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Category: Reportage

  • MIL-OSI Global: What do we know about the Air India crash? How did one man survive? What now? An aviation safety expert explains

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Guido Carim Junior, Senior Lecturer in Aviation, Griffith University

    The back of Air India flight 171 after it crashed into a residential building in Ahmedabad. Sam Panthaky / AFP via Getty Images

    An Air India flight crashed shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad in northwest India on Thursday afternoon local time, killing more than 260 people.

    The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, Flight AI171, was carrying 242 people bound for London. Only one passenger, a British man, survived.

    The plane crashed less than a minute after takeoff, coming down on top of a college hostel around 1.5 kilometres from the runway. Little is known so far about the cause of the incident.

    As an aviation safety expert, it is hard to avoid a sense of disbelief that an event such as this – involving one of the most advanced passenger jets in the world, built on the lessons of many earlier accidents – could happen in the 21st century.

    Trouble after takeoff

    Air crashes such as this one, in which a plane experiences trouble immediately after takeoff, are now extremely rare. They were more common in the past.

    In one infamous 1999 incident, 32 people died when LAPA Flight 3142 crashed during takeoff from Buenos Aires. During the accident investigation, it emerged that the Boeing 737’s wing flaps had not been in the right position for takeoff and the crew had ignored alarms from the plane’s internal warning system.

    The 2009 emergency landing of US Airways Flight 1549 on New York’s Hudson River also occurred shortly after takeoff. In that case, the problem was quite different: a collision with a flock of Canada geese shut down both engines, leading to a powerless aircraft.

    However, the aviation industry puts a lot of resources into learning from accidents so they don’t happen again. LAPA Flight 3142 led to recommended improvements in pilot training and flight procedures. The rules for engine design were changed after the “miracle on the Hudson”.

    So whatever caused the Air India crash, it may not be something we have seen before.

    How did one passenger survive?

    One passenger survived the crash. We don’t know exactly how.

    He was sitting in seat 11A, next to an emergency exit. Reports say the plane “broke in half”, and the passenger found himself in the front half while the rear caught fire. He then walked from the wreckage and was found by rescuers.

    Why did he survive when everybody else died? Research suggests that, in general, the seats at the back of the plane are the safest place to be in a crash – but this man was quite close to the front.

    Based on what we know so far, my expert opinion is that we have no better explanation than to call it luck or a miracle.

    Where to from here?

    We won’t have a clear idea of what happened until a full investigation has been carried out. Air crash investigations follow a protocol laid out by an International Civil Aviation Organization document called Annex 14.

    India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau will lead this investigation, putting together a team that will be assisted by representatives from the US National Transport Safety Bureau and the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch, representing the countries of the plane’s manufacturer and passengers aboard.

    Rescuers sift through the wreckage of Flight AI171 in Ahmedabad.
    Sam Panthaky / AFP via Getty Images

    The team will conduct a forensic investigation of the crash site to make sense of what happened. Alongside material evidence found at the site, they will look at the data stored in the plane’s “black box”, which includes data from the flight recorder and cockpit voice recorder, to learn about what happened in the leadup to the crash.

    A slow, steady process

    Air crash investigations can take a long time. Typically a preliminary report will be published 3 to 6 months after the crash, followed by a final report a year or two later.

    The report will provide factual information on the cause of the accident and make recommendations. Depending on the cause, these might be changes to maintenance procedures, pilot and crew procedures, or even the design of parts of the aircraft.

    Indian authorities will then disseminate these recommendations to whoever needs them around the world. The process is slow, but it moves in the direction of safer air travel. Everyone will be waiting to find out and learn.

    In the meantime, it’s best to remember that we still don’t know what happened or why. Everyone wants answers, but speculation can do more harm than good.

    Guido Carim Junior 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. What do we know about the Air India crash? How did one man survive? What now? An aviation safety expert explains – https://theconversation.com/what-do-we-know-about-the-air-india-crash-how-did-one-man-survive-what-now-an-aviation-safety-expert-explains-258910

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Speculation about the cause of Air India crash is rife. An aviation expert explains why it’s a problem

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Natasha Heap, Program Director for the Bachelor of Aviation, University of Southern Queensland

    It has only been a few hours since Air India flight AI171 crashed in Ahmedabad, killing more than 260 people, yet public speculation about the causes of the disaster is already rife.

    Parts of the media seem to be encouraging this. For example, earlier today I was contacted by an international news organisation for an interview about the tragedy. While I agreed, I cautioned that I could only say “it is too early to speculate”. They decided not to proceed with the interview. No reason was given, but perhaps it was my aversion to speculation.

    Of course, I want to know as much as anyone else what caused this disaster. But publicly speculating at such an early stage, when there is so little evidence available, is more than unhelpful. It is also harmful, as many examples throughout history have shown.

    Like an archaeological excavation

    Aviation accident investigations start as soon as first responders have extinguished the fires and completed the search for survivors – the first and foremost driver when responding to such a disaster – and have declared the site safe. The identification of the victims will then commence, completed by a different agency, parallel to the accident investigation.

    State authorities aren’t the only people involved. The aircraft manufacturer (in this case Boeing) will usually send representatives to assist the investigation, as can the home countries of victims. Investigators in the country where the accident occurred may also request assistance from countries with more experience in aviation accident investigation.

    An early step for investigators is finding the black boxes (flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorder) among the debris. These contain data about the flight itself, what the aircraft was doing, and what the pilots were saying.

    But a plane crash investigation involves much more than just finding the black box.

    An aviation accident investigation is akin to an archaeological excavation – methodical and painstaking. If the evidence is not collected and preserved for later analysis at the time, it will be irrevocably lost.

    In the case of Air India Flight 171 the scene is further complicated by the crash location – a building. It will take time for the aeroplane wreckage, victims and personal belongings to be sorted from the building debris. This must occur before the search for answers can commence.

    Investigators will also gather witness statements and any video of the event. Their analysis will be further informed by company documentation, training, and regulatory compliance information.

    Around 80% of aviation accidents are due to “human factors”.

    According to the International Civil Aviation Organisation human factors are:

    what we know about human beings including their abilities, characteristics, and limitations, the design of procedures and equipment people use, and the environment in which they function and the tasks they perform.

    It could take several years for the full forensic investigation into this disaster to run its full course. For example, the final report into the Sea World helicopter crash in Queensland, Australia, back in 2023, which claimed the lives of four people and injured nine others, was only released in April this year.

    A history of speculation – and vilification

    There is a long history of undue and harmful public speculation about the possible causes of a plane crash.

    For example, since the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 on March 8, 2014, speculation has swirled about whether chief pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah was responsible for the disaster and the deaths of the other 238 people on board. This has deeply upset his sister, Sakinab Shah. In 2016, she told CNN she feels her brother is a “scapegoat” she must defend.

    Similarly, the pilots of the British Midlands accident near Kegworth in 1989, in which 47 people died, were also publicly vilified.

    The pilots, who survived the crash, were experienced but misidentified which engine had failed, and shut down the wrong one. They were widely criticised in the press for the error, tarnishing their reputations, losing their jobs, and no doubt causing more stress to their families. The investigation later revealed the pilots themselves had not received any simulator training as they transitioned to a newer variant of the aircraft they were flying.

    This shows how undue public speculation about an airline disaster can add to the distress of victims and their families.

    Respect the process

    No doubt pilots and aviation experts are speculating in private right now about the causes of this particular disaster. Cafes, pubs and crew rooms will be rife with discussions and opinions. It is human nature to want to know what happened.

    But to speculate in public won’t assist the investigative process. Nor will it help the families of the victims, or the first responders and investigators themselves, get through this horrible time.

    Investigators need to work without external pressures to ensure accurate findings. Respecting this process maintains integrity and supports the many people who are currently experiencing unimaginable grief.

    Natasha Heap 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. Speculation about the cause of Air India crash is rife. An aviation expert explains why it’s a problem – https://theconversation.com/speculation-about-the-cause-of-air-india-crash-is-rife-an-aviation-expert-explains-why-its-a-problem-258911

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: As Antarctic sea ice shrinks, iconic emperor penguins are in more peril than we thought

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Dana M Bergstrom, Honorary Senior Fellow in Ecology, University of Wollongong

    When winter comes to Antarctica, seals and Adélie penguins leave the freezing shores and head for the edge of the forming sea ice. But emperor penguins stay put.

    The existence of emperor penguins seems all but impossible. Their lives revolve around seasons, timing and access to “fast ice” – sea ice connected to the Antarctic coast. Here, the sea ice persists long enough into summer for the penguins to rear their chicks successfully.

    But climate change is upending the penguins’ carefully tuned biological cycles. The crucial sea ice they depend on is melting too early, plunging the chicks from some colonies into the sea before they are fully fledged.

    In the latest bad news for these penguins, research by the British Antarctic Survey examined satellite images from 2009 to 2024 to assess fast-ice conditions at 16 emperor penguin colonies south of South America. They noted an average 22% fall in numbers across these colonies. That translates to a decrease of 1.6% every year.

    This rate of loss is staggering. As the paper’s lead author Peter Fretwell told the ABC, the rate is about 50% worse than even the most pessimistic estimates.

    Emperor penguin colonies can number in the tens of thousands. But these numbers obscure an alarming trend.
    Robert Harding Video/Shutterstock

    Breeding while it’s freezing

    Just like polar bears in the Arctic, emperor penguins are the iconic species threatened by climate change in Antarctica.

    Emperor penguins are a highly successful species. They’re the tallest and heaviest penguin alive today. They evolved about one million years ago, and are highly adapted to life in one of Earth’s harshest environments. As of 2009, the emperor penguin population was estimated at just shy of 600,000 birds.

    Unfortunately, they are now in real trouble, because their breeding habitat appears to be reducing.

    At the beginning of every Antarctic winter, the surface of the ocean begins to freeze and sea ice forms. Over March and April, emperor penguins aggregate into raucous breeding colonies along the coast of the ice continent. They need about nine months to care for their chicks, until the young penguins can go to sea and look after themselves.

    The males frequently huddle to keep each other warm and their eggs safe. Meanwhile, the females spend months at sea catching krill, squid and fish, returning in July/August to feed their hungry chicks. When summer finally comes in December, the chicks start to shed their down and grow a dense, waterproof plumage – like a feathery armour against the intensely cold seas off the icy continent.

    Breeding locations are a kind of “Goldilocks” zone. When choosing a home, the penguins have to find a place that is safe but not too far from the fast ice edge where they go to start hunting.

    The greater the distance they have to travel, the longer it takes to return to their offspring, and the chicks may miss out on meals. But if a colony is too close to the edge of the fast ice, the risk increases that the ice breaks up before the chicks are ready to go to sea. Although fast ice can cover vast areas of the ocean surface, its edge is exposed to the swell of the Southern Ocean.

    In recent years, the fast ice in different parts of Antarctica has been breaking up early, before the chicks have moulted into their adult plumage. Without waterproof plumage, chicks perish because the cold water kills quickly. As this happens more often, the size of a colony shrinks.

    How bad is it?

    We don’t yet know if this rate of loss is happening right across Antarctica. The study only covers a the part of the continent that includes the Antarctic Peninsula and the Weddell Sea.

    What we do know is that Antarctica and its unique biodiversity are not immune to the consequences of still-rising global greenhouse gas emissions.

    In 2021, emperor penguins were listed as endangered by the United States, because the risk of extinction by century’s end had increased. Australia has not yet listed the emperor penguin as a threatened species.

    The new research suggests the future of these iconic birds is not looking good. Until the world gets serious about cutting greenhouse gas emissions, sea ice will retreat – and more chicks will fall into the icy water before they are ready to launch.

    Seabird ecologist Dr Barbara Wienecke contributed to this article.

    Dana M Bergstrom is affiliated with the Pure Antarctic Foundation, a group of scientists and artists interested in communicating science and knowledge to the broader community.

    – ref. As Antarctic sea ice shrinks, iconic emperor penguins are in more peril than we thought – https://theconversation.com/as-antarctic-sea-ice-shrinks-iconic-emperor-penguins-are-in-more-peril-than-we-thought-258807

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Two-state solution in the Middle East has been a core US policy for 25 years – is the Trump administration eyeing a change?

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Dan Arbell, Scholar-in-residence at the Center for Israeli Studies, American University

    Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, holds a note given to him from President Donald Trump to be placed in the cracks of the Western Wall in the old city of Jerusalem on April 18, 2025. Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images

    For a generation, the promotion of a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a core pillar of U.S. policy in the Middle East.

    But ahead of a major United Nations conference on how to advance that solution, some are asking if Washington is eyeing a change.

    On June 10, 2025, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, stated in an interview to Bloomberg that he opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state at this time, noting that “unless there are some significant things that happen that change the [Palestinian] culture, there is no room for it.” He added that those changes “are not likely to occur in our lifetime.”

    Asked if the establishment of a Palestinian state is still the goal of U.S. policy, Huckabee replied, “I don’t think so.” He went on to mull the carving out of land from a Muslim-majority country for Palestinians, rather than a future homeland for them coming from the area currently controlled by Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

    The comments by Huckabee, a Donald Trump political appointee and ardent pro-Israel Evangelical Christian, have been interpreted as a signal that the Trump administration is potentially breaking away from long-standing U.S. policy. Adding credence to that view has been the administration’s antipathy toward the U.N. conference on the two-state solution, due to convene in New York from June 17-20.

    As a 25-year veteran of the Israeli Foreign Service who served in the embassy in Washington twice, I know that such a turn in U.S. policy is possible. But it is not without difficulties, as the Trump administration will need to present an alternative plan for resolving the conflict.

    President Trump has recently shown he is prepared to break with long-standing U.S policies, as was the case in his decision to lift sanctions on Syria and meet with the country’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa – to the great surprise of many. But calling it quits on the two-state solution is different – it could lead to the further destabilization of an already unstable region.

    What is the two-state solution?

    For the past quarter-century, U.S. policy – endorsed by Republican and Democratic administrations alike – has advocated for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the advancement of a two-state solution. In practical terms, this means the establishment of a Palestinian state encompassing the Palestinian people currently living in the occupied West Bank and possibly the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, alongside the state of Israel.

    The idea that these two coexisting states could provide a permanent end to the conflict formally came to prominence in June 2002 as part of the Road Map to Peace for the Middle East Conflict announced by U.S. President George W. Bush and adopted by the International Quartet on the Middle East, comprising the U.S., Russia, European Union and the U.N.

    U.S. President George W. Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, left, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Aqaba, Jordan, in June 2003.
    Hussein Malla/AFP via Getty Images

    U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama took active steps to advance the two-state solution, including direct involvement in negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

    And in his first term, Trump presented his own plan, which he called the “Deal of the Century.” With the subheading “a realistic two-state solution,” it laid out a path to Palestinian statehood if the Palestinians’ political leadership met a set of benchmarks.

    President Joe Biden continuously raised the two-state solution as the most viable way to resolve the conflict – even after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas and the war subsequently launched by Israel in Gaza.

    But for years, international observers have worried about the viability of the two-state solution in the face of opposition from right-wing Israeli governments, continued Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank, and weak and divided Palestinian leadership and polity. Yet the alternatives – including continued Israeli occupation, a one-state solution or a confederation with Jordan – are viewed as less viable options.

    Galvanizing support behind statehood

    For these reasons, the two-state solution remains the most acceptable formula to much of the international community.

    Member states of the European Union, Arab countries, as well as most countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa, have been advocating for decades for the implementation of the two-state solution and have incorporated it into their foreign policies.

    The upcoming U.N. conference in New York, to be chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, intends to underscore the importance of getting to a two-state outcome.

    While there is no real expectation the conference will lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state anytime soon, it aims to galvanize international support for the concept of Palestinian statehood.

    Huckabee’s comments were made in the context of the U.N. conference. And they are of no real surprise: Huckabee’s personal views on the subject are very well known.

    But the former Arkansas governor is now the United States’ representative in Israel, and that gives his words weight.

    Warning or notice of intent?

    While there was wide speculation that the comments reflect a change in U.S. policy, the Trump administration did not rush to endorse them – but nor did it distance itself from Huckabee’s words.

    As the war in Gaza continues, there is a growing realization among leading Republicans as well as mainstream Democrats in the U.S. that talk of advancing the two-state solution is premature if not unrealistic at present, especially taking into account the stern opposition of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nationalist-religious government.

    But that does not suggest the Trump administration has necessarily steered away from this option for the future.

    Rather, it could be that the U.S. administration has calculated that as it devotes efforts to ending the war in Gaza, at least temporarily, and securing the release of the remaining Israeli hostages being held, talk of a two-state solution now is counterproductive to its efforts.

    And Huckabee’s comments may be aimed more at those delegates shortly arriving in New York for the U.N. summit, serving as a warning rather than a notice of intent.

    In a cable sent from the State Department to U.S. embassies around the world, American diplomats were reportedly asked to discourage countries from participating in the conference – not because the U.S. is “disowning” the two-state solution, but rather because the administration believes the conference may undermine its current efforts.

    The cable stated that the U.S. opposes any steps that unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state, which it feels “adds significant legal and political obstacles to the eventual resolution of the conflict.”

    The wording was not coincidental. U.S. policy has been consistent over the years in stating that any resolution of the conflict should be reached through negotiations between the main parties – the Israeli government and Palestinian representatives – which need to refrain from taking any unilateral steps.

    A man walks in front of a sign with portraits of U.S. President Donald Trump and Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee in central Jerusalem on May 7, 2025.
    Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images

    Getting ahead of policy

    Notwithstanding all this, Huckabee’s comments were not made in a vacuum.

    While the U.S. administration has not formally moved away from the two-state formula, there is a growing number of conservatives in Congress, as well as in the Washington think-tank community, that see an opportunity to bring a change in U.S. policy in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks.

    In his first term, Trump was relatively tepid in his approach. So far in his second term, he has given little sign of where he stands on the issue. Huckabee’s comments, in this regard, may have been a subtle nudge – with the ambassador getting ahead of where he hopes policy is heading.

    Dan Arbell 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. Two-state solution in the Middle East has been a core US policy for 25 years – is the Trump administration eyeing a change? – https://theconversation.com/two-state-solution-in-the-middle-east-has-been-a-core-us-policy-for-25-years-is-the-trump-administration-eyeing-a-change-258753

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: US Army’s image of power and flag-waving rings false to Gen Z weary of gun violence − and long-term recruitment numbers show it

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jacob Ware, Adjunct Professor of Domestic Terrorism, Georgetown University

    A recruit participates in the Army’s future soldier prep course at Fort Jackson in Columbia, S.C., on Sept. 25, 2024. AP Photo/Chris Carlson

    The U.S. Army will celebrate its 250th birthday on Saturday, June 14, 2025, with a parade in Washington, D.C., in which about 6,600 soldiers and heavy pieces of military equipment will roll through the streets. The parade aims to display the Army’s history and power.

    “It’s going to be incredible,” President Donald Trump recently said. Trump’s 79th birthday also occurs on June 14.

    Despite the festivities, however, the parade will occur amid bleak times for the U.S. military, as it experiences a multiyear decline in recruitment numbers. In the face of a pandemic and a strong civilian job market, the Army, Air Force and Navy all missed their recruitment goals in 2022 and 2023. In 2022, the Army missed its quota by 25%.

    In 2024, the U.S. military met its recruitment target, which supports the argument that the bump is not due to Trump, as recruitment levels began to rise again before his reelection. But in some cases, the U.S. military has met its recruitment goals by lowering target numbers.

    And as a scholar of terrorism and targeted violence, I believe a close reading of available data on military recruitment suggests U.S. gun violence may be largely to blame for the lack of interest in joining the military.

    Gun violence data

    Regardless of one’s personal politics, the data on U.S. gun violence makes for painful reading.

    Almost 47,000 Americans died from gun-related injuries in 2023. In 2022, there were 51 school shootings in which students were injured or killed by guns. And gun injuries are the leading cause of death for Americans between ages 1 and 19.

    Data about the perceptions of gun violence is equally staggering, especially among American youth between ages 14 and 30.

    Four out of five American youth believe gun violence to be a problem, and 25% have endured real active-shooter lockdowns, according to data compiled by Everytown for Gun Safety, where I serve as a survivor fellow, the Southern Poverty Law Center and American University’s Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab.

    Moreover, these perceptions have considerable impacts on youth mental health and their sense of safety. Studies have linked concern over school shootings among adolescents with higher rates of anxiety and trauma-related disorders.

    As Arne Duncan, who served as President Barack Obama’s secretary of education during the Sandy Hook tragedy, said in 2023: “Unfortunately, what’s now binding young people across the country together is not joy of music, or sports, or whatever, it’s really the shared pain of gun violence – and it cuts through race and class and geography and economics.”

    National security threat

    In the past couple of years, polls taken of Generation Z youth, born between 1997 and 2012, suggest mental health and mass shootings are among the most important political issues motivating this band of voters.

    Gun violence, in other words, is a national security emergency, undermining the U.S. government’s ability to protect its citizens in their schools, places of worship and communities.

    As former Marine Gen. John Allen wrote in 2019: “Americans today are more likely to experience gun violence at home than they might in many of the places to which I deployed in the name of defending our nation.”

    U.S. Army National Guard members stand outside the Army National Guard office during training on April 21, 2022, in Washington.
    AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File

    Rewriting American culture

    Accordingly, gun violence has undercut American patriotism, corroding the U.S. government’s soft power within its own borders. Generation Z, termed by some as the “lockdown generation,” is often derided as less patriotic than its predecessors.

    Surprising Gen Z Research.

    Also, the belief in American exceptionalism is dropping among millennials, born between 1981 and 1996. That perception is combined with less confidence in U.S. global engagement and the efficacy of military solutions.

    American culture has long inspired military service, with recruits seduced by action movies and promises of heroic returns to the U.S. But American culture today is being rewired into one of suffering, pain and victimhood.

    A fear of violence

    Gun violence destroys youth tolerance for the violence that defines a career in the U.S. military.

    Internal U.S. military surveys of young Americans show that “the top three reasons young people cite for rejecting military enlistment are the same across all the services: fear of death, worries about post-traumatic stress disorder and leaving friends and family — in that order.”

    Generations already suffering a shattered sense of safety and place do not see the military as a viable option.

    The explanations the U.S. Defense Department gives for dismal recruitment levels focus on the younger generation’s supposed lack of backbone or hatred of America.

    D’elbrah Assamoi, from Cote d’Ivoire, signs her U.S. certificate of citizenship after a military training ceremony at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, in San Antonio, Texas, in April 2023.
    Vanessa R. Adame/U.S. Air Force via AP

    Republicans, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, have blamed alleged “wokeness” for low recruitment levels.

    And the Trump administration’s statements about improving recruitment numbers over the past several months overlook both a late Biden-era surge after a pandemic slump as well as the reality that numbers remain depressed due to military services repeatedly lowering their recruitment goals.

    Very rarely are introspective questions publicly debated today about the objective attractiveness of military service or the appetite for violence among young people. The problem, I believe, is not that young people are insufficiently patriotic – it’s that they have already been fighting a war, daily, for their entire lives.

    In reversing the slide in recruitment, then, the military could improve its sensitivity to these important concerns.

    Highlighting the range of careers within the services that do not involve front-line combat and physical danger could encourage more reluctant would-be recruits to volunteer.

    Mental health support also could be made an essential element of military training and lifestyle − not a resource only for those bearing the hidden side-effects of life in the ranks. Encouraging those suffering from treatable mental health issues to seek meaning in service could also boost recruitment numbers.

    Jacob Ware is a gun violence survivor and serves as a Survivor Fellow at Everytown for Gun Safety.

    – ref. US Army’s image of power and flag-waving rings false to Gen Z weary of gun violence − and long-term recruitment numbers show it – https://theconversation.com/us-armys-image-of-power-and-flag-waving-rings-false-to-gen-z-weary-of-gun-violence-and-long-term-recruitment-numbers-show-it-257090

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The Conversation scoops two awards in one night, including Podcast Publisher of the Year

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gemma Ware, Head of Audio, The Conversation UK

    The Conversation UK’s Head of Audio, Gemma Ware, at the Publisher Podcast Awards on June 11.

    The Conversation’s audio team is celebrating a very successful night at the Publisher Podcast awards where The Conversation won Podcast Publisher of the Year.

    The judges said: “This particular publisher has been entering these awards since the start and it’s been a real honour to watch their work grow in quality and depth each year, to the point they were placed in the top 3 of every single category they entered this year.”

    We were also thrilled that our recent series Scam Factories won the Best Investigative Podcast category in a very strong field. The series exposed the brutal workings of scam centres in south east Asia where thousands of people, many tricked into being there, are forced to work scamming others around the world. We worked with three researchers on a multimedia project and three part podcast series that involved producers and translators in Cambodia, China and Uganda.

    We’re a small team working across multiple time zones to bring academic expertise and research to new audiences in audio and I’m thrilled that our type of journalism has been recognised in this way.

    You can listen to all episodes of Scam Factories, now available on The Conversation Documentaries feed and explore the accompanying multimedia series.

    Visit our podcast page to explore our other podcasts including The Conversation Weekly, Know Your Place: what happened to class in British politics and The Conversation’s Curious Kids.

    – ref. The Conversation scoops two awards in one night, including Podcast Publisher of the Year – https://theconversation.com/the-conversation-scoops-two-awards-in-one-night-including-podcast-publisher-of-the-year-258879

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Air India crash: what do we know about the Boeing 787 Dreamliner involved? Expert Q&A

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Ali Elham, Professor of Design Optimisation, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, University of Southampton

    Motive56 / Shutterstock

    An Air India plane bound for London Gatwick airport crashed shortly after take-off on 12 January in Ahmedabad, western India. Flight AI171 was carrying 242 people, including 169 Indian nationals, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian.

    Here, Professor Ali Elham, from the University of Southampton’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, speaks to The Conversation’s Paul Rincon about the plane involved in the crash, Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner.

    How does Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner differ from other passenger planes?

    The Dreamliner was a huge breakthrough in aircraft design. For example, it was the first Boeing aircraft with more than 50% composite material in its structure. In this case, composite material refers mainly to carbon fibre. This carbon fibre was replacing parts of the structure that would have been made from aluminium in previous types of aircraft. This contributed to a huge reduction in aircraft weight.

    There were many innovations in the 787, making it very different from previous iterations of Boeing aircraft, such as the 747 and 767.

    The combination of new engines, improved aerodynamics, and significant weight reduction – largely due to the use of composite materials – resulted in notable reductions in both fuel consumption and carbon emissions compared to previous-generation aircraft. Another feature was the greatly increased electrification of the plane, with more use of batteries for onboard power systems.

    What is the Dreamliner’s safety record like?

    The Dreamliner has a very good safety record and has been flying for many years without significant problems. But when the plane was new, in 2013 or so, there were a few incidents in which the aircraft’s lithium-ion batteries overheated, in some cases resulting in smoke or even catching fire, both on the ground and during flight. There were no casualties and the aircraft were all able to land safely. But Boeing grounded all Dreamliners for a few months.

    Boeing intensively investigated the problem. They redesigned the batteries, they redesigned the battery containers and then they ran tests and an extensive certification process that allowed them to return the Dreamliners to flight. Since then, there have been no incidents with batteries as far as I am aware.

    Batteries were used instead of getting power from the gas turbines in the engines. The power is used for instruments, for electronics and many other aircraft systems. Increased electrification – getting more of the aircraft’s power from batteries – contributes to reducing carbon emissions, because the gas turbines run on kerosene.

    Do any details currently known about the crash narrow down the search for the cause?

    It’s too early to say anything about the cause of the crash, and as far as I’m aware no official details have been released about the cause.

    Generally speaking, however, when you investigate air crashes, they often involve a chain of problems. One thing happens, then a number of events follow from that. So it might not be one cause here.

    This crash occurred shortly after takeoff. While flying is statistically the safest form of transport, the takeoff and landing phases are generally considered the most critical. This is because aircraft operate closer to the ground, with less time and altitude to respond to technical issues or sudden changes. Although not inherently dangerous, these phases carry a higher risk of incidents compared to cruising at altitude.

    What will the crash investigation focus on?

    They will investigate everything. They will search for the data recorders (black boxes), which are designed to survive a crash. If these are recovered, investigators will be able to view all the flight data, hear all the cockpit conversations. They will take all the information from the control tower. Sometimes clues can be found from all this data. They will also examine the wreckage of the aircraft in detail.

    It’s a different situation from the Boeing 737 Max groundings, which followed two crashes linked to a specific and repeatable software flaw. Similarly, when the Dreamliner first entered service, a series of battery overheating incidents revealed a systemic issue that led regulators to temporarily ground the fleet.

    In the current case, unless investigators identify a recurring technical problem that poses an immediate risk to other 787s, a fleet-wide grounding would be unlikely. Safety is always the top priority, but regulatory responses typically depend on whether an issue appears to be isolated or part of a broader pattern.

    It must be said that the 787 Dreamliner has a very good safety record. It had a very long certification period with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the US.

    Ali Elham 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. Air India crash: what do we know about the Boeing 787 Dreamliner involved? Expert Q&A – https://theconversation.com/air-india-crash-what-do-we-know-about-the-boeing-787-dreamliner-involved-expert-qanda-258853

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Tornado is a Scottish samurai-western film – genres with a long-shared history

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jonathan Wroot, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Greenwich

    Tornado fuses aspects of the western and samurai-style action in atmospheric 18th-century Scotland. Critics have praised the performances of Tim Roth, Jack Lowden and newcomer Kôki who plays the titular Tornado.

    Director John Maclean’s appreciation of both westerns and samurai films is undeniable in Tornado, a stylistic tale of revenge, violence and stolen gold. Any filmmaker’s visual flair and storytelling choices stand out against these conventions. This was also the case with Maclean’s excellent revisionist take on the western genre, Slow West, which was released in 2015.

    The western and the samurai film are not as popular as they once were, especially in the 1960s and 70s. But their characteristics are still hugely influential, as Tornado demonstrates. The film highlights specific parallels between the two genres. In particular, tales of lone warriors, gangs of greedy bandits, violent revenge and stolen treasure, are recurring motifs in both cinematic traditions.

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    In most Hollywood films, any character who wields a samurai sword is referred to as a samurai. However, a samurai sword might be wielded by a soldier, a yakuza or a ronin (a wandering lone swordsman).

    The real samurai were salaried warriors, who swore loyalty to a local lord in Japan’s medieval era, in return for money, food and shelter. They typically use a long sword (katana) and two shorter swords, known as the wakizashi and the tanto.

    But as Japanese swords are most often associated with samurai in western culture, the name has stuck. In Japan, such films are more likely to be called chanbara (sword-action) films. This includes Tornado, which will most likely be marketed as a chanbara title if it is released in Japan.

    In Japan, Fujin (Takehiro Hira) and his daughter Tornado will be seen as closer to wandering swordsman characters from long-running series, like the Zatoichi franchise, than samurai.

    The trailer for Tornado.

    Western-samurai influences

    One of the most influential Japanese films to have samurai in the title is clearly a touchstone for Tornado. Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) has produced many remakes, including two film versions of The Magnificent Seven (released in 1960 and 2016), and intergalactic adaptations such as Battle Beyond The Stars (1980).

    The antagonists in Seven Samurai were bandits, which is also the case in Tornado. The unlikely gang is made up of characters with various deadly skills, as were the heroes in the 1954 epic.

    Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) and Yojimbo (1961) were also remade as westerns. The Outrage and A Fistful of Dollars were released in 1964. Some of the most famous and popular samurai films involve stories of swordsmen banding together, or taking on villains alone – plots which can be easily adapted to the wild west setting.

    Still, influence works both ways. Akira Kurosawa was an admirer of John Ford’s western films before his own work was remade in Hollywood. Various other Japanese pictures, from The Rambling Guitarist (1959) to Sukiyaki Western Django (2007), have paid homage to westerns over the years. And in 2013, Japanese actor Ken Watanabe starred in a Japanese remake of Clint Eastwood’s award-winning film Unforgiven (originally released in 1992).

    Nine films that were inspired by Seven Samurai.

    Similarly to Japanese period films, westerns continue to be made, though far fewer. With lower budgets often comes revisionist takes on their historical setting, alongside the reduced chances of actually making a western in the US. Slow West (2015) and The Power of the Dog (2021) were predominantly filmed in New Zealand.

    In Australia there is also a long history of the outback western, often set in the 19th century. The Proposition (2005) is a celebrated 21st century example.

    So Tornado is in good company. And Maclean has made a sound decision to take samurai and western cinematic influences to Scotland. At the time of writing, no historical evidence confirms the possibility of wandering Japanese swordsmen in this part of the world in the 18th century. But in film history, samurai and gunslingers have travelled around the world many times.

    Jonathan Wroot 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. Tornado is a Scottish samurai-western film – genres with a long-shared history – https://theconversation.com/tornado-is-a-scottish-samurai-western-film-genres-with-a-long-shared-history-258251

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The UK’s small businesses should be fuelling the country’s growth ambitions. Here’s why that’s not happening

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Danny Buckley, Workplace Learning Director, Loughborough University

    Today a van, tomorrow the world … with the right support. jgolby/Shutterstock

    The UK government’s spending review has set out its priorities for the next three years. But behind the rhetoric about boosting growth lies growing concern about small businesses being locked out of the wider UK economy. Government funding and regulation are increasingly out of step with the reality of micro-enterprises and sole traders, shutting off their potential to boost GDP growth.

    These businesses already punch above their weight, accounting for 60% of private-sector employment and more than half of total business turnover. Yet while recent budgets have pushed up costs through higher employer national insurance (NI) contributions and minimum wage rises, little meaningful relief has been offered in return.

    As a result, a recent British Chambers of Commerce survey found that 82% of businesses expect the NI hike to damage their business. More than half say it will affect recruitment plans, prices and day-to-day operations.

    Working with small businesses, apprentices and local enterprise leaders, we have seen how government support schemes often fail to reach those who need them most. Our research into informal work and legitimacy shows that many micro-businesses (ten employees or fewer) and sole traders operate in a space where regulatory demands feel misaligned with their economic reality.

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    Across the UK, many micro-businesses already operate on a thin margin. For some, formal compliance with tax, labour and reporting obligations is simply out of reach. This is not due to unwillingness, but rather to a lack of manpower and time. In short, it is not about criminality, but survival.

    And when formality becomes unviable, the government loses out too through reduced tax receipts, lower NI contributions and missed opportunities for growth.

    In our research, we’ve found that formal and informal business owners don’t reject regulation outright. They reject complex systems that demand compliance without offering security. When the risks of being “seen” by the taxman outweigh the benefits, informality becomes a rational, even morally justifiable, choice.

    Informality is a significant global issue. According to the 2025 report by the International Labour Organization, even in high-income countries like the UK around one in ten workers are informally employed. And more than 60% of these people are working within formal enterprises, typically as undeclared workers.

    Informal work is most common in service and construction industries, and despite high education levels, nearly one in four informal workers lives below the poverty line. This compares to just 14% of formal workers.

    Barriers to growth

    In the UK, regulatory structures can make matters worse. The VAT threshold, recently raised to £90,000, may appear generous. But it can act as a cliff edge, discouraging small businesses from growing.

    Evidence from the International Monetary Fund shows that firms often intentionally limit turnover to avoid registration. Compliance costs and administrative burdens create a clear disincentive to scaling up.

    The slowdown is measurable. Small businesses reduce growth by up to 25% as they near the threshold, with no rebound in performance post-registration. This suggests a structural effect rather than temporary caution. Around one in five firms reports actively avoiding VAT registration by turning down work or restructuring operations. It’s a clear sign that the system discourages formal expansion.

    ‘Off-the-books’ workers – even those employed by big firms – are more likely to live in poverty.
    Irene Miller/Shutterstock

    These structural barriers don’t end with taxation. Even when support schemes are well designed and effective on paper, many small firms find themselves excluded by eligibility criteria or overwhelmed by the administrative requirements. For example, the Help to Grow: Management programme has delivered clear value, equipping thousands of SME (small and medium-sized enterprises) with vital skills in strategy, finance and innovation.

    However, it is limited to businesses with five or more employees. This excludes sole traders, some micro-businesses and early-stage entrepreneurs, among others. These smaller firms, often operating informally or semi-formally, are arguably those most in need of accessible, flexible support. By overlooking them, even well-intentioned programmes risk reinforcing the gaps they aim to close.



    Read more:
    How much for cash? Why the informal economy is bad for business, consumers and society

    Apprenticeship policy highlights another example of unintended exclusion. While apprenticeships are promoted as a win-win for employers and learners, the funding rules and regulations are typically geared towards larger organisations.

    For micro-businesses, the system often feels impenetrable. The administrative burden and cash-flow implications of taking someone away from their role to train them frequently outweigh the perceived benefits.

    Adding to these challenges are the recent changes to Level 7 apprenticeship funding rules, in the form of age restrictions. This raises concerns about whether smaller employers will continue investing in leadership and skills development.

    As a result, some of the smallest firms, particularly in personal services, trades, and early-stage startups, miss leadership development opportunities. This is not because they lack interest in training, but because the system was not designed with their scale or reality in mind.

    If the government wants to support small businesses, it must move beyond one-size-fits-all tax tweaks and headline grants. It has signalled a commitment to fiscal efficiency and targeted growth. What’s needed is a new model of support – one that recognises the complexity of informality, business growth and builds trust and opens routes into formal economic participation.

    This means creating tailored support and offering incentives to grow and develop for sole traders, self-employed people, and micro-businesses rather than penalising them. The government must simplify support mechanisms and ensure they are genuinely accessible – particularly for time-poor micro-businesses.

    It should move beyond rigid digital portals and offer relationship-based support through local networks, trusted intermediaries or one-to-one guidance. Crucially, access to skills programmes, including apprenticeships, should be guaranteed for businesses of all sizes, not just those large enough to navigate complex eligibility criteria or absorb upfront costs.

    Without these measures, the UK will only deepen its two-tier economy – where formality becomes a privilege rather than a pathway. Building a fairer, more dynamic business environment starts by including those already doing the work, even if they are not yet on the books.

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

    – ref. The UK’s small businesses should be fuelling the country’s growth ambitions. Here’s why that’s not happening – https://theconversation.com/the-uks-small-businesses-should-be-fuelling-the-countrys-growth-ambitions-heres-why-thats-not-happening-258451

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why can’t we stop feeding monkeys? Experts explain the reasons behind a dangerous habit

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sian Waters, Research fellow at the Department of Anthropology, Durham University

    A monkey waits for food from tourists in Thailand.
     Miroslaw Gierczyk/Shutterstock

    We’ve seen it happen. For example, a visit to the Ouzoud waterfalls in Morocco’s High Atlas led to an encounter with a group of nearby tourists feeding chips – supplied by the tour guide – to some waiting Barbary macaques. Pointing to a nearby sign that read “do not feed the monkeys” was met with complaints about spoiling their fun.

    Scenes like this play out across the globe. Feeding wild primates is common in many countries. Scientists have spent years studying its effects on primate behaviour. But much less attention has been paid to the other side of the interaction – the people doing the feeding.

    Our recent research explores not just the effects on animals, but why people feed monkeys in the first place. Understanding that is essential if we want to change behaviour and keep both humans and primates safe.

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    As tourism expands and infrastructure develops, humans and primates are living in closer quarters than ever before. Some species like macaques and baboons readily adapt to living in developed areas by foraging in rubbish bins and dumps.

    Habitat loss also plays a major role. The wide scale destruction of primate habitat means they come to rely on human food waste or people feeding them.

    In some tourism hot spots, feeding the primates, known as “provisioning”, is deliberate but regulated, ensuring tourists see the monkeys but cannot feed them. In others, tourists feed even endangered species freely, with little oversight. That’s when problems arise.

    Thieving monkeys steal from tourists and barter for treats on BBC’s Planet Earth.

    Uncontrolled feeding brings animals and humans into unusually close contact, and not always in welcome ways. Primates can become aggressive, resulting in bites, scratches and potential disease transmission. They may enter homes and shops, damage property, or intimidate people. Some primates even learn to beg or to steal valuables, returning them only when a food bribe is offered in exchange.

    When food sources suddenly disappear, this type of behaviour can escalate. For example, during the pandemic, some macaque populations in Thailand made headlines as “gangs” that caused chaos when tourists stopped visiting. When animals are seen as a public nuisance, calls for culling or relocation often follow.



    Read more:
    Why monkeys attack people – a primate expert explains

    Nutrition is another issue. The types of foods given to primates are usually calorie-rich and highly processed. Excess consumption of these foods can make primates obese or lead to chronic disease like diabetes. The extra calories allow some species to reproduce every year, leading to larger group sizes and compounding human-wildlife conflict.

    Feeding of packaged foods also results in large amounts of plastic and other litter left behind by people. New roads contribute to this problem by offering opportunities to vendors to sell food to road users. The resulting food waste can attract monkeys to the roadside where passing motorists throw them more food. This puts both people and primates at risk of road accidents.

    Some societies have fed monkeys for centuries and these interactions can be neutral or positive. However, many instances of people feeding primates causes negative interactions, so understanding why people feed monkeys is vital.

    Feeding wildlife often results in plastic waste.
    maxontravel/Shutterstock

    Why people do it

    As primate experts, we deal with the negative effects of uncontrolled monkey feeding all the time and know the complexities of this common human behaviour. Our recent review of the relevant research coupled with our own field experiences found a surprising range of motivations for why people feed primates.

    We found that feeding primates could be a religious obligation, a way to perform a good deed or obtain good fortune. It may be helpful in managing a person’s mental health. Many people feed primates for emotional reasons like pity, or to feel a connection to the animals.

    At some sites, residents have a vested interest in the continued practice of monkey feeding as it provides them with an income. Tour guides often receive higher tips when they can provide close animal encounters. Bus and taxi drivers can benefit from taking tourists to sites where they can observe and feed wild primates.



    Read more:
    Three surprising reasons human actions threaten endangered primates

    Attempting to stop people from feeding primates is difficult as most perceive it as an enjoyable and carefree activity. Campaigns must be carefully designed and relevant to the local context. This includes understanding why people are feeding primates in the first place.

    As scientists we need to better communicate the negative effects of feeding primates to a wider audience. We also need to prevent it from becoming an accepted activity, particularly in areas that could prove dangerous to both people and primates, such as roadsides.

    Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. But talking to people who feed primates to understand why they do it is fundamental for designing effective management strategies in future.

    Sian Waters is affiliated with the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group’s Section for Human-Primate Interactions (SHPI) and receives funding from

    Artis Zoo, Amsterdam, NL
    Ouwehand Zoo Foundation NL
    Re:Wild

    Tracie McKinney is affiliated with the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group’s Section for Human-Primate Interactions (SHPI).

    – ref. Why can’t we stop feeding monkeys? Experts explain the reasons behind a dangerous habit – https://theconversation.com/why-cant-we-stop-feeding-monkeys-experts-explain-the-reasons-behind-a-dangerous-habit-257485

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Brian Wilson’s visionary songwriting held unmatched emotional power. And in person he never disappointed

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Scott, Head of Division, School of Business and Creative Industries, University of the West of Scotland

    Brian Wilson, the Beach Boy and visionary composer whose groundbreaking music reshaped the sound of American pop, died on June 11. I had the pleasure of meeting Wilson several times, but first met with the great man through my friend David Leaf, whose writing is key to understanding Wilson’s music and humanity.

    Wilson never disappointed. He was always unpredictable, always quirky and always delightfully Brian. On one occasion some friends and I interviewed him in a Mayfair hotel where – ever the trouper – he was helping promote a not-very-good Beach Boys collaboration with Status Quo.

    We took him a side of Scottish smoked salmon as a gift against the advice of his wife Melinda who smiled sagely as he ripped the packet open and devoured it on the spot while patiently answering questions on Beach Boys minutiae.

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    The legend of Wilson’s songwriting and production genius is often said to rest on two albums. First the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds (1966) and then its intended follow up SMiLE! which he started in 1966 and eventually finished in 2004.

    Sometimes overlooked, though, is the fact that Pet Sounds was preceded by 11 hit Beach Boys albums, many hit singles on both sides of the Atlantic, and worlds of innovation and influential new studio practices.

    Wilson’s self-taught, monastic, note-by-note transcriptions of performances by The Four Freshmen and the orchestral works of George Gershwin were key to this innovation. As was his willingness to push the boundaries of recorded sound, layering complex and dynamic musical ideas by directing several musicians in hallowed Los Angeles recording studios such as Gold Star, Capitol and Western Recorders.

    Wilson the hitmaker

    Early Wilson productions reveal a contemporary hitmaker who was willing to embrace unusual structures and non-standard rock instrumentation (marimba, harpsichord, harp and bass harmonica) while leaving oceans of space for the Beach Boys’ peerless harmonies. These rich, jazz-influenced vocal arrangements were often double- and triple-tracked (a recording technique that layers the same parts of the song to create a fuller sound).

    But Wilson also had the hitmakers’ instinct for collaboration. A series of lyricists including Gary Usher, Roger Christian, Tony Asher and fellow Beach Boy Mike Love helped further elevate his music, either in terms of its thematic commercial appeal or (as in his work with Van Dyke Parks) as a series of conceptual artworks.

    Brian Wilson in the studio recording Good Vibrations in 1966.

    While albums such as The Beach Boys Today! (1965) pointed a clear path to the introspection of Pet Sounds in songs like In the Back of My Mind and Please Let Me Wonder (both 1965), it is the latter album that remains one of the most famous examples of sustained artistry in 20th-century popular music. It solidified the idea of Wilson not just as a “genius” (a tag originated by publicist Derek Taylor) but more substantially as an expressionistic auteur.

    After announcing the shelving of his experimental album SMiLE! in 1967, Wilson famously withdrew from public life. But I would argue that that well-known retreat was less of a withdrawal than the 20-years-in-bed legend would have it.

    Although increasingly in poor health, he made important contributions to Beach Boys albums throughout the 1970s, most famously his fully-fledged return as songwriter and producer in the cult classic The Beach Boys Love You (1977). He also played a major role in projects like the beautiful American Spring album, which Wilson produced with his collaborator David Sandler for his first wife Marilyn and her sister Diane in 1972.

    My encounters with Wilson

    The late 1980s saw Wilson’s substantial second act eventually begin with a highly regarded eponymous 1988 solo album. Later – freed from the control of abusive psychotherapist Eugene Landy and with the support of second wife Melinda and the amazing musicians that became the Brian Wilson band – he enjoyed one of the great third acts in music history from the 2000s onwards.

    During this period, he recorded acclaimed solo albums (including a revisiting of the works of his greatest hero in the wonderful Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin) and toured extensively.

    Around this time, composer Duglas T. Stewart and I interviewed him for the liner notes of our tribute album Caroline Now! (2000) down the phone from his home in Los Angeles, where Wilson grappled comically with multiple phone lines. In response to a question about the influence of Wendy Carlos’s Switched On Bach album (1968) on his 1970s synthesiser arranging he yelped: “You know what, I have this in my CD player RIGHT NOW!”

    The subsequent clatter of him trying to locate the CD with many barking dogs in the background seemed like a magical sound moment. And a very Brian sound moment.

    People tend to define Wilson primarily through his fragility or his long struggle with poor mental health. Those are important factors in any life and put a clear stamp on the music he created. But I would challenge you to think again. Instead, think about this great artist through the lens of his strength, resilience and commitment to the creative act.

    The full performance of SMiLE! at The Royal Festival Hall in February 2004.

    In later years he joked about his name and the connection between “Wilson” and “willpower”, but it’s a joke that reveals something deeper. At the opening of SMiLE! at the Royal Festival Hall February 20 2004, Wilson walked onto the stage to present a work he had abandoned 37 years previously – a work that by some accounts had nearly killed him.

    At the end of the performance of this beautiful and unique album Wilson repeatedly attempted to silence the rapt applause before sighing wearyingly and accepting it. It was not just recognition for the achievement of the music, but the defiance of the artist himself.

    In later touring years, Wilson’s physical fragility was sometimes in evidence, but there were always moments – often in songs like Surfer Girl (1963) or the hymnal Love & Mercy (1988) – where his intent, to make himself and others feel better through the art of songmaking, retained an unmatched emotional power. It was a reminder that the love and mercy you need tonight would always exist in the music of Brian Douglas Wilson.

    David Scott 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. Brian Wilson’s visionary songwriting held unmatched emotional power. And in person he never disappointed – https://theconversation.com/brian-wilsons-visionary-songwriting-held-unmatched-emotional-power-and-in-person-he-never-disappointed-258864

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The transatlantic race to create the television

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Donald McLean, Honorary Lecturer in Early Television, University of Glasgow

    Number 1519 Connecticut Avenue lies just north of Dupont Circle, just over a 20-minute walk from the White House in Washington DC. In 1921, the inventor Charles Francis Jenkins set up his laboratory and offices there, upstairs from a car dealership.

    Today there are no obvious external indications of this famous resident, nor of his exceptional achievements, awards and numerous patents. A hundred years ago at his laboratory, on June 13 1925, Jenkins gave a demonstration of a televised film sent by radio waves from a building 10km away at what is now the US Naval Research Laboratory in Bellevue, DC.

    The invited group of mostly government officials included the secretary of the navy, Curtis D. Wilbur. They watched with fascination a film that showed a silhouette of a toy windmill with its blades in motion. The television picture comprised 48 lines, refreshed at the silent-movie rate of 16 per second.

    The Washington newspaper headlines the following day hailed the demonstration as the “first motion pictures transmitted by radio”. Hobbyist magazines reported fervently that “television is here!”, calling Jenkins the “father of television”.

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    Today those announcements seem over-enthusiastic. Television as an operational service still had a long way to go to have the quality and range to make consumer devices feasible. All the same, they were right in anticipating where Jenkins’ demonstration might lead.

    By that July, Jenkins had demonstrated vision and sound transmitted together on a single short-wave radio frequency. The published technical details indicate a high degree of sophistication in his designs, as might be expected from someone with a background in precision phototelegraphy (transmitting images over wires).

    Parallel development

    Jenkins had an impressive track record as an inventor. He and his business partner, Thomas Armat, are generally accepted as the originators of the intermittent drive system for motion picture film projectors in the early 1910s. This made it possible to move films one frame at a time through a projector, enabling smooth playback without any flickering.

    For this landmark work, Jenkins won the prestigious Elliott Cresson Medal from the Franklin Institute and became the founder and first president of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers in 1916.

    In the early 1920s he then developed a practical means of sending images of weather charts by radio to ships at sea. It was this phototelegraphy work that led him into experiments in televising silhouettes of live and filmed scenes. He claimed that he first demonstrated the technology to witnesses in June 1923.

    Nevertheless, the Scottish inventor John Logie Baird beat him to become the first to do a public demonstration, in London over three weeks in March and April 1925. Baird, who had been working on the technology since early 1923, showed live moving images in reflected light transmitted by radio to enthusiastic crowds in Selfridges department store. With only eight lines per picture, he carefully chose simple objects that would be easily identifiable.

    In the US, Jenkins had doubled down on improving the image quality for his demonstration. His persistence with back-lit silhouettes today seems odd considering most TV programmes would come to be televised in reflected light. Baird’s preference for showing recognisable facial features in reflected light gained him widespread recognition for his demonstration of 30-line television in January 1926.

    Jenkins nevertheless launched his silent silhouette video service for hobbyists on the radio station W3XK in July 1928, around the same time as similar offerings from companies that included General Electric (GE) and the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). By the end of that year, there were thought to have been as many as 15 television stations operating in the US.

    Like Baird and Jenkins’ methods, many of these early stations relied on mechanically rotating disks with patterns of holes to scan images line by line. They were all very low on detail, but were still heralded as proof of concept for television. A key factor in their acceptance was the uncanny ability of human vision to recognise facial expressions along with natural body motion in poor quality images.

    Later in 1928, Baird went on to demonstrate colour, early 3D (stereoscopic), and transatlantic television all for the first time, though more as a way of attracting financial backing than presenting prototypes of future offerings. Unlike Jenkins, who earned money from his earlier inventions and patents, Baird relied largely on funding from investors to grow his business, which aimed to develop and commercialise his mechanical television technology.

    What came next

    Mechanical television was short-lived. Around 1931 RCA and EMI (Electric and Musical Industries), soon to become the key players in broadcasting infrastructure in the US and UK, had independently predicted insufficient public interest in this technology. With its inherently limited image quality, they thought it couldn’t support a viable business.

    Swift advances in electronics continued unabated throughout the interwar years. This allowed successful development of alternative, superior television systems using ideas from scientists such as Boris Rosing in Russia and Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton in the UK.

    RCA and EMI focused their respective resources on developing vastly superior electronic television systems. These scanned and reproduced images using electron beams that are fired inside a glass unit known as a cathode ray tube to capture and show the transmitted moving picture on the screens of people’s TV sets. Those pictures had around 100 times the information content of the earlier mechanical equivalents.

    This made the many early mechanical television services attain one more “first”: becoming obsolete. In just over 15 years from Jenkins’ 1925 demonstration, first the UK and then the US would launch new operational broadcast television services for the public that completely overshadowed the earlier pioneering work.

    Jenkins did not live to see those new systems. His health deteriorated from late 1930 and he died in 1934 aged 66, leaving behind a superb legacy of a full career in inventions.

    John Logie Baird operating his mechanical television system in 1931.
    Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

    Baird continued to work as a TV pioneer in the 1930s and 1940s, dedicated to exploring colour television and cinema projection. He died in 1946 at the age of just 57.

    Jenkins’ and Baird’s original pioneering efforts, and the excitement they generated, are still rightly heralded by many people today. We can now only imagine how it must have felt to see moving images transmitted from miles away for the first time. It’s incredible to reflect that what was once considered magic so quickly became mundane.

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

    – ref. The transatlantic race to create the television – https://theconversation.com/the-transatlantic-race-to-create-the-television-258726

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: France’s final nuclear tests in the South Pacific, 30 years on

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Roxanne Panchasi, Associate Professor, Department of History, Simon Fraser University

    Former French President Jacques Chirac encounters a protest from members during an official visit to the European Parliament in Strasbourg in July 1995.
     (European Parliament)

    In recent months, the viability of France’s nuclear arsenal has been making headlines with talk of a French “nuclear umbrella” that might shield its allies on the European continent. In the face of the Russia-Ukraine war, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s statements regarding the possibility of deploying nuclear weapons in that conflict, the question of how to best defend Europe has taken on an urgency not seen since the height of the Cold War.

    Despite its more robust nuclear weapons capabilities, the United States in the Donald Trump era appears less committed to the defence of its NATO allies. Debates about a French nuclear umbrella aside, these discussions — combined with increased military spending worldwide and resurgent fears of nuclear war — make the history of France’s nuclear readiness and weapons testing feel uneasily current.

    In June 1995, French President Jacques Chirac announced that France would resume testing nuclear weapons in the South Pacific. Just weeks after being elected to office, Chirac ended a three-year moratorium on testing that his predecessor, François Mitterrand, had put into effect in April 1992.

    Chirac insisted this additional series of weapons tests was essential to France’s national security and the continued independence of its nuclear deterrent. The eight planned detonations scheduled to take place over the next several months would, he claimed, provide the data needed to move from real-world detonations to computer simulations in the future. He also said it would enable France to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban-Treaty (CTBT) banning all nuclear explosions, for military or other purposes, by the fall of 1996.

    France’s history of nuclear tests

    A report on France’s nuclear tests in the South Pacific. (Disclose)

    Chirac’s June 1995 announcement, followed by the first new detonation in September that year, provoked intense opposition from environmental and peace groups, and protests from Paris to Papeete, throughout the Pacific region and across the globe.

    Representatives from the world’s other nuclear-armed states expressed concern that France was choosing to conduct further tests so close to a comprehensive ban. The governments of Australia, New Zealand and Japan also registered their staunch opposition, issuing diplomatic statements, calling for the boycott of French goods and pursuing other measures of rebuke.

    A defensive posture had been a pillar of France’s nuclear weapons policy since the nation first entered the atomic club in 1960 with the detonation of Gerboise Bleue, a 70-kiloton bomb, at Reggane in Algeria. The following three atmospheric and 13 underground Saharan tests resulted in serious long-term health and environmental consequences for the region’s inhabitants.

    In 1966, France’s nuclear testing program relocated to Maō’hui Nui, colonially known as “French Polynesia.”

    The next 26 years saw a further 187 French nuclear and thermonuclear detonations above and beneath the Pacific atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa. They exposed the local population to dangerous levels of radiation, contaminating food and water supplies, and harming corals and other forms of ocean life.

    These experiments — along with the final six underground detonations the French carried out in 1995 and 1996 — left a toxic legacy for generations to come.

    Inadequate compensation for lingering harm

    When Chirac shared his rationale for France’s latest nuclear test series with a room full of journalists gathered at the Elysée Palace in June 1995, he was adamant that these planned tests, and all of France’s nuclear detonations, had absolutely no ecological consequences.

    Today, we know this claim was more than incorrect. It was a falsehood reliant on data and conclusions that grossly underestimated the harmful impact that France’s nuclear testing program had on the health of French soldiers and non-military personnel onsite, inhabitants in the surrounding areas and the environments where these explosions took place.

    Most recently, during the 2024 Paris Olympics, there was an evident deep contradiction between “French Polynesia” as a tourist paradise and idyllic location for the Games’ surf competitions and a space of continuing injustice for test victims that highlights the history of France’s nuclear imperialism in the region.

    In 2010, the French government passed the Morin law ostensibly aimed at addressing the suffering of those significantly harmed by radiation during France’s nuclear weapons detonations from 1960 through 1996.

    The number of people who have been successful in their applications for recognition and compensation remains inadequate, particularly in Algeria. Out of the 2,846 applications submitted by only a fraction of the thousands of estimated victims, just over 400 people in Maō’hui Nui and only one Algerian have received compensation since 2010.

    In 2021, French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged that France “owes a debt” to the people of Maō’hui Nui. He has since called for the opening up of key archives pertaining to this history, but there is much more work to be done on all fronts.

    The findings of a recent French parliamentary commission on the effects of testing in the Pacific, scheduled to be released soon, may contribute to greater transparency and justice for victims in the future.

    In Maō’hui Nui, demands for acknowledgement and restitution have been intertwined with the independence movement, while confronting the impact and legacies of the nuclear detonations in Algeria has been fraught with tensions between Algeria and France over the colonial past.

    Future of the test ban treaty

    In January 1996, France conducted its last nuclear test by detonating a 120-kiloton bomb underground in the South Pacific. In September, France added its signature to the CTBT, joining the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, China and 66 other states without nuclear weapons in their commitment not to engage in further nuclear explosions in any context.

    Almost 30 years later, the CTBT has still not come into force. While most signatories have ratified the treaty, China, Egypt, Iran, Israel and the U.S. are among the nine that have not. Meanwhile, Russia withdrew its own ratification in 2023. Key non-signatories include India, North Korea and Pakistan — all nuclear-armed states that have conducted their own tests since 1996.

    Given these crucial exceptions to a test ban, the prospects for something as ambitious as the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which not a single nuclear weapons state has signed to date, remain uncertain, to say the least.

    Roxanne Panchasi has previously received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

    – ref. France’s final nuclear tests in the South Pacific, 30 years on – https://theconversation.com/frances-final-nuclear-tests-in-the-south-pacific-30-years-on-256439

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Mitigating AI security threats: Why the G7 should embrace ‘federated learning’

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Abbas Yazdinejad, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Artificial Intelligence, University of Toronto

    Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the world, from diagnosing diseases in hospitals to catching fraud in banking systems. But it’s also raising urgent questions.

    As G7 leaders prepare to meet in Alberta, one issue looms large: how can we build powerful AI systems without sacrificing privacy?

    The G7 summit is a chance to set the tone for how democratic nations manage emerging technologies. While regulations are advancing, they won’t succeed without strong technical solutions.

    In our view, what’s known as federated learning — or FL — is one of the most promising yet overlooked tools, and deserves to be at the centre of the conversation.



    Read more:
    6 ways AI can partner with us in creative inquiry, inspired by media theorist Marshall McLuhan

    As researchers in AI, cybersecurity and public health, we’ve seen the data dilemma firsthand. AI thrives on data, much of it deeply personal — medical histories, financial transactions, critical infrastructure logs. The more centralized the data, the greater the risk of leaks, misuse or cyberattacks.

    The United Kingdom’s National Health Service paused a promising AI initiative over fears about data handling. In Canada, concerns have surfaced about storing personal information — including immigration and health records — in foreign cloud services. Trust in AI systems is fragile. Once it’s broken, innovation grinds to a halt.

    Why is centralized AI a growing liability?

    The dominant approach to training AI is to bring all data into one centralized place. On paper, that’s efficient. In practice, it creates security nightmares.

    Centralized systems are attractive targets for hackers. They’re difficult to regulate, especially when data flows across national or sectoral boundaries. And they concentrate too much power in the hands of a few data-holders or tech giants.

    But instead of bringing data to the algorithm, FL brings the algorithm to the data. Each local institution — whether it’s a hospital, government agency or bank — trains an AI model on its own data. Only model updates — not raw data — are shared with a central system. It’s like students doing homework at home and submitting only their final answers, not their notebooks.

    This approach dramatically lowers the risk of data breaches while preserving the ability to learn from large-scale trends.

    Where is it already working?

    FL could be a game-changer. When paired with techniques like differential privacy, secure multiparty computation or homomorphic encryption, it could dramatically reduce the risk of data leaks.

    In Canada, researchers have already used FL to train cancer detection models across provinces — without ever moving sensitive health records.

    Artificial intelligence has been used to train cancer detectiom models.
    (Shutterstock)

    Projects like those involving the Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network have demonstrated how FL can be used to predict chronic diseases such as diabetes, while keeping all patient data securely within provincial boundaries.

    Banks are using it to detect fraud without sharing customer identities.Cybersecurity agencies are exploring how to co-ordinate across jurisdictions without exposing their logs.



    Read more:
    Health-care AI: The potential and pitfalls of diagnosis by app

    Why the G7 needs to act now

    Governments around the world are racing to regulate AI. Canada’s proposed Artificial Intelligence and Data Act, the European Union’s AI Act, and the Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI in the United States are all major steps forward. But without a secure way to collaborate on data-intensive problems — like pandemics, climate change or cyber threats — these efforts may fall short.

    FL allows different jurisdictions to work together on shared challenges without compromising local control or sovereignty. It turns policy into practice by enabling technical collaboration without the usual legal and privacy complications.

    And just as importantly, adopting FL sends a political signal: that democracies can lead not just in innovation, but in ethics and governance.

    Hosting the G7 summit in Alberta isn’t just symbolic. The province is home to a thriving AI ecosystem, institutions like the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute and industries — from agriculture to energy — that generate vast amounts of valuable data.

    Picture a cross-sector task force: farmers using local data to monitor soil health, energy companies analyzing emissions patterns, public agencies modelling wildfire risks — all working together, all protecting their data. That’s not a futuristic fantasy — it’s a pilot program waiting to happen.

    A foundation for trust?

    AI is only as trustworthy as the systems behind it. And too many of today’s systems are based on outdated ideas about centralization and control.

    FL offers a new foundation — one where privacy, transparency and innovation can move together. We don’t need to wait for a crisis to act. The tools already exist. What’s missing is the political will to elevate them from promising prototypes to standard practice.

    If the G7 is serious about building a safer, fairer AI future, it should make FL a central piece of its plan — not a footnote.

    Abbas Yazdinejad 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.

    Jude Kong 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. Mitigating AI security threats: Why the G7 should embrace ‘federated learning’ – https://theconversation.com/mitigating-ai-security-threats-why-the-g7-should-embrace-federated-learning-258670

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Ngũgi wa Thiong’o and the African literary revolution

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Simon Gikandi, Professor of English and Chair of the English Department, Princeton University

    The passing of celebrated Kenyan writer and scholar Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o on 28 May 2025 marks the end of a remarkable period in African literary history – the fabulous decades in the second half of the 20th century when African writers came to command the world stage.



    Read more:
    Five things you should know about Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, one of Africa’s greatest writers of all time

    This was the time of what I call the African literary revolution. As a scholar of African literature and the author of many books and papers on Ngũgĩ, I have raised several questions about this period. Why and how did this revolution happen? What motivated this turn to the imagination as a tool of decolonisation? And what was Ngũgĩ’s role in this drama?

    To answer these questions one must think of Ngũgĩ inside and outside a generational cultural project.

    The African literary revolution

    Accounting for this project is not difficult. One can say for certain that in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as the African continent entered the last phase of decolonisation, writers and intellectuals became important actors in the fight for independence. They did so by quietly entering and occupying the spaces and knowledge systems that had until then been the preserve of colonial agents.

    They used the work of the imagination to challenge colonial systems of thought and imagine decolonial alternatives. And what made this a period like no other in African literary history was a powerful sense of newness and the possibilities of a world yet to come. As the Nigerian writer and critic Chinua Achebe once put it:

    There was something in the air.

    Literature was asked to herald the possibilities and perils of freedom and Ngũgĩ was to play a major role in chaperoning the language of African being and becoming.

    In the memoirs he wrote about his education, he would often return to his mental imprisonment in English literature and the mythology of Englishness.

    Hidden in these narratives of colonial miseducation, however, was the discovery of the gift of African fiction brought by precursors. Nigeria’s Achebe and Cyprian Ekwensi and South Africa’s Peter Abrahams gave Ngũgĩ a model of how English could be used against Englishness.

    Coming after these writers provided him with an alternative to the “Great Tradition” of English letters.

    Reimagining Africa

    As a student at Alliance High School in Kenya and later at Makerere University College in Uganda, Ngũgĩ positioned himself as part of a literary vanguard that was reimagining Africa.

    His first major fiction was published in Penpoint, a pioneering journal of literature edited by students at the Makerere English department. He was a delegate to the 1962 Conference of African Writers held at the university, sharing the podium with writers who were to define the African culture of letters for several decades. He was one of the few writers at this historic conference without a major publication, but his presence seemed to signal the promise of the future.

    Something else made this period distinctive: this was a time when African intellectuals, writers and politicians shared a common belief in the redemptive work of art and literature. At Makerere, Ngũgĩ had been preceded by Julius Nyerere, a translator of Shakespeare in Swahili who was to become president of Tanzania. At the same college, Apollo Milton Obote, future president of Uganda, had appeared in a 1948 production of Julius Caesar, the first performance of Shakespeare at the university.

    And the contributors represented in Origin East Africa, an anthology of creative writing at Makerere, provide the most vivid example of the role writing and a literary education could come to play in the making of the postcolonial public sphere. Ngũgĩ had four stories published in the anthology, coming just after a short story by Ben Mkapa, future president of Tanzania.

    Ngũgĩ belonged to a generation that saw literature as a forum for critique, of questioning dominant ideas and beliefs. In this context, creative writing was asked to perform at least four tasks:

    • to reimagine an African past whose resources might be rehearsed for the future

    • to rehearse the drama of decolonisation

    • to account for postcolonial failure

    • to produce fictions that might help readers rethink a global African identity.

    Ngũgĩ’s novels rose to fulfil these tasks with conviction and courage. The River Between and Weep Not, Child dealt with the wounds of history. A Grain of Wheat and Petals of Blood were positioned in a zone where the figure of the new nation was caught between its aspirations and desires and the possibility of failure and betrayal. Wizard of the Crow was simultaneously an allegory of postcolonial failure and the possibility of its transcendence.

    And then came banishment and exile.

    The late career

    Although he barely acknowledged it in his writings or in public, Ngũgĩ’s late career was defined by the realities of exile and an awareness of his own displacement from his primary audience and the Gĩkũyũ language that had energised his poetics.

    He was celebrated and honoured in powerful American universities and institutions including the Library of Congress. He was recognised in the global African world and cited by the few African leaders like Ghana’s John Dramani Mahama who understood the need for a forceful response to racial ideologies.



    Read more:
    Drama that shaped Ngũgĩ’s writing and activism comes home to Kenya

    But he was a persona non grata in the one place – Kenya – where recognition mattered most to him.

    In the end, there was a certain kind of belatedness in Ngũgĩ’s later fictions. The subject of these works and their points of reference were distinctly Gĩkũyũ, Kenyan, African, pan-African, and global. Nonetheless, these gestures of being African were enacted far away from the homelands in which Ngũgĩ’s writing and thinking was both intelligible and functional.

    Imagining and writing about Africa away from Africa was a promise and debt. It was an obligation to a place but also a measure of one’s distance from it.



    Read more:
    3 things Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o taught me: language matters, stories are universal, Africa can thrive

    I reflected on this problem as I reviewed Ngũgĩ’s 2006 novel set in an imaginary autocratic country, Murogi wa Kagogo (Wizard of the Crow), in its original Gĩkũyũ edition and later in its translation.

    I was reading the same book, but it was pointing in two different directions – towards home and away from it.

    In our many encounters, Ngũgĩ made fun of the fact that I seemed to have adopted alienation as the essential condition for thinking and writing. What he sought to do until the last minute of his life was carry within himself and his fictions that place that used to be home, its politics and poetics.

    Simon Gikandi 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. Ngũgi wa Thiong’o and the African literary revolution – https://theconversation.com/ngugi-wa-thiongo-and-the-african-literary-revolution-258428

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: 5 great reads by South African writers from 30 years of real-life stories

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Hedley Twidle, Associate Professor and head of English Literary Studies, University of Cape Town

    Across three decades of democracy, South Africa has – like many places undergoing complex and uneven social change – seen an outpouring of remarkable nonfiction. The Interpreters is a new book that collects the work of 37 authors, all of it writing (plus some drawing) concerned with actual people, places and events.

    The anthology is the product of many years of reading and discussion between my co-editor Sean Christie (an experienced journalist and nonfiction author) and me (a writer and professor who teaches literature, including creative nonfiction).

    The book is a work of homage to the many strains of ambitious and artful writing that shelter within the unhelpful term “nonfiction”. These include: narrative and longform journalism; essays and memoir; reportage, features and profiles; life writing, from private diaries to public biography; oral histories, interviews and testimony.

    To give an idea of the range, energy and risk of the pieces collected in the anthology, here I discuss five of them.

    1. Fighting Shadows by Lidudumalingani

    We debated for a long time which piece to start the anthology with, and ultimately went for this one, which begins:

    One afternoon my father and the other boys from the Zikhovane village decided to walk across a vast landscape, two valleys and a river, to a village called Qombolo to disrupt a wedding.

    It’s a quietly compelling opening. First of all, there is intrigue: why the disruption? It could also easily be the first sentence of a novel (maybe even one by famous Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe). And so we begin with a reminder of how storytelling is such a deep, ancient and fundamental part of societies – an impulse that long predates writing and moves across and beyond the fiction/nonfiction divide. (Lidudumalingani won the 2016 Caine Prize for a short story, so he works across both.)

    Fighting Shadows is about the tradition of stick fighting, and how it’s transported from rural areas to urban ones. But it’s also about so much more, about “the dance between then and now”, as the writer puts it later on. The prose is so deft and graceful, as if the author is trying to match the “dance” of expert stick fighters with his own verbal arts. For me it’s a story that could only have emerged from this part of the world: it has a distinct voice, precision and poetry to it.

    2. The End of a Conversation by Julie Nxadi

    This is the shortest piece in the anthology, but for me one of the most affecting. It traces how a young girl comes to realise that the (white) family she is being brought up with are not really her family. She is the daughter of the housekeeper, the domestic worker:

    I was not ‘the kids’.
    I was not their kin.

    It’s probably best described as autofiction, a kind of writing that lies somewhere in the borderlands between autobiography and fiction. Nxadi has spoken of how she decided to write in a way that contained her own life story – the “heartbreak” of that moment – but was also able to carry and represent the experience of others who had gone through something similar.

    The piece is also a product of the #FeesMustFall student protests (2015 onwards), when many young South Africans felt able to share unresolved, awkward or shameful stories for the first time.

    The End of a Conversation is such a deft, wise and subtle handling of a difficult subject, with no easy targets or easy resolutions. Somehow the writer has found just the right distance – emotionally and aesthetically – from this moment of childhood realisation.

    3. South African Pastoral by William Dicey

    I co-own a pear farm with my brother. I attend to finances and labour relations, he oversees the growing of the fruit.

    This essay by William Dicey thinks hard, very hard, about what it means to manage a fruit farm in the Boland (an agricultural region still shaped by South Africa’s divided past). It is one of the most frank and unflinching accounts of land and labour I’ve ever come across. The writer makes the point that he could easily have stayed in the city, lived in “liberal” circles and not thought about these issues much.

    But becoming a farmer confronts him with all kinds of difficult questions (How much should he intervene in the lives of his employees? In family and financial planning, in matters of alcohol abuse?) as he is drawn into an awkward but meaningful intimacy with others on the farm.

    The US essayist Philip Lopate suggests that scepticism is often the tool for moving towards truth in personal nonfiction writing:

    So often the “plot” of a personal essay, its drama, its suspense, consists in watching how the essayist can drop past his or her psychic defences toward deeper levels of honesty.

    This is very much what happens in South African Pastoral, and why it is such a mesmerising piece (even while written in such a plain and restrained style).

    4. Hard Rock by Mogorosi Motshumi

    My co-editor said from the start we should include graphic nonfiction (drawn stories and comics) and I’m so grateful he did. Mogorosi Motshumi’s warm, zany but also harrowing account is about coming of age under apartheid and then the heady days of the 1990s transition.

    In his early career, Motshumi was widely known for his comic strips and political cartooning, but this graphic autobiography is far more ambitious. The style of drawing changes and evolves as the protagonist gets older; also, there is something intriguing about seeing weighty subjects like detention, disability, substance abuse and HIV/AIDS stigma approached through the eyes of a wry cartoonist with a keen sense of the absurd.

    Hard Rock is a prologue to the graphic nonfiction memoir that he has been working on for many years, the 360 Degrees Trilogy. The first two instalments have appeared – The Initiation (2016) and Jozi Jungle (2022) – and I would urge anyone to seek them out. Mogorosi’s work is a major achievement in South African autobiography and life writing (or life “drawing”).

    5. The Interpreters by Antjie Krog, Nosisi Mpolweni and Kopano Ratele

    This co-authored piece is what gave the anthology its name. The Interpreters is a reflection on being a language interpreter during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings (1996-1998) into gross human rights violations during white minority rule.

    A series of individuals recall the challenges of that process. Sitting in glass booths in the middle of proceedings, they had to move across South Africa’s many official languages in real time, translating the words of victims, perpetrators, grieving families, lawyers and commissioners.

    The chapter is also a reminder of how our English-language anthology faces the challenge of doing justice to a multilingual, multivocal society where all kinds of cultural translations happen all the time.

    The piece is a blend of many people’s voices, testimonies and reminiscences. As such, it also seemed to symbolise the larger project of The Interpreters: trying to record, render and honour the many voices that make up our complex social world.

    Hedley Twidle worked with Soutie Press in the creation of this anthology.

    – ref. 5 great reads by South African writers from 30 years of real-life stories – https://theconversation.com/5-great-reads-by-south-african-writers-from-30-years-of-real-life-stories-258340

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Khartoum before the war: the public spaces that held the city together

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Ibrahim Z. Bahreldin, Associate Professor of Urban & Environmental Design, University of Khartoum

    What makes a public space truly public?

    In Khartoum, before the current conflict engulfed Sudan, the answer was not always a park, a plaza or a promenade.

    The city’s streets, tea stalls (sitat al-shai), protest sites and even burial spaces served as dynamic arenas of everyday life, political expression and informal resilience.

    In a recently published article, I studied 64 public spaces across pre-war Greater Khartoum, revealing a landscape far richer – and more contested – than standard urban classifications suggest. Specifically, I uncovered four classifications: formal, informal, privately owned and hybrid spaces – each alive with negotiation and everyday use.

    While some spaces were planned by colonial engineers or municipal authorities, many were carved out by communities: claimed, adapted and reimagined through use.

    My research offers valuable insights into the design and planning of Africa’s cities. As they grow and face mounting political and environmental pressures, it’s time to rethink how public spaces are defined and designed – not through imported models, but by listening to the ways people already make cities public.



    Read more:
    Sudan needs to accept its cultural diversity: urban planning can help rebuild the country and prevent future conflict

    Across the African continent, cities are growing fast – but not always fairly. Urban expansion often privileges gated developments, mega-projects and high-security zones while neglecting the everyday spaces where most people live, work and gather.

    In Sudan, these dynamics have been further complicated by conflict, displacement and economic instability. The ongoing war has disrupted not only governance, but also the spatial fabric of urban life.

    My paper aims to invite those involved in planning policies and post-conflict reconstruction to move beyond formal, western-centric models that often overlook how publicness actually unfolds in African cities: through informality, negotiation and social improvisation.

    Khartoum’s public spaces, as documented in my study, serve as diagnostic tools for understanding how cities survive crises, express identity and contest inequality.

    In the wake of war and displacement, these spaces will play a role in shaping how Sudan rebuilds not just infrastructure, but social cohesion.

    Pre-war Khartoum

    Khartoum’s public spaces cannot be understood through conventional categories – like formal squares and urban parks – alone. These formal squares represent only one layer of a much more plural and negotiated urban reality.

    Drawing on fieldwork and the documentation of 64 public spaces across Greater Khartoum, I identify four overlapping types that reflect how space is produced, accessed and contested.

    1. Formal public spaces: These include planned parks, ceremonial squares, civic plazas and administrative open spaces, often relics of colonial or postcolonial urban planning. They are defined by order, visibility and regulation. Mīdān Abbas, originally an active civic space in the centre of Khartoum, repeatedly reclaimed by informal traders and protesters, is one example, illustrating how even the most formal spaces can become contested. It was notably active during Sudan’s April 1985 uprising, serving as part of a wider network of civic spaces used for political mobilisation. Informal traders consistently transformed it into a bustling marketplace, embedding everyday commerce and social exchange into the formal urban fabric.

    2. Informal and insurgent spaces: These emerge beyond or against official planning logics – riverbanks used for gatherings, neglected lots transformed into social nodes or bridges appropriated by traders. They include spiritual sites like Sufi tombs, and protest spaces such as the sit-in zone outside the city’s army headquarters. These spaces reveal the city’s capacity for bottom-up urbanism and collective adaptation.

    3. Privately owned civic spaces: Shopping malls, privately managed parks and cultural cafés fall into this category. While they appear public, they are often classed, surveilled (monitored through cameras or security presence) or exclusionary. The rise of these spaces coincides with the decline of state-managed urban infrastructure, reflecting the turn in Sudanese urban governance.



    Read more:
    Sudan: the symbolic significance of the space protesters made their own

    4. Public “private” spaces: These spaces blur lines between ownership and use. They include mosque courtyards, school grounds, building frontages or underutilised university lawns that serve as informal gathering points. Access here is governed less by law and more by social codes, trust or class.

    Together, these typologies highlight that “publicness” in Khartoum is relational. It depends not only on who planned a space, but who uses it, how and under what conditions.

    Planning in African cities must therefore move beyond fixed zoning maps to embrace the layered, fluid and lived nature of urban space.

    Rebuilding, rethinking, resisting

    Post-conflict reconstruction in Sudan – and elsewhere in Africa – must resist the allure of “blank slate” master plans. Those involve rebuilding cities from scratch with sweeping, top-down designs that ignore existing social and spatial dynamics.

    Imported models, often guided by bureaucratic thinking or commercial incentives, risk erasing the very spaces where public life already thrives, albeit informally or invisibly.

    Rather than imposing formality, planners should recognise and strengthen the informal and hybrid systems that sustain civic life, especially in times of instability.

    Urban theorists working in and on the global south, such as AbdouMaliq Simone and the late Vanessa Watson, have long argued for planning frameworks that centre on everyday practices, adaptive use and spatial justice.

    Khartoum offers a compelling case.

    From the sit-ins of 2019 to tea stalls run by displaced women, public spaces in Sudan are not inert backdrops. They are active platforms of everyday life, resistance, care and community-making.

    Reconstruction must begin by asking: what spaces mattered to people before the war? Which ones fostered inclusion, dignity and visibility? Only then can new urban futures emerge, ones that are rooted in the practices of those who have always made the city public, even when the state did not.

    What makes spaces truly public?

    The public realm in Sudan has always been shaped through negotiation, sometimes with the state, often despite it.

    Rebuilding after war is not only about reconstructing buildings but also about reimagining the terms of belonging.

    This requires a shift from viewing public space as a fixed asset to understanding it as a dynamic process. Who gets to gather, to speak, to rest, to protest – these are the true measures of publicness.

    Understanding Khartoum’s pre-war public spaces isn’t a nostalgic exercise. It’s a necessary step towards building more inclusive, resilient and locally grounded cities in the wake of crisis.

    Ibrahim Bahreldin is a member of the Sudanese Institute of Architects and the City Planning Institute of Japan, and is registered as a professional architect and urban planner with the Sudanese Engineering Council and the Saudi Council of Engineers. He is also affiliated with the King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia.

    The Author receives funding from KAU Endowment (WAQF) at King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

    – ref. Khartoum before the war: the public spaces that held the city together – https://theconversation.com/khartoum-before-the-war-the-public-spaces-that-held-the-city-together-258632

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Endometriosis: difficult childhood linked with greater likelihood of being diagnosed – new research

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Marika Rostvall, PhD Candidate, Epidemiology, Karolinska Institutet

    Our study of over a million Swedish women revealed a link between difficult childhood circumstances and a higher likelihood of being diagnosed with endometriosis. Drazen Zigic/ Shutterstock

    Around one in ten women worldwide have endometriosis. This common condition causes tissue similar to the lining of the uterus to grow in other parts of the body. This can result in painful periods, chronic pain and even infertility.

    Yet despite how common endometriosis is, there’s currently no cure for it. This may partly be due to the fact that researchers still aren’t entirely sure what triggers endometriosis.

    But one factor that might increase a woman’s likelihood of developing endometriosis is their early life experiences. Recent research published by my colleagues and I has revealed a link between difficult childhood circumstances and a higher likelihood of being diagnosed with endometriosis.

    Our study included all women born in Sweden between 1974 and 2001, totalling over a million women. We then followed them from birth using the Swedish register system, which allowed us to track each participants’ health data.

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    We also looked at different indicators of childhood adversity that had been captured through the registers. We focused specifically on experiences which previous studies have shown can lead to negative mental or physical health later in life.

    This included having a parent with substance abuse problems, having had to spend a night in the care of child-protection services, having to move around a lot or being exposed to violence. In total, we included 11 indicators of childhood adversity in our analysis.

    We then compared the likelihood of receiving an endometriosis diagnosis in women who had experienced each specific type of childhood adversity with women who had not. We controlled for factors that might have influenced the results, including the womens’ ages, the year they were born, their county of birth and if they had been been smaller than average at birth.

    Our results showed that having experienced some form of adversity between birth to 15 years of age was associated with a higher risk of being diagnosed with endometriosis later in life. The only adverse childhood event that wasn’t linked with a greater risk of being diagnosed with endometriosis was familial death.

    Women who had been exposed to violence had the highest risk increase, with an over twofold greater likelihood of being diagnosed with endometriosis compared with all other women.

    The likelihood of being diagnosed with endometriosis increased the more adversity a woman had experienced in their childhood. Women who had experienced one type of adversity in childhood had a 20% greater likelihood of being diagnosed with endometriosis. But women who had experienced five or more types of adversity had a 60% greater likelihood.

    We also ran a separate analysis that included women who experience painful periods (dysmenorrhea) to see if it affected the results. Many women who are diagnosed with endometriosis initially seek help from their doctor because they experience painful periods. We included women who had dysmenorrhea to capture women who might have endometriosis, but had not yet received a proper diagnosis. The results were similar even when we included women with dysmenorrhea in our analysis.

    Having experienced some form of adversity between birth and 15 years of age was associated with a higher likelihood of being diagnosed with endometriosis.
    DimaBerlin/ Shutterstock

    Previous studies which have looked at self-reported early childhood trauma have seen a link with endometriosis. But our study looked not only at remembered experiences of trauma, but also at other indicators of stress.

    Endometriosis and immune function

    Our findings may be explained, at least in part, by immune system processes and chronic inflammatory responses.

    Having experienced adversity during childhood has previously been linked to higher levels of chronic inflammation, as well as an increased risk for autoimmune disorders. Greater levels of inflammation in the body could worsen endometriosis symptoms or even trigger endometriosis to develop.

    Another possible way childhood adversity could affect endometriosis is through increased pain. Childhood adversity has been linked to a higher risk for chronic pain conditions. This could lead to women in our study who had gone through childhood adversity experiencing more painful symptoms on average, and therefore being more likely to seek medical help and receive a diagnosis.

    Further research might dig into these possible mechanisms. This would improve our understanding of how and why the disease develops. A better understanding of the mechanisms behind the pain experienced by women with endometriosis might also allow researchers to develop more effective treatments than those currently available.

    Our study reinforces the conclusions of previous studies which show a link between early childhood adversity and poor health in later life. This kind of research suggests a connection between mental and physical health, and indicates that we need to re-examine our view of the mind and body as separate entities.

    It should be noted that our study is observational, which means it cannot prove that adverse events in childhood cause endometriosis, it can only show an association between the two things.

    However, our study does highlight the importance of devoting resources to help parents and children. Helping families escape poverty, treating parental addiction or providing stable housing could lead to a healthier population in the future.

    Marika Rostvall receives funding from Karolinska Institutet, Region Stockholm and Karolinska University Hospital.

    – ref. Endometriosis: difficult childhood linked with greater likelihood of being diagnosed – new research – https://theconversation.com/endometriosis-difficult-childhood-linked-with-greater-likelihood-of-being-diagnosed-new-research-258369

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Remembering Frederick Forsyth: my encounters with the spy who stayed out in the cold

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paul Lashmar, Reader in Journalism, City St George’s, University of London

    One of the great British purveyors of the spy and cold-war genres, Frederick Forsyth, who has died at the age of 86, was best known for his novels The Day of the Jackal (1971), The Odessa File (1972) and The Dogs of War (1974).

    He wrote another 22 books, which together have sold 75 million copies worldwide, and spawned several successful films. In his 2015 memoirs, Forsyth revealed he had been a spy for the British government.

    My encounters with “Freddie” came late in his life. Back in 2023 my former colleagues at Brunel University were launching a project called Writers in Intelligence. Having no contacts in the murky world of spookery, they approached me for help.

    They needed a high-profile writer who had worked in intelligence for their first event. I suggested Forsyth, as he had admitted to being an MI6 asset between 1968 and 1988. I wrote to him, and he agreed to an interview.

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    It was not my finest hour. I had carefully created a narrative arc of questions and outlined my plan to Forsyth in the green room. He nodded. After we sat down in front of a packed audience Forsyth proceeded to ignore my first question and launched into his own well-practised narrative.

    “What is the point of espionage in the first place?” he asked rhetorically. “I would sum it up in a single word: forewarning – what the bad guys are doing,” he said, launching into his spiel. He was particularly good on the need for a cover story when working abroad, “where the very nasty secret police ruled the roost”. His cover was being a foreign correspondent.

    For the rest of his “talk”, I tried to predict his direction of travel and lob the occasional question to justify my existence. Relief for me came with the Q&A.

    Inevitably a question came up about the Nigerian civil war in which he had a controversial role. Independent from 1960, Nigeria is a creation of the British empire and in broad terms combines three different colonial and ethnic areas. The Muslim north, mostly the Haus-Fulani people; the mixed religions of the Yoruba west; and the Christian Igbo people of the east in the area known then as Biafra, rich in oil reserves. In 1966, an attempted military coup sparked civil war and anti-Igbo pogroms in the north, forcing 1.2 million Igbo refugees to return to the Biafra region.

    Refugees complained that the Lagos-based Nigerian government under General Yakubu Gowon had failed to protect them. Secessionists under the military commander of the east, Colonel Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, declared Biafra a separate republic in May 1967. Gowon ordered the Nigerian army to retake Biafra. Initially the Biafran forces countered attacked but Gowan’s troops, reinforced by secretly delivered British munitions, created a lengthy stalemate.

    Forsyth, aged 29 and now a BBC correspondent (after stints as the RAF’s youngest fighter pilot and a Reuters journalist) was posted to Biafra to cover the war. With few of his reports being used despite him being on the frontline (at one point a bullet grazed his head), he grew increasingly disillusioned. He considered the BBC’s reports from its west Africa correspondent in Lagos hundreds of miles away, to be pro-Gowon.

    Angering BBC bosses by making the case for Biafra, Forsyth was ordered out, after which he said he resigned, although this contradicts the tweet made by the BBC’s John Simpson, who this week said that Forsyth was sacked after “introducing Biafran propaganda into his reports”.

    In 1968 Forsyth reported independently from Biafra on the deliberate starvation of people that shocked the world, and became close to Colonel Ojukwu. Eventually, after three years, Biafra was overwhelmed and reintegrated into Nigeria in 1970.

    In the Brunel audience was Nigerian novelist and journalist Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani who is of Igbo heritage. I asked her this week what she recalled of the evening having travelled to see Forsyth whose books “had been a staple” during her teenage years. She asked Forsyth whether his assessment of the war back then was valid. Forsyth did not really give an opinion but, describing what he had seen, clearly thought his reporting had stood the test of time.

    The Brunel evening was deemed a success as Forsyth had lived up to his reputation as a charismatic raconteur. Even in his eighties he cut an imposing figure – decidedly alpha male and a hard-living world traveller. On the thriller-writer spectrum, he combined the spirit of Hemingway with the cool detached air of le Carré. It was not hard to believe that Forsyth had been a little too close to some of the unsavoury events he wrote about.

    We meet again, Mr Forsyth

    A few months later I asked him for a one-to-one interview and was invited to his house in a Buckinghamshire village. I explained that for nearly 50 years I had been intermittently researching the foreign office’s cold-war covert propaganda operation, the Information Research Department (IRD).

    Set up in 1948 to attack communism, by the late 1960s the IRD was a huge operation and had extended its secret remit from anti-communism to covertly attacking anybody or anything its mandarins perceived as anti-British. I had been reading recently released IRD files on Biafra that had long been withheld.

    The first thing that was clear was that Forsyth was still angry over what he saw as the British betrayal of the Biafran people. He cursed the then prime minister Harold Wilson. As a result of Forsyth’s reporting on Biafra – which he saw as objective – he had come under personal attack.

    Who was responsible, I asked. Forsyth identified the high commissioner in Lagos at the time, Sir David Hunt, “a very unpleasant man” whom he held in very low regard. Indeed Hunt had written in one internal memo that Forsyth was “an ardent Ibo partisan and is now employed by them”, and who “spread the most alarming and exaggerated reports”. The memo is now held in the National Archives.

    I was able to tell Forsyth that the foreign office had deployed the full arsenal of the IRD’s propaganda skills to support Gowon’s government – and made a huge effort to neuter Forsyth’s reporting from Biafra. Wilson’s government did not want to lose access to cheap oil supplied by Nigeria, or for it to be known that Britain was secretly supplying Gowan with arms.

    The IRD’s role was all the more curious in that the Soviet Union was pro-Gowon and Ojukwa was anti-communist. In our meeting Forsyth was surprised at what I had to say; he had never heard of IRD, which in turn surprised me. What was all the more puzzling was that IRD was close to MI6 and, as Forsyth revealed in his memoir, he had been an unpaid MI6 asset for 20 years, beginning in Biafra in 1968.

    He thought his targeting might explain the breadth of the personal attacks any against him. In another memo held in the National Archives, this time written in 1969, another British diplomat said he had met Forsyth and bemoaned it was “hard to understand” how the BBC had employed him as correspondent.

    The war ended in January 1970. The number of deaths is still disputed but claimed to be between one and two million – mostly civilians many of whom starved to death. On his return to the UK Forsyth wrote his first book, a non-fiction account called The Biafran Story, which did not sell.

    By the beginning of 1971 Forsyth was unemployable as a journalist and struggling financially. He sat down and over 35 days wrote The Day of the Jackal, a novel set in 1963 about an assassination plot against the French President, which went on to sell ten million copies. In 1973 it was turned into a film starring Edward Fox and was a huge box office hit. Forsyth never had to worry about money again.

    Paul Lashmar is affiliated with the Labour Party

    – ref. Remembering Frederick Forsyth: my encounters with the spy who stayed out in the cold – https://theconversation.com/remembering-frederick-forsyth-my-encounters-with-the-spy-who-stayed-out-in-the-cold-258762

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Many Russian speakers in Ukraine have switched language – but changing perceptions may be much harder

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Oleksandra Osypenko, PhD researcher in linguistics, Lancaster University

    After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a lot of Ukrainians who would normally have used Russian as their first language started instead to speak only in Ukrainian. It was part of a cultural shift, particularly in areas close to Russia. Streets were renamed, statues of Russians taken down and Russian literature taken off the shelves of bookshops.

    But language does more than merely signal a person’s identity. We wanted to find out whether a change in the language a person uses could influence they way they think in their everyday lives. Our research suggests encouraging people to speak more Ukrainian in public isn’t enough to shift the influence of the Russian language on people’s perceptions.

    In a study published in 2024, Ukrainian linguistics expert Volodymyr Kulyk documented a marked decline in the everyday use of Russian by Ukrainians since the invasion in February 2022. Many individuals, Kulyk found, were voluntarily abandoning Russian in response to the invasion, often viewing the language itself as a symbol of Putin’s aggression.

    His survey found that only 44% of Ukrainians reported using Ukrainian as their primary language in 2012, compared to 34% who said they primarily spoke Russian, and 22% had used both. By December 2022, the percentage of people who said they primarily spoke Ukrainian had risen to 57.4% and Russian use had dropped to just 14.8%, with the remaining 27.8% reporting using both languages.

    Kylyk found that this was even more pronounced in public spaces. In the workplace, use of Ukrainian increased from 41.9% in 2012 to 67.7% in December 2022. Online, the consumption of Ukrainian-language content by Ukrainians soared from 11.6% to 52.2%, while that of Russian-language content fell from 48.6% to just 6%

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    The idea that language shapes thought, known as the “linguistic relativity principle” was first articulated by American linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1950s. Numerous subsequent studies have since provided evidence supporting the principle.

    Researchers have shown that learning a new language or increasing the use of one can subtly reshape the way a person views the world.

    One way to test this is by looking at grammatical gender. In 40% of the world’s languages – including Ukrainian and Russian – objects are assigned a gender. For example, the word for “sock” is masculine in Russian and referred to using a pronoun “he” (носок – nosok), while in Ukrainian it is feminine and referred to using as “she” (шкарпетка – shkarpetka). Using grammatical gender allows us to examine how such purely linguistic categories influence our perception.

    Previous studies have shown that people tend to associate grammatically masculine nouns with stereotypically male qualities such as strength or aggression and feminine nouns with softness or gentleness. These are associations that can shape real-world judgments in unexpected ways.

    For example, a 2020 study led by French linguist Alican Mecit found that French and Spanish speakers perceived the pandemic as less threatening when it was referred to as la COVID-19 (feminine), and more dangerous when called le coronavirus (masculine), affecting how cautious they were in daily life.

    Masculine or feminine?

    To explore these effects in context of Ukraine’s ongoing language shift, we conducted a study in late 2023 to examine whether speaking Ukrainian or Russian affects people’s perception of everyday things, by asking our participants to rate objects as more masculine or feminine.

    Our participants also completed Ukrainian and Russian proficiency tests and filled out a questionnaire about their language habits. We asked them about what languages they used on a daily basis, with family and friends, and which language they considered their dominant one. After analysing this data, we discovered an interesting trend.

    Some of our results showed exactly what we had thought. Participants with higher proficiency in Russian showed a statistically significant influence of Russian on the way they viewed the world. The same was true for those more proficient in Ukrainian.

    This suggested that the language a person is most skilled in – as measured by tests, not just their own reports – has a strong influence of their perception, even when they are not consciously using that language.

    In other words, the deeper your knowledge of a language, the more it shapes your unconscious patterns of thought.

    But when we looked at participants’ self-reported language use, we unexpectedly found that even those people who said they used Ukrainian more than Russian day-to-day, with their family and friends, still showed perceptual patterns aligned with Russian. These were Ukrainians whose first language was Russian but who had made a deliberate switch to Ukrainian.

    For example, when rating gendered objects as more masculine or feminine, these participants made choices that reflected Russian grammatical gender rather than Ukrainian – so, to use our example from earlier in this article, they saw a sock as being inherently a male thing.

    This suggested one of two possibilities. Either they had overstated their use of Ukrainian, possibly due to social pressure. Or they were genuinely switching to Ukrainian, but Russian continued to unconsciously influence their thinking. This mismatch was especially common among those who claimed to use Ukrainian in informal settings, like at home or with friends.

    So, even as more Ukrainians shift away from using the Russian language because of the war, the influence of Russian can still be found in how they perceive the world.

    What does this mean for language policy?

    Ukraine’s language policies have been a matter for debate event before the 2022 invasion. In fact, one of the reasons Vladimir Putin gave for launching his “military operation” was because of what he claimed was a “genocide” against Russian speakers in Ukraine, something the Ukrainian government strenuously denied.

    But it should be noted that Ukraine passed a law in 2019 (which came into force at the beginning of 2021, titled On ensuring the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language. This required the use of Ukrainian in all spheres of public life, including education, science, culture, media, advertising and customer service. The law drew some international criticism as possibly discriminatory and caused considerable disquiet in Russian-speaking communities.



    Read more:
    Ukraine: how a controversial new language law could help protect minorities and unite the country

    So while language policy in Ukraine has focused on promoting Ukrainian language in public and professional settings, including schools and workplaces, our findings suggest that these formal uses of language do not necessarily change the way people think.

    The bigger shifts seem to come from informal, everyday language use, especially at home. It is in those personal, emotionally rich contexts that language appears to shape thought most deeply.

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

    – ref. Many Russian speakers in Ukraine have switched language – but changing perceptions may be much harder – https://theconversation.com/many-russian-speakers-in-ukraine-have-switched-language-but-changing-perceptions-may-be-much-harder-257765

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Wales is overhauling its democracy – here’s what’s changing

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stephen Clear, Lecturer in Constitutional and Administrative Law, and Public Procurement, Bangor University

    Wales’ Senedd will expand and change as of May 2026. Mareks Perkons/Shutterstock

    Next May’s Senedd (Welsh parliament) election won’t just be another trip to the polls. It will mark a major change in how Welsh democracy works. The number of elected members is increasing from 60 to 96, and the voting system is being overhauled. These changes have now passed into law.

    But what exactly is changing – and why?

    When the then assembly was first established in 1999, it had limited powers and just 60 members. Much has changed since then and it now has increased responsibility including primary law-making powers over matters such as health, education, environment, transport and economic development.

    The Wales Act 2014 also bestowed a number of new financial powers on the now Senedd, including taxation and borrowing powers. But its size has stayed the same.

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    This led to concerns about capacity and effectiveness. In 2017, an independent expert panel on electoral reform concluded that the Senedd was no longer fit for purpose. It warned that 60 members simply weren’t enough to scrutinise the Welsh government, pass legislation and respond to constituents. A bigger chamber, it argued, would improve both the quality of lawmaking and democratic accountability.

    Wales also has fewer elected politicians per person than any other UK nation. Scotland has 129 MSPs, while Northern Ireland has 90 MLAs. Even with next year’s changes, Wales will still have fewer elected members per citizen compared with Northern Ireland.

    It’s a similar picture when Wales is compared with other small European nations.

    More Senedd members could ease workloads, improve local representation and importantly, may encourage a more diverse pool of people to stand for office.

    How is the voting system changing?

    Alongside expansion will be a change in how Senedd members are elected.

    Since its inception, Wales has used the “additional member system”, which is a mix of first-past-the-post for constituency seats and proportional representation for regional ones.

    From 2026, that system will be replaced by a closed list proportional system, using the D’Hondt method. It’s a system which is designed to be fairer, ensuring that the proportion of seats a party wins more closely reflects the votes they get. But it also means voters will have less say over which individuals get elected.

    Wales will be divided into 16 constituencies, each electing six MSs. Instead of voting for a single candidate, voters will choose one party or independent candidate.

    Parties will submit a list of up to eight candidates per constituency. Seats will then be allocated based on the overall share of the vote each party gets, with candidates elected in the order they appear on their party’s list.

    For example, if a party wins a percentage share of the vote equating to three seats, the top three people on their party list will be elected. The calculation for this is defined by the D’Hondt formula. The decision to adopt this method in Wales was one of the recommendations of the special purpose committee on Senedd reform in 2022.

    Jeremy Vine explains just how the D’Hondt system of proportional representation works.

    Several countries across Europe use this system for their elections, including Spain and Portugal. In countries with small constituency sizes, D’Hondt has sometimes favoured larger parties and made it harder for smaller parties to gain ground. That’s something observers in Wales will be watching closely.

    An alternative method, Sainte-Laguë, used in Sweden and Latvia, is often seen as more balanced in its treatment of small and medium-sized parties, potentially leading to more consensual politics. But it too has its downsides. In countries which have many smaller parties, it can lead to fragmented parliaments and make decision-making more difficult.

    In sum, no system is perfect. But D’Hondt was chosen for its balance between proportionality, simplicity and practicality.

    The Senedd chamber will house 36 more members from May 2026 onwards.
    Senedd Cymru

    Could this confuse voters?

    One concern is the growing differences between electoral systems across the UK, and even within Wales itself.

    At the UK level, first-past-the-post (FPTP) is the method used for Westminster elections. Meanwhile, some Welsh councils are experimenting with the single transferable vote method, which lets voters rank candidates in order of preference.

    So, some people in Wales could find themselves navigating three different voting systems for three different elections. Obviously, this raises the risk of confusion. Voters who are used to one vote and the “winner takes all” nature of FPTP may be confused by how seats are allocated in Wales come 2026.

    With numerous different systems, the risk is that people do not fully understand how their vote translates into representation. In turn this risks undermining confidence and reducing voter turnout.



    Read more:
    Wales wants to punish lying politicians – how would it work?

    Voters will need clear, accessible information on how their vote works – and why it matters. But this is particularly challenging when UK-wide media often defaults to FPTP-centric language and framing surrounding debates, which can shape public expectations. News about Wales often barely registers beyond its borders, while news about politics in Wales barely registers within.

    Electoral reform often prompts broader conversations. As Welsh voters adjust to the new proportional system, some may begin to question Westminster’s FPTP model, especially if the Senedd better reflects the diversity of votes cast. FPTP is frequently criticised for producing “wasted votes” and encouraging tactical voting, particularly in safe seats.

    Under a more proportional system, tactical voting becomes less necessary, which has the potential to shift voter habits in Wales.

    If the 2026 reform leads to a more representative and effective Senedd, it may not only reshape Welsh democracy, but reignite debates about electoral reform across the UK.

    Stephen Clear 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. Wales is overhauling its democracy – here’s what’s changing – https://theconversation.com/wales-is-overhauling-its-democracy-heres-whats-changing-256640

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Tornado: this samurai-western immigrant revenge tale tries to be many things – but runs out of ammo

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Chi-Yun Shin, Senior Lecturer, Film Studies, Sheffield Hallam University

    Tornado is many things: a British period drama, a western, a samurai film, a coming-of-age story and an origin story. Set in the windswept moorland of Britain in 1790, the film offers a lawless backdrop fit for a western, with no visible sign of the industrial revolution that began some three decades prior.

    Its Wuthering Heights-esque wilderness, serenely captured by the cinematographer Robbie Ryan conjures up an almost otherworldly look.

    The film is also a revenge story. Tornado (Kōki), the 16-year-old Anglo-Japanese heroine, seeks to avenge her father’s death, armed with a samurai sword. First, though, she has to escape the clutches of some ruthless highwaymen.

    We begin in the middle of this action, with Tornado being pursued across a desolate landscape by Sugarman’s (Tim Roth) gang, who just killed her father, Fujin (Takehiro Hira).

    They are looking for their ill-gotten sacks of gold, which they believe she stole from them. What they don’t know is that Fujin, a former samurai who was reduced to a travelling puppeteer in Britain, taught his daughter to fight and hid the gold. These archetypal components of western genre, gold and revenge are mashed up with a samurai-sword-wielding heroine.

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    The cross-pollination of western and samurai films has a long history. There is the well-known influence of John Ford’s westerns on the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa. Meanwhile, Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) in turn directly inspired the classic Hollywood western, The Magnificent Seven (1960).

    Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961) practically started the whole sub-genre of spaghetti western, providing a template for the narrative and character arc. Both Sergio Leone’s influential A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and Sergio Corbucci’s Django (1966) feature a lone man, seemingly a mercenary, entering a town with two warring gangs where he uses his skills (swapping samurai-sword-wielding for gun-slinging) to manipulate the situation.

    Tornado’s influences

    Tornado pays homage to Leone’s epic spaghetti western Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). This is most obvious in a scene where the vicious gang arrives at the circus troupe’s trailer site where Tornado is taking refuge.

    A knife thrower (Jude Cranston) is practising his techniques, and his steady throwing actions make rhythmic noises as his knives hit the target board in succession. This creates a soundscape reminiscent of the masterful sound design of the opening sequence of Once Upon a Time in the West.



    Read more:
    Tornado is a Scottish samurai-western film – genres with a long-shared history

    The sole black member of the gang, named Psychotic Bandit (Dennis Okwera) is conspicuously dressed in all black, complete with a black cowboy hat. This costuming is almost identical to one of the three outlaws played by Woody Strode (one of the first black American players in the NFL, turned actor) in Once Upon a Time in the West.

    As he approaches the knife thrower and silences him, his out-of-place look (too dandy for a rural bandit) suddenly makes sense and serves a purpose. Like the Strode character, Psychotic Bandit doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t quite pull off the formidable calm menace of Strode.

    The trailer for Tornado.

    Tornado is also a typical immigrant family story that deals with the generational gap. The father tries his best to pass on his culture and knowledge (samurai skill in this case) to Tornado, but his teenage daughter, while reluctantly participating in the family business (a samurai puppet show) wants to have a lie-in and go to town. She speaks to him in perfect English as opposed to his accented English.

    Although the presence of Japanese samurai as a travelling showman in 1790s Scotland is unlikely (considering that the first Japanese visitors set foot on British soil in 1832), director John Maclean’s interest in outsiders and marginalised communities is evident.

    In one scene, now-wounded Sugarman faces Tornado and makes a fatherly suggestion that she go home, to which she answers: “I am home.” It’s a knowing exchange, even if it’s a bit of cliche. Through the course of the film, Tornado grows to accept her father’s teachings and comes of age, as she declares: “I’m Tornado; remember my name.” Though it feels a little contrived, it is fitting for an origin story of a self-assured samurai.

    This coming-of-age story of a young female samurai, set in a desolate landscape, offers a downbeat antidote to the romanticised stories of a westerner who goes to Japan and becomes a samurai, as seen in The Last Samurai (2003) and Shōgun (2024).

    In the end, however, Tornado tries to be too many things, and can’t quite cut it as a satisfying samurai film. It lacks the introspection of Twilight Samurai (2002) or the exhilaration of Zatoichi (2003) and 13 Assassins (2010). It amounts to an unconventional, but underwhelming, execution of a classic genre mash-up.

    Chi-Yun Shin 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. Tornado: this samurai-western immigrant revenge tale tries to be many things – but runs out of ammo – https://theconversation.com/tornado-this-samurai-western-immigrant-revenge-tale-tries-to-be-many-things-but-runs-out-of-ammo-258733

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Global outrage over Gaza has reinforced a ‘siege mentality’ in Israel – what are the implications for peace?

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Eyal Mayroz, Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney

    After more than 20 months of devastating violence in Gaza, the right-wing Israeli government’s pursuit of two irreconcilable objectives — “destroying” Hamas and releasing Israeli hostages — has left the coastal strip in ruins.

    At least 54,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military, close to two million have been forcibly displaced, and many are starving. These atrocities have provoked intense moral outrage around the world and turned Israel into a pariah state.

    Meanwhile, Hamas is resolved to retain control over Gaza, even at the cost of sacrificing numerous innocent Palestinian lives for its own survival.

    Both sides have been widely accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and mainly in Israel’s case, genocide.

    While the obstacles to ending the fighting remain stubbornly difficult to overcome, a troubling pattern has become increasingly apparent.

    The very outrage that succeeded in mobilising, sustaining and swelling international opinion against Israel’s actions — a natural psychological response to systematic injustice — has also reinforced a “siege mentality” already present among many in its Jewish population.

    This siege mentality may have undermined more proactive Israeli Jewish public support for a ceasefire and “day-after” concessions.

    A toxic cocktail of emotions

    Several dominant groups have shaped the conflict’s dynamics, each driven by a distinct set of emotional responses.

    For many Israeli Jews, the massacres of October 7 have aggravated longstanding feelings of victimhood and mistrust, fears of terrorist attacks, perceptions of existential threats, intergenerational traumas stemming from the Holocaust, and importantly, the strong sense of siege mentality.

    Together, these emotions have produced a toxic blend of anger, hatred and intense desire for revenge.

    For the Palestinians, Israel’s devastation of Gaza has followed decades of oppressive occupation, endless rights violations, humiliation and dispossession. This has exacerbated feelings of hopelessness, fear and abandonment by the world.

    The wider, global pro-Palestinian camp has been driven by moral outrage over the atrocities being committed in Gaza, alongside empathy for the victims and a sense of guilt over Western governments’ complicity in the killings through the provision of arms to Israel.

    Similarly, for Israel’s supporters around the world, anger and resentment have led to feelings of persecution, and in turn, victimisation and a sense of siege.

    Many on both sides have become prisoners of this moral outrage. And this has suppressed compassion for the suffering of the “other” — those we perceive as perpetrators of injustice against the side we support.

    Complaints of bias and content omissions

    Choosing sides in a conflict translates almost inevitably into biases in how we select, process and assess new information.

    We search for content that confirms what we already believe. And we discount information that would go against our pre-existing perceptions.

    This tendency also increases our sensitivity to omissions of facts we deem important for our cause.

    Since early in the crisis, voices in the two camps have accused the mainstream media in the West of biased coverage in favour of the “other”. These feelings have added fuel to the moral outrage and sense of injustice among both sides.

    Outrage in the pro-Israel camp has focused mainly on a perceived global conspiracy to absolve Hamas of any responsibility.

    In that view, Israel has been singled out as the only culpable party for the killings in Gaza. This is despite the fact Hamas unleashed the violence on October 7, used the Gazan population as human shields while hiding in tunnels, and refused to release all the Israeli hostages to end the fighting.

    On the other side, pro-Palestinian outrage has focused on “blatant” omissions by the media and Western governments of important historical facts that could provide context for the October 7 attacks.

    These included:

    On both sides, then, significant focus has been placed on omissions of facts that could support one’s own narrative or cause.

    A siege mentality in Israel

    Many Israelis continue to relive October 7 while remaining decidedly blind to the daily horrors their military inflicts on Gaza in their name. For them, the global outrage has reinforced a long-existing and potent siege mentality.

    This mindset has been fed by a reluctance to directly challenge Israeli soldiers risking their lives and other rally-around-the-flag effects. It’s also been bolstered by the desire for revenge and an intense campaign of dehumanising all Palestinians — Hamas or not.

    The so-called “ring of fire” created around Israel by Iran and its proxies —Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Houthis — has further amplified this siege mentality. Their stated objective is the destruction of Israel.

    I’ve conducted an exploratory study of Israeli media, government statements and English Jewish diaspora publications from October 2023 to May 2025, reviewing some 5,000 articles and video clips.

    In this research, I’ve identified strong, consistent uses of siege mentality language, phrases such as:

    In a detailed analysis of 65 English articles from major Israeli outlets, such as The Jerusalem Post and Times of Israel, and Jewish publications in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, I found siege mentality language in nearly nine out of ten searches.

    Importantly, nearly half of these occurrences were in response to pro-Palestinian rhetoric or advocacy: campus protests and actions targeting Israelis or Jews, university groups refusing to condemn October 7, or foreign governments’ recognition of Palestinian statehood.

    The sharp increase in attacks on Jews and Jewish installations since October 7 has also sparked global debates over rising antisemitism. Distinguishing honest critiques of Israel’s actions in Gaza from antisemitic rhetoric has become contentious, as has the use of antisemitism claims by Israeli leaders to dismiss much of this criticism.

    Moving forward

    When viewed through the prism of injustice, the strong asymmetry between Israeli and Palestinian suffering has long been apparent. But it’s grown even wider following Israel’s brutal responses to October 7.

    The culpability of Israel’s government and Hamas for the atrocities in Gaza is incontestable. However, many in the Israeli-Jewish public must also share some of the blame for refusing to stand up to – or by actively supporting – their extremist government’s policies.

    The pro-Palestine movement’s justice-driven campaigns have done much to combat international bystanding and motivate governments to act. At the same time, the unwillingness to unite behind a clearer unequivocal condemnation of Hamas’ massacres may have been a strategic mistake.

    By ignoring or minimising the targeting of civilians, the hostage-taking and the reports of sexual violence committed by Hamas, a vocal minority of advocates has weakened the movement’s otherwise strong moral authority with some of the audiences it needed to influence most. First and foremost, this is people in Israel itself.

    My research suggests that while injustice-based outrage can be effective at generating attention and engagement, it can also produce negative side effects. One adverse impact has been the polarisation of the public debate over Gaza, which, in turn, has contributed to the intensification of Israelis’ siege mentality.

    Noam Chomsky, a well-known Jewish academic and fierce critic of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, once noted in relation to Palestinian advocacy:

    You have to ask yourself, when you conduct some tactic, what the effect is going to be on the victims. You don’t pursue a tactic because it makes you feel good.

    The question, then, is how to harness the strong mobilising power of moral outrage for positive ends – preventing bystander apathy to atrocities – without the potential negative consequences. These include polarisation, expanded violence, feeding a siege mentality (when applicable), and making peace negotiations more difficult.

    The children in Gaza and elsewhere in the world deserve advocacy that will prioritise their welfare over the release of moral outrage — however justified.

    So, what approaches would most effectively help end the suffering?

    Most immediately, the solution rests primarily with Israel and, by extension, the Trump administration as the only international actor powerful enough to force Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to halt the killings.

    Beyond that, and looking toward the future, justice-based activism should be grounded in universal moral principles, acknowledge all innocent victims, and work to create space for both societies to recognise each other’s humanity.

    I served as a counterterrorism specialist with the Israeli Defence Forces in the 1980s.

    – ref. Global outrage over Gaza has reinforced a ‘siege mentality’ in Israel – what are the implications for peace? – https://theconversation.com/global-outrage-over-gaza-has-reinforced-a-siege-mentality-in-israel-what-are-the-implications-for-peace-258561

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Should global media giants shape our cultural and media policy? Lessons from satellite radio

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Brian Fauteux, Associate Professor Popular Music and Media Studies, University of Alberta

    Debates about regulating Canadian content for streaming media platforms are ongoing, and key issues include revising the definition of Canadian content for audio and visual cultural productions and whether big streaming companies would be mandated to follow new Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) policies.

    Global streaming companies are fighting regulations requiring them to fund Canadian content and news.

    The Motion Picture Association-Canada, which represents large streamers like Netflix, Amazon and Disney, has argued that the CRTC should not impose “mandatory positions, functions or elements of a ‘Canadian program’” on global streaming companies.

    The Online Streaming Act, passed in 2023, amended the Broadcasting Act to “ensure that online streaming services make meaningful contributions to Canadian and Indigenous content.”

    For example, according to the act, online audio streaming services that make more than $25 million in annual revenue and that aren’t affiliated with a Canadian broadcaster will contribute five per cent of those funds to organizations such as FACTOR, Musicaction, the Community Radio Fund of Canada and the Indigenous Music Office, among others.

    This has the potential to benefit musicians in Canada. But Apple and Spotify, and other tech and music companies, have banded together (under the Digital Media Association, DiMA), labelling the act a “streaming tax” on users.

    This is a pivotal moment to think about the important role of policy to support Canada’s independent artists, as well as public and community media, and the increasing power of global streaming companies when it comes to setting the terms of cultural policy. One way to do this is to consider the trajectory of satellite radio.



    Read more:
    Canada’s identity is at stake if we don’t equitably fund and support its music now

    Lessons from satellite radio

    As I have previously argued, the history of satellite radio anticipated the broader turn to subscription music listening. Similarly, the story of satellite radio in Canada exemplifies the tensions arising in policymaking today with streaming media.

    As I discuss in my new book, Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age, the launch of subscription satellite radio services in the United States in 2001, and their subsequent entry into the Canadian market in 2005, raised questions about how to regulate these new services.

    Canadian content regulations had been established for broadcast radio in 1971, and these needed to be sorted out for satellite radio channels. Many artists and music industry workers were keen to allow the service to enter the country, while others were concerned with the lack of substantial cultural protectionism.

    Canadian content for satellite

    When the CRTC first licensed Sirius and XM in Canada, the license stipulated that each provider had to offer at least eight Canadian-produced channels, each with at least 85 per cent Canadian content. (These guidelines countered the satellite providers’ proposal of only four Canadian channels each.) Later, the CRTC revised regulations, so that no less than 10 per cent of unique channels, per provider, had to be Canadian.

    Critics felt that relegating Canadian music to a small selection of channels higher on the channel lineup (in the 160s and 170s) was a disservice to Canadian content regulations, as those channels were easy to ignore. They also thought that, overall, the domestic music content featured on satellite would be lower than what was heard on terrestrial radio.

    During the 2004 CRTC public hearing before the licensing of Sirius and XM in Canada, Neil Dixon, the president of Canadian Music Week, argued that “one of the most difficult things we had to do in promoting independent music on an independent label was getting it outside this country.”

    Dixon championed the advantages of satellite radio in comparison to terrestrial radio, as did several creatives entities. They spoke of the belief and hope in seeing Canadian, as well as Indigenous artists, heard beyond Canadian borders and in areas not served by broadcast radio.

    CBC Radio 3 and satellite

    Among the Canadian satellite channels was CBC Radio 3, a channel programming 100 per cent independent Canadian music. It served as a beacon of hope for Canadian artists because its music programming drew from a wide variety of artists who had not yet received commercial radio play. This channel came from a financial and programming partnership between CBC, the public broadcaster, and Sirius Canada.

    Years after the 2011 merger of Sirius and XM in Canada, SiriusXM Canada was restructured in 2016, with 70 per cent of the company now owned by U.S. SiriusXM. This also meant that the CBC would cease being a shareholder in SiriusXM Canada.

    In 2022, Sirius XM Canada announced it was removing CBC Radio 3 and CBC Country; these were replaced by channels programmed by SiriusXM. The company also cut French-language CBC music channels ICI Musique Franco-Country and ICI Musique Chansons and introduced new French music channels.

    Uproar over cutting of CBC channels

    The cutting of CBC channels sparked uproar among artists in Canada, namely independent ones. SiriusXM had become a major income source for Canadian artists, particularly by comparison to the low royalty payments from Canadian commercial radio and streaming platforms.

    One headline in the Toronto Star read: “‘Final nail in the coffin’: Why SiriusXM dropping CBC Radio 3 is ‘potentially catastrophic’ for Canadian artists.”

    For artists, a royalty payment could be about $50 per play, divided between artist and owner of the song’s master (typically labels).



    Read more:
    Artists’ Spotify criticisms point to larger ways musicians lose with streaming — here’s 3 changes to help in Canada

    Subscription radio and superstar artists

    Among the new channels introduced by SiriusXM when it simultaneously cut CBC channels was Mixtape North, devoted to Canadian hip hop and R&B.

    Such a channel has the potential to support upcoming Canadian artists in these genres. However, the Mixtape North channel description mentions massively successful commercial artists: “Playing the newest hits from Drake and Jessie Reyez to classic throwbacks from Kardinal Offishall and K-OS to emerging voices.” In late May 2025, according to xmplaylist.com, the most played artists were The Weeknd and Drake, as well as Melanie Fiona, who has a new song with American artist LaRussell.

    A balance between superstar artists and smaller or independent artists is evident. The channel seems designed for more superstar artists than Radio 3, because it is without the CBC’s public media mandate to play independent artists.

    Precarity of public media institutions

    SiriusXM is a massive commercial subscription radio company with a long history of working to alter cultural policy in its favour. Some have argued that it didn’t make sense for a public media company to partner with a commercial subscription radio service in this way.

    The precarious position of public institutions and regulations to support smaller or independent artists remains a pressing issue. Traditional public broadcasters globally, since at least the early 2000s, have faced a growing pressure to reconceive service delivery and responsiveness to public needs and interests, and the multimedia ways people may want to tune in or engage.



    Read more:
    Trump and many GOP lawmakers want to end all funding for NPR and PBS − unraveling a US public media system that took a century to build

    The story of satellite radio exemplifies an imperfect approach to supporting Canadian culture across the digital and streaming music era, as well as the competing commercial and public interests in policymaking.

    We need to pay careful attention to the uneven power dynamics between major media companies and then the musicians and music lovers who live by the rules established through policymaking.

    Brian Fauteux receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

    – ref. Should global media giants shape our cultural and media policy? Lessons from satellite radio – https://theconversation.com/should-global-media-giants-shape-our-cultural-and-media-policy-lessons-from-satellite-radio-257531

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The big Musk v Trump break-up: what the polls say about who the public thinks won

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex

    Many people thought that the close relationship between Donald Trump and Elon Musk would end badly, since they both have the hubris that comes from success and power. One is arguably the most powerful politician in the world and the other the richest man.

    That said, most people were not prepared for the rapid breakdown in their relationship and the slanging match that took place after Musk spectacularly fell out with the US president. This was magnified by the fact that both have their own influential social media sites (X and Truth Social) and so the divorce was very, very public.

    More recently Musk has rowed back on the comments he made about Trump after leaving his role as a “special government employee” of the administration, and says he went “too far”. But Trump might have a long memory for grievances, so it remains to be seen if the relationship can be patched up.

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    What do the American people think? The chart below shows the percentage of respondents with favourable and unfavourable opinions of Trump and Musk in the most recent US Economist/YouGov poll completed on June 9 after the row blew up.

    It is clear that the most people think that Trump won the contest, giving him a favourability gap (% favourable minus % unfavourable) of minus 10% compared with Musk’s gap of minus 23%.

    What Americans think of Trump and Musk after their row:


    Author’s graph based on Economist polling., CC BY-SA

    The demographics of these favourability judgements are particularly interesting. After the row, around 49% of men thought favourably of Trump, compared with 38% of women, continuing a trend that shows more male than female support for the president. But the gender gap for Musk is even wider with 43% men and only 27% women having a favourable view of the billionaire, making the gap 11% for Trump and 16% for Musk.

    Another interesting demographic is age. Some 35% of 18-to-29 year olds favour Trump (the lowest number of any age group), compared with 30% who favour Musk. The equivalent figures for the over 65s are 45% favouring Trump and 37% Musk. The age divide is wide, with young Americans disliking both more than older Americans, but it is not as wide as the gender gap.

    The income figures and attitudes to both are surprising. A total of 38% of those with incomes less than US$50,000 (£36,700) a year favour Trump, compared with 51% of those with incomes between US$50,000 and US$100,000. The surprise is that only 42% of those with incomes greater than US$100,000 favour Trump, making affluent Americans closer to the low-income group than to the middle-income group in attitudes to the president.

    The equivalent figures for Musk are 32% favourable in the US$50,000 group, 39% in the US$50,000 to US$100,000 group and 36% in the US$100,000+ group, which gives a similar picture.

    If we look at the voting record of the survey respondents in the presidential elections last year, 86% of Trump voters still have a favourable view of him, compared with only 5% of Harris voters. In comparison 67% of Republican voters are favourable to Musk, compared with 10% of Democrats. Equally, 81% of Conservatives favour Trump compared with 67% who favour Musk.

    Looking at the overall picture Musk is the loser in the row as far as the American public are concerned, and this may in part explain his apparent contrition.

    The price of Tesla shares (US$) since the presidential election:


    Author’s graph based on data from Yahoo finance., CC BY

    Overall though, Trump has been gradually losing support on his job approval since the election and the polling shows that 43% of respondents approve and 52% disapprove of his performance as president.

    We don’t have equivalent figures for Musk, but if we take the stock market price of Tesla shares as a guide to his approval ratings this has declined rapidly over time as the chart shows. On December 17 last year the price was US$480 (£353) per share, compared with US$332 per share on June 11 2025. This represents a fall of about 30%. The dramatic dip at the end of the series is an indicator of how markets have reacted to the spat between them.

    Following his public break-up with Trump, Musk’s other major company, Space X, is also likely to face fallout. It is a private company and so does not have a share price, but it is heavily dependent on contracts from the US government to keep going. It seems likely that the flow of contracts for space projects is likely to dry up following the row with Trump, as the president has suggested.

    Overall, Musk has paid a heavy price for becoming such a visible Trump supporter and subsequently falling out with him. And, so far, the public appears to be on Trump’s side.

    Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC.

    – ref. The big Musk v Trump break-up: what the polls say about who the public thinks won – https://theconversation.com/the-big-musk-v-trump-break-up-what-the-polls-say-about-who-the-public-thinks-won-258841

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How to Train Your Dragon: refreshed visuals don’t save this remake’s hackneyed American exceptionalism

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sarah Louisa Bowen, Head of Animation at the Northern Film School, Leeds Beckett University

    The original DreamWorks animated feature film, How To Train Your Dragon, was released in 2010 to widespread critical acclaim. Praised for its innovative 3D animation, emotional depth and stunning flying sequences, spectacle converged with identity, inclusion and a story of generational change that adhered to a reassuringly traditional narrative structure. Fifteen years later, in a world more politically fractured, the live-action remake has been released.

    The original film confidently mastered the uncanny valley issues of early 3D animation. This new live-action version builds on its success and presents a spectacular photo-realistic fantasy world.

    Hyper-real flight sequences offer immersion in ways that have appealed to audiences since the inception of cinema when phantom rides simulated the thrill of speed and continuous movement from a first person perspective.

    There are references to other films throughout, including Titanic (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998) and the Alien and Harry Potter franchises. But even with its extensive use of CGI and visual effects, the differences between the live-action and animation are not as pronounced as might be expected in films made 15 years apart.

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    Significant differences are apparent when it comes to the characters, however. The 2025 reinterpretations of Hiccup (Mason Thames), Astrid (Nico Parker) and Stoic (Hiccup’s father, played by Gerard Butler) seem less nuanced than the original versions. With animated characters, the audience accepts a stylised story world and character motivation more readily. But translated to live action, their motivations now feel as though they turn on a sixpence. As such they come across more as narrative devices than psychologically developed characters.

    The story centres on a young Viking named Hiccup. He looks older here than the original animated 15-year-old, but like most heroes heading off for a rite of passage, he is still awkward, cerebral and caught in the space between boyhood and an adult masculinity.

    Hiccup is expected to kill a dragon as his initiation into adulthood. Instead, he bonds with the fearful Night Fury Dragon (which he names Toothless), and relates to the creature’s feelings of exclusion. This furthers his understanding of the creature he has injured and leads him to question the beliefs of his community.

    The trailer for How to Train Your Dragon.

    When Hiccup reaches out (a moment of welcome respite in the relentless musical score) to Toothless, the most feared dragon, becomes puppy-like with exuberance, gratitude and goodwill. This underlines the film’s themes of empathy over power and a vision for a world that is remade through connection. As such, Hiccup’s mastery of Toothless, through mutual trust and consent, belongs to a cinematic lineage of children and their animal companions.

    American exceptionalism

    The film begins with an introduction to the village of Berk that is under aerial bombardment from dragons. The plucky island community endures the raids with a grit and stoicism that is reminiscent of cinematic representations of the British during the blitz.

    If the dragons are stand-ins for the German Luftwaffe Messerschmitt, then Toothless is all RAF Spitfire. The aerial combat takes a new direction when the attacking dragons are revealed to be controlled by tyrannical alpha dragon, The Red Death.

    The voice casting of the villagers distracts from the action, however. The established Viking community is represented by a range of identities. All the adults speak with British accents while their children, the future inheritors, have an American lilt.

    Tradition versus modernity is one of the themes of the film.

    The implication is that the old Viking community is blinkered by tradition while the American youths represent modernity through reason and inclusion. This hackneyed trope of a traditional community stuck in the past until the Americans drive progress remains in this live-action version. It contradicts the film’s themes of inclusion and understanding by perpetuating an American exceptionalism that resonates with cultural shifts in the aftermath of the second world war.

    As such, the choice of accents is not merely a concession to the market but a continuation of the cultural hegemony of US war narratives. Even though the Battle of Britain was mostly a British, European and Commonwealth effort, it’s the legacy of the Eagle Squadrons, those rule-breaking Americans, who are alluded to here.

    This live-action version of How To Train Your Dragon is therefore refreshed in its visuals only. The dreams, cultural anxieties and post-war allusions remain. The question then is this: after Trump’s reshaping of America’s relationship with the UK and Europe, is a second world war meta-narrative still going to fly?

    Sarah Louisa Bowen 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. How to Train Your Dragon: refreshed visuals don’t save this remake’s hackneyed American exceptionalism – https://theconversation.com/how-to-train-your-dragon-refreshed-visuals-dont-save-this-remakes-hackneyed-american-exceptionalism-258496

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: A school prom isn’t just a party – it can equip teens with life skills

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Julie Tinson, Professor of Marketing, University of Stirling

    Pixel-Shot/Shutterstock

    The high school prom, an American institution, has now been a mainstay in UK culture for over 25 years. A prom heralds the end of exams and the end of school altogether – and the beginning of a new chapter of life. It’s an opportunity for teens to dress up in glamorous dresses and smart tuxedos, and maybe arrive in style in the back of a limo.

    It’s an adolescent ritual that might be seen as a one-off, frivolous event. But a prom is much more important than that.

    The research for our forthcoming book chapter has shown that organising and attending proms build teenagers’ leadership skills, creativity, practical and life skills, as well as social and emotional skills. It also boosts positive emotions, such as enthusiasm and pride: something teenagers emerging from a gruelling summer of exams need.

    For teens involved in organising the event, there is scope to develop leadership skills. Making group decisions about where to hold the event and how to fund it requires bargaining with other organising committee members, as well as reasoning with fellow students and navigating school rules.

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    Trying to please everyone, including teachers, parents and host venues can be a steep learning curve. And dealing with disappointment when compromise is required is an important life skill.

    For teenagers with limited involvement in organising the event, attending prom can still help boost their learning. Having a party to look forward to can increase teens’ diligence and commitment to their schoolwork as they revise for their exams. Some schools capitalise on this by offering “passports” to prom. This scheme could involve students earning a free ticket to prom by attending a set number of revision classes.

    Emerging adult selves

    Prom is more than an opportunity for dressing up. Teenagers can also use this event to present a new or altered self, using a coming-of-age celebration as a platform to convey who they are or who they want to be. In some cases, this can involve young people making their own clothing and accessories. Such types of activity afford practical and life skills.

    And any prom look requires organisation: budgeting, researching what’s available. Finances, limited or otherwise, may constrain or restrict choice and result in problem solving or trade-offs. As the high school prom occurs within a particular time frame, time management and the (online) ordering of products can contribute – or not – to the success of a desired prom outfit.

    Friends are keen to share their prom experience with others, but attending the high school prom can be prohibitively expensive. Our research has shown that in these situations, teens can develop their social and emotional skills as well as effectively communicating and negotiating with school staff in more equal, adult ways than they may have before.

    Some teenagers create their own prom looks.
    MJTH/Shutterstock

    For example, some teens in our research secured their friend’s attendance at prom by buying her a dress for her birthday and asking their teacher if she could have her prom ticket for free.

    There remains opportunity to use the high school prom as means to develop a wider range of diverse skills. Equality, diversity and inclusion could be better embedded in prom activities to make them accessible to all, and teenagers can be part of this. To ensure widening participation, creating high school proms that reflect a range of cultures and identities could further enhance learning opportunities for those taking part.

    High school proms involve not only teenagers but also their families, friends and the wider community. Schools especially have an important role to play in this coming-of-age celebration, often going further than simply supporting its organisation. Teachers, for example, can help facilitate the supply of dresses and other resources to guarantee inclusion at this end of school celebration, ensuring that those who want to attend this event can do so.

    Our research shows that teenagers actively participate in a learning journey while preparing for this ritual and develop life skills that they can build on in work, further education and volunteering. A high school prom is more than just one night to remember.

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

    – ref. A school prom isn’t just a party – it can equip teens with life skills – https://theconversation.com/a-school-prom-isnt-just-a-party-it-can-equip-teens-with-life-skills-254532

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The deteriorating justice system in England and Wales is hindering economic growth

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Diane Coyle, Professor of Public Policy, University of Cambridge

    Tupungato/Shutterstock

    The Labour government has made economic growth its top priority, committing to planning reforms, business partnerships and millions of pounds of investment in science and technology.

    But economic growth is not just about innovation, investment and businesses. How the law functions is of fundamental importance for economic growth. The UK’s highly-regarded system of justice plays an important role in creating the environment of trust that underpins commerce and investment.

    The legal system should be regarded as part of the national infrastructure, just as much as rail or electricity networks, or health and education. But like them, it has suffered a sustained drop in funding. And with the civil courts now in a state of neglect, their reputation – and the trust placed in them – is at risk of crumbling.

    For both people and businesses, the forum for resolving disputes and securing rights against one another, or against the state, involves the legal system. County courts, tribunals and bodies such as Acas (the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) are just a few of the bodies involved in civil and administrative law, employment law, tax law and corporate law.

    The Ministry of Justice budget for England and Wales, which funds courts and tribunals, started to fall in real terms in the 2011-12 financial year. This has led to under-resourcing, underequipping, and understaffing of services. Justice is an “unprotected” government department, and continues to be a low priority compared to others such as health and education.

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    The chancellor’s spending review announced “up to £450 million additional investment per year for the courts system by 2028-29, compared to 2025-26”, which the government says will help tackle court backlogs. But years of decline have already deteriorated the system significantly.

    The key question to measuring the success of publicly-funded legal systems is, are they fast, fair and predictable? It would be difficult today to answer positively.

    There are large backlogs due to staff shortfalls compared to caseloads. When it comes to civil claims in the courts, aside from the very smallest claims, the average period from a claim to a hearing is now 77 weeks. This is an increase from 48 weeks pre-austerity. In either case, it’s plenty of time for a small business or startup to go under while trying to reclaim a debt.

    The position in the tribunals is not much better. According to the latest Ministry of Justice statistics, the backlog of open tribunal cases rose by 4% overall in the quarter to June 2024, to 668,000. There was a 17% jump in employment tribunal open cases, and a huge surge in appeals to the special educational needs and disability tribunal, taking the backlog up 61% to 9,200.

    Another example is the 79,000 appeals outstanding at the social security and child support tribunal, where eligibility for personal independence payments for disabled people is determined. This was up 12% on the year in mid-2024, causing a large number of mostly financially struggling people to wait too long for the money they are due. This has the effect of draining spending power in the local economies that need it most.

    So much for speed. What about whether people and businesses can rely on justice that is fair and predictable? Unfortunately, the tribunal statistics contain worrying signs that this is not reliably happening. For instance, with the social security and child support tribunal, three-fifths of hearings resulted in administrative decisions being overturned in favour of the claimant.

    Effect on the economy

    The economic impact of fraying civil justice is hard to discern. The academic and policy literature alike tend to focus on the high-profile areas of law that affect corporations, such as property and contract disputes.

    Yet there are assuredly costs across the system. Employers may be unable to recruit staff until a tribunal case is settled; meanwhile, employees can’t find a new job. And small businesses may be unable to get bills paid, even for large amounts well over what their cash flow can sustain.

    Long waiting periods for tribunals can harm small businesses.
    JessicaGirvan/Shutterstock

    For countries where slow and unpredictable justice has long been acknowledged as a problem, there is solid evidence of its detrimental effect on the economy. For example, Italian growth has been shown to be hampered by the uncertainty around civil law processes, increasing the risks involved in business decisions. Economists – including Nobel prizewinners Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson – have identified the legal system as essential underpinning for the economy.

    The justice system needs to be regarded as part of national infrastructure, the collection of physical and institutional systems and networks without which the economy cannot function. People do not want courts any more than they want bridges or cables for their own sake, but for all the indispensable activities they enable.

    The value of the courts is indirect but fundamental. If they crumble, the economic transactions and investment enabled by a predictable, rapid justice system are held back.

    Civil and administrative justice does not leap to mind when contemplating the demands of the growth mission: battery factories, graphene labs and building sites all provide ministers with better photo ops. But unless there is improvement in the timeliness of decisions by courts and tribunals, growth in the UK will be facing yet another powerful headwind.

    Diane Coyle has received funding from the Nuffield Foundation’s Public Right to Justice programme.

    – ref. The deteriorating justice system in England and Wales is hindering economic growth – https://theconversation.com/the-deteriorating-justice-system-in-england-and-wales-is-hindering-economic-growth-258362

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Wearable fitness trackers can make you seven times more likely to stick to your workouts – new research

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matthew Cocks, Reader, Exercise Physiology, Liverpool John Moores University

    Wearable fitness trackers might help you better stick to your fitness goals. PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/ Shutterstock

    The hardest part of any workout regime is sticking with it. Around half of those who start an exercise programme stop within six months.

    But our recent study found that using wearables (such as a smartwatch) not only makes people more likely to start working out, they’re also seven times more likely to still be active after six months compared to those who didn’t use a smartwatch.

    Our study focused specifically on adults who had recently been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Physical activity is a cornerstone of type 2 diabetes management, as it helps regulate blood sugar, supports cardiovascular health and improves quality of life.

    Yet around 90% of people with type 2 diabetes fall short of weekly physical activity recommendations. Common barriers include low motivation, uncertainty about what activity is safe and a lack of tailored support.

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    Our study tested a new approach using wearable technology and remote coaching to overcome these barriers. We found that people who followed a smartwatch-supported remote coaching programme were ten times more likely to start a workout regime than those who received remote coaching alone.

    The study involved 125 adults aged between 40 and 75 from the UK and Canada who had recently been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. All participants worked with an exercise specialist to co-design a personalised six-month physical activity plan. The focus was on gradually increasing both moderate-to-vigorous exercise (with a target of 150 minutes per week) and daily lifestyle activity. Support was delivered remotely through phone or video calls.

    Half of the participants were randomly assigned to use wearable technology to support their personalised activity plans. The smartwatch had movement and heart rate sensors, a mobile app to track activity and personalised text messages based on their recent progress. They could also message their coach, receive real-time feedback and adjust their activity plans accordingly.

    The results were striking. Compared to the control group, those who were given a smartwatch were ten times more likely to start working out regularly, seven times more likely to still be active after six months and three times more likely to remain active one year later – even after support had ended.

    At the end of the programme, over 50% of the smartwatch group were meeting recommended activity levels. In comparison, only 17% of the control group were.

    Feedback from participants showed that the flexibility of plans, personalised messages and smartwatch data were key motivators. While some faced early challenges with the technology, most adapted quickly.

    Half of those who used a smartwatch met recommended weekly activity levels.
    Melnikov Dmitriy/ Shutterstock

    These findings support growing evidence that wearable technology can help people become – and stay – more active. While our study focused on people with type 2 diabetes, similar benefits have also been observed in the general population.

    For example, one trial found that inactive adults (aged 45-75) who were given pedometers and walking advice increased their daily step count by around 660 steps after 12 weeks compared to a control group. Those given a pedometer were also more active three years later.

    Since then, wearable technology has advanced. Modern smartwatches now capture a wider range of metrics beyond steps – such as heart rate and activity intensity. A 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis, which analysed more than 160 randomised controlled trials, found that fitness trackers and similar devices were effective at increasing physical activity by an average of around 1,800 steps per day. Importantly, the most sustained improvements occurred when wearables were paired with personalised feedback or behavioural support.

    Together, these studies suggest that wearables can be powerful tools for long-term behaviour change and may help us better stick to our fitness goals.

    Wearable fitness trackers can extremely helpful – but only if you use them purposefully. Our research, along with findings from other studies, shows that wearables are most effective when they help you apply proven behaviour-change strategies.

    Here are some evidence-based tips to help you get the most out of your device:

    1. Set realistic, specific goals

    Plan exactly when and how you’ll move. Apps can help you set daily or weekly targets. Research shows that breaking down big, vague intentions – such as “get fit” – into small, concrete steps makes it easier to stay motivated and avoid feeling overwhelmed.

    2. Schedule activity and stick to it

    Use reminders or calendar prompts to build a regular routine. Consistency builds habits, and scheduled activity reduces the chance of skipping workouts due to forgetfulness or lack of planning.

    3. Track your progress

    Monitoring your activity helps you stay motivated and accountable. This feedback boosts motivation by showing that your efforts are making a difference, increasing your sense of control and accountability.

    4. Use small rewards

    Many devices include features such as badges or streaks, which reinforce progress. Celebrating small wins triggers feelings of accomplishment, which encourages you to keep going and helps build long-term habits.

    5. Share with others

    Whether it’s a friend or coach, sharing your progress can boost commitment. Knowing others are aware of your goals can increase motivation, provide encouragement, and help you overcome challenges.

    6. The tracker is a tool, not the solution

    It won’t change behaviour on its own. Its value lies in how it supports your goals and helps you build lasting habits.

    These techniques don’t just encourage short-term change – they build motivation, self-belief and routine, which are key for maintaining healthy habits over time.

    Our research shows that when wearable tech is used as part of a structured, supportive programme, it can make a real difference – especially for people managing health conditions such as type 2 diabetes. By combining wearable technology with personalised coaching and proven behaviour change techniques, you might just have a better chance of sticking with your physical activity goals.

    Matthew Cocks receives funding from the Medical Research Council.

    Katie Hesketh receives funding from Diabetes UK and NIHR.

    – ref. Wearable fitness trackers can make you seven times more likely to stick to your workouts – new research – https://theconversation.com/wearable-fitness-trackers-can-make-you-seven-times-more-likely-to-stick-to-your-workouts-new-research-256941

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Cash for sharks: the unintended consequences of paying fishermen to release sharks caught in their nets – podcast

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

    As Jaws marks its 50th anniversary this year, sharks continue to get a bad rap. Film after film portrays them as terrifying hunters, the bane of surfers and swimmers.

    But in Indonesia, sharks are the hunted. It’s the world’s largest shark-fishing nation, with more species of sharks found in Indonesian waters than in any other country. It’s estimated that one in three species of shark and their close relatives, including rays, are threatened with extinction.

    Indonesia was the ideal place for conservation scientist Hollie Booth and her colleagues at a local NGO that she founded called Kebersamaan Untuk Lautan (an Indonesian phrase meaning “togetherness for the ocean”), to test out a new idea: would paying fishermen to release any sharks and rays caught accidentally in their nets help to keep more alive?

    “ Nobody’s ever done a randomised control trial of an incentive-based marine conservation programme before,” Booth, a researcher at the University of Oxford, told The Conversation Weekly podcast, “ and it is the best way to get good evidence on what is and isn’t working.”

    Booth and her colleagues were delighted that the vessels taking part in the trial were sending back videos of fishermen releasing sharks and rays caught up in their nets.

    But when they had enough data to really analyse what had been happening, they realised that the incentive programme had some unintended consequences. “ It wasn’t all quite as positive and rosy as we’d originally hoped,” says Booth. “I felt like a fraud.”

    Listen to Hollie Booth and her colleague M. Said Ramdlan discuss their new study on The Conversation Weekly podcast.

    This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Gemma Ware with production assistance from Mend Mariwany and Katie Flood. Gemma Ware is the executive producer. Mixing and sound design by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl.

    Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available on Apple Podcasts.

    Hollie Booth is the founder and Chair of Kebersamaan Untuk Lautan. The program and this research was funded by Save Our Seas Foundation and the UK Darwin Initiative. M Said Ramdlan works as a project coordinator and secretary for Kebersamaan untuk Lautan and has received research funding from the Save Our Sea Foundation.

    – ref. Cash for sharks: the unintended consequences of paying fishermen to release sharks caught in their nets – podcast – https://theconversation.com/cash-for-sharks-the-unintended-consequences-of-paying-fishermen-to-release-sharks-caught-in-their-nets-podcast-258350

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –