rust Belt Republicans portrayed in the national media.

    Ignoring these nuances reinforces stereotypes that the rural Rust Belt is the exclusive domain of white conservativism. But this region isn’t now, and never has been, simply red and white.

    Christabel Devadoss received funding from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).

    – ref. Rust Belt voters aren’t all white, but election coverage of the region often ignores the concerns of people of color there – https://theconversation.com/rust-belt-voters-arent-all-white-but-election-coverage-of-the-region-often-ignores-the-concerns-of-people-of-color-there-224466

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Independent voters think for themselves and stay out of politics – 3 essential reads

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jeff Inglis, Politics + Society Editor, The Conversation US

    Jessie Harris, left, a registered independent voter in South Carolina, casts a ballot in February 2024. Joe Lamberti for The Washington Post via Getty Images

    In the 2024 election, the two major-party campaigns and many news reporters are spending a lot of time talking about independent voters – those who are neither aligned with the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party. Despite the power that political independents are anticipated to have over the election results, there’s a lot that remains unknown about this group.

    The Conversation U.S. has published several articles about what is known, and why it’s hard to know much more. Here are selections from some of those articles:

    1. How many independent voters are there?

    It’s very hard to answer that question, wrote Thom Reilly, a professor of public affairs at Arizona State University. Part of the problem is figuring out how to define who independent voters are. Surveys often ask people if they are Republicans, Democrats or independents, and if they answer that they are independents, the surveys ask how strongly they might lean toward one party or the other. But this muddies the waters of political identity, Reilly wrote:

    “It’s possible that some voters identify as independent but really just have weaker political preferences than party die-hards, while still maintaining some loyalty to one party or the other. And some independent voters change their political identification from one cycle to another. That makes it hard to tell who an independent voter is and how many of them exist.”

    Those changing alignments, Reilly wrote, “may require scholars, media outlets and the public to shift their traditional two-party view of American politics.”



    Read more:
    Why is it so hard to know how many independent voters there are?

    2. Independent voters think for themselves

    Independent voters exhibit a key quality that most Americans expect of their fellow citizens: They base their views on their life experiences.

    Unfortunately, as politics scholars Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz at the University of Maryland and Joshua J. Dyck at UMass Lowell explained, this is an attribute almost unique to political independents:

    “In contrast, Democrats’ and Republicans’ ideas of what problems deserve government attention and how to solve them are much less likely to be based on their own life experiences, and instead simply mirror the information they have gained from leading political figures on social media, on cable news networks or through other partisan information outlets.”

    For instance, independents living in neighborhoods with high levels of gun violence are far more likely to report being concerned about gun violence than independents who live in safer areas. But, Pearson-Merkowitz and Dyck wrote,

    “for Democrats and Republicans, there is no relationship between where they live and their level of concern about gun violence: Whether they live in a relatively dangerous community or a relatively safe one, their views on gun violence reflect their party’s messages on the issue.”



    Read more:
    Politics is still both local and personal – but only for independents, not for Democrats or Republicans

    3. Independents less likely to engage in any politics

    Research into independents’ political activity finds them tending to stay away from politics, wrote Julio Borquez, a political science scholar at the University of Michigan-Dearborn:

    “Perhaps most importantly, pure independent voters are simply less likely to vote than those who express any degree of partisan attachment. In the 2020 presidential election, reported turnout among pure independents was about 20 percentage points lower than turnout among other voters, including independents who lean toward a party.”

    Research has found members of this group “tend to be genuinely put off by partisan conflict and party labels,” Borquez wrote. Different studies have found, for instance, that they prefer photos of neighborhoods that did not show political yard signs over the same photos of the same neighborhoods with homes displaying political yard signs. And they pay less attention to campaigns and partisan social media than people with partisan affiliations.

    So they are indeed independent – but the question remains whether they will be uninvolved in 2024 or motivated to cast their ballots and make their views known.



    Read more:
    Independent voters are few in number, influential in close elections – and hard for campaigns to reach

    – ref. Independent voters think for themselves and stay out of politics – 3 essential reads – https://theconversation.com/independent-voters-think-for-themselves-and-stay-out-of-politics-3-essential-reads-241193

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Americans own guns to protect themselves from psychological as well as physical threats

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Nick Buttrick, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

    Many gun owners cite protection as a reason to carry a firearm. RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

    Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, Tim Walz and JD Vance all have something in common. All four of them, along with an estimated 42% of American adults, have lived in a home with at least one gun.

    Gun ownership in the United States is widespread and cuts across all sorts of cultural divides – including race, class and political ideology. Like all mass experiences in American life, owning a gun can mean very different things to different people.

    One thing that American gun owners tend to agree on, no matter their differences, is that guns are for personal protection. In a 2023 Pew survey, 72% of gun owners reported that they owned a firearm at least in part for protection, and 81% of gun owners reported that owning a gun helped them to feel safer. This perspective contrasts to that of gun owners in other developed economies, who generally report that guns are more dangerous than safe and that they own a gun for some other reason.

    I’m a psychologist who studies contemporary society. In the lab, my colleagues and I have been investigating this feeling of safety that American gun owners report. We’re trying to get a more complete sense of just what people are using their firearms to protect against. Our research suggests it goes much deeper than physical threats.

    Social scientists are exploring the motivations and effects of owning a gun.
    Cécile Clocheret/AFP via Getty Images

    Protection goes beyond the physical

    By combining social-scientific research on firearms ownership with a raft of interviews we’ve conducted, we’ve developed a theory that gun owners aren’t just protecting against the specific threat of physical violence. Owners are also using a gun to protect their psychological selves. Owning a gun helps them feel more in control of the world around them and more able to live meaningful, purposeful lives that connect to the people and communities they care for.

    This sort of protection may be especially appealing to those who think that the normal institutions of society – such as the police or the government – are either unable or unwilling to keep them safe. They feel they need to take protection into their own hands.

    This use of a deadly weapon to provide comfort and solace may come at a cost, however, as firearms often bring a heightened sense of vigilance with them. Firearm instructors frequently teach owners to be especially aware of their environment and all the potential dangers and threats within. When gun owners look for danger, they often are more likely to find it.

    Gun owners may end up perceiving the world as a more dangerous place, institutions as more uncaring or incompetent, and their own private actions as all the more important for securing their lives and their livelihoods.

    How gun owners feel during daily life

    What does this cycle of protection and threat look like in everyday life? My colleagues and I recently ran a study to investigate. We’re still undergoing peer review, so our work is not final yet.

    We recruited a group of over 150 firearms owners who told us that they regularly carry their guns, along with over 100 demographically matched Americans who have never owned a gun. Over two weeks, our research team texted the participants at two random times each day, asking them to fill out a survey telling us what they were doing and how they were feeling.

    To get a sense of how guns change the psychological landscape of their owners, we divided our gun-carrying group into two. When we texted one half of the group, before we asked any other questions, we simply asked whether they had their gun accessible and why they’d made that decision. For the other half of our gun-owning participants, and for our non-gun-owning control group, firearms and firearm carrying never came up.

    When subtly reminded of guns in general – regardless of whether their gun was accessible – our participants reported feeling more safe and in control and that their lives were more meaningful. Thanks to our random-assignment procedure, we can be pretty confident that it was thinking about guns, as opposed to any differences in the underlying groups themselves, that caused this particular increase in psychological well-being.

    About half of the times that we texted, the gun owners told us that they had a gun accessible at that moment. When a gun was handy, our participants told us that they were feeling more vigilant and anxious, and that their immediate situation was more chaotic. This result didn’t seem to be driven by owners choosing to have guns available when they were putting themselves into objectively more dangerous situations: We found the same pattern when we looked just at moments when our participants were sitting at home, watching television.

    Raising fear and promising rescue

    Contemporary American gun ownership may have conflicting messages embedded within it. First, a gun is a thing you can use to bolster your fundamental psychological needs to feel safe, to feel in control and to feel like you matter and belong. Second, having a gun focuses your attention on the dangers of the world.

    By both fueling a sense of danger and holding out the promise of rescuing you from the fear, messaging around guns may end up locking some owners into a sort of doom loop.

    A sense of responsibility goes along with gun ownership for the vast majority of Americans who own a firearm.
    Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images

    My collaborators and I are currently exploring whether stressing other parts of gun ownership may help owners to move beyond this negative spiral. For instance, while owners often talk about “danger,” they also talk frequently about “responsibility.”

    Being a responsible gun owner is central to many owners’ identities. In one study, 97% of owners reported that they were “more responsible than the average gun owner,” and 23% rated themselves as being in the top 1% of responsibility overall. This, of course, is statistically impossible.

    To more fully understand the many ways responsible firearm ownership can look, we are in the process of interviewing gun owners from all around the state of Wisconsin, a notably diverse state when it comes to gun ownership. We’re tapping into as many of the ways of owning a gun as we can, talking with protective owners, hunters, sport shooters, collectors, folks in urban areas, folks in rural areas, men, women, young people, old people, liberals, conservatives, and, of course, trying to capture the complex ways that race shapes ownership.

    Who do gun owners feel they are responsible for? What kinds of actions do they think responsible owners take?

    We hope to learn more about the many different ways that people conceptualize what a gun can do for them. American gun cultures are complex and distinct things. By exploring the worldviews that support firearm ownership, we can better understand what it means to live in the U.S. today.

    Nick Buttrick receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Wisconsin Department of Justice.

    – ref. Americans own guns to protect themselves from psychological as well as physical threats – https://theconversation.com/americans-own-guns-to-protect-themselves-from-psychological-as-well-as-physical-threats-239363

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: In Hawaii, parasites and viruses team up in the battle against fruit flies – an entomologist explains the implication for global pest control

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kelsey Coffman, Assistant Professor of Entomology & Plant Pathology, University of Tennessee

    Diachasmimorpha longicaudata, a parasitoid wasp that helps control pests. Sheina Sim, CC BY

    Take a stroll along one of the beaches on Hawaii Island in late summer, and you’ll likely stumble upon almond-shaped fruits lying in the sand. Known as false kamani nuts, or tropical almonds, they fall from tall, shady Terminalia catappa trees that line the many picturesque ocean views on the island.

    But what may not be clear to the casual beachgoer is that there’s a fight for survival occurring within the flesh of these unassuming fruits. Tropical almonds are one of many active battlegrounds in a war between a global agricultural pest, a parasitic wasp and a beneficial virus.

    As an entomologist who studies insect viruses, I want to untangle the complex interactions that insects have evolved with microbes. The findings might help researchers tackle global food security issues.

    A global pest challenge

    At the center of this conflict are invasive fruit flies in the family Tephritidae, many of which have spread across the globe and wreak havoc on hundreds of commercial fruits and vegetables.

    In Hawaii, several species of tephritid fruit fly invaded, starting in the late 1800s. They have caused major economic losses to fruit production across the islands. Scientists and fruit growers have undertaken enormous efforts to control these flies since their initial introductions, but they remain a serious economic problem.

    One reliable method of control has been to release tiny insects called parasitoid wasps into the wild that can hunt down immature fruit flies and target them for annihilation. The term parasitoid describes an organism that spends its development as a parasite and eventually kills its host.

    Parasitoid wasps use an elongated stinger, known as an ovipositor, to drill into fruits where flies are developing and pierce the fly’s body to lay an egg within. Wasp eggs hatch inside the fly host and gradually devour the entire fly from the inside out.

    Human use of parasitoid wasps or other natural enemies to control pest populations is known as biological control, or biocontrol. It was so successful in Hawaii that several species of parasitoid wasp have established wild populations on the islands. They have helped continuously suppress multiple fruit fly pests to this day.

    The release of nonnative insects for biocontrol could have unforeseen negative consequences for local ecosystems. Therefore, federal agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture have strict regulations for new and existing biocontrol programs.

    The enemy of my enemy is my friend

    So, how do wasps achieve the impressive feat of reducing fruit fly pest populations? Once laid inside a fly host, the wasp must face the fly’s immune system, which will try to suffocate the egg before it hatches.

    This inhospitable environment has forced wasps to evolve an arsenal of microscopic substances, also known as molecular factors, to combat fly defenses. These include a cocktail of different molecules introduced by the wasp mother at the time of egg-laying.

    The goal of these factors is to manipulate the fruit fly’s physiological processes, like its development from egg to adult and its immune response to invading parasites. By interacting with molecular components, like proteins, that make up insect physiological pathways, parasitoid wasp factors can delay insect host development and suppress host immunity to allow the wasp offspring to feed on fly tissue unharmed.

    This is the origin story of an unlikely partnership that many species of parasitoid wasp have formed with beneficial viruses. Virus particles multiply to massive quantities within the reproductive organs of female wasps during their development. Wasp mothers then use their ovipositor like a hypodermic needle to inject virus particles into host insects during egg-laying.

    The virus particles turn into biological weapons that infect cells of the wasp’s host. This infection disrupts processes like the fly’s immune response. Developing wasps benefit from the virus’s activity and return the favor by passing on the virus to future wasp generations.

    Not all heroes wear capes

    Diachasmimorpha longicaudata is a small, bright orange wasp with a distinctively long ovipositor. The literal translation of longicaudata is “long-tailed” in Latin. But don’t let its charismatic appearance fool you.

    D. longicaudata is ferocious in its ability to feast on several species of fruit fly pests, such as the Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata, and the oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis. Because of D. longicaudata’s ability to attack a wide variety of fruit fly pests, pest management specialists around the world have released the wasps into agricultural ecosystems, where they dependably establish new populations and provide sustained pest control.

    Like many parasitoids, D. longicaudata has formed an alliance with a virus known as Diachasmimorpha longicaudata entomopoxvirus, or DlEPV.

    DlEPV replicates within the venom gland of female wasps, which stores billions of virus particles. Virus particles are so densely packed in there that they often cause the venom gland to appear iridescent blue.

    DlEPV particles are highly lethal when injected into flies in the lab. The virus freezes the fly’s development and replicates with abandon until the fly’s ultimate demise.

    In contrast, the alliance between wasp and virus is so strong that curing D. longicaudata wasps of their resident DlEPV infection causes the wasp offspring to die inside the fly hosts.

    A new potential path forward

    My colleagues and I published a study showing that DlEPV may play a critical role in helping D. longicaudata make a meal out of so many different fruit fly pests. We found a link between D. longicaudata survival and DlEPV lethality within different fruit fly host species.

    When we infected C. capitata and B. dorsalis flies with DlEPV, the virus successfully replicated and killed large swaths of fly hosts. However, DlEPV couldn’t replicate within the melon fly, Zeugodacus cucurbitae, a fly species that D. longicaudata wasps cannot use as hosts.

    These findings shine new light on the effect viruses have on host-parasite rivalries. The presence of these viruses could influence how useful parasitoid wasps are in getting rid of fruit fly pests. In the case of D. longicaudata, its associated virus may be responsible for the decades of reliable aid this wasp has provided to fruit fly biocontrol programs around the world.

    This work has also revealed a new potential tool in the war against fruit fly pests. DlEPV is now known as a lethal enemy for several of the world’s most destructive pest species. If researchers can determine precisely how DlEPV exploits fly hosts at a molecular level, they could one day incorporate the same strategies that this virus uses into new fruit fly pest control methods.

    Kelsey Coffman receives funding from USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).

    – ref. In Hawaii, parasites and viruses team up in the battle against fruit flies – an entomologist explains the implication for global pest control – https://theconversation.com/in-hawaii-parasites-and-viruses-team-up-in-the-battle-against-fruit-flies-an-entomologist-explains-the-implication-for-global-pest-control-234780

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: US-Africa relations under Biden: a mismatch between talk and action

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Christopher Isike, Director, African Centre for the Study of the United States, University of Pretoria

    In his first year in office, US president Joe Biden committed to resetting US-Africa relations based on a doctrine of equal partnership.

    He sent his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria. The visit was used to outline the administration’s policy outlook towards Africa. It laid the ground for the official US-Africa policy commitment that Blinken launched the following year in South Africa.

    Since then, there have been high level engagements between the US and African countries to deepen ties. They included visits by top cabinet members of the administration: vice-president Kamala Harris, secretary of defence Lloyd Austin and treasury secretary Janet Yellen. First lady Jill Biden also came.

    Biden hosted a well attended US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington DC in December 2022. Kenyan president William Ruto paid a state visit to the White House in May.

    Yet our view, which is based on years of studying and writing on US and Africa relations, is that the Biden administration has not fulfilled its commitment to resetting US-Africa relations based on an equal partnership. It hasn’t recognised Africa’s growing agency in international affairs.

    We argue that there has been a mismatch between the rhetoric and practice of an equal partnership. For example, African leaders or the African Union were not consulted about the agenda of the 2022 US-Africa Leaders Summit. This was also the case with the US’s Africa strategy.

    This reflects the traditional paternalistic relationship of the US with Africa.



    Read more:
    Joe Biden in Africa: US president has ignored the continent for his entire term — why he’s visiting Angola

    Biden is due to visit Angola in December – his only African visit as president. A much more encouraging message of equal partnership would have been delivered if the US-Africa Leaders Summit, for example, had been held at the African Union headquarters in Ethiopia. Biden would have then been able to engage with African leaders in the continent early in his term.

    A full diary of engagements

    There are a number of positive indicators of Biden’s commitment to reset relations with Africa.

    August 2022: The first tangible step was through the US Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa. This presented a shift in emphasis from great power politics (vis-a-vis China and Russia in Africa) and Trump’s America First diplomacy, to one of mutual respect and partnership (at least on paper) under Biden.

    Priorities included fostering open societies, delivering democratic and security dividends, advancing pandemic recovery and economic opportunity, and supporting the climate agenda.

    December 2022: The US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington DC was attended by 49 African leaders, three months after the release of the Africa strategy. The focus was on

    strengthening ties with African partners based on principles of mutual respect and shared interests and values.

    Biden pledged US$55 billion in investments until 2025 to advance goals that aligned with shared priorities. The US is said to have allocated 80% of said funds.

    The US used the summit to formally announce its support for the African Union’s membership of the G20. This was realised when the AU officially joined the G20 as a permanent member in 2023.

    November 2023: Biden hosted Angolan president João Lourenço at the White House on an official visit. They discussed cooperation on the economy, security, energy, transport, telecommunications, agriculture and outer space.

    May 2024: Kenyan president William Ruto’s state visit was the first by an African leader in more than 15 years.

    September 2024: US ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield announced US support for Africa getting two permanent seats on the UN security council.

    Finally, Biden’s visit to Angola, set for the first week in December would be the first by a US president since 2015.

    What’s gone wrong

    It’s possible to see serious flaws in the US approach towards Africa set against the expectation of an equal partnership.

    Firstly, the US has attempted to undermine African agency through its bid to pressure African countries to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Many African countries chose non-alignment.

    Secondly, the US championing two seats for Africa on the security council looks commendable on the surface. But the lack of veto power perpetuates power imbalances between Africa and the current permanent security council members – the US, France, the UK, Russia and China.

    The question again is how equal the partnership is if Africa will be a junior member of the security council.

    Thirdly, there has been a lack of joint agenda setting. African countries have made no input into US-Africa strategy or the US-Africa Leaders Summit.

    Failing to consult African leaders, institutions and civil society on the continent’s own priorities reflects the same old practice of imposing priorities on African states. It looks like a continuation of the usual passing off of American national interests as African interests.

    Fourthly, there have been challenges in implementing what’s set out in the US Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa. These have included inadequate resource allocation.



    Read more:
    US-Africa trade deal turns 25 next year: Agoa’s winners, losers and what should come next

    Fifth, the Biden administration has used the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) as diplomatic leverage over African countries. For example, in October 2023 it announced the removal of Uganda, Niger, Gabon and Central African Republic from the beneficiaries. Earlier, the administration removed Ethiopia, Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso. These countries were removed from Agoa for not complying with US human rights and political demands.

    Between February and March 2024, the US Congress also considered the US-South Africa Bilateral Relations Bill, which risks South Africa’s exclusion from Agoa because of Pretoria’s position on the Israel/Palestine conflict.

    Lastly, the fact that Biden is only visiting Africa in the last days of his presidency suggests Africa is not a priority. The fact that only one African head of state has been afforded a state visit to Washington reinforces this thinking.

    If the US is serious about equal partnership, it mustn’t treat Africa as an afterthought. It must always consult African states in shaping policies that affect them and the continent.

    Ruth Kasanga, a postgraduate student in the Department of Political Sciences and Research Assistant at the African Centre for the Study of the United States, University of Pretoria, made contributions to this article.

    Samuel Oyewole is affiliated with Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria.

    Christopher Isike 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. US-Africa relations under Biden: a mismatch between talk and action – https://theconversation.com/us-africa-relations-under-biden-a-mismatch-between-talk-and-action-242307

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Alzheimer’s treatment donanemab is not a ‘miracle drug’ – not providing it on the NHS is the right choice

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ian Maidment, Professor in Clinical Pharmacy, Aston University

    There was frustration in some corners of the media when it was announced that a new drug to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s was not going to be made available on the NHS.

    Alzheimer’s wonder drug blocked on NHS over cost, a Telegraph headline ran. The Daily Mail went with: Alzheimer’s ‘wonder’ drug will be blocked by NHS from TODAY due to cost.

    In late August, the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), which provides clinical guidance for the NHS, rejected another Alzheimer’s treatment called lecanemab. The media response at that time was similar.

    One million people in the UK have dementia, and this figure is expected to rise to 1.4 million by 2040. We have no drugs that slow the disease progression – so-called “disease-modifying drugs” – for this mind-robbing disease, only drugs to treat symptoms. It is clear that we need new drugs, so has Nice made the wrong decision?

    Let’s dig a bit more into the rationale for Nice’s decision.

    The “wonder” drug (or “miracle drug”) that some newspapers referred to is donanemab, an antibody that latches onto amyloid plaques in the brain and removes them. These plaques are the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s, but it is not known if they are the cause of Alzheimer’s or a consequence of it. (Some people have an abundance of these plaques but no Alzheimer’s.)

    At the end of October, Nice declined to approve this drug for use on the NHS for treating early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. This was despite the UK’s drugs regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority (MHRA) approving donanemab.

    How can we explain the different decisions of the two public bodies? And which one was right?

    We can understand the decisions in the context of the different roles of the MHRA and Nice. Essentially, the MHRA reviews the scientific evidence and decides whether the drug is safe and effective. It aims to assess whether the benefits outweigh the risks. If they do, then the drug is approved for use in the UK.

    Nice focuses on developing guidelines to support the adoption of new treatments, while considering value for money for the taxpayer alongside safety and effectiveness.

    We don’t know how much donanemab will cost in the UK. In the US, the list price is £25,000 per patient per year. It is thought that about 70,000 people in the UK would be eligible for treatment with donanemab.

    These drugs, donanemab and lecanemab, are given by infusion every two or four weeks and there are additional costs related to this and the monitoring needed.

    To successfully treat patients in the very early stages of Alzheimer’s, these people first need to be identified. So new specialist diagnostic clinics would need to be created to test and confirm potential underlying disease. This might include genetic tests and lumbar puncture tests (to look for elevated amyloid in spinal fluid).

    The drug infusions need to be started in specialist clinics with trained staff and facilities available for routine administration. This will all potentially increase the medication management burden on the patient and any family carer, which already can be difficult.

    Nice concluded that donanemab slows the rate of decline in symptoms, but is not a cure. We don’t know enough about the long-term effects or the cost-effectiveness of this treatment. Nice consulted various expert groups on how well donanemab works, and the consensus was that it is modest at best.

    The main outcome measurement used in the clinical trial was the integrated Alzheimer’s disease rating scale at 76 weeks. The scale, which measures both cognition and daily functioning, ranges from 0 to 144. A meaningful change is considered to be five points for people with Alzheimer’s who have mild cognitive impairment and nine points for people with Alzheimer’s who have mild dementia.

    The change in the scale from the start of the trial to 76 weeks was −10.19 in patients receiving donanemab compared with −13.11 in patients receiving a placebo. This difference of 2.92 is less than what is considered to be a meaningful change for patients. Given this, donanemab is certainly not a “wonder” drug or a “miracle” drug, and describing it as such may give false hope to vulnerable people with dementia and their family carers.

    Substantial side-effects

    The side-effect burden of donanemab is substantial and like all new drugs, more side-effects may be identified when it is used in day-to-day practice. One particular concern is swelling and bleeding on the brain.

    In human trials, brain swelling and bleeds occurred in 37% of patients on donanemab compared with 15% on the placebo. Overall, 13% of patients on donanemab stopped treatment because of the side-effects compared with 4% on placebo. Although the consequences are generally mild, it can lead to serious problems, such as seizures.

    Hypersensitivity reactions, including swelling of the lips, face, tongue, throat and other parts of the body and breathing difficulties, are also a risk.

    Many families in the UK have been touched by Alzheimer’s and fully understand the need for effective care. For families, one clear need is social care and support. Government after government has identified the need to invest in and reform social care. This, rather than spending money on drugs of questionable benefit, needs to be the priority.

    Ian Maidment 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. Alzheimer’s treatment donanemab is not a ‘miracle drug’ – not providing it on the NHS is the right choice – https://theconversation.com/alzheimers-treatment-donanemab-is-not-a-miracle-drug-not-providing-it-on-the-nhs-is-the-right-choice-242147

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –