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Category: Reports

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trump labels drug cartels as terrorist groups – what it means for Mexico and beyond

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Amalendu Misra, Professor of International Politics, Lancaster University

    Donald Trump returned to the US presidency on January 20 with a flurry of executive orders. This included the designation of criminal gangs and drug cartels operating south of the Mexico border as “foreign terrorist organisations” – a first for a US president. The state department will now decide which groups are added to the list.

    Trump’s disdain for the criminal fraternity in Latin America is not new. When announcing his first run for the presidency in 2015, Trump claimed the Mexican government was deliberately sending drugs, rapists and criminals to the US.

    To keep them out, he floated and later implemented a rigorous border protection programme. This led not only to mass deportations, but also the building of a concrete and metal wall along the US-Mexico border that spans hundreds of miles.

    In his new order, Trump claimed the “cartels have engaged in a campaign of violence and terror throughout the western hemisphere that has not only destabilised countries with significant importance for our national interests but also flooded the US with deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs”.

    How will this order, if it eventually becomes law, impact the people towards whom it is directed?

    Fears of military action

    A terrorist designation expands the government’s ability to collect military intelligence on the cartels and prosecute people deemed to be offering any “material support” to these groups. However, some fear the designation will also make it politically easier for the US government to order direct military intervention against the cartels without having to go through Congress.

    During Trump’s first term, for instance, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was designated as a foreign terrorist organisation. Its head, General Qasem Soleimani, was killed by a US drone strike less than a year later. The Trump Administration cited its foreign terrorist organisation order as justification for its actions.

    Trump has not yet ruled out similar military action in Mexico. On January 20, while signing executive orders in the Oval Office, Trump was asked whether he would send the special forces to confront Mexico’s cartels. “Could happen. Stranger things have happened”, he replied. In the past, Trump has also apparently suggested a missile attack on Mexican drug labs.

    The idea of unilateral US military action against the cartels has always faced stiff opposition from Mexico. And in December, as plans to designate the cartels as terrorist organisations gathered steam, Trump’s Mexican counterpart Claudia Sheinbaum said: “We collaborate, we coordinate, we work together, but we will never subordinate ourselves … Mexico is a free, sovereign, independent country and we do not accept interference.”

    However, US military operations in Mexico may not be so far-fetched. The US has previously staged armed interventions in Latin America when it has felt its national interests were under threat. The ousting of Panama’s leader, Manuel Noriega, in 1989 is a good example.

    That year, the then US president George H.W. Bush ordered 20,000 American troops to invade Panama in an operation to “protect the lives of American citizens”. Noriega, who was arrested after spending days hiding in Panama City’s Vatican embassy, was wanted by US authorities for racketeering and drug trafficking.

    The invasion resulted in the deaths of 514 Panamanian soldiers and civilians (though the unofficial count is closer to 1,000), and three American servicemen.

    Power of persuasion

    The terrorist designation could, on the other hand, simply be a tactic to pressure governments across Latin America into taking tougher action against the gangs. We have already seen the likes of El Salvador’s iron-fisted president, Nayib Bukele, do the heavy lifting for the US, so far as countering criminal gangs is concerned.

    With US assistance, El Salvador currently operates the infamous Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum security jail that holds high-ranking members of the country’s main criminal gangs. Its critics consider it a “black hole of human rights” and one of the harshest prisons in the world.

    Over the past few weeks, Trump has rebuked Sheinbaum for not doing enough to curtail the power of cartels operating in her country. He claimed earlier in January that Mexico was “essentially run by the cartels”.

    Trump’s proposed appointment of Colonel Ronald Johnson, a former Green Beret with extensive experience in US military intelligence, as ambassador to Mexico signals a potential shift in US strategy toward direct confrontation with the region’s governments to step in line.

    Trump can also buy compliance from governments in Latin America to do his bidding against the cartels, as was the case with Plan Colombia. Launched in 2000, the US-funded US$1 billion project (equivalent to roughly £1.5 billion today) provided foreign and military aid to Colombia in an attempt to fight the production and trafficking of illegal narcotics in the country.

    Plan Colombia was subject to considerable controversy. Its critics claim it led to gross human rights violations as well as the destruction of the environment and people’s livelihoods. But successive US administrations have maintained that Plan Colombia, which came to an end in 2015, was a success.

    The terrorist designation will usher in seismic changes in Latin America. Should Sheinbaum embrace Trump’s initiative, in part or in its entirety, then it is likely to lead to a civil war-like situation in Mexico, given the firepower and deep pockets the cartels have.

    In 2007, under the so-called Mérida Initative, the US donated at least US$1.5 billion to help the then Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, launch his “war on drugs”. The outcome of that war was disastrous, with tens of thousands of lives lost and its effects still being felt today.

    Amalendu Misra is a recipient of British Academy and Nuffield Foundation Grants.

    – ref. Trump labels drug cartels as terrorist groups – what it means for Mexico and beyond – https://theconversation.com/trump-labels-drug-cartels-as-terrorist-groups-what-it-means-for-mexico-and-beyond-248035

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: UK government’s AI plan gives a glimpse of how it plans to regulate the technology

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paul Khullar, Analyst, Science and Technology, RAND Europe

    Anggalih Prasetya / Shutterstock

    The UK government recently published its plan for using AI to boost growth and deliver services more efficiently. It also suggests a fundamental shift in how the UK aims to position itself as a global leader in AI innovation.

    The AI Opportunities Action Plan gives further evidence on how the government intends to regulate cutting-edge AI.

    The timing of this plan, ahead of the Paris AI Action Summit in February, positions the UK to play a significant role in shaping global discussions on AI governance. Its plans to give more powers to the AI Safety Institute (AISI), a directorate of the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation, could enhance the UK’s influence in international cooperation on AI safety and governance through leading the way on legislation and enforcement.

    The previous Conservative government’s approach, outlined in its Pro Innovation Approach to AI Regulation white paper, relied heavily on existing regulators and non-binding principles.

    But Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Peter Kyle has said there will be a significant shift in the UK’s regulatory approach, moving from voluntary cooperation to mandatory oversight of the most advanced AI systems. After looking at these systems, regulators could ask the tech companies to make changes.

    The government is proposing the Frontier AI Bill, which would make the AISI into a statutory body with the ability to have legal powers rather than just advise companies. The bill could also grant the AISI unprecedented powers to tell developers to share their models for testing before market release, and offer feedback.

    How the EU approaches AI

    This new regulatory shift differs from the European Union’s approach in two important ways. First, the EU has opted for a voluntary code of practice for general-purpose AI systems.

    The EU AI Act takes a comprehensive approach, regulating AI applications across various risk levels and sectors, from high-risk applications in healthcare and education to consumer-facing AI systems. In contrast, the UK’s proposed bill appears more narrowly focused on cutting-edge AI systems before they’re released. Beyond governance, the UK plan also addresses the use of AI in critical infrastructure such as the road networks.

    The government plans to go ahead with 48 out of 50 of the report’s recommendations to start with. This demonstrates a strong commitment to developing the necessary foundations for AI advancement. There are also “partial” agreements to consider visa plans for workers who are highly skilled in AI and the creation of a copyright cleared dataset for training, or improving, AI systems.

    These measures aim to address crucial gaps in the UK’s AI ecosystem. The focus on infrastructure and developing AI skills suggests maintaining competitiveness in AI requires more than just a favourable regulatory environment, it needs robust capital investments.

    Broader risks

    However, several challenges remain. The focus on advanced AI systems, while important, has drawn criticism for potentially overlooking broader AI-related risks. There are legitimate concerns about whether this approach adequately addresses the full spectrum of challenges posed by widespread AI adoption across different sectors and cases, such as developers using copyrighted material to improve their AI systems.

    The success of this new approach will largely depend on several factors. The ability to introduce effective pre-market testing procedures for cutting edge AI systems without creating excessive barriers to innovation. And also it depends on the capacity of regulators to balance oversight and innovation.

    Success will also hinge on the effectiveness of these initiatives in strengthening the UK’s competitive position. .

    The UK’s approach represents a bold experiment in AI governance – one that charts a distinct path from the EU.

    This plan marks a decisive moment in UK AI policy. The success or failure of this targeted approach could have significant implications for how other nations balance comprehensive AI oversight with focused regulation of the most capable systems.

    Paul Khullar has worked on projects funded by DSIT.

    Sana Zakaria has received funding from DSIT and UKRI for other areas of work in her portfolio.

    – ref. UK government’s AI plan gives a glimpse of how it plans to regulate the technology – https://theconversation.com/uk-governments-ai-plan-gives-a-glimpse-of-how-it-plans-to-regulate-the-technology-248140

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The Holocaust: how ‘rescue archaeology’ is tackling the impending loss of surviving witnesses

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tony Kushner, James Parkes Professor of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, University of Southampton

    This year is the 80th anniversary of the Soviet army’s liberation of Auschwitz, the huge and complex concentration and death camp in which one million Jews were murdered.

    The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is For a Better Future, a message of hope that is much needed in this extremely troubling world, where the far right is gaining power inside and outside of Europe.

    An issue which has troubled those, like myself, who are involved with Holocaust education and memorialisation for some time is what to do when the survivor generation passes on.

    This is no longer a theoretical concern. Every year, inevitably and at an accelerating rate, the numbers of Holocaust survivors diminishes. In the past few years in the UK alone, prominent survivors have been lost. Most recently Lily Ebert, aged 100, who late in life became famous through relating her harrowing story through the very modern media of TikTok.

    Speaking about her death, King Charles said: “Alongside other Holocaust survivors she became an integral part of the fabric of our nation; her extraordinary resilience and courage an example to us all, which will never be forgotten.”

    Indeed, many Holocaust survivors have been prominent in recent years, recounting their testimony to schools and the media. Holocaust Memorial Day, inaugurated at the start of the new millennium, has provided a special place for survivors at both a national and local level.

    This year at the University of Southampton, for example, we are privileged to have Janine Webber, a survivor of the Lvov ghetto in German-occupied Poland, speaking. She will relay to a diverse audience of all ages and backgrounds her life before, during and after the Holocaust.

    Through the Parkes Institute for the study of Jewish/non-Jewish relations, we have organised this city-wide event for over two decades. We know, however, that this may be one of the last times we will be privileged to have the survivors at the heart of our programme. In 2035 it will be the 90th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and by then few survivors, if any, will still be alive.



    Read more:
    Charlotte Delbo and the women of Convoy 31000: how researching their stories led me to a forgotten subcamp and Nazi lies in the Auschwitz archive

    There is a certain irony in the understandable angst about the devastating prospect of a world without Holocaust survivors (as well as their liberators, and those who helped Jewish people during their darkest hour).

    For many years after 1945, Holocaust survivors were not given the space to talk about their experiences – a silence that often extended to their children and wider families. It was only talking in their own small circles that these survivors felt that their experiences would be understood.

    Now the situation is very different. Survivors are honoured for their work in educating new generations born well after the second world war. King Charles’s heartfelt tribute to Ebert reflects a wider tendency. Many have been given honours, including a knighthood to the late survivor leader, Ben Helfgott, who died in 2023. Helfgott was one of over 700 child survivors who were flown to the UK in 1945 to recuperate and ended up making a huge contribution to the country.

    The Pride of Britain Awards honoured Sir Ben Helfgott in 2020.

    In the 1950s and 60s, when the first histories of the Holocaust were produced, the focus was on the perpetrators and the victims were voiceless and seen as “uneducated men” who had no place in accounts of the recent past. All of this changed in the late 20th century when the Holocaust grew in public awareness and interest.

    Belatedly, the survivors were rescued from obscurity and the human element of the tragedy came to the fore. Local and then international testimony projects emerged, the largest being the ongoing Visual History Archive which has interviewed close to 60,000 survivors, including of more recent genocides such as that in Rwanda.

    ‘Rescue archaeology’

    I have estimated that there may be up to 100,000 testimonies of Holocaust survivors in video, oral history and written format – perhaps the most related to any event in history. Most recently these interviews have been developed as interactive holograms where students and others can ask questions of the survivors such as the University of Southern California’s Dimensions project.

    These projects are a form of “rescue archaeology”, saving the testimony of survivors before it is too late. They are, especially in the hologram form, a way of directly confronting the dilemma of how to educate and commemorate without the survivors actually being present.

    The University of Southern California’s Dimensions in Testimony project.

    In 2000, the Imperial War Museum in London opened its first Holocaust galleries. Before then the Holocaust had rarely been confronted by this landmark museum. In 2019 a new permanent Holocaust exhibition was also opened. In both exhibitions, survivor testimony was a prominent and engaging feature. Video testimony especially can capture the attention of all age groups and backgrounds.

    But even with this remarkable resource of recorded Holocaust testimony, something huge and irreplaceable will be lost when we no longer have the survivors to tell their stories.

    Even when survivors are unfocused in their presentation, or they find it challenging to communicate what is ultimately indescribable, there has been a bond between them and their audience. In some ways their presence has made it too easy for those involved in education and commemoration to deal with the Holocaust.

    We must therefore find fresh ways of doing justice to their experiences, using their recorded experiences (including those who were killed but managed to write their testimony in the war itself through diaries) and finding creative ways of engaging a new generation to whom this is now distant history.

    It would be naive, however, to think that the post-survivor world will be an easy one to navigate. We have been lucky that the survivors have had the courage and energy to share their experiences and must regret that it took us so long to listen.

    Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

    Tony Kushner 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 Holocaust: how ‘rescue archaeology’ is tackling the impending loss of surviving witnesses – https://theconversation.com/the-holocaust-how-rescue-archaeology-is-tackling-the-impending-loss-of-surviving-witnesses-248202

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The pope’s memoir, Oscar nominees and a mafia exhibition – what to read, see and do this week

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna Walker, Senior Arts + Culture Editor

    I finally got round to watching Conclave last week. Two hours of Ralph Fiennes and Isabella Rossellini in Oscar-nominated performances alongside Lucian Msamati and a stray papal turtle. The scandals. The tension. The outfits (also nominated). A sublime experience.

    On the way home from the cinema, I became lost in background reading. “How much do we know about real conclaves controversies?” I jabbed into Google. “How close was the film’s pope to the current pontiff, Francis?” As I soon realised, the real Vatican is frequently stranger than fiction. Take Wake Up!, for example, Pope Francis’s progressive rock album (no, really) which was released in 2015.

    More surprises are in store in his autobiography, Hope, which was published this week. It’s the first time a pope has written a memoir. As explained by our reviewer, the appropriately named historian of the Catholic church Professor Liam Temple, we’ve never known this much about the pontiff before. We learn that young Francis was an avid football and basketball fan, for example. But also, that he’s now a deeply remorseful man, often impatient and periodically anti-social.



    Read more:
    Pope Francis autobiography: we’ve never known so much about the pontiff before

    The book had us wondering. Would you rather learn about historic figures through their own words, or the art of others? Answer our poll to let us know and reply to this email with your favourite memoir of all time. My colleague Naomi’s is Just Kids by Patti Smith.

    A brutal backlash

    The Brutalist swept the Oscars shortlist yesterday with ten nominations including best picture, director and actor in a leading role. We asked a real architect to review the film.



    Read more:
    The Brutalist: an architect’s take on a film about one man’s journey to realise his visionary building

    The trailer for The Brutalist.

    Adrian Brody plays Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth. He’s arrived in Philadelphia after surviving the Holocaust and is taken under the patronage of wealthy industrialist, Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce). It’s a monumental work about the foundations, both literal and ideological, of post-war America. Three-and-a-half hours long (with a welcome intermission) it is staggering in its scale and ambition – a film that really must be seen in the cinema.

    For fans, the Academy’s support is a relief. For the past week, nominations were in doubt due to a growing backlash around the film’s use of AI to enhance the authenticity of the actors’ Hungarian accents. The language’s hard-to-imitate vowel sounds proved tricky even for Brody, whose mother was a Hungarian refugee. For Dr Dominic Lees, who has been researching the use of AI in filmmaking for six years, this creative decision is hardly shocking, especially in comparison to other recent uses of the technology – we’re looking at you, Here.



    Read more:
    AI voice technology used in The Brutalist is nothing new – the backlash is about transparency

    The trailer for Kyoto.

    With a climate-change denier back in the White House, the London opening of Kyoto at the West End’s Soho Place could hardly be timelier. The Royal Shakespeare Company production dramatises the intense negotiations of the world’s first climate change treaty. In doing so, it “turns diplomacy into a contact sport”, eliciting gales of laughter from the audience and raising plentiful questions to ponder on the way home.

    Kyoto is playing at London’s Soho Place theatre until May 3.

    Through the lens

    We caused some controversy last week with our rundown of six covers of Bob Dylan songs that were better than the originals. “What no Guns N’ Roses, Knocking on Heaven’s Door?” asked one reader. “I’ll give you Hendrix, but all the others are ersatz compared to Bob’s versions,” proclaimed another.

    The trailer for A Complete Unknown.

    Hopefully one thing Dylan fans can agree on is the strength of Timothee Chalamet’s Oscar-nominated performance in the new biopic, A Complete Unknown. To our reviewer’s mind, he brings charm, vulnerability and authenticity to what will surely become one of the stand-out roles of his career.



    Read more:
    A Complete Unknown: Chalamet’s brilliant performance captures the elusive essence of a young Dylan

    You might expect an exhibition of mafia photos to depict conflict, violence, men in suits and victims in pieces. But a new show of Sicilian photographer Letizia Battaglia at London’s Photographers’ Gallery instead presents images of lovers, flowers and children in the street.

    Born in 1935, Battaglia was one of the first women reporters in Italy. This is the first major UK exhibition of her work since her death in 2022. Through her lens, she frequently captured the ambiguous reality of the mafia in Sicily. The revolution of her work was the way it stripped the mafia of its glamour, by showing not only its violence, the murders, the desperation, but also the banality and the normalisation of their crimes.

    Letizia Battaglia: Life, Love and Death in Sicily is on at The Photographers’ Gallery, London, until February 23.

    – ref. The pope’s memoir, Oscar nominees and a mafia exhibition – what to read, see and do this week – https://theconversation.com/the-popes-memoir-oscar-nominees-and-a-mafia-exhibition-what-to-read-see-and-do-this-week-248184

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The Holocaust poets who can help us to understand genocides past and present

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jean Boase-Beier, Emeritus Professor, School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, University of East Anglia

    On Holocaust Memorial Day we remember the victims of the Nazi Holocaust in 1940s Europe and all those affected by later genocides.

    I believe that reading poetry is an important way to commemorate these victims because it is such a personal form.

    The events of the Holocaust are familiar to many people as dates and numbers. The first concentration camp opened in Dachau in 1933. In 1942 the infamous meeting at the Wannsee took place in Berlin to decide upon the “final solution” to the perceived problem of Jewish people in Germany and beyond.

    Some 6 million Jewish people were murdered, some 200,000 disabled and ill people were killed in Germany alone and 400,000 people were forcibly sterilised because they possessed traits the Nazis deemed undesirable.

    Such statistics are well documented by Holocaust historians. But behind these numbers, overwhelming in their sheer vastness, are individuals, those whose voices we hear especially clearly in poems.

    Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

    People wrote poetry as realisation grew of their likely fate even before the murderous events that later came to be called the Holocaust. Many wrote poetry about the Holocaust later, because they survived and wanted the world to hear their stories, or because they lost family members and wanted to remember them.

    Among those who wrote after the Holocaust was German poet Volker von Törne, who was wracked with vicarious guilt for his father’s Nazi past.

    But it is the poems written as the events of the Holocaust were unfolding that strike a particular chord. These are poems by prisoners facing execution, by Jewish members of society forced to live in overcrowded ghettos, by those in camps and those about to be transported to camps. Often such poems were written on odd scraps of paper, carefully hidden or buried in the ground, or smuggled out of prison, ghetto or camp.

    These writers, desperate to tell their stories, chose poetry because of its immediacy, its conciseness, its emotional impact and its ability to say what cannot easily be said in prose.

    Almost none of them wrote in English, so English speakers read them via translators who can speak their words for them, fashioning new versions that aim to capture the style of the originals with all its resonances and as much of their immediacy and impact as possible.

    Poets of the Holocaust

    Some Holocaust poets became famous, and their work has been translated many times. One of the best known, Paul Celan, was a Romanian-German poet. His parents died in the Holocaust. He died by suicide in 1970, having written some of the most memorable poems about the Holocaust, including Death-Fugue (1948), which described the repetitive and deadly rhythm of camp life and death.

    German poet Nelly Sachs, who escaped at the last minute to Sweden, won the Nobel prize in 1966. Her work is readily available in a number of excellent recent translations.

    Other famous poets of the Holocaust include Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever, Italian essayist Primo Levi and Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti.

    But the stories told by these famous poets, important though they are, can only give a partial picture. Often the fine details of everyday experience, the fears and hopes of individual women, men and children, have a particular resonance in the work of lesser-known poets.

    Romanian-German poet Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger was only 17 when she wrote her poetry of fearful anticipation. She was transported to a concentration camp where she died a year later.

    Lithuanian poet Matilda Olkinaitė was murdered at 19. How would their poetry have developed had they lived? We will never know. But what they have left us, recreated through their translators, is a highly sensitive view of life in the chaos of approaching catastrophe.

    Voices in anthologies

    For readers who want a fuller picture of Holocaust poetry, anthologies are invaluable. They usually have an introduction, or notes, providing the context that is so crucial to understanding the poems.

    Two older anthologies, Holocaust Poetry by Hilda Schiff (1995) and Beyond Lament by Marguerite Striar (1998) are still very useful.

    More recently, I co-edited the anthology Poetry of the Holocaust (2019), which arose from a research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Our aim was to collect less well-known Holocaust poetry, and, with the help of 35 translators from languages as varied as Yiddish, Norwegian, Japanese and Hungarian, to present the poems in original and translation, with a contextual note for each.

    We tried to include a broader range of poems than earlier anthologies have tended to do. The anonymous Song of the Roma, for example, laments the fate of the more than 200,000 Gypsy, Roma and Traveller victims of the Nazis.

    Many poems in the anthology document very specific events, such as French writer Andrė Sarcq’s To the Twice-Murdered Men, which depicts the dreadful detail of his lover’s death at the hands of the Nazis, who treated gay men with unfathomable barbarity.

    Polish Resistance member Irena Bobowska suffered the cruel removal of the wheelchair upon which she depended. She imagined the world she has lost in So I Learn Life’s Greatest Art.

    German poet Alfred Schmidt-Sas wrote with extreme difficulty, as his hands were bound. He reflected on his imminent beheading in Strange Lightness of Life. And in My God, French poet Catherine Roux told of the horrifying and mundane details of her arrival in a concentration camp: “I’ve no hair / I’ve no hanky.”

    It is only by listening to these individual voices that we can really begin to understand what the many millions of Holocaust victims went through, and what victims of genocides all over the world have suffered and are suffering at this moment. Poetry helps us to do this.

    Jean Boase-Beier acts as Translations Editor for Arc Publications. She has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for research relevant to this article.

    – ref. The Holocaust poets who can help us to understand genocides past and present – https://theconversation.com/the-holocaust-poets-who-can-help-us-to-understand-genocides-past-and-present-248205

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trump inherits the Guantánamo prison, complete with 4 ‘forever prisoners’

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Lisa Hajjar, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara

    A control tower overlooks the Camp VI detention facility, at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. AP Photo/Alex Brandon

    President Joe Biden’s record of handling the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is decidedly mixed. He succeeded in reducing the detainee population he inherited by more than half, but he compounded problems in the military commissions that the Bush administration had invented in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to try people captured in the “war on terror.” Now all the problems at Guantánamo are again President Donald Trump’s.

    When Biden took office in 2021, there were 40 prisoners. Today there are 15, the lowest number since the first 20 Muslim men and boys captured in Afghanistan were airlifted to the base on Jan. 11, 2002.

    Biden left Trump four people the U.S. will not release but also cannot put on trial – the so-called “forever prisoners.” He also left intact the troubled military commissions system, with three pending criminal cases against a total of six detainees.

    In December 2021, former chief military defense attorney Brig. Gen. John Baker testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee: “It is too late in the process for the current military commissions to do justice for anyone. The best that can be hoped for at this point … is to bring this sordid chapter of American history to an end.” Baker made clear that the only viable option is to resolve the cases with plea bargains for the defendants.

    Marine Brig. Gen. John Baker tells U.S. senators that there is no opportunity for justice to be done at Guantánamo.

    A chance to make progress

    There are three cases that have not yet gone to trial – the 9/11 case with four defendants facing charges for their connections with the attacks, the USS Cole bombing in October 2000 with one defendant and the Bali bombing in October 2002 with one defendant.

    The 9/11 and USS Cole cases have been stuck in the pretrial phase since Biden was Barack Obama’s vice president. In the summer of 2024, a breakthrough in the 9/11 case appeared imminent: Prosecutors and defense lawyers for three of the four defendants reportedly reached plea-bargain agreements. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad – the alleged “mastermind” of the attacks – Walid bin Attash and Mustafa Hawsawi agreed to plead guilty and accept life sentences in exchange for the government taking the death penalty off the table. There was no deal for the fourth 9/11 defendant, Ammar al-Baluchi.

    The deals were approved on July 31 by the top military officer overseeing the Guantánamo commissions, retired Brig. Gen. Susan Escallier. But two days later, Biden’s defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, stepped into the process and overrode Escallier – whom he had appointed. Austin announced that the plea deals were revoked.

    The judge, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall, decided to schedule plea hearings for early January. But after some legal back-and-forth that forced a stay, he had to cancel them. Biden left the case against three 9/11 defendants in limbo.

    The basement of this government building in Bucharest, Romania, held a secret CIA prison, one of many across the world.
    AP Photo

    Witness to the transition

    In mid-January 2025, I made my sixteenth reporting trip to Guantánamo. I came for closing arguments on a motion in the 9/11 case that seeks to suppress statements that Ammar al-Baluchi made to the FBI in January 2007. That was four months after he and 13 others were transferred to Guantánamo from CIA black sites where they were held for years. The litigation to suppress those statements started in 2019.

    In Chapter 10 of my book, “The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight against Torture,” I detail how the litigation on this suppression motion made public previously unknown details and under-acknowledged horrors of the CIA’s rendition, detention and interrogation program.

    These closing arguments were the culmination of six years of litigation on the key question in the 9/11 case: Does torture matter in the pursuit of justice in the military commissions?

    A drawing by Guantánamo detainee Abu Zubaydah depicts a person being waterboarded.
    Copyright Abu Zubaydah 2019. Licensed by Professor Mark Denbeaux, Seton Hall Law School

    Can Guantánamo be closed?

    Of the 780 people ever detained at Guantánamo, 540 were released during the presidency of George W. Bush, who established the detention facility. Obama, who signed an executive order on his second day in office pledging to close Guantánamo within a year, released 200.

    In his first term, Trump pledged to keep the facility open. The only man to leave Guantánamo during Trump’s first term was Ahmed al-Darbi, who was repatriated to Saudi Arabia in 2018 to serve out the remainder of his sentence from a 2014 plea bargain agreement.

    When Biden took office, he said that he supported shutting down the military prison at Guantánamo. In the early years of his presidency, there was a slow stream of transfers, mostly people who had been cleared for release long ago and were freed.

    In Biden’s last months, the pace of transfers quickened. In December 2024, a Kenyan detainee, two Malaysian members of al-Qaida who had pled guilty the previous January, and a Tunisian man who had been in Guantánamo since the day the facility was opened were all repatriated to their countries of origin and freed. In January 2024, 11 Yemenis were transported from the prison to Oman to be resettled.

    15 men left behind

    The Biden administration had also planned to repatriate a severely disabled Iraqi detainee, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, to serve out his plea-bargained sentence in a Baghdad prison. But a federal judge blocked that transfer, ruling that al-Iraqi would not get necessary medical treatment in Iraq and might be subject to abuse there.

    Al-Iraqi is one of the 15 that Biden left behind. Three of them – a Libyan, a Somali and a stateless Rohingya – have long been cleared for release. Their continuing detention without charges highlights a key element of the Guantánamo problem: No one can be released unless the U.S. government finds another country willing to accept them.

    One of the remaining detainees, Ali Bahlul, is serving a life sentence for conspiracy to commit war crimes. Six others, including the four 9/11 defendants, are awaiting their trials.

    There are also four detainees whom the government refuses to transfer but cannot put on trial for lack of evidence.

    The U.S. goverment says it cannot release Abu Zubaydah from Guantánamo because he would disclose classified interrogation techniques critics have labeled torture.
    U.S. Central Command via AP

    These so-called “forever prisoners” include Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi-born man of Palestinian descent who was taken into CIA custody in 2002 and was used as the guinea pig for the CIA torture program. The government long ago conceded that Abu Zubaydah was not a top leader of al-Qaida – in fact he was not even a member. But he will not be released because he knows how he was treated by the CIA, and that treatment remains highly classified.

    The newest forever prisoner is one of the original 9/11 defendants, Ramzi bin al-Shibh; in September 2023, he was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial. Now he is uncharged, unreleased and untreated for his psychological maladies that were caused by the torture he endured in CIA black sites.

    The ‘War on Terror’ is not over

    When Biden pulled U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in August 2021, he claimed to have ended America’s longest war – and repeated this claim in a January 2025 speech. But the Guantánamo prison remains open, and as long as it is, the “war on terror,” which first put U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2001, is not over.

    How Trump will deal with Guantánamo is an open question. If he focuses on the death penalty, he will press ahead with military commission trials like his predecessors, hoping for unanimous guilty verdicts and death sentences. If he prioritizes cutting wasteful government spending, he will release additional detainees and allow the three plea bargain agreements to go into effect.

    No one I spoke to during my last trip was willing to predict what a second Trump term might bode for Guantánamo – except that it won’t be closed.

    Lisa Hajjar 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. Trump inherits the Guantánamo prison, complete with 4 ‘forever prisoners’ – https://theconversation.com/trump-inherits-the-guantanamo-prison-complete-with-4-forever-prisoners-247058

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: To truly understand the health of a lake, you must look well beyond its shoreline

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Beatrix Beisner, Professor, Aquatic ecology, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

    On the surface, most of Canada’s lakes and rivers look pristine. But below the surface, many are facing essential challenges to their health. Why? To better understand the health of Canadian lakes and rivers, we must look beyond the site itself to the whole watershed.

    Canada’s freshwater streams, rivers and lakes are inherently connected ecosystems. Driven by precipitation and gravity, the flow of water changes across seasons and location. Connected waterflows form watersheds. A watershed is the combined area drained by a body of water, including groundwater aquifers.

    All human activity within a watershed that affects the quality of flowing water — including rain, snow, irrigation or groundwater — will have an impact upon all the water bodies in the system. Because of this, it is essential to monitor and regulate human activities in a lake’s watershed if its health and biodiversity are to be preserved.

    Disturbances can influence aquatic ecosystems even if they occur far away from the water’s edge, especially where large quantities of water flow rapidly. Simply put, what happens upstream, and on land, is as important to what is happening in the lake itself. What’s more, poor freshwater health can affect the health of the land within the watershed as well.

    Our lakes: their secrets and challenges, is a series produced by La Conversation/The Conversation.

    This article is part of our series Our lakes: their secrets and challenges. The Conversation and La Conversation invite you to take a fascinating dip in our lakes. With magnifying glasses, microscopes and diving goggles, our scientists scrutinize the biodiversity of our lakes and the processes that unfold in them, and tell us about the challenges they face. Don’t miss our articles on these incredibly rich bodies of water!

    In my research, I work to better understand lake, stream and river ecosystem functioning, biodiversity and health. This is of increasing importance as aquatic environments are affected by climate change. What is clear, is that to fully understand what is going on in a lake ecosystem, you need to look beyond its shoreline.

    Truly understanding how water flows within a watershed can empower us to act more responsibly and design more just and effective policies.

    Inconsistent boundaries

    Watershed boundaries, which are defined by landscape topography, often do not overlap nicely with political boundaries — with the Nile Basin being perhaps the most obvious example.

    Moreover, humans have long been manipulating water flows through dams and irrigation. Where we place our cities, agriculture, mines and forestry also often overlaps with more than one watershed or can overwhelm another.

    Recent work, as part of the Lake Pulse Network, has sampled over 650 lakes across Canada. This research demonstrated that only a four per cent to 12 per cent urbanization level within a watershed is enough to harm biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.

    Urbanization is one of the most impactful ways in which humans affect watersheds. The reasons for this are likely down to hard infrastructure blocking the flow of water along with forestry and agriculture land conversions changing how water flows.

    The inescapable truth is that the health and function of a specific aquatic ecosystem is shaped by what happens on the land within that watershed as a whole. These system-wide influences are known as as “allochthonous” — as opposed to “autochthonous” (internal) interactions solely within a single waterbody.

    External influences (runoff) from the land can overwhelm a water body’s internal processes and, in some case, can even have negative impacts upon both fish health and the wider local food web.

    Climate change is also playing an increasingly outsized role in the lives of Canadian lakes. The most noticeable impacts of a warming world in Canada are forest fires of increasing severity and duration and ever more intense storms.

    These extreme events will cause more runoff into our lakes, potentially overwhelming them through nutrient overloading, salinization and other chemical shifts in the water quality.



    Read more:
    Sediment runoff from the land is killing NZ’s seas – it’s time to take action

    Managing water flows

    The connectivity between waterbodies within a watershed is also critical to consider in biodiversity conservation.

    First, these aquatic connections serve as migratory corridors for mammals and birds, but also aquatic species of fish and invertebrates like insects and crayfish. With climate change and warming waters across Canada, aquatic organisms will increasingly need such corridors within watersheds to move northwards to cooler waters.

    Just as migratory pathways enable the dispersal of native species, they can also aid the spread of invasive species. Invasive species management must also take a watershed perspective, and not focus on a single invaded lake or river.

    If an exotic species has arrived in your watershed then you are likely to soon see that species in a lake or river near you.

    Contaminants — such as pesticides, other toxins, microplastics and nutrients — also require a watershed-wide approach to effectively manage. Like an invasive species, contaminants can flow downstream across a watershed. Though, the presence of healthy wetlands within a watershed can help filter these out and improve water quality.

    Dams, bridges and culverts provide a clear physical barrier to connectivity within a watershed. Though not without utility, these human constructs greatly affect the watershed ecosystem.

    For example, many fish species will not pass through a culvert or under a low bridge. These human structures can greatly disrupt fish population dynamics, movement pathways and abilities to adapt to changing conditions.

    Unfortunately, the challenges facing fish populations can have significant impacts for biodiversity health, and ecosystem services, across the watershed.

    Endlessly interconnected

    The interconnected nature of watershed ecosystems necessitates collaborative forms of governance.

    Integrated watershed management is an approach to water governance that involves many different agencies, communities and levels of government. Several provinces use this approach, including the most populated provinces of Ontario and Québec. This model must become the norm across Canada.



    Read more:
    How the invasive spiny water flea spread across Canada, and what we can do about it

    More fundamentally, biodiversity protection in a watershed must be handled in an integrated manner. Ideally this would be done using natural watershed boundaries, and not political ones, especially with respect to managing issues related to connectivity. However, this may not always be possible, in which case water governance systems must transcend political boundaries as needed.

    Enabling watershed governance across political boundaries is an area where the new federal Canada Water Agency could play a leading role.

    Regardless of specific arrangement, it is imperative that all who care about the health of Canada’s freshwater consider its lakes and rivers within their larger watersheds. Only by focusing on watershed health can we preserve Canada’s freshwater.

    Beatrix Beisner currently receives research funding from NSERC, FRQNT, Hydro-Québec and the Québec Ministry of Environment (MELCCFP) . She is Co-director of the Interuniversity Research Group in Limnology / Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en limnologie (GRIL).

    – ref. To truly understand the health of a lake, you must look well beyond its shoreline – https://theconversation.com/to-truly-understand-the-health-of-a-lake-you-must-look-well-beyond-its-shoreline-228352

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: ‘Childless cat ladies’ have long contributed to the welfare of American children − and the nation

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Anya Jabour, Regents Professor of History, University of Montana

    Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams, who never had children of her own, concentrated much of her activism on enriching the lives of American youth. Chicago History Museum/Getty Images

    Parenting, single people and the U.S. birth rate have assumed a greater place in the 2024 presidential campaign than any race in recent memory.

    Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance was widely rebuked for criticisms he lodged in 2021 against “childless cat ladies,” saying they have no “physical commitment” to the country’s future.

    In August 2024, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, also a Republican, piled on, saying Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has no children to “keep her humble,” even though she’s stepmother to two children who call her “Mamala.”

    As a historian of women, families and children in the U.S., I see these biological definitions of motherhood as too narrowly conceived. The past can serve as a reminder that other forms of mothering are important, too.

    My research offers a broader perspective on women’s experiences of mothering and a deeper understanding of how women without biological children contribute to the nation and its future.

    ‘Mothers of all children’

    One such woman was Katharine Bement Davis, the subject of my current research.

    Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1860, Davis was a member of a generation of “new women” who pursued higher education, built professional careers and fought for political rights.

    Other women of this generation included Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams, public health nurse Lillian Wald, prison reformer Miriam Van Waters, child welfare advocate Julia Lathrop, social work pioneer Sophonisba Breckinridge and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt – to name just a few.

    Of this group, only Roosevelt had children of her own. But all of them saw themselves as “mothers of all children,” as one historian has described juvenile justice advocates. Accepting responsibility for the nation’s welfare, they used their identity as public mothers to shape American politics.

    In a 1927 letter to her college classmates, Davis whimsically reflected on her life choices:

    “First, I am still an old maid; therefore, I cannot write interesting things about my husband and children, (and) how I have treated him and how I have raised them. First and last, however, I have had a good deal to do in the way of looking after other people’s husbands and children.”

    Indeed, Davis’ life illustrated the many meanings of motherhood.

    Like many ostensibly childless women, Davis was a doting aunt. With her unmarried sisters, Helen and Charlotte, she helped care for her only niece, Frances, whose mother died when she was just a toddler. In the mid-1920s, Frances lived with all three aunts while attending school in New York City.

    Black feminist scholars call this sort of arrangement, long practiced in African American communities, “othermothering.”

    Davis and other white women of her generation also engaged in the practice of caring for children, whether through formal adoption or informal caregiving. For instance, Breckinridge helped raise her nieces and nephews, while Van Waters legally adopted a daughter.

    ‘Maternalism the coming great force in government’

    Throughout her life, Davis used what she called “the methods of motherhood” to promote public welfare.

    After teaching school in western New York , establishing a playground in a working-class neighborhood in Philadelphia and supervising young offenders in upstate New York, Davis became New York City’s first female commissioner of correction in 1914.

    Only months into her term, male inmates at Blackwell’s Island Penitentiary staged a major riot. Davis quelled the rebellion and established her own authority by addressing the refractory prisoners like wayward children. “You fellows must behave,” she pronounced. “I’ll have it no other way.”

    Social reformer Katharine Bement Davis, right, wrote that she ‘had a good deal to do in the way of looking after other people’s husbands and children.’
    Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images

    After successfully using “motherly methods” to regain control of “the bad boys of Blackwell’s Island,” Davis proclaimed that “maternalism” was “the coming great force in government.”

    Echoing her colleagues in the suffrage movement, Davis used the language of maternalism to promote women’s voting rights. Like other feminist pacifists, she believed that women were “the mother half of humanity.” Finally, like many women activists in the U.S. and Europe, she believed that all women – whether they had children of their own or not – were responsible for all children’s welfare.

    Insisting that “wise motherhood” was essential to better government, Davis argued that women needed the vote – and that the nation needed women voters. Maternalist activists also promoted juvenile justice, parks and playgrounds, health care programs and financial assistance for needy families and children, laying the groundwork for the modern welfare state.

    Giving women the right to choose

    While she promoted public welfare and demanded political rights, Davis also advocated for what she and her contemporaries called “voluntary motherhood” – the idea that women should be able to control their reproductive lives.

    Davis supported efforts to overturn the Comstock Act of 1873, which defined contraception and abortion as obscene and made distributing birth control information or devices through the U.S. postal service a federal crime.

    States followed federal precedent by adopting “mini-Comstock Laws” criminalizing birth control. By the 1920s, however, some states permitted physicians to prescribe contraceptives – such as diaphragms and spermicides – to protect the health of their female patients.

    When she surveyed 1,000 married women for a study of female sexuality in the 1920s, Davis found that most of her study subjects used contraceptives. In addition, nearly 1 in 10 reported having had at least one abortion, even though the procedure was illegal in every state.

    And when Davis asked the women about their views on contraception – or as the survey put it, “the use of means to render parenthood voluntary instead of accidental” – she found that about three-quarters of them approved of it.

    When the childless take charge

    So-called childless women like Davis have shown that they have a stake in children’s welfare, women’s welfare and the nation’s welfare.

    Over the past century, maternalists and feminists often have worked together to achieve their aims. Indeed, sometimes they were the same people.

    Davis cuddles a kitten in a photograph taken while she was a college student.
    Life and Labor, Volume 4

    But today, it seems that Republican politicians are attempting to drive a wedge between mothers and others. As a recent New York Times article put it, “the politics of motherhood” have become a “campaign-trail cudgel.”

    However, as Davis understood, many issues that affect mothers are important to all women. Moreover, Davis believed that everyone – not just biological mothers – shares the responsibility for the health and welfare of future generations. Finally, she insisted that women should control their own destinies.

    So, was Davis a childless cat lady?

    Well, a grainy photo of her cuddling a kitten suggests that she did love cats.

    As for her childless status, when you consider the full range of her work on behalf of the nation’s children, the answer becomes a bit more complicated.

    Anya Jabour 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. ‘Childless cat ladies’ have long contributed to the welfare of American children − and the nation – https://theconversation.com/childless-cat-ladies-have-long-contributed-to-the-welfare-of-american-children-and-the-nation-240199

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Tim Walz’s candidacy for vice president underscores the political power of teachers

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Christopher Chambers-Ju, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Texas at Arlington

    As a former high school teacher, Tim Walz represents a rarity among politicos. PeopleImages/E+ via Getty Images

    On July 25, 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke to the American Federation of Teachers – the first labor union she addressed after announcing her candidacy for president.

    Even though she was speaking to a roomful of teachers, Harris didn’t focus on teacher-specific issues. Rather, she spoke about general policies that working people want, such as sick leave and paid family leave. She also spoke about the labor movement more broadly. “When unions are strong, America is strong,” she said.

    At the Democratic National Convention in August, Harris’ running mate Tim Walz proudly claimed his identity as a teacher. On Instagram, he described himself as being a “dues-paying, card-carrying member of my teachers union for years.”

    Public school teachers are not often talked about as a major force in national politics. They are not wealthy donors. They rarely hold public office. Many congresspeople claim to have been “educators,” but that includes law school professors, school fundraisers and school district superintendents.

    Teachers and their unions, however, can be influential in politics – in the U.S. and globally. Walz’s candidacy prompts a reexamining of their role. Whose interests do they represent? Can teachers really speak on behalf of broader communities?

    Our view, based on political science research we and others have carried out, is that teachers are one of the most – if not the most – well-organized groups advocating in favor of the economic interests of working people in politics today.

    The rise of teachers as political candidates around the world

    Tim Walz taught social studies for 20 years at Mankato West High School in Minnesota. When he served in Congress, he was one of only a handful of teachers from public K-12 schools. The overwhelming majority of congresspeople are lawyers and business professionals who are mostly from higher-income backgrounds, and a disproportionate number studied at elite institutions.

    Walz’s candidacy as a high school teacher turned high-profile politician has few obvious precedents in the United States. But Walz is far from unique globally.

    In many developing democracies, from Colombia to Indonesia and India, teachers are a large group of public sector workers who are organized through powerful labor unions. Around the world, teacher candidates have risen through the ranks politically. In Colombia, for example, the teachers union has 270,000 members, making it the largest union in that country. A number of leaders from that union have moved from the union presidency to the Senate of the republic.

    The 2024 book “Mobilizing Teachers” documents the emergence of teachers as a political force in Latin America beginning three decades ago.

    Former president of Peru Pedro Castillo may be best remembered for being ousted from office in 2022 after attempting to dissolve Congress. But his origins are notable. He was a humble elementary school teacher and union leader who improbably rose to the presidency in 2021. Similarly in Mexico, national teachers union leader Alfonso Cepeda Salas became a senator for the ruling party in 2024.

    Teachers unions aren’t always a force for good governance. In Mexico, they are widely criticized for using corrupt practices to influence politics, such as showing favoritism in promoting teachers aligned with certain parties. In the 1980s, however, teachers mobilized in the streets of Brazil, Chile and Mexico against military dictatorships and authoritarian rule, and Brazilian teachers unions advocated for broader causes such as the right to education and increased spending on public schools.

    In the U.S., public K-12 teachers do not usually become high-profile political candidates. However, they emerged as major political actors in other ways in the late 20th century. This was spurred by economic changes such as automation and globalization, which disrupted the work of many unions – such as manufacturing unions – but not teachers. Today, 1 in 5 union members are teachers. And teachers as a whole make up 8% of the college-educated workforce in the United States.

    Through their labor unions, teachers in the U.S. are sometimes recruited as political candidates, especially in state and local elections. However, their numbers are few. In 2018, for example, teachers were on the ballot in record numbers but still represented just 3% of candidates.

    Teachers and the public interest

    Teachers in the U.S. have faced criticism for opposing reforms such as school choice and connecting teacher evaluations to student test scores. Some scholars believe these reforms could improve education quality.

    In the U.S., there’s also concern about teachers’ strong influence on school board elections and Democratic Party primaries. Some researchers argue that teachers unions have disproportionate power because “they are actively and purposely engaged in an electoral effort to control their own superiors” – school board members. In other words, unlike private sector workers, teachers unions use their political clout to select their own bosses.

    Yet, other scholars have shown that the policies teachers pursue often align with the interests of students. Teachers unions have long argued that better teacher working conditions mean better learning conditions for students, and that’s what they often advocate for.

    In some states and cities, there are severe teacher shortages, which some analysts cite to argue that low pay for teachers has made it an unattractive career. These shortages not only affect the quality of education but also reflect the economic concerns of middle-class Americans. Teacher salaries have stagnated, even though a large body of economics research has shown a cause-and-effect relationship between increasing educational spending and better student achievement, especially when funding increases go to teacher salaries.

    Over the past 16 years in the U.S., teacher strikes have raised teacher salaries and the salaries of other education workers, such as janitors, bus drivers and administrative staff. Teachers have also highlighted the kinds of school-quality concerns that many parents care about, such as free school meals and hiring more counselors, nurses and psychologists at schools.

    The role of teachers in preserving democracy

    Public school teachers are uniquely positioned to uphold democratic institutions – a primary concern for many scholars heading into this election. Teachers are deeply embedded in local communities and habitually organize to coordinate political efforts with other local nonprofits and grassroots groups. We believe they’re one of the few middle-class groups still able to push back against the growing power of large corporations, megadonors and media conglomerates.

    Melissa Arnold Lyon receives funding from a postdoctoral fellowship with the National Academy of Education (NAEd) and the Spencer Foundation.

    Christopher Chambers-Ju 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. Tim Walz’s candidacy for vice president underscores the political power of teachers – https://theconversation.com/tim-walzs-candidacy-for-vice-president-underscores-the-political-power-of-teachers-239812

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Could fungi actually cause a zombie apocalypse?

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Matt Kasson, Associate Professor of Mycology and Plant Pathology, West Virginia University

    A zombie cicada fungus, _Massospora cicadina_, has consumed the rear end of this periodical cicada, replacing it with a ‘plug’ of chalky spores. Matt Kasson, CC BY-ND

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

    Is a zombie apocalypse caused by fungi, like the Cordyceps from “The Last of Us,” something that could realistically happen? – Jupiter, age 15, Ithaca, New York

    Zombies strike fear into our hearts – and if they’re persistent, eventually they get inside our heads. Animals taken over by zombies no longer control their own bodies or behaviors. Instead, they serve the interests of a master, whether it’s a virus, fungus or some other harmful agent.

    The term “zombi” comes from Vodou, a religion that evolved in the Caribbean nation of Haiti. But the idea of armies of undead, brain-eating human zombies comes from movies, such as “Night of the Living Dead,” television shows like “The Walking Dead” and video games like Resident Evil.

    Those all are fictional. Nature is where we can find real examples of zombification – one organism controlling another organism’s behavior.

    I study fungi, a huge biological kingdom that includes molds, mildews, yeasts, mushrooms and zombifying fungi. Don’t worry – these “brain-eating organisms” tend to target insects.

    The fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis infects and kills ants. Over time, they can diminish the local ant population.

    Insect body snatchers

    One of the most famous examples is the zombie ant fungus, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which is part of a larger group known as Cordyceps fungi. This fungus inspired the video game and HBO series “The Last of Us,” in which a widespread fungal infection turns people into zombie-like creatures and causes society to collapse.

    In the real world, ants usually comes into contact with this fungus when spores – pollen-size reproductive particles that the fungus makes – fall onto the ant from a tree or plant overhead. The spores penetrate the ant’s body without killing it.

    Once inside, the fungus spreads in the form of a yeast. The ant stops communicating with nestmates and staggers around aimlessly. Eventually it becomes hyperactive.

    Finally, the fungus causes the ant to climb up a plant and lock onto a leaf or a stem with its jaws – a behavior called summiting. The fungus changes into a new phase and consumes the ant’s organs, including its brain. A stalk erupts from the dead insect’s head and produces spores, which fall onto healthy ants below, starting the cycle again.

    A citrus cicada nymph infected with Ophiocordyceps sobolifera. The nymph lives underground, but the fungus ensures that it ‘summits’ to just below the soil line, so that its stalks (pink) and spores find their way above ground.
    Matt Kasson, CC BY-ND

    Scientists have described countless species of Ophiocordyceps. Each one is tiny, with a very specialized lifestyle. Some live only in specific areas: for example, Ophiocordyceps salganeicola, a parasite of social cockroaches, is found only in Japan’s Ryukyu Islands. I expect that there are many more species around the world awaiting discovery.

    The zombie cicada fungus, Massospora cicadina, has also received a lot of attention in recent years. It infects and controls periodical cicadas, which are cicadas that live underground and emerge briefly to mate on 13- or 17-year cycles.

    The fungus keeps the cicadas energized and flying around, even as it consumes and replaces their rear ends and abdomens. This prolonged “active host” behavior is rare in fungi that invade insects. Massospora has family members that target flies, moths, millipedes and soldier beetles, but they cause their hosts to summit and die, like ants affected by Ophiocordyceps.

    The real fungal threats

    These diverse morbid partnerships – relationships that lead to death – were formed and refined over millions of years of evolutionary time. A fungus that specializes in infecting and controlling ants or cicadas would have to evolve vastly new tools over millions more years to be able to infect even another insect, even one that’s closely related, let alone a human.

    In my research, I’ve collected and handled hundreds of living and dead zombie cicadas, as well as countless fungus-infected insects, spiders and millipedes. I’ve dissected hundreds of specimens and uncovered fascinating aspects of their biology. Despite this prolonged exposure, I still control my own behavior.

    Dozens of Massospora cicadina-infected 13-year cicadas being prepared for drying and analyzing in Matt Kasson’s mycology lab at West Virginia University.
    Matt Kasson, CC BY-ND

    Some fungi do threaten human health. Examples include Aspergillus fumigatus and Cryptococcus neoformans, both of which can invade people’s lungs and cause serious pneumonia-like symptoms. Cryptococcus neoformans can spread outside the lungs into the central nervous system and cause symptoms such as neck stiffness, vomiting and sensitivity to light.

    Invasive fungal diseases are on the rise worldwide. So are common fungal infections, such as athlete’s foot – a rash between your toes – and ringworm, a rash that despite its name is caused by a fungus.

    Fungi thrive in perpetually warm and wet environments. You can protect yourself against many of them by showering after you get sweaty or dirty and not sharing sports gear or towels with other people.

    Not all fungi are scary, and even the alarming ones won’t turn you into the walking dead. The closest you’re likely to come to a zombifying fungus is through watching scary movies or playing video games.

    If you’re lucky, you might find a zombie ant or fly in your own neighborhood. And if you think they’re cool, you could become a scientist like me and spend your life seeking them out.

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

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

    Matt Kasson has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, USDA ARS and USDA APHIS.

    – ref. Could fungi actually cause a zombie apocalypse? – https://theconversation.com/could-fungi-actually-cause-a-zombie-apocalypse-230761

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Wild animals can experience trauma and adversity too − as ecologists, we came up with an index to track how it affects them

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Xochitl Ortiz Ross, Ph.D. Candidate in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles

    Marmots were the perfect test species for a wildlife adversity index. Xochitl Ortiz Ross

    Psychologists know that childhood trauma, or the experience of harmful or adverse events, can have lasting repercussions on the health and well-being of people well into adulthood. But while the consequences of early adversity have been well researched in humans, people aren’t the only ones who can experience adversity.

    If you have a rescue dog, you probably have witnessed how the abuse or neglect it may have experienced earlier in life now influence its behavior – these pets tend to be more skittish or reactive. Wild animals also experience adversity. Although their negative experiences are easy to dismiss as part of life in the wild, they still have lifelong repercussions – just like traumatic events in people and pets.

    As behavioral ecologists, we are interested in how adverse experiences early in life can affect animals’ behavior, including the kinds of decisions they make and the way they interact with the world around them. In other words, we want to see how these experience affect the way they behave and survive in the wild.

    Many studies in humans and other animals have shown the importance of early life experiences in shaping how individuals develop. But researchers know less about how multiple, different instances of adversity or stressors can accumulate within the body and what their overall impact is on an animal’s well-being.

    Wild populations face many kinds of stressors. They compete for food, risk getting eaten by a predator, suffer illness and must contend with extreme weather conditions. And as if life in the wild wasn’t hard enough, humans are now adding additional stressors such as chemical, light and sound pollution, as well as habitat destruction.

    Given the widespread loss of biodiversity, understanding how animals react to and are harmed by these stressors can help conservation groups better protect them. But accounting for such a diversity of stressors is no easy feat. To address this need and demonstrate the cumulative impact of multiple stressors, our research team decided to develop an index for wild animals based on psychological research on human childhood trauma.

    A cumulative adversity index

    Developmental psychologists began to develop what psychologists now call the adverse childhood experiences score, which describes the amount of adversity a person experienced as a child. Briefly, this index adds up all the adverse events – including forms of neglect, abuse or other household dysfunction – an individual experienced during childhood into a single cumulative score.

    This score can then be used to predict later-life health risks such as chronic health conditions, mental illness or even economic status. This approach has revolutionized many human health intervention programs by identifying at-risk children and adults, which allows for more targeted interventions and preventive efforts.

    So, what about wild animals? Can we use a similar type of score or index to predict negative survival outcomes and identify at-risk individuals and populations?

    These are the questions we were interested in answering in our latest research paper. We developed a framework on how to create a cumulative adversity index – similar to the adverse childhood experiences score, but for populations of wild animals. We then used this index to gain insights about the survival and longevity of yellow-bellied marmots. In other words, we wanted to see whether we could use this index to estimate how long a marmot would live.

    A marmot case study

    Yellow-bellied marmots are a large ground squirrel closely related to groundhogs. Our research group has been studying these marmots in Colorado at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory since 1962.

    A marmot wearing an ear tag.
    Xochitl Ortiz Ross

    Yellow-bellied marmots are an excellent study system because they are diurnal, or active during the day, and they have an address. They live in burrows scattered across a small, defined geographical area called a colony. The size of the colony and the number of individuals that reside within varies greatly from year to year, but they are normally composed of matrilines, which means related females tend to remain within the natal colony, while male relatives move away to find a new colony.

    Yellow-bellied marmots hibernate for most of the year, but they become active between April and September. During this active period, we observe each colony daily and regularly trap each individual in the population – that’s over 200 unique individuals just in 2023. We then mark their backs with a distinct symbol and give them uniquely numbered ear tags so they can be later identified.

    Although they can live up to 15 years, we have detailed information about the life experiences of individual marmots spanning almost 30 generations. They were the perfect test population for our cumulative adversity index.

    Among the sources of adversity, we included ecological measures such as a late spring, a summer drought and high predator presence. We also included parental measures such as having an underweight or stressed mother, being born or weaned late, and losing their mother. The model also included demographic measures such as being born in a large litter or having many male siblings.

    Importantly, we looked only at females, since they are the ones who tend to stay home. Therefore, some of the adversities listed are only applicable to females. For example, females born in litters with many males become masculinized, likely from the high testosterone levels in the mother’s uterus. The females behave more like males, but this also reduces their life span and reproductive output. Therefore, having many male siblings is harmful to females, but maybe not to males.

    A yellow-bellied marmot shown on a trail camera in Montana.

    So, does our index, or the number of adverse events a marmot experienced early on, explain differences in marmot survival? We found that, yes, it does.

    Experiencing even just one adversity event before age 2 nearly halved an adult marmot’s odds of survival, regardless of the type of adversity they experienced. This is the first record of lasting negative consequences from losing a mother in this species.

    So what?

    Our study isn’t the only one of its kind. A few other studies have used an index similar to the human adverse childhood experiences score with wild primates and hyenas, with largely similar results. We are interested in broadening this framework so that other researchers can adopt it for the species they study.

    A better understanding of how animals can or cannot cope with multiple sources of adversity can inform wildlife conservation and management practices. For example, an index like ours could help identify at-risk populations that require a more immediate conservation action.

    Instead of tackling the one stressor that seems to have the greatest effect on a species, this approach could help managers consider how best to reduce the total number of stressors a species experiences.

    For example, changing weather patterns driven by global heating trends may create new stressors that a wildlife manager can’t address. But it might be possible to reduce how many times these animals have to interact with people during key times of the year by closing trails, or providing extra food to replace the food they lose from harsh weather.

    While this index is still in early development, it could one day help researchers ask new questions about how animals adapt to stress in the wild.

    Xochitl Ortiz Ross has received funding from The National Science Foundation, The University of California, Los Angeles, The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, The Animal Behavior Society, The American Society of Mammalogists, and The American Museum of Natural History.

    Daniel T. Blumstein received funding from The National Science Foundation, The University of California Los Angeles, The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory and the National Geographic Society.

    – ref. Wild animals can experience trauma and adversity too − as ecologists, we came up with an index to track how it affects them – https://theconversation.com/wild-animals-can-experience-trauma-and-adversity-too-as-ecologists-we-came-up-with-an-index-to-track-how-it-affects-them-237913

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: More kids than ever need special education, but burnout has caused a teacher shortage

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kimber Wilkerson, Professor of Special Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison

    Many special education teachers quit after less than five years on the job. 10’000 Hours/Digital Vision via Getty Images

    A growing number of students in public schools – right now, about 15% of them – are eligible for special education services. These services include specially designed instruction for students with autism, learning or physical disabilities, or traumatic brain injuries. But going into the current school year, more than half of U.S. public schools anticipate being short-staffed in special education. Dr. Kimber Wilkerson, a professor of special education and department chair at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains why there’s a shortage and what needs to be done to close the gap.

    Dr. Kimber Wilkerson discusses the special education teacher shortage.

    The Conversation has collaborated with SciLine to bring you highlights from the discussion, which have been edited for brevity and clarity.

    Which students receive special education services?

    Kimber Wilkerson: Students with a disability label receive special education services. They need these additional services and sometimes instruction in school so they can access the curriculum and thrive like their peers.

    What is happening with staffing for special education?

    Wilkerson: Since special education became a thing in the ’70s, there have always been challenges in filling all the special education positions.

    In the past 10 years preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, those challenges started to increase. There were more open positions in special education at the beginning of each school year than in previous decades. In the 2023-24 school year, 42 states plus the District of Columbia reported teacher shortages in special education.

    What is causing these shortages?

    Wilkerson: One, there are fewer young people choosing teaching as a major in college and as a profession. And special education is affected by these lower rates more than other forms of education.

    Also, there’s more attrition – people leaving their teaching job sooner than you might expect – not because they’re retiring, but because they are tired of the job.

    They want to do something different. They want to go back to school. Sometimes it’s life circumstances, but the number of people leaving the job before retirement age has increased. And in our state, Wisconsin, about 35% of all educators leave the field before they hit their fifth year.

    That number is even higher for special educators. About half of special educators are out of the profession within five years.

    Why do special education teachers leave the profession?

    Wilkerson: There’s not a national study that speaks to that reason. There are some localized studies, and people report things like too much paperwork or too many administrative tasks associated with the job. Sometimes they report the students’ behavioral challenges. Sometimes it’s a feeling of isolation, or a lack of support from the school.

    How are students with disabilities affected when their school does not have enough special educators?

    Wilkerson: In a school that’s one special educator short, the other special educators have to take over that caseload. Instead of having 12 students on their caseload, maybe now they have 20. So, the amount of individual attention given to each student with a disability decreases.

    Also, when teachers with experience leave the profession, they leave behind a less experienced group of teachers. This means the students are losing out on the benefit of those years of wisdom and experience.

    What are some strategies to recruit and retain more special education teachers?

    Wilkerson: There’s a range of strategies that different universities, states and school districts have taken, like residency programs.

    In these programs, the person who is learning to be a teacher, and who is referred to as a teaching resident, works alongside a mentor teacher for an entire year in a school, and they get paid to do so. They’re not the teacher of record, but they’re learning and getting paid, and they’re in that school community.

    Can you tell us about your recent study on supporting new special education teachers?

    Wilkerson: One thing that made a big difference is when the teachers in our study, which is now under review, had access to a mentor and a group of their peers. We called this facilitated peer-to-peer group of teachers a “community of practice.” Every other week, on Zoom, we’d get these new special education teachers from different school districts together, along with experienced teachers. And they would do some sort of work on problems, bringing in the things that were challenging, and work on possible solutions as a group.

    We also used Zoom to do one-on-one mentoring. And what people liked about it was that they could talk to someone who wasn’t right in their building and right in their district who they could be open and vulnerable with.

    Sometimes, special educators can be isolated because they’re not necessarily a part of a grade-level team. They work with kids across a lot of classrooms. This gave them an opportunity to have their own kind of community, and that made a difference.

    We also surveyed their level of burnout and how good they felt about the job they did. And then we surveyed special education teachers who weren’t participating in our community of practice.

    At the end of the year, those people who had that mentoring and the community of practice felt less burnt out, and they also felt more effective in the area of classroom management. And that’s critical, because burnout is one of the primary reasons people leave the profession.

    So if we can make people feel like they’re better equipped to handle this challenging position, then that’s one strategy to increase the number of people wanting to stay in their job year after year.

    Watch the full interview to hear more.

    SciLine is a free service based at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a nonprofit that helps journalists include scientific evidence and experts in their news stories.

    Kimber Wilkerson receives funding from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences and the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education.

    – ref. More kids than ever need special education, but burnout has caused a teacher shortage – https://theconversation.com/more-kids-than-ever-need-special-education-but-burnout-has-caused-a-teacher-shortage-239559

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Presidential election could help decide fate of the 70,000 Afghans living temporarily in the US

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Idean Salehyan, Professor of political science, University of North Texas

    Afghan evacuees arrive at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Va., on Aug. 27, 2021. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

    The Taliban, an ultraconservative Islamic political group, retook control of Kabul a little more than three years ago, dashing many Afghans’ hopes for a tolerant, democratic government.

    As U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan days after the Taliban’s resurgence in 2021, hundreds of thousands of Afghans flocked to the Kabul airport, desperate to be evacuated. Among them were Afghans who worked for U.S. military and NATO forces as interpreters and in other roles – in addition to other people who were afraid of the Taliban.

    Chaotic and sometimes violent scenes of the poorly planned evacuation captured media attention for weeks, as the U.S. military airlifted nearly 124,000 people out of Afghanistan.

    Many of the Afghans who fled their country in 2021 went to Iran, Pakistan and other nearby countries. To offer a lifeline to the Afghans who came to the U.S., the Biden administration announced on Aug. 29, 2021, that evacuated Afghans could legally – but temporarily – stay in the U.S.

    As a scholar of civil conflict and refugee migration, I have been following the Afghan evacuation and policy responses in Washington since 2021. While President Joe Biden renewed humanitarian parole for approximately 70,000 Afghans in 2023, these people remain in legal limbo, unable to fully move forward in their lives.

    The upcoming election will likely be decisive in resolving Afghans’ legal status or not.

    An Afghan couple, including a man who worked as an interpreter for the U.S. military, walk in Charlestown, Mass. in February 2022.
    Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images

    Understanding humanitarian parole

    The U.S. admitted Afghans into the country through what’s called humanitarian parole, a federal program that the president can authorize to give protection to people in other countries facing extreme emergency circumstances.

    Humanitarian parole must be renewed by a presidential administration every two years, unlike the U.S. refugee admission policy, which gives foreigners who face legitimate fears of returning home the right to get permanent residency in the U.S.

    The Afghan parole program enabled people like Mina Bakhshi – a female rock climber who had no future under the Taliban because of her gender – to enter the U.S. and attend college.

    It also helped people like Qasim Rahimi, a journalist in Afghanistan, to flee to safety with his family and settle in Kansas City, Missouri.

    About one-third of the Afghan evacuees who came to the U.S. settled in California, Virginia and Texas, while the rest settled in other states.

    Yet humanitarian parole is not a permanent solution.

    While these Afghan people can legally work and attend school in the U.S., they often face obstacles with getting stable work or even finding a home to rent because they are not permanent residents and do not have Social Security numbers.

    A long history of parole in the US

    Typically, the U.S. government has used humanitarian parole to rescue people from conflicts in which U.S. armed forces are involved, like Vietnam and Ukraine.

    People who face serious danger because of conflict or other reasons can also enter the U.S. by applying for and receiving refugee status, but it can take more than a year for it to be granted. Humanitarian parole lets the U.S. government act quickly when it wants to help foreigners come to the country during an emergency.

    At the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, for example, the U.S. admitted thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian migrants fleeing their countries.

    As then-President Gerald Ford stated in an address to Congress in 1975, providing humanitarian parole to Vietnamese people who supported the U.S. in its war effort in Vietnam was a “profound moral obligation.” In 1977, Congress passed a law that allowed these refugees to permanently settle in the U.S.

    The U.S. also issued humanitarian parole to Hungarian and Cuban refugees who fled communist dictatorships in the 1950s.

    More recently, the U.S. granted parole to a group of Haitian orphans following a major earthquake in 2010, and to children from Central America who illegally crossed the border without their parents during the Obama administration.

    In 2022, the U.S. government again used humanitarian parole to welcome more than 125,000 Ukrainians fleeing the war in their country.

    What the Afghan Adjustment Act would do

    While Biden issued temporary humanitarian parole to Afghans in 2021 and renewed it in 2023, only Congress has the power to pass an act that would ensure they can legally stay in the country permanently. Yet, a deadlocked Congress has failed to pass legislation to adjust the status of Afghans.

    A proposed bipartisan bill in Congress called the Afghan Adjustment Act would allow Afghan parolees to apply for permanent legal status.

    A coalition of refugee advocates and veterans organizations has championed the Afghan Adjustment Act.

    Yet, a handful of Republican lawmakers, led by Sen. Chuck Grassley, have opposed the act on national security grounds. They say that vetting procedures for newcomers are not sufficient, which could lead to security risks. Some want a more targeted program that focuses only on Afghans who worked with U.S. troops.

    Republican Sen. Tom Cotton has proposed another bill that would significantly reduce a president’s authority to use humanitarian parole for Afghans or anyone else in the future.

    An Afghan evacuee living in Charlestown, Mass., in February 2022 shows a photo of himself working in Afghanistan as a translator.
    Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images

    The election factor

    The fate of Afghan parolees will likely be determined by the results of the upcoming election. Should Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris win office, I believe she is likely to renew parole for Afghans for at least two more years, as Biden did in 2023. Congress may be more likely to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act after the election, since it is rare to pass major legislation during an election period.

    What Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump might do about Afghans living temporarily in the U.S. is an open question. During Trump’s previous presidential term, his administration focused in part on curbing immigration. This included slashing refugee admissions and making it harder to issue U.S. visas to Afghans and Iraqis who worked with the U.S. military.

    On the campaign trail, Trump has promised to renew his travel ban on Muslims and to continue to limit immigration to the U.S.

    In the meantime, Afghans who fled the Taliban continue to face uncertainty about their future in the U.S.

    Idean Salehyan is affiliated with the Niskanen Center in Washington, D.C.

    – ref. Presidential election could help decide fate of the 70,000 Afghans living temporarily in the US – https://theconversation.com/presidential-election-could-help-decide-fate-of-the-70-000-afghans-living-temporarily-in-the-us-233941

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Aurora and Springfield aren’t the first cities to become flash points in US immigration debate − here’s what happened in other places used as political soapboxes

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Miranda Cady Hallett, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Human Rights Center Research Fellow, University of Dayton

    Many Americans had probably never heard of Aurora, Colorado, or Springfield, Ohio, before Donald Trump broadcast his false claims about these cities nationwide late in the 2024 presidential campaign.

    First, in September 2024, the Republican presidential nominee claimed in a debate with Kamala Harris that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were stealing and eating other residents’ pets. A month later, at a rally in Aurora, Trump declared that city to be a “war zone” overrun by Venezuelan gangs.

    Trump’s false claims went viral, creating chaos for these communities. Reporters rushed in. In Springfield, so did bomb threats.

    These stories feel familiar to me as an anthropologist whose work has explored the social dynamics of immigrant destinations in the United States. Springfield and Aurora are only the latest small cities to become sudden flash points in America’s ongoing – and increasingly heated – immigration debate.

    Siler City, North Carolina

    The small town of Siler City, North Carolina, was used as a backdrop for anti-immigrant political rhetoric a quarter century ago.

    In the late 20th century, jobs in Siler City’s local poultry industry became a magnet for Latin American immigrants and their families, leading to rapid demographic change. In 1990, the town was 98% white and African American. By the 2000 census, almost 40% of the town’s 6,000 residents identified as Hispanic or Latino.

    This shift caused some racial tension, and in 2000 the notoriously racist politician David Duke headlined an anti-immigrant rally outside City Hall in Siler City.

    Duke, who was also a former Louisiana state representative and former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, railed against Latin American immigrants.

    “Do you understand that immigration will destroy the foundations of this country?” Duke asked. “When you have more diversity, you end up with more division and more conflict,” he said, warning of “extinction” for white people in the U.S.

    Duke also railed against school integration. Thirty-five years after desegregation, this remained a favorite complaint of white supremacists.

    Only a handful of people, many of them from out of town, showed up to support Duke’s message, carrying signs like “The Melting Pot is Boiling Over.”

    In the short term, Duke’s rally exacerbated polarization in Siler City. It also stoked fear and anxiety among foreign-born residents, some of whom believed the local government had endorsed Duke’s message because the rally took place in front of the town hall.

    Looking back, however, many Siler City residents see the David Duke incident as a turning point – toward an improvement in ethnic relations in their town.

    After Duke’s rally, local politicians spoke out against the divisiveness and hatred. Within a few months, residents offended by the anti-immigrant rally had organized a unity event and cultural festival.

    By the time I visited Siler City in 2008 as a graduate research assistant studying new immigration destinations, many locals noted with pride that white supremacists could gain no foothold in town. They said Duke’s racist rally caused neighbors to stop and think, and decide what side they were on.

    Today, Siler City has an immigrant community advisory board, and the government actively works to promote integration and social cohesion among residents.

    Lewiston, Maine

    A similar story unfolded in the working-class Maine city of Lewiston in 2002 after its mayor wrote a public letter about the city’s rising refugee population.

    Just over 1,000 Somali refugees had settled in the city in the preceding year, having been displaced by civil war and drought back home.

    “This large number of new arrivals cannot continue without negative results for all,” Mayor Laurier Raymond wrote. “Our city is maxed out financially, physically and emotionally.”

    He called on Somali people to “pass the word (that) we have been overwhelmed.”

    Raymond’s letter got the attention of organized white supremacist groups, who descended on Lewiston, a former sawmill hub of about 35,000 people. In response, local people formed an ad hoc community organization called “Many and One,” and when the hate group World Church of the Creator rallied in Lewiston on Jan. 11, 2003, only 36 people attended. About 4,000 counter-protesters came out to support the Somali community.

    A film crew that had showed up to document the conflict ended up telling the story of Lewistonians sending a message of acceptance and unity.

    The temporary stresses on Lewiston were real, but in general locals came down on the side of inclusion and welcome. By 2021, Lewiston had one of the country’s highest per capita populations of Muslim residents, and of Somali-Americans.

    Twenty years later, the arrival of Somali families has become part of the story Lewiston tells about its history and identity.

    Conservative and anti-immigrant messages continue to resonate in the town. Yet many locals, like author Cynthia Anderson, say they are “moved and inspired” by the resilience of their Somali-American neighbors.

    Like most Haitians living in Springfield, Somali people did not choose to leave their country. They were displaced, and many were traumatized – yet they built new lives and contributed to the community.

    What can this history tell us now?

    While there are key differences between Springfield, Aurora, Siler City and Lewiston, these four places also share many attributes.

    These are all economically beleaguered cities with higher crime rates than the U.S. average but lower housing costs and more entry-level jobs in manufacturing. Such places are sometimes called “emerging gateway cities,” because they are appealing to immigrant families seeking opportunity.

    Yet the same conditions also make these cities attractive to political figures seeking a stage to blame immigrants for the community’s preexisting economic, social and public safety challenges.

    As in Siler City and Lewiston, Springfield and Aurora have mainly rejected false political claims and negative messages about their immigrant residents.

    In Springfield, residents have organized rallies and a prayer vigil in solidarity with Haitians, and Ohio’s Republican governor defended the city against Trump’s allegations.

    The Republican mayor of Aurora said before Trump’s Oct. 11 visit that he hoped “to show him and the nation that Aurora is a considerably safe city – not a city overrun by Venezuelan gangs.”

    The 2024 election has brought tense and polarizing times to these towns. But history suggests that Springfield and Aurora will eventually be home to vibrant and integrated immigrant communities.

    Once the vitriol fades, Trump’s incendiary misinformation will likely become just a footnote to the larger story of the country’s 21st-century transformation.

    Miranda Cady Hallett received funding from the Russell Sage Foundation’s “New Immigrant Destinations” project in 2008-2009, providing support for the North Carolina-based research mentioned in this article.

    – ref. Aurora and Springfield aren’t the first cities to become flash points in US immigration debate − here’s what happened in other places used as political soapboxes – https://theconversation.com/aurora-and-springfield-arent-the-first-cities-to-become-flash-points-in-us-immigration-debate-heres-what-happened-in-other-places-used-as-political-soapboxes-239809

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Election officials are hard at work to deliver fair, secure and accurate elections – despite a constant flow of attacks

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mitchell Brown, Professor of Political Science, Auburn University

    Voting machines are tested at the Wake County Board of Elections on Sept. 17, 2024, in Raleigh, N.C. Allison Joyce/Getty Images

    The 2024 election is rife with controversy, from the politics of the campaigns to the politics surrounding the administration of elections. Accusations of wrongdoing and ineptitude continue to plague election officials, despite their explanations of legal compliance and process.

    This is not new. During the 2016 election season, there was a growing narrative in the media and elsewhere that U.S. elections were poorly run. These accusations came from the left and the right, with concerns ranging from voter suppression to rigged machines.

    My colleagues and I have been studying election administration intensely for many years. When these accusations were made, they struck us as both odd and incorrect. We traveled around the country to visit election offices. We did surveys, we interviewed people, we ran focus groups, we toured election offices.

    In 2020, my colleague Kathleen Hale and I published a book on innovation in election administration. Among our conclusions: U.S. elections are not broken, and while fragmented and sometimes confusing, the system is functioning well, despite myriad pressures on it.

    The 2020 election continued to underscore that American election administration is strong across the country, despite the narrative from some losing candidates that there was widespread fraud and conspiracy.

    I continue to interact with election officials on a regular basis through meetings, conversations, classes I teach and election observations. While there are normal errors and mistakes that will always happen, this year’s presidential election also continues to demonstrate that the people running our elections are professionals engaging in neutral administration, upholding the law as well as important public administration principles of transparency, accountability, accuracy, integrity and widespread access for eligible voters.

    These people are doing this work despite an increasingly complicated and threatening environment for election officials.

    Elections happen almost every day

    There are approximately 8,000 election jurisdictions across the country. For the most part, elections are run locally by community members who work for their county or city government. Some election officials are appointed, some elected, and some are career civil service employees. During the voting period, there are thousands and thousands of volunteer poll workers who are trained to support the process.

    These offices work closely with other county and city government offices. Their employees are trained on standard operating procedures to ensure ballot security and electoral integrity, and they work closely with state election offices to ensure standard application of federal and state laws. In some states, such as Colorado and Ohio, they have professional associations to enhance their coordination and work. And there are national professional and training programs to further enhance the field.

    Despite the fact that most people think elections are held every other year, when you take into account state, local and special elections and the steps involved in preparation, early and absentee voting, election day voting and canvas and certification, there is an election being run somewhere in America almost every day.

    Working in elections is uniquely challenging. Deadlines are fixed, budgets are comparatively small in most places, and perfection is expected at all times. For the past two presidential election cycles, election officials in some jurisdictions faced almost constant accusations of incompetence or fraud. Accusers are rarely able to provide actual evidence.

    There are excellent examples around the country of good election administration in the face of many challenges and accusations of wrongdoing.

    ‘Relentless … barrage of falsehoods’

    Consider Wesley Wilcox, supervisor of elections in Marion County, Florida. Wilcox has been a dedicated election official for decades, honored by his colleagues across the country when they elected him to the Election Center Hall of Fame in 2023. He is an elected Republican and vocal about his support of his party.

    But since 2020, Wilcox and his colleagues have been a constant target of accusations of wrongdoing, which he told a 2022 U.S. Senate committee hearing constituted a “relentless and unprecedented barrage of falsehoods.” These baseless accusations came despite the fact that Wilcox’s office was involved in the investigation of a woman who was charged with actual wrongdoing: substantiated voter fraud.

    Another example is Mary Hall, an auditor in Thurston County, Washington. Hall has been recognized by the state of Washington and her colleagues for her strong professionalism for decades. She heads a robust office and staff who work to communicate to voters to ensure community trust in their processes and outcomes.

    Despite that, groups in the area have organized to challenge voter registrations of people who have done no wrong, causing extra work for Hall’s office.

    There are legitimate reasons that voter rolls are not perfect, and the presence of people on a voter roll who have moved and registered elsewhere is not evidence of fraud. And while such double registration is not illegal, voting in multiple places is. In the face of all of this, Hall continues to respectfully respond to their accusations and criticisms.

    In 2023, her office was one of five nationally to have received envelopes with white powder in them, which turned out to be fentanyl in some cases.

    “I used to be very proud of my position and telling people what I did for a living. And I don’t do that anymore, because you never know what reaction you’re going to receive from the people on the other end,” Hall told “PBS NewsHour” in November 2023.

    Election Day precinct officials receive training at Wake County Board of Elections headquarters on Sept. 26, 2024, in Raleigh, N.C.
    Allison Joyce/Getty Images

    ‘Years of unsubstantiated personal attacks’

    Other than sowing confusion and public distrust, these attacks and accusations have real-life implications for the lives of the people running elections.

    One of the hardest for me to watch has been Cathy Darling Allen’s resignation from the profession.

    Darling Allen, the former chief election official for California’s Shasta County, is widely regarded among her peers as having the highest levels of professionalism, integrity and honesty. In 2024, Darling Allen was one of five election officials in the country whom the American Bar Association awarded its Unsung Heroes of Democracy Award. That award “recognizes those individuals and organizations who work every day, often behind the scenes or without fanfare, to ensure that our elections are secure and that the democratic ideals set forth in the U.S. Constitution are upheld.”

    But years of threats, hate mail, accusations and unsubstantiated personal attacks against her left her physically ill. This stress and resulting health conditions forced her to retire early. A vocal group of county residents alleged that widespread election fraud was happening on her watch and accused her of sedition and treason. In an ironic development, a local news website reported that “Supervisor Patrick Jones, who is the most visible proponent of the claim that election fraud is occurring locally, was himself successfully elected to office in a process overseen by Darling Allen.”

    Darling Allen is just one example of dedicated officials who have left the field in recent years because of the rampant, false narrative about election wrongdoing on the part of officials.

    Election offices will never have the kinds of resources that those individuals, groups and countries who are attacking the integrity of their offices have.

    But these officials nonetheless persist, upholding state and federal laws and professional standards of conduct and producing accurate and timely election results.

    A review of the Moritz College of Law case tracker for the 2020 presidential election, which documents important election law cases from around the nation, demonstrates that many of these charges were meritless and that the results of the election were upheld. These results reflect the competence of those election officials.

    Other groups, including academics, have been working to neutrally and empirically study these issues, looking at a range of topics, from election performance to best practices, as well as seeking to understand the impacts of the current narrative on the public.

    Real electoral mismanagement is investigated, and the people involved face consequences if it is substantiated. Election fraud is a crime. Election officials know this and work tirelessly to ensure timely, fair, secure and accurate elections.

    Mitchell Brown is the Curtis O. Liles III Professor in the Department of Political Science and directs the election administration program at Auburn University. For 35 years, Auburn University faculty have served as the curricular faculty for the Certified Elections/Registration Administrator (CERA) certification program, and through this role she serves on the Board of Directors of the Election Center. She has received numerous grants and contracts to study election administration, including from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Bipartisan Policy Center, and MIT MEDSL, among others.

    – ref. Election officials are hard at work to deliver fair, secure and accurate elections – despite a constant flow of attacks – https://theconversation.com/election-officials-are-hard-at-work-to-deliver-fair-secure-and-accurate-elections-despite-a-constant-flow-of-attacks-236912

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Tracking vampire worms with machine learning − using AI to diagnose schistosomiasis before the parasites causing it hatch in your blood

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Trirupa Chakraborty, Ph.D. Candidate in Integrative Systems Biology, University of Pittsburgh

    Blood samples of patients infected with a parasitic worm that causes schistosomiasis contain hidden information that marks different stages of the disease. In our recently published research, our team used machine learning to uncover that hidden information and improve early detection and diagnosis of infection.

    The parasite that causes schistosomiasis completes its life cycle in two hosts – first in snails and then in mammals such as people, dogs and mice. Freshwater worm eggs enter human hosts through the skin and circulate throughout the body, damaging multiple organs, including the liver, intestine, bladder and urethra. When these larvae reach blood vessels connecting the intestines to the liver, they mature into adult worms. They then release eggs that are excreted when the infected person defecates, continuing the transmission cycle.

    Since diagnosis currently relies on detecting eggs in feces, doctors usually miss the early stages of infection. By the time eggs are detected, patients have already reached an advanced stage of the disease. Because diagnosis rates are poor, public health officials typically mass-administer the drug praziquantel to populations in affected regions. However, praziquantel cannot clear juvenile worms in early stages of infection, nor can it prevent reinfection.

    Schistosomiasis isn’t usually diagnosed until the late stages of the disease.
    DPDx/CDC

    Our study provides a clear path forward to improving early detection and diagnosis by identifying the hidden information in blood that signals active, early stage infection.

    Your body responds to a schistosomiasis infection by mounting an immune response involving several types of immune cells, as well as antibodies specifically targeting molecules secreted by or present on the worm and eggs. Our study introduces two ways to screen for certain characteristics of antibodies that signal early infection.

    The first is an assay that captures a quantitative and qualitative profile of immune response, including various classes of antibodies and characteristics that dictate how they communicate with other immune cells. This allowed us to identify specific facets of the immune response that distinguish uninfected patients from patients with early and late-stage disease.

    Second, we developed a new machine learning approach that analyzes antibodies to identify latent characteristics of the immune response linked to disease stage and severity. We trained the model on immune profile data from infected and uninfected patients and tested the model on data that wasn’t used for training and data from a different geographical location. We identified not only biomarkers for the disease but also the potential mechanism that underlies infection.

    Why it matters

    Schistosomiasis is a neglected tropical disease that affects over 200 million people worldwide, causing 280,000 deaths annually. Early diagnosis can improve treatment effectiveness and prevent severe disease.

    In addition, unlike many machine learning methods that are black boxes, our approach is also interpretable. This means it can provide insights into why and how the disease develops beyond simply identifying markers of disease, guiding future strategies for early diagnosis and treatment.

    Clusters of Schistosoma haematobium eggs surrounded by immune cells in bladder tissue.
    CDC/Dr. Edwin P. Ewing Jr.

    What still isn’t known

    The schistosomiasis infection signatures we identified remain stable across two geographical regions across two continents. Future research could explore how well these biomarkers apply to additional populations.

    Further, our work identifies a potential mechanism behind disease progression. We found that a particular immune response against a specific protein on the surface of the worm signals an intermediate stage of infection. Understanding how the immune system responds to this understudied antigen could improve diagnosis and treatment.

    What’s next

    Besides improving our understanding of how the immune system responds to different stages of infection, our findings identify key antigens that could pave the way for designing cost-effective and efficient approaches to diagnosis and treatments. Our next steps will include actually deploying these strategies in the field for early detection and management of disease.

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

    Trirupa Chakraborty is affiliated with Light Up non-profit organisation, based in India. The organisation does not have any connection with or benefits from this article.

    Aniruddh Sarkar has received grant funding from the NIAID, BARDA, Task Force for Global Health (TFGH), Atlanta Center for Point-of-Care Technologies (ACME POCT), Center for Childhood Infections & Vaccines (CCIV) and the Bernie Marcus Early Career Professorship at Georgia Tech

    Jishnu Das has research grant funding from the NIH (NIAID, NHGRI, NIAMS, NEI, NCI, NHLBI, NIMH), DoD and the Rainin Foundation. He consults for Seromyx on a case-by-case basis and receives corresponding financial compensation including stock options. Seromyx has no direct connection to (including benefitting from financially or otherwise) this article.

    – ref. Tracking vampire worms with machine learning − using AI to diagnose schistosomiasis before the parasites causing it hatch in your blood – https://theconversation.com/tracking-vampire-worms-with-machine-learning-using-ai-to-diagnose-schistosomiasis-before-the-parasites-causing-it-hatch-in-your-blood-239466

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Thomas Tuchel: the philosophical dilemma facing the new England coach

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By John William Devine, Senior Lecturer in Ethics, Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences, Swansea University

    As the new senior head coach of the England men’s football team, Thomas Tuchel has assumed one of the most intensely scrutinised managerial roles, not only in football, but in all of sport.

    Commentary following his appointment suggests that he should expect unprecedented scrutiny. Despite superb credentials, including coaching Chelsea to Champions League victory in 2021, Tuchel’s appointment has raised anew the question of whether English players should be managed by an English manager.

    At the press conference announcing his appointment, he apologised (only partly in jest) for holding a German passport. He is the first German to be appointed to the role. Sceptics have voiced concern about whether a “foreign” manager – particularly one from the England team’s fiercest rival – could feel the requisite passion, loyalty and determination for English success. But doubts about his commitment are only the beginning – the role of England manager involves an unenviable footballing dilemma.

    The renowned American football coach Vince Lombardi made popular the sporting mantra: “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” On the Lombardian view, performance has no value independent of its outcome. Set aside the mastery of skills, the lessons of winning and losing, forging bonds with teammates and opponents and the simple joy of play – for him, the value of sport lies in winning – and winning alone.

    On this view, the clamour for Tuchel’s predecessor, Gareth Southgate, to depart following the 2024 UEFA European Football Championship was misguided. In reaching the final of successive European championships (2020 and 2024) and the semi-final of the World Cup in 2018, Southgate brought English men’s football to its greatest height since the World Cup-winning team of 1966.

    His team comfortably outperformed the so-called “golden generation” of David Beckham, Stephen Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Wayne Rooney, which never progressed beyond the quarterfinals of a major tournament, playing for another foreign manager, Sven-Goran Ericksson. Judged by results alone, Southgate was a once in a generation England manager.

    However, the English public subscribed to a more demanding philosophy of football: “Winning is essential, but it is not enough.” Despite the team’s success, the public wanted more. They demanded not only victory, but style too.

    Southgate’s team played a conservative, defensively-minded brand of football. In Euro 2024, their passing wasn’t fluid and they created few chances on goal. Instead, they relied on a strong defence coupled with rare moments of attacking brilliance from individual players. Despite their success, Southgate became a lightning rod for criticism due to the uninspiring manner of his team’s victories.

    A philosophical dilemma

    The pursuit of victory in sport would seem, on the face of it, to be a simple proposition – play as well as you can and hope that this suffices to overcome your opponent. But playing to win is often less about playing well and more about ensuring that your opponent plays badly. It is less about executing your strengths and more about stifling the opposition.

    In happy circumstances, playing well and playing to win coincide. In such cases, an opponent’s strengths and weaknesses can largely be ignored. Athletes who are comfortably superior to their opposition (think Serena Williams, Simone Biles, or the All Blacks in their pomp) may have the luxury of ignoring their opponents’ performance. Such is their dominance that, if they play well, victory inevitably follows. However, for mere mortals – including the Three Lions – even a good day can be a losing day.

    This tension between playing well and playing to win is one that all athletes, of whatever level, must navigate. Tuchel now takes up the challenge of marrying these often opposed ideals – anything but victory is unacceptable and so too is anything but thrilling football.

    In contrast to the Lombardian obsession with winning, sport can also be seen as a vehicle for self-expression. Each sport presents athletes with a unique set of obstacles, constraints embedded in the rules coupled with challenges presented by opponents. How we respond to those obstacles can express something about us, both to ourselves and to others.

    Sporting competition can serve as a means of self-expression – a blank canvas on which athletes paint. We must decide how much we value sport as an avenue for proving athletic superiority and how much we value sport as an avenue to convey who we are and what we value. At its best, a national team’s style reflects a national footballing philosophy. But honouring our sporting identity may conflict with our desire to win.

    Winning at the highest level and playing to express the pure form of our footballing philosophy may be mutually exclusive goals for all but the most dominant teams. Tuchel must grasp both horns of this dilemma while persuading the public of his desire for English success.

    If the team’s results are anything but flawless, his commitment to the cause will be questioned. If the team’s style is unpleasing to the eye, he will be accused of misunderstanding England’s footballing identity. Who would envy him the task ahead?


    Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

    John William Devine 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. Thomas Tuchel: the philosophical dilemma facing the new England coach – https://theconversation.com/thomas-tuchel-the-philosophical-dilemma-facing-the-new-england-coach-241836

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Existential uncertainty: how it affects your mind – and what you can do about it

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dusana Dorjee, Associate professor in Psychology in Education, University of York

    ‘Doomscrolling’ is an unhelpful coping strategy. Olezzo/ Shutterstock

    With near-constant headlines discussing the devastating crises humanity is currently facing – from climate change to political polarisation and war – many of us are experiencing feelings of existential uncertainty.

    This can manifest in different ways, such as feeling anxious or distressed when consuming the news. You might also feel a more subtle but persistent sense of unease and worry about the future.

    These feelings are actually linked to changes in the brain. By knowing how this works, we can understand what techniques will best help us to manage this feeling when we next experience it.

    Worrying thoughts and feelings about existential threats increase activity in the amygdala – a brain region that responds to threat. This releases stress hormones – first in the brain (hypothalamus and pituitary gland) and then in the adrenal cortex (which sits on top of the kidneys).

    The release of these hormones from the adrenal cortex can impact our attention, problem-solving and decision-making abilities due to their effects on two distinct brain regions which support cognitive functions and memory – the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus. These regions can actually decrease stress hormone levels, but can become less effective at doing so in response to extremely stressful events or very frequent experiences of stress and anxiety. Chronic stress exposure damages these two brain regions, and can create a vicious cycle of prolonged anxiety.

    To cope with this uncertainty and anxiety, one common response people use is information seeking – where we seek out information about an event or situation in order to feel more certain and less anxious.

    But this coping mechanism can lead to doomscrolling on social media, where negative content tends to be shared more frequently and feelings of existential uncertainty are exploited for financial or political gain. Our brains also remember negative information better than positive information, which is why negative content is often used for manipulation.



    Read more:
    Existential crisis: how long COVID patients helped us understand what it’s like to lose your sense of identity and purpose in life

    Our attempts to make sense of existential uncertainty can also make some people more susceptible to conspiracy theories. This is because when we feel threatened and uncertain, any explanation for what’s happening seems better than none – and this brings some short-term relief from our worries.

    We may also be more inclined to cling to ideas and values that make us feel part of something bigger than ourselves when experiencing existential uncertainty. That’s why some people find themselves feeling more strongly about their political or religious views during periods of unrest – even if such beliefs can sow distrust towards others.

    These coping mechanisms may only provide short-term relief from feelings of anxiety – and even worsen our mental health in the long run. To better cope and protect your mental health during times of existential uncertainty, here are some more effective things you can do instead:

    1. Stress-reduction exercises

    Next time the news makes you feel anxious, try naming the emotion you’re experiencing. Naming emotions can reduce their intensity and unpleasantness. Then count to four while breathing in and count to five while breathing out. Breathing out for longer activates the parasympathetic system – the pathway of neural cells that helps the body rest and relax.

    Using a “sensory anchor” such as a nearby sound or object to ground your attention in the moment can also be effective. This can quell the stream of worrying thoughts.

    Other stress-reducing activities you can add into your daily routine include practising relaxation techniques such as progressive muscle relaxation or taking brief mindfulness breaks. Physical activity, such as dancing or walks, can also temporarily decrease stress as brief acute stress during exercise is another way of activating the parasympathetic system afterwards.

    2. Look to connect

    It can be helpful when experiencing existential uncertainty to remind yourself that others are probably feeling the same way. Acknowledging the common humanity of our worries may help reduce the feelings of threat we have.

    Awe-inducing activities, such as spending time outdoors, making art or meditating or praying, can all expand feelings of connectedness and reduce worry.

    Volunteering can help you connect with others.
    PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/ Shutterstock

    Writing about what you’re grateful for is another useful way to decrease distress during times of uncertainty. This increases brain activity in the medial prefrontal cortex – a brain area involved in regulating emotions, stress and boosting social-connectedness. The increased brain activity can last as long as three months.

    Practising compassion can also reduce distress during times of existential uncertainty. Whereas witnessing others’ suffering can trigger empathic distress – a negative emotion that’s also linked to withdrawal – finding ways to be compassionate and help others can shift this into a positive emotion and make us feel closer to people.

    3. Shift your thinking

    Instead of spending hours doomscrolling, try using your need for information to search for creative solutions or view the crises as opportunities for innovation where you can put your skills to positive use.

    Or, try finding initiatives that help to create this kind of constructive mindset. This can be anything from volunteering at a food bank or charity, writing a blog to making art. These kinds of activities can have a buffering effect on the stress response by protecting mental health and reduce negative emotions.

    Similarly, new creative ways of responding during times of crisis can shift our thinking to being solution-focused – instead of dwelling on the problems we face. This can support our emotional wellbeing.

    If everyone follows these tips, this may create a more cooperative environment which may bring us a bit closer to addressing current global crises at the collective, societal level.

    Dusana Dorjee received funding for her research from the British Academy, ESRC, UKRI Innovate UK and Mind & Life Institute. She is a co-director of a community interest company providing training in mindfulness-based wellbeing courses for schools and adults.

    – ref. Existential uncertainty: how it affects your mind – and what you can do about it – https://theconversation.com/existential-uncertainty-how-it-affects-your-mind-and-what-you-can-do-about-it-241197

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The 2026 Commonwealth Games will create an economic model that allows smaller nations to step up and host

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gayle McPherson, Chair in Events and Cultural Policy, and Director of the Research Centre for Culture, Sport and Events, University of the West of Scotland

    The tension was palpable as we waited to see if Glasgow would rescue the Commonwealth Games for 2026. After the Australian state of Victoria pulled out, the eyes of the Commonwealth turned to Scotland.

    Glasgow delivered a hugely successful event in 2014, raising questions about whether a future games there could match that success. I was part of the bid team as the cultural advisor for Glasgow 2014 and went on to conduct research on the impact of the games on sustainable community participation for people with a disability. So I understand the positive impact the games had for Scotland.

    My work over the past couple of decades has examined the social impact of mega sports events and their role as agents for change, specifically disability rights, social inclusion, and peace and diplomacy. In other words, considering whether major sport events truly serve as a force for good as it’s often argued they do. If this is indeed the case, why shouldn’t smaller Commonwealth nations benefit from hosting the games?

    Experts often criticise the economic and social impact of major sporting events, but others argue for the social value these events can bring to communities long after they have left town.

    My research team conducted a survey on perceptions of the impact of the Glasgow 2014 games that revealed overwhelming support for their lasting impact on the city and Scotland.

    The results showed that 75% of respondents believed the games increased civic and national pride, boosted Glasgow and Scotland’s chances of securing future events, enhanced their international reputation, and, as often attested, strengthened the nation’s soft power. Scotland ranks second (behind Quebec) out of ten similar territories for overall soft power, and third for sport.

    Amid a rise in the Bric countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) using sport in soft power terms, other nations have sought to be part of this too. The Commonwealth Games is increasingly being used as a vehicle for positive change and regional soft power.



    Read more:
    Glasgow’s 2026 Commonwealth Games needs to showcase an affordable and socially beneficial way of hosting sporting events

    There has been a rise in emerging states running mega sports events, often wealthy illiberal nations such as China and Qatar. However, what about the smaller nations in the Commonwealth? Only two – Malaysia and Jamaica – have ever hosted the Commonwealth Games, and the only other nation outside of Australia, Canada, UK and New Zealand to do so is India.

    Glasgow is offering a new model that will create a legacy not only for Scotland, but for many other smaller nations in the Commonwealth. The games are known as the “Friendly Games” – it’s a community that is known for three core values: humanity, equality and destiny.

    The family of nations

    The African nations form a significant part of the Commonwealth sports movement, so shouldn’t we expect the model that Glasgow is developing to be transferable, ensuring that sport can serve a common good? An environmentally sustainable approach would use facilities and networks already in place to help developing nations, which already suffer disproportionately in terms of climate and environmental risks.

    Under this model, venues and infrastructure are already in place. The event is athlete-focused, with competitors staying in hotels as opposed to a purpose-built athlete village, and transport needs minimised through walking or the use of team buses. The 2026 Glasgow event could serve as a blueprint for a sustainable approach to games delivery, inspiring nations such as Ghana, which already has the necessary venues and infrastructure to take on future Commonwealth Games.

    With just ten sports across four venues, Glasgow 2026 has thought differently about delivery and digital broadcast. This is the only fully integrated games, hosting para competition at the same time as able-bodied events. This too will help smaller nations’ para-athletes, who often do not get a chance to compete internationally.

    The Commonwealth is made up of 56 independent countries and the Commonwealth Games Federation consists of 72 member nations and territories. Gabon and Togo joined the Commonwealth in 2022, neither of which had previous ties to the British empire or other Commonwealth states, demonstrating that some countries still want to be part of a wider family.

    Given 19 African countries have Commonwealth Games Associations, we could well see one of these take the baton in future. The Ghanaian sports minister made it clear that after hosting a successful African Games in 2024, he believed the next step would be the Commonwealth Games.

    The recent African Games in Ghana’s capital Accra held athletics in a stadium that seats 11,000 spectators, while the World Athletics Championships in 2022 used the University of Oregon’s temporary stadium that seated 13,000. Commonwealth Games Scotland realised that, for 2026, Glasgow could host athletics at an existing stadium in the city with an upgrade to facilities that would provide seating for 11,000.

    Ghana and Scotland are learning from each other to lay a path for smaller nations to host future games. The Birmingham Commonwealth Games in 2022 contributed £1.2 billion to the UK economy and £79.5 million in social value. This is possible for small nations too.

    Glasgow 2026 can create a different legacy for the Commonwealth Games; one that is built on inclusion, diversity and sustainability and which incorporates the culture, values and pride of the Commonwealth. The time is right to offer a new approach to event delivery that offers other smaller nations the chance to benefit from sport as a force for good.

    Professor Gayle McPherson receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Sport Canada and has previously received funding from the Peter Harrison Foundation and Observatory for Sport in Scotland.

    – ref. The 2026 Commonwealth Games will create an economic model that allows smaller nations to step up and host – https://theconversation.com/the-2026-commonwealth-games-will-create-an-economic-model-that-allows-smaller-nations-to-step-up-and-host-241059

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: AI is just one of the thorny issues facing photography – here’s how the industry can prioritise ethics

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Savannah Dodd, Postdoctoral research fellow, Centre for Creative Ethnography, Queen’s University Belfast

    Photography is an immensely powerful medium. Unlike paintings or drawings, photographs have long been connected to ideas of truth and used as evidence, shaping our understanding of the world. When it comes to journalism, photographs have been shown to have a greater impact than the written word alone – in fact, the lead image of a news article can alter how a reader interprets the text.

    But right now the industry is having a crisis of conscience, and the past few years have seen a surge in online debate about ethics, as concerns have been raised about photographic practices across a wide range of industries, from fashion advertising to charity fundraising.

    These concerns have extended to the news media, which has drawn criticism for the one-dimensional representation of certain communities, for example that of black men and Afghan women, which is exacerbated by inconsistent standards applied to publishing images of suffering.

    This article is part of our State of the Arts series. These articles tackle the challenges of the arts and heritage industry – and celebrate the wins, too.

    While questions of image ethics are not new, this crisis is only deepening with the exponential growth in the production and use of AI-generated images.

    It is often difficult to differentiate between photographs and photo-realistic AI-generated images, and the lines between the two are being increasingly blurred as AI images are sold on picture library platforms and used by advocacy campaigns for charities. AI images are now being used in the campaign for the upcoming US election, perhaps most famously with an AI image of Taylor Swift endorsing Donald Trump.

    Despite the ongoing discussion about photography ethics, practice is sometimes slower to change. This can create a tension between those who espouse more traditional approaches to photography, and those who are critiquing those approaches. This is contributing to polarisation within the industry and a growing uncertainty about how we can use photography ethically today.

    As an anthropologist who teaches visual media ethics, I am interested in how professional photographers think about and practise ethics in their work. This year, as part of my research into this topic, I analysed 48 interviews I conducted between 2020 and 2023 with people working in photography.

    These interviews focused particularly on the perspectives of professionals, including those whose voices have often been marginalised within the industry. This includes black photographers, photographers of colour, photographers in the global south, disabled photographers and female photographers. All of these interviews are publicly available online.

    Lessons in self-reflection

    In each interview, I asked: “What does photography ethics mean to you?” Through analysing their responses, I have distilled eight key lessons about photography ethics. From foundational ideas about the power of photography to practical advice about personal biases, collaboration, asking for consent and building trust, these lessons can help to foster a deeper understanding of the ethical considerations in photography.

    One of the threads that runs through many of these lessons is the importance of self-reflection. Photographers speak about engaging in self-reflection to understand their own motivations for telling a certain story through photography, as well as their own personal perspective in relation to the stories they tell. Photographer Kirsty Mackay says:

    I think looking at the objective and your own reasons for documenting a subject is really, really important. What we see, quite often, is middle-class photographers making a story about working-class people, not really to raise awareness of an issue, but really for themselves, and for their own ego, and to elevate their status within photography.

    Self-reflection can help photographers to better understand how their perspective shapes the way they tell visual stories by identifying their underlying assumptions and unconscious biases. As photographer and academic Dr Tara Pixley explains: “In your career as a photographer … you’re going to tell hundreds of stories, but the first story you have to tell to yourself is the one about you.”

    While self-reflection is important for mining our motivations and mitigating our biases, it cannot achieve objectivity. Despite long-held beliefs in the objectivity of photography, there is a growing recognition within the industry that we all see the world through our own lens, subjectively. This is why we need a diversity of photographers.

    Additionally, no amount of self-reflection can substitute knowledge and understanding of the people, places and topics we are photographing. Photographers like Taha Ahmad stress the importance of research in their practice. He explains that doing research can help photographers to “have a better understanding of the kind of work they are going to produce and what impact the work could make when it is out in front of the world”.

    Despite its limitations, self-reflection is critical for the future of the photography industry. Photography ethics are changing as the world changes. This may mean that past practice does not match up with the current ethical standards. This may also mean that we respond to ethical issues differently today than we might have in the past. The key is to learn from our past experiences to inform our practice in the future.

    The lessons identified by this report should not be understood as guidelines or rules, nor are they comprehensive. Instead, they are intended to help inform how we think about photographs, the photographic process and photography ethics – and, perhaps, they can help us to navigate the current crisis of conscience felt across the photography industry.


    Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

    Savannah Dodd is the founder and director of the Photography Ethics Centre. She receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

    – ref. AI is just one of the thorny issues facing photography – here’s how the industry can prioritise ethics – https://theconversation.com/ai-is-just-one-of-the-thorny-issues-facing-photography-heres-how-the-industry-can-prioritise-ethics-241148

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What is it like to be a prison officer in the UK?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kaigan Carrie, PhD Candidate in Criminology, University of Westminster

    When prison officers are in the news, it’s rarely for a positive reason. Recent headlines have included officers smuggling contraband into prisons, or having inappropriate relationships with prisoners. It’s little wonder that the many prison officers who only want to do a good job feel undervalued. We don’t often hear about the ones saving lives on the wings.

    Prison officers get a bad reputation. Research suggests that the public think they are power-hungry disciplinarians with questionable morals. It doesn’t help that a record high 165 staff in England and Wales were dismissed for misconduct in the past year.

    But what is it like to be a prison officer in the UK today? I talk to prison officers in Scotland and Finland for my own PhD research and I regularly interview prison officers around the world for my podcast, Evolving Prisons.

    Prison officers wear many hats. They’re mentors, firefighters and first-aiders. Officers themselves have likened their job to that of a parent. Sometimes they’re teaching a prisoner how to read, helping with job applications and sometimes they’re just having a conversation which might help someone change their thinking. Prison officers are the cornerstone of the prison system.

    This is why it is so concerning that prisons in England and Wales are chronically understaffed. More than 13% of prison officers left His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service in the 12 months prior to June 30 2024. And 32% of the remaining officers have less than two years’ service, which puts them at risk due to their inexperience.

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    This understaffing means that prisoners spend longer in their cells, as there are fewer opportunities for them during the day. This, coupled with unprecedented overcrowding, creates a “pressure cooker” environment which results in higher rates of violence and an increase in staff assaults.

    One officer, who has worked in UK prisons for three decades, said it’s like going through a meat grinder and living each day in fear.

    A 2023 study by the House of Commons justice committee surveyed 5,113 prison officers (about 25% of the total officer workforce). The results found a staggering 50% of them do not feel safe in the prison they work in.

    The Ministry of Justice revealed that, in the 12 months to March 2024, the rate of assaults on staff in prisons in England and Wales increased by 24% from the year before, totalling 9,847 assaults. Working in a job where you are exposed to violence regularly has a negative impact on your physical and mental health.

    Physical and mental health toll

    Prison officers are in constant contact with people deemed too dangerous to be in society. As a result of this and the lack of resources available to them to do their job, they’re found to experience elevated rates of stress and burnout. They are also at heightened risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke.

    In addition to the stress-related risks, working in a prison carries other environmental hazards that have both physical and mental effects.

    For example, the use of the synthetic drug “spice”, a psychoactive substance, is prevalent in prisons around the UK and prison officers are at risk from inhaling the fumes. The symptoms are wide-ranging from one officer telling me it made her believe she had six fingers, to another being hospitalised and left with long-term health problems. Earlier this year, five prison officers were taken to hospital after a curry made for them by prisoners was suspected to have been spiked with spice.

    Hypervigilance is common in prison officers and manifests as a way to keep themselves safe. However, research found it can negatively affect their sleep and their relationships, and it can psychologically fatigue officers. Some research suggests that some officers may help prisoners commit crime as a result of burnout, due to feeling a lack of motivation and dedication to the job.

    Prison officers can also experience “moral injury”, a form of psychological trauma that can occur when someone acts against deeply held beliefs, as they find themselves going against their internal beliefs in their work. One officer told me, when working with female prisoners who had previously been victims of domestic abuse, that she felt she had replaced their perpetrator and was further traumatising them by telling them when they could shower, eat and leave their cell.

    Prison officers witness a lot of trauma such as self-harm, suicide attempts and violence. Little research exists into rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among serving prison officers in the UK. However, a 2018 study in the US found prison officers have PTSD rates six times higher than the general population.

    It’s clear that UK prison officers have been struggling with their mental health. One in eight took sick days for mental health reasons in 2022.

    A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said recently that the department will “get a grip on the situation … and make our prisons safer for hard-working staff.”

    But until that happens, the country’s prisons remain in a state of disarray. And prison officers are the people being asked to hold them together, while putting their own health and wellbeing on the line.

    Kaigan Carrie 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 is it like to be a prison officer in the UK? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-prison-officer-in-the-uk-241596

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why does Donald Trump tell such blatant lies?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Geoff Beattie, Professor of Psychology, Edge Hill University

    When it comes to lying in politics, Donald Trump is in a class of his own. According to the Washington Post, he made 30,573 false or misleading claims in his four years as president, increasing year-on-year from six per day in his first year to 39 per day in his fourth.

    Although other presidents have lied to the public, none have lied like this. Some of Trump’s lies are trivial, and many are self-aggrandising (“Nobody builds better walls than me”). Then there are his more egregious lies, like the one about the 2020 presidential election being “stolen” – demonstrably and dangerously contrary to the facts, with serious consequences for the nation and public trust.

    And these lies can cut through. Research by political scientists Kevin Arceneaux and Roy Truex found that this “big lie” about the stolen election was very “sticky”. Around 50% of Republican voters believed it, regardless of any emerging contrary evidence. The researchers also found that belief in this lie boosted Republican supporters’ self-esteem – as they weren’t “losers” after all.

    Politicians who lie can gain a strategic advantage. If you can successfully embellish the truth or construct a new reality, this often tends to be more interesting and engaging than the complicated truth. The truth may be a bit dull and uninspiring; the lie can be whatever you want it to be. You know what your audience wants to hear.

    Politicians know that lying is part of our everyday lives. Research in psychology using lie diaries tells us that people lie on average twice a day. Many are harmless “white” lies told for the benefit of others, but some are not so harmless and told for the benefit of the liar themselves.

    Some people get significant pleasure from telling such self-centred lies. Psychologists call this “duping delight”. It confuses the recipient of the lie, who expects to detect signs of guilt or anxiety. Instead, all they see is a faint smile of satisfaction. The liar gets away with it – that smile could mean anything.

    Who likes lying?

    Certain types of personality are drawn to telling these sorts of lies, including those with little empathy, such as narcissists and psychopaths. They don’t care about the consequences for the recipient; it’s all about them.

    People typically start lying early in life – between two and three years of age. Charles Darwin observed this in his own son.

    And the ability to lie improves as our cognitive abilities develop. Like any skill, we get better at it with practice. While many adults still feel guilt when they don’t tell the truth, some politicians don’t appear to feel any guilt, shame or sadness at telling a lie.

    Donald Trump claimed falsely that immigrants in Ohio were eating cats and dogs.

    Telling a big lie

    Politics was once thought of as an art. It was political philosopher Nicolo Machiavelli who, in 1532, wrote: “Those princes who have done great things … have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft.” Part of that craft was lying. Machiavelli argued that rulers should do whatever it takes to retain power, and this could include “being a great dissembler”.

    Politicians can lie by omission and by exaggeration – but sometimes, like Trump, they tell outright “big lies”. This term was introduced by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, and the concept of the big lie was used by the Nazis to justify persecution of the Jews.

    A big lie is often defined as “a deliberate gross distortion of the truth used especially as a propaganda tactic”. These have, it is argued, the power to disrupt society.

    Political historian Timothy Snyder accused Trump of using the big lie technique in his denial of the 2020 election result.

    To work, according to Hitler, big lies must also be able “to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings”. They are not aimed at our rational selves, but our unconscious and emotional selves.

    Trump saying that immigrants are eating the dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio, is not appealing to our rational system. It’s providing us with a vivid image, and trying to affect our emotional and unconscious system.

    As the sociobiologist Robert Trivers has pointed out, lying can give you a clear evolutionary advantage. Status, wealth and achievements are important in that great evolutionary battle, the survival of the genes – that’s why people (including Trump) lie about them. But Trivers says self-deceit can also be evolutionarily advantageous, because if you can convince yourself then it makes you more convincing to others, and therefore more effective.

    Perhaps Trump managed to convince himself that they really were eating the dogs and cats in Springfield. Or perhaps he thought to himself: “Plant the emotional image, that’s all you need for the faithful.”

    Attractive fictions might well engage us and sweep us along but, as Shakespeare suggested in the Merchant of Venice, many people hope the “truth will out” eventually. The last few months of the US election campaign suggest this may not always be true.

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

    – ref. Why does Donald Trump tell such blatant lies? – https://theconversation.com/why-does-donald-trump-tell-such-blatant-lies-241192

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: New report reveals that targets to save 30% of the ocean by 2030 aren’t being met

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Callum Roberts, Professor of Marine Conservation, University of Exeter

    Qasimphotographer/Shutterstock

    The world is gathering in Colombia for the UN biodiversity conference known as Cop16, a biannual pulse-taking of the living planet where actions to protect the natural world are agreed. At its last meeting in 2022, an ambitious roadmap for nature protection was put in place. As part of that Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework, the UN set a bold goal to protect 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030 – known as “30×30” – which was agreed by 196 countries and bodies such as the European Commission.

    A key task in Colombia will be to measure progress, and the ocean is in the spotlight. A new report reveals that growth in marine protected areas – designated nature conservation zones that are protected from one or more harmful or damaging human activities – is far too slow to achieve this target. Analysis by conservation experts shows that protected areas are too scattered and unrepresentative.

    Efforts to protect marine life lag far behind conservation on land. When 30×30 was agreed, the world had protected roughly 17% of land and 7.8% of the sea. The sea element was already behind previous targets, set in 2010 by the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity to reach 17% and 10% protection of land and sea by 2020.

    The 30×30 target is based on what scientists say is required to protect marine diversity, unlike the arbitrary 10% target it replaces. This would give a decent chance of meeting basic conservation goals like representing the full spectrum of habitats and species, or sustaining ecosystem services, such as the provision of seafood to eat and clean water for people. The 30×30 target was designed to turbo-charge conservation, end biodiversity loss and begin nature’s recovery. It hasn’t quite worked out that way, at least not yet.

    The new report, commissioned by philanthropic initiative the Bloomberg Ocean Fund and developed in partnership with environmental organisations Campaign for Nature, the Marine Conservation Institute and SkyTruth, is sobering. Since 2022, the global ocean protected area network has grown by only 0.5 percentage points to 8.3%, still nearly 2% short of the 10% target that 30×30 replaced. On this trajectory, the world is set to crawl towards just 9.7% by 2030. The world is failing badly and there seems little urgency in the pace of progress.

    Some marine protected area designations set fishing restrictions.
    Tamil Selvam/Shutterstock

    Most marine protected areas (MPA) fail the quality test too. Assessed against a global framework of effectiveness, called the MPA guide, most marine protected areas are insufficiently protected or managed to deliver positive benefits to nature. The report calculates that only 2.8% of the world’s ocean is protected “effectively” according to MPA guide criteria. They include tiny protected areas like the South Arran MPA in Scotland, which was set up in 2014 and monitored by the local community, and the vast and still wild Ascension Island protected area that encloses 172,000 square miles (445,000km²) of the tropical Atlantic.

    Even this low figure could overestimate current effectiveness. Reporting against MPA guide criteria is not yet mandatory for countries, so inconsistent definitions of protected areas complicate measurement of progress. And while some countries have declared MPAs as either “highly” or “fully” protected, the report suggests some of these areas aren’t sufficiently funded by governmental or other means to deliver effective management.

    Country protected-area networks – that’s the the total composition of all protected areas – are badly imbalanced. In the global north, countries like the US, UK and France have declared large highly and fully protected areas in their overseas territories to boost the coverage of effective MPAs. Meanwhile, in home waters, most MPAs remain subject to destructive and extractive industrial activities such as bottom-trawl fishing or offshore energy. Their headline percentage protection numbers therefore “blue-wash” the reality of ongoing damage and biodiversity loss.

    This October, Australia expanded the sub-Antarctic Heard and MacDonald Islands MPA, leading its environment minister to declare that with 52% of Australia’s waters protected, it had far exceeded 30×30. This and other huge offshore protected areas hide the fact that only 15% of coastal seas around the main Australian landmass are protected. Much of it is still open to industrial fishing and oil and gas production.

    The 30×30 goal will also be an impossible dream until the world ratifies the UN’s high seas treaty. This was agreed in 2022 to manage and protect the colossal 61% of the ocean (43% of the Earth’s surface) that lies beyond the sovereign waters of any nation. Until that treaty comes into force, there is no agreed legal mechanism to create MPAs there. At present, just 1.4% of international waters are protected, much of them in Antarctica.

    The Bloomberg report recommends governments speed up the creation of more marine protected areas. Another new study suggests a further 190,000 MPAs will be needed to reach 30×30, equivalent to 85 new protected areas daily for the rest of this decade.

    While numbers and size matter, the world must also stop paying lip service to conservation and deliver real protection for nature, matched with sufficient and durable finance to ensure they work. And the high seas treaty needs urgently ratified, since there otherwise remains a near half-planet sized hole in ambitions for 30×30.


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

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

    Callum Roberts receives funding from Convex Insurance, EU H2020, and EU Synergy. He is a board member of Nekton and Maldives Coral Institute, and advisor to Minderoo Foundation, Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy and CORDAP, and is a Pew Marine Fellow and WWF Fellow.

    – ref. New report reveals that targets to save 30% of the ocean by 2030 aren’t being met – https://theconversation.com/new-report-reveals-that-targets-to-save-30-of-the-ocean-by-2030-arent-being-met-241584

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How Black music record stores shaped the sound of the UK

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Amit Dinesh Patel, Senior Lecturer in Music and Sound, University of Greenwich

    Black music record stores have always been more than just places to buy records. These spaces became lifelines for communities, cultural hubs where people gathered, shared stories and connected over a shared passion for music.

    From the early days of the Windrush generation to the present, these stores have been a vital part of the Black cultural experience. For many, they were crucial in shaping not just their musical tastes, but their sense of identity and belonging.

    I am part of a new research project, The Record Store and Black Music: A UK History, which is aiming to shine a spotlight on this legacy by documenting the untold stories of Black record stores across the UK to preserve them for future generations. Through oral histories, films and photos, we are capturing the vibrant world that flourished within these stores.

    Trailer for an upcoming documentary created as part of the project.

    “I don’t know how, especially as Black Caribbean people, we’d have survived in England if we hadn’t had music,” Claude Hendrickson, founder of the Chapeltown Youth Association Leeds, told us. His words emphasised how deeply intertwined these spaces are with the community’s survival and cultural resistance.

    For many Black people, these stores transcended their commercial nature to offer a sense of belonging, a space where you could learn about new artists, hear the latest sounds and connect with kindred spirits. As British DJ and presenter Trevor Nelson told us: “the first community I had in music was in a record shop”. He remembered how important those early interactions with his first music community were, building connections that would shape his career.

    What made these stores even more unique was their ability to foster a network of collaboration. Record shops weren’t just about selling music; they were about creating it, too. Artists, DJs, promoters, radio stations and music journalists used these spaces as meeting points to exchange ideas, feedback and be inspired.

    As David Rodigan, a legendary figure in UK radio and reggae aficionado, explained to us: “The whole business of going to a record shop was very much an advent of gathering like-minded souls.”

    The original taste-makers

    Before the age of streaming, record stores were an essential part of how music moved and evolved. Long before algorithms suggested new tracks, the person behind the counter was the original taste-maker – someone who knew their music and their community and could help shape what you listened to next.

    In this way record stores didn’t just reflect musical trends – they helped create them. For example, shops that catered to soul, R&B, reggae, jungle, drum ‘n’ bass, UK garage, dub, hip-hop, and other Black music genres played an instrumental role in shaping the UK’s music charts. They guided the preferences of their customers and, by extension, the nation.

    In an era when mainstream radio and major record labels often ignored Black music, these stores provided a crucial alternative. They were the places where artists got their start and where word of mouth helped build careers.

    In doing so, these stores became the heart of a cottage industry that supported independent artists and labels, allowing Black people to thrive in an industry that wasn’t always welcoming or accessible.

    Our project doesn’t just celebrate the past – it also asks what these spaces mean in today’s world. Although record shops aren’t as ubiquitous as they once were, their impact on the cultural landscape remains undeniable. By documenting these stories, we ensure that the contribution of Black music stores isn’t forgotten but rather remains an integral part of the UK’s cultural heritage.

    As we continue to explore and document their history, we are reminded of their immense contribution – not only to the music industry but to the very fabric of British cultural life.


    Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

    Developed by 2Funky Arts, this research project was made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and will include the release of a documentary, book, educational resource, podcast and website. Visit https://theblackmusicrecordshop.co.uk/ to learn more.

    – ref. How Black music record stores shaped the sound of the UK – https://theconversation.com/how-black-music-record-stores-shaped-the-sound-of-the-uk-241321

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Russia’s ‘meat grinder’ tactics in Ukraine have proved effective in past wars – but at terrible cost

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Becky Alexis-Martin, Peace Studies and International Development, University of Bradford

    Reports have emerged in recent months of particularly savage casualties among Russian troops fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, as the Russian military bids to capture as much territory as it can, possibly with one eye on a potential ceasefire deal. Much will depend on the outcome of the US election. Donald Trump has said he will end military aid to Ukraine if elected, bringing the war to an end in “one day”.

    This could mean that Kyiv will be forced to cede Ukrainian territory along current lines of occupation. Analysts have commented that this was one of the motivations for Ukraine’s Kursk offensive inside Russia in August, since territory captured by Ukraine would be a valuable bargaining chip in negotiations.

    But meanwhile Russia’s offensive in eastern Ukraine has been particularly bloody, with US intelligence reports of casualty numbers of up to 1,000 per day, dead and wounded. This calls to mind the “meat grinder” tactics of previous Russian and Soviet military campaigns.

    The “meat grinder” is a collective battlefield approach that values high troop density and intensity to overwhelm the enemy. It is a uniquely Russian approach nine decades in the making, consisting of a combination two much older strategies, namely attrition and mass mobilisation.

    At the heart of attrition is the notion of abundance. The opponent is physically and psychologically exhausted by the sheer force of numbers, as wave after wave of cannon fodder are relentlessly deployed. Mass mobilisation is the large-scale movement of troops to a particular location with the intention of overpowering the adversary. Neither approach recognises the intrinsic value of individual lives.

    Despite being outmatched in organisation and tactics, the Russian military successfully undertook a war of attrition against Napoleon’s invasion in 1812. A century later, the Russian empire generated enormous casualties but successfully launch large-scale counterattacks during the first world war.

    The “meat grinder” became embedded in Soviet military tactics. The phrase “quantity has a quality of its own” has apocryphal roots in Stalin’s leadership during the second world war. Key battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk involved the deployment of millions of soldiers, and the Soviet army eventually crushed the Nazi blitzkrieg through sheer weight of numbers on the eastern front.

    Past victories do not guarantee future success. But – for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his military planners – it seems the dead and disabled bodies of their own soldiers are necessary collateral damage. It is estimated that more than 70,000 Russian troops have died since 2022. But it has been reported that Russian casualty rates are now rising more rapidly due to its military’s increased reliance on inexperienced fighters.

    The state of the war in Ukraine, October 20 2024.
    Institute for the Study of War

    Civilian recruits now make up the greatest proportion of deaths since the invasion began. This increase is partially their lack of military knowledge in a challenging fighting environment against a highly motivated enemy. But inadequate medical care and poor quality protective kit are also important factors. The Russian state media shares carefully curated images and stories of the deceased but morale is still crashing, and military wives and mothers are rebelling.

    Ultimate sacrifice

    Putin’s meat grinder continues to expand, however. The Russian government announced plans to spend £133.8 billion on national security and defence in 2025, equivalent to 41% of annual government expenditure. All healthy men aged 18 to 30 can now be conscripted, and Russia has recently ordered a third increase in Russian troops. The recruitment of a further 180,000 soldiers will make Russia’s army the second largest in the world, with nearly 2.4 million members. Yet this army is unqualified and offers little protection for the individual soldier.

    Ukraine does not view its soldiers’ lives as disposable in the same way – and they are comparatively well trained and resourced. But the dynamic in Ukraine may be changing. The country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, signed new conscription laws in April 2024 that lowered the age of conscription to 25, and it has reached the point where eligible men are now being dragged away from restaurants and nightclubs by army recruiters.

    Russia’s meat-grinder tactics are not infallible and will eventually collapse. Large formations can quickly become large targets in an age of remote reconnaissance. While Russia can coerce military participation through the carrot of high wages and the stick of forced conscription, a large and unmotivated army is not well-equipped for modern warfare and will eventually produce diminishing returns.

    Even declaration of martial law in the whole of Russia – Putin introduced martial law in occupied part of Ukraine in September 2022 – would not overcome the deeply embedded structural issues Russia faces. Poor care of soldiers and veterans will generate long-term challenges in the form of disability and treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

    The social and cultural harms of a poor culture of care are already manifesting in Russia. Approximately 190 serious crimes have been committed by veterans upon returning home. With Putin showing no interest in peace, we can only hope that the Russian war machine burns itself out – and that the long-term consequences are not terminal.

    Becky Alexis-Martin is affiliated with the British American Security Information Council.

    – ref. Russia’s ‘meat grinder’ tactics in Ukraine have proved effective in past wars – but at terrible cost – https://theconversation.com/russias-meat-grinder-tactics-in-ukraine-have-proved-effective-in-past-wars-but-at-terrible-cost-241688

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Jasper’s wildfire recovery is challenged by its unique land classification and the approaching winter

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jack L. Rozdilsky, Associate Professor of Disaster and Emergency Management, York University, Canada

    On July 24, 2024, one-third of the structures in Jasper, Alta. were destroyed when the Jasper Complex Wildfire burnt an estimated 32,722 hectares.

    As a researcher of disaster and emergency management, I visited Jasper in October to observe disaster recovery efforts there.

    The Municipality of Jasper and its federal partners are actively managing the recovery. The municipality has submitted an application for $73.14 million in expenditures for reimbursement from Alberta’s provincial Disaster Recovery Program.

    For those outside of the disaster zone, the message is that Jasper still exists and it is open for business. In the meantime, visitors need to be aware that residents are facing daunting tasks in a recovery effort that will take not months but years.

    Visiting Jasper

    As I approached Jasper from the south, through the fire-scarred Jasper National Park, I was first struck by what visually appears as a wasteland of burnt sticks in a black, brown and grey landscape.

    Burned trees in Jasper National Park landscape.
    (J. Rozdilsky), CC BY

    Proceeding into Jasper, the landscape transforms into the disfigured skeletal remains of noncombustible portions of structures — the buildings have been reduced to piles of charred, rusting and decomposing objects in vast debris fields.

    However, portions of Jasper’s built environment did survive the fire, and it is entirely possible to spend time in some parts of the town that remained intact rather than looking like a burnt-out war zone.

    Clean-up challenges

    A very visible and immediate challenge to Jasper’s practical recovery is the removal of debris.

    A streetlamp lies on the ground in Jasper, outside what remains of the Wicked Cup Café.
    (J. Rozdilsky), CC BY

    Work is underway to expedite bulk debris removal action. The action would work by removing debris across multiple properties at the same time by using one contractor.

    One of the challenges of removing the debris is the rapid approach of winter. November sees the most snowfall in Jasper, with an average snowfall of 135 millimetres.

    Despite best efforts being made, if large tracts of disaster debris become frozen in place over winter, such a situation will impede recovery progress in 2025.

    In addition to health hazards and special worker safety related to fire debris, improper management of disaster debris can impede the timely recovery of the affected area.

    Land classification

    Less visible, but nonetheless important, challenges facing disaster recovery in Jasper are unfolding policy dilemmas related to a very nuanced land tenure situation. Rules of land tenure define how access is granted to rights to use, control and transfer land, as well as associated responsibilities and restraints.

    From the public administrative perspective, Jasper is not your typical Canadian town. It is formally a provincially classified specialized municipality that exists within the boundaries of federally administered national park lands governed under the National Parks Act.

    The situation means disaster recovery will take place under a unique set of rules governing everything from land use decisions to one’s right to reside in Jasper. In Jasper, residents own their homes, but not the property they sit on; the Crown is the only landowner in the park.

    Until an amendment to the Canada Parks Act known as Bill C-76 received royal assent on Oct. 3, 2024, Jasper’s local government did not have the ability to exercise control over its own land use and planning. Under Bill C-76, the Municipality of Jasper will formally take authority over specific elements of land-use planning and development that were previously held by Parks Canada.

    However, this nuanced land tenure situation in Jasper will complicate recovery. Unanticipated consequences of overlapping interests will occur as several parties in Jasper are allocated different rights to the same parcel of land.

    Collective recovery

    A sign that Jasper was moving in the right direction was evidenced by a municipally based public information campaign consisting of posters in the town centre. The headline on the poster was “We’re in this together.”

    A poster for a public information campaign addressing residents and visitors to Jasper.
    (J. Rozdilsky), CC BY

    The left column of the poster addresses Jasper residents, while the righthand side speaks directly to visitors. Visitors were advised to “ask us about our town, the park and our community. Try not to ask us what we lost in the fire.”

    The “We’re in this together” theme related to recovery applies beyond local affairs. For those far outside of Jasper, now is the time to support the town’s unique role as a national asset, facilitating access of 2.5 million visitors yearly to Canadian natural areas.

    For Jasper’s disaster recovery, we are indeed all in this together.

    Jack L. Rozdilsky receives support for research communication and public scholarship from York University. He also has received research support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

    – ref. Jasper’s wildfire recovery is challenged by its unique land classification and the approaching winter – https://theconversation.com/jaspers-wildfire-recovery-is-challenged-by-its-unique-land-classification-and-the-approaching-winter-241135

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau have taken the same tepid approach to global affairs

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Adam Chapnick, Professor of Defence Studies, Royal Military College of Canada

    Nine years ago, not long before Stephen Harper’s Conservative government was replaced by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, retired diplomat Paul Heinbecker penned a brutal takedown of Canadian foreign policy.

    To Heinbecker, Harper’s appointment of five foreign ministers (and two more acting foreign ministers) over nine years indicated his government didn’t take the file seriously. That lack of seriousness helped explain why American presidents only visited three times between 2006 and 2015, leaving Canada “on the margins of global relevance.”

    Heinbecker concluded disparagingly:

    “The Harper government has turned foreign policy outside in. It has treated foreign affairs often as a means to cultivate diaspora communities and constituencies at home…. Foreign posture has replaced foreign policy.”

    Harper, Trudeau similarities

    Nine years later and another former diplomat, David Mulroney, has admonished the Justin Trudeau government’s approach to foreign policy with equal harshness.

    “Canadians show up to lecture, not listen,” he wrote in a National Post op-ed.

    One of Trudeau’s own ministers of global affairs, Marc Garneau, apparently concurs:

    “Unfortunately, Canada’s standing in the world has slipped, in part because our pronouncements are not always matched by a capacity to act or by actions that clearly demonstrate that we mean what we say …. We are losing credibility.”

    Garneau was the fourth of Trudeau’s five foreign ministers. Since 2015, American presidents have visited Canada just twice. And just like the Harper Conservatives failed in their bid to secure a seat for Canada on the United Nations Security Council in 2010, so too did the Trudeau Liberals in 2020.



    Read more:
    UN Security Council: Actually, the world doesn’t need more Canada

    The similarities don’t end there.

    Neither Harper nor Trudeau commissioned a foreign policy review. Neither fully funded the military. Both positioned women and children at the centre of relatively meagre international assistance programs. And, like Harper’s, much of Trudeau’s focus in foreign affairs seems aimed at courting domestic groups.

    ‘Unavoidably reactive’

    Our new history of Canadian foreign policy, Canada First, Not Canada Alone, explains why these similarities are unsurprising.

    Canadian governments have limited flexibility in their conduct of external affairs. As one group of foreign policy experts once said:

    “Especially for the smaller powers, the conduct of foreign policy is to some extent unavoidably reactive. For those that are securely placed and richly endowed, like Canada, the messes they confront are usually not of their own making, and the pressures they face are largely beyond their control.”

    What’s more, the country’s miraculous avoidance of a significant international attack over the last 150 years leaves most Canadians feeling safer than they probably should. In this context, it’s difficult for decision-makers to make foreign policy a strategic priority.

    Laments about the decline of Canada’s contribution to world affairs began in the 1970s, and have continued ever since. These concerns have typically been reasonable, even when Ottawa’s intentions were sincere.



    Read more:
    Canada needs a focused and flexible foreign policy after years of inconsistency

    Harper genuinely wanted to elevate the place of the Armed Forces in Canadian society, only to discover that success in Afghanistan was impossible and supporting our military was incredibly expensive.

    Trudeau’s pledge to restore Canada’s peacekeeping tradition when he became prime minister was real; he only abandoned it upon realizing that peacekeeping in the contemporary operating environment risked a significant loss of Canadian lives.

    To date, such reversals have had limited consequences. Long protected by three oceans and a friendly giant to the south, successive governments in Ottawa have been able to ignore problems that bedevil less geographically fortunate countries.

    Pivoting in a changing world

    But more recent global challenges — brutal wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, climate change, supply chain disruptions, election interference, American political polarization — serve as stark reminders that the world is changing in ways that necessitate a more active Canadian global posture.

    That new approach requires co-operation with allies and international organizations, not to mention a significant economic investment.

    The recipe for Canada First policies — those that keep the state and its people secure within a stable international system, economically prosperous, politically autonomous and united at home — is easier to articulate than it is to implement.

    It requires not just a functioning, productive relationship with our critical ally to the south, but also a commitment to a rules-based international order and multilateral approaches to conflict resolution.



    Read more:
    How minority governments can influence foreign policy

    Engaging in diplomacy

    Foreign policy practitioners negotiate and compromise, doing what is necessary to maintain credibility at home and overseas. They act without the benefit of hindsight, frequently under political pressure and short time frames.

    When they fail, the consequences of their actions are obvious. Their successes can be harder to measure, leading some to view the practice of diplomacy as elitist, exclusive and ineffective.

    At times that may be true, but that doesn’t detract from diplomacy’s key role in Canada’s viability as an independent, prosperous country. A willingness to engage in diplomacy in defence of Canadian interests must also be matched by investments in the capacity to act globally.

    The future of Canada depends on decision-makers with the humility to recognize that standing alone on the world stage is no way to protect and promote the national interest.

    Adam Chapnick and Asa McKercher received funding for this project from the Canadian Defence Academic Research Program.

    .

    – ref. Why Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau have taken the same tepid approach to global affairs – https://theconversation.com/why-stephen-harper-and-justin-trudeau-have-taken-the-same-tepid-approach-to-global-affairs-241339

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Flock is a refreshing play about the complex reality of growing up in care

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Eva A Sprecher, Research Fellow in Clinical, Education and Health Psychology, UCL

    Flock follows Robbie (Jamie Ankrah) and his older sister Cel (Gabriella Leonardi).
     Playing On, CC BY

    There are over 100,000 children and young people living in care in the UK, either with foster carers, in residential children’s homes or in other settings. Flock, currently playing at the Soho Theatre in London before embarking on a UK tour, follows the lives of two young people who have spent time in care, Robbie (Jamie Ankrah) and his older sister Cel (Gabriella Leonardi).

    The play was written by Lin Coughlan and directed by Jim Pope after three years of development with Raising the Roof, a project working with young people aged 16-25 who have lived in care, to develop fictional narratives informed by their own lives.

    The voices of young people who have lived in care give this play its beating heart. And they’re also vitally important for authentic representation of first-hand care-stories that are notably missing in mainstream media.

    Historically, characters who have grown up in the care system tend to be represented as villains or criminals in popular culture. Think Paul Spector in The Fall, or Loki from the Marvel universe. Exceptions can be found in many heroes in the Marvel comics created by Stan Lee, like Spider-Man or Daredevil.

    Researchers who have first-hand experience of the care system have commented on the prevalence of stigmatising narratives around “damage” and negative stereotypes associated with experience of care, alongside idealised “happy-ever-after” foundling stories.

    Important work is being done to archive the work of creators with experience of the care system and to capture a variety of care stories. However, nuanced work taking into account the complexity of going through the care system is rare and public attitudes reflect harmful misconceptions about young people living in care.

    Trailer for the touring production of Flock.

    In England, it’s estimated that at least one in three children who enter care are separated from their siblings. In Flock, Robbie is desperately waiting for his 18th birthday, when he hopes he will be able to live reunited with his sister Cel.

    While Robbie and Cel are not living together, they find ways to connect – taking trips to McDonalds or going bowling. Maintaining connections with siblings, while sometimes complex, can make a big difference to supporting the sense of belonging, mental health and wellbeing experienced by young people in care.

    Cel is one of the only people who shares Robbie’s memories of his nan and their valued moments with her before coming into care. There is evidence that sibling separation has a long-lasting impact for adults with experience of care, associated with complicated feelings of loss. However, when planning for young people’s living arrangements, sibling reunification or connection is not always prioritised.

    Young carers and their siblings

    Sibling reunification is not always easy. While Cel loves Robbie, she often feels more like his parent, and the responsibility of supporting him to manage his emotions while she is still a child weighs heavily on her. Cel might be described as a young carer, taking on daily tasks and personal care for her sibling when adults were not able to do so.

    While young carers who have spent time caring for a sibling do often express feeling more resourceful, greater responsibility and prioritising their sibling’s needs can impact their own wellbeing. Cel dreams of going to university and the freedom of leaving her responsibility as an older sister, even as she loves Robbie and wants the best for him.

    Cel is not the only person that Robbie can rely on. He also has a strong connection with his best friend Miko (Deshaye Gayle) and somewhat reluctantly meets with his personal advisor, Mrs Bosely (Jennifer Daley). As Robbie’s relationship with Cel comes under threat, these connections become especially important.

    Coming into care can cause disruption to more than sibling relationships. Children often lose touch with family, friends and communities and often move school and neighbourhood. Most young people living in care, like Robbie, have had difficult and possibly traumatic early experiences before, during and after moving into care.

    After difficult early experiences, some young people may experience changes to their brain and behaviour that allows them to survive loss, neglect or abuse. These adaptations may look like an increased alertness to danger or an unwillingness to trust others.

    While these changes may help children stay safe when living in unsafe circumstances, they might also make it harder to maintain close relationships. This negative impact of these understandable adaptations on relationships is called “social thinning”. At moments, Robbie’s mistrust is clear – when he fears that Miko is only his friend out of pity or when he finds it hard to accept any support Bosely offers him. However, we also see that the consistent, warm and understanding support of Miko and Bosely helps Robbie to stay connected in his lowest moments.

    This play represents both the very difficult experiences of young people living in care, alongside real moments of joy, strength, hope and connection. Flock provides a refreshing and much-needed story of the complex reality of the lives of young people living in care in the UK, putting real voices at its centre.

    Flock is on at the Soho Theatre, London until November 2, when it embarks on a UK tour.


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    Eva A Sprecher 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. Flock is a refreshing play about the complex reality of growing up in care – https://theconversation.com/flock-is-a-refreshing-play-about-the-complex-reality-of-growing-up-in-care-241620

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why Trump’s messaging is becoming more extreme, a mathematician explains

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dorje C. Brody, Professor of Mathematics, University of Surrey

    “Talk about extreme.” That was the response of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris at September’s televised debate, after her rival, Donald Trump, made the baseless claim that migrants had been eating the dogs and cats of their neighbours in Springfield, Ohio.

    Despite mounting criticism, Trump doubled down on the accusation. Likewise, during the more recent vice-presidential debate, Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, falsely claimed that the migrants in Springfield are illegal.

    The arrival of hurricanes Milton and Helene then gave them more opportunities to disseminate disinformation. Trump’s team attacked the government over its response to the disaster, claiming that government money earmarked for disaster victims has been spent on migrants who crossed illegally into the US.

    “Kamala spent all her Fema [Federal Emergency Management Agency] money – billions of dollars – on housing for illegal migrants”, Trump said at a rally in Michigan. This point was also repeated by Vance in an opinion piece on October 8 in the Wall Street Journal.

    The claim is false. But does it make sense for Trump’s team to spread such extreme disinformation? Mathematical analysis suggests it can.

    The positions of the candidates on the various issues, such as migration, can be represented on the political spectrum from the left to the right. It is fair to say that Trump places himself at the right end of the spectrum, while Harris sits at the centre.

    If you are at the far end of the spectrum, left or right, then you want to move people as far in your direction as possible. So, given that these days, in the US at least, there appear to be no consequences for disseminating disinformation, you want your messages to be extreme.

    By consistently hyping up the dangers of migrants, for example, more voters will start feeling that something needs to be done, even if they have never encountered an issue themselves.

    Indeed, mathematical models show that the probability of a candidate positioned at the end of the spectrum winning an election can, at least theoretically, reach 100%, if the messages are nothing but extreme. The same does not apply to a candidate positioned in the middle.

    We have seen this effect manifesting itself in the recent elections in Germany and France. Unless the public already has a strong appetite for the centre ground, which was the case for July’s general election in the UK, positions at the centre are often precarious.

    The path to victory for Harris therefore remains steep. But there are means for an effective counteroffensive.

    Clear communication

    Political messages have two purposes: communicating where the candidate stands on the various issues, and making the voters feel that those positions are desirable. We can apply the mathematics of communication, which explains our cognitive response to digesting information, to infer the impact of political messages.

    In particular, we can study how different messages on a given issue combine and interact. This, of course, only concerns voters who consume a variety of information sources, as opposed to those confined to an information echo chamber.

    For those who consume both Democratic and Republican messages, the effect of combining them can be subtle. But, in many cases, they combine in an additive way with some weights on each message.

    You can think of it as a weighted average of the two information sources. For example, if Harris says one thing and Trump says something opposite on a particular issue, then the net effect is each message muting the other slightly.

    So, if Trump says the illegal Haitian migrants in Springfield are eating people’s pets, and Harris says the migrants are there legally and are not eating anyone’s pets, then people might come to the conclusion that, while there may be illegal Haitian migrants in Springfield, they may not be eating pets.

    However, in some cases, one of the weights can take a negative value. This means that rather than adding them, the receiver of the two messages will subtract them. When this happens, the effect of that message is unexpectedly reversed.

    For example, when clear and convincing evidence of the legal status of the migrants in Springfield is presented, the prevailing noise about their pet-eating habits will, in anything, strengthen people’s belief that the claim is false.

    This can happen when the message from Harris is sufficiently loud and clear. Importantly, this does not mean Harris should loudly deny the disinformation. Provided that Harris sticks to her own messages in a clear and transparent manner, the mathematics of communication predicts that disinformation can turn itself against its spreader, for the following reasons.

    The idea, roughly speaking, goes as follows. Suppose that a recipient of the messages is unaware of the prevalence of disinformation, and that there is a considerable gap between the unsubstantiated disinformation and reliable information, with the latter being communicated very clearly.

    In this situation, communication theory shows that the receiver will dismiss disinformation more strongly than someone who is aware of the prevalence of disinformation.

    It is reminiscent of the Japanese martial art judo where the ultimate aim is to use your opponent’s momentum, rather than your own force.

    Disinformation should be challenged. And, indeed, both Harris and her predecessor Joe Biden have come out to condemn Trump’s “onslaught of lies” in relation to the two hurricanes.

    But merely focusing on challenging disinformation is counterproductive. What is more important is for their own message to be communicated loud and clear.

    No crystal ball can tell us whether the Democrats will retain the White House in November. But simply repeating the point that Trump is a threat to democracy, as Biden was prone to do, will not cut it.

    Dorje C. Brody has received funding from UKRI.

    – ref. Why Trump’s messaging is becoming more extreme, a mathematician explains – https://theconversation.com/why-trumps-messaging-is-becoming-more-extreme-a-mathematician-explains-239421

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Liam Payne: the death of a favourite celebrity can be painful – but collective grief can help

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sam Carr, Reader in Education with Psychology and Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath

    One of my (Sam’s) earliest memories is from 1980, when John Lennon was tragically assassinated. I vividly recall my mother’s reaction upon hearing the news – she put down the phone, overwhelmed with grief.

    Her connection to Lennon, someone she’d never met, was deeply personal. This moment, even though I was only three years old, left a lasting impression and showed me how profound these attachments can be. For my mother, Lennon wasn’t just a famous figure. He represented a significant part of her life and emotions.

    If you’re a One Direction fan, you may be feeling a similar kind of grief over the tragic death of band member Liam Payne. Some fans have described Payne’s loss as akin to “losing a family member” or feeling like they’ve “lost a big part of their childhood”.

    This collective mourning illustrates how deeply ingrained celebrities can become in our lives, not just as entertainers, but as symbols of our personal experiences and memories.

    Olivia, 23, tried to describe her sense of loss to a BBC reporter:

    It was my first feeling of being in love, my first feeling of crushing on a boy, of being excited about boys. I kissed the posters every night. We all did. It felt like you were part of the best club in the world and it’s a huge part of why we bonded together.

    This form of attachment is known as a parasocial relationship, an emotional connection formed with someone who is unaware of the bond. Unlike personal relationships, where both parties contribute to the connection, parasocial relationships allow fans to project idealised traits onto celebrities, unchallenged by reality.

    In this way, celebrities often represent aspirational versions of ourselves or embody significant aspects of our identity. When they die, the emotional experience of grief is not just about the person, but about losing part of that imagined connection.

    No one’s 20s and 30s look the same. You might be saving for a mortgage or just struggling to pay rent. You could be swiping dating apps, or trying to understand childcare. No matter your current challenges, our Quarter Life series has articles to share in the group chat, or just to remind you that you’re not alone.

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    The death of a beloved celebrity shatters something that feels deeply meaningful, and can leave you grappling with an emotional void. The loss is not just of a public figure, but of a personal connection that may have shaped your identity and sense of belonging.

    This profound sense of grief is often also shared. Following Payne’s sudden death, fans have gathered worldwide, from the UK to the Philippines and Argentina, to sing and mourn at vigils for the star. A similar phenomenon was also observed in September, when Harry Potter fans raised wands at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park in Orlando. They were paying tribute to Maggie Smith, who played the popular character Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films, following her death aged 89.

    Collective grief is a common reaction when an influential figure dies. These shared acts of mourning are not only socially significant but also have the power to foster empathy, transforming collective pain and public emotion into meaningful memories of social solidarity and communal strength.

    While fans will mourn their star regardless of age, there’s a stark contrast between the deaths of Smith and Payne. Smith’s passing is generally viewed as a “good” death, marking the end of “a true legend”, while Payne’s death at 31 is seen as “a bad, sad ending”. The way that we grieve celebrities is often connected to their age. When Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman died in 2020 aged 43, it shattered many fans’ sense of hope for the future.

    For many Payne fans, the singer was their “first love”. Falling in love with celebrities, as psychoanalysts like Aldo Carotenuto have argued, elicits a projection of idealised fantasy that becomes interwoven with our vision of the future. This temporal aspect of fandom is rooted in our sense of narrative identity, through which we view life as a continuing book. The death of a young star can powerfully disrupt this plot and leave you grappling with an unresolved chapter in your own story.

    One Direction fans often call themselves “directioners”. Losing a core member of the group has led some directioners to feel this identity is now threatened or altered. The disruption to your sense of identity following the death of a young celebrity that you grew up alongside can be profound. It signifies not only the loss of a cherished part of your past but also serves as a painful reminder of the passage of time and the fragility of life.

    This reality can force you to confront your own mortality, highlighting the finite nature of existence. In times of collective mourning, people reflect on their own lives and aspirations while cherishing the memories and legacies of those they admired.

    Moving forward without them

    Despite the deep pain of grieving, fans often engage in what grief experts call “continuing bonds” – an effort to maintain a connection with the celebrity through memories, tributes or ongoing engagement with their work.

    This bond helps to reestablish a sense of order, providing emotional continuity even in the face of loss. The bonds we form with celebrities are often more meaningful than they first appear. Sociologist Jackie Stacey has examined how memories tied to celebrities can profoundly shape and sustain a sense of meaning throughout our lives.

    From a life course perspective, early experiences with a favourite star can become deeply embedded in your identity, acting as enduring sources of comfort, inspiration and self-expression.

    Though his life has been cut short, the memories and inspiration Payne provided will continue to live on among his fans. As directioners gathered outside the Buenos Aires hotel where he passed away, they sang One Direction songs, including the poignant line: “This is not the end.”

    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. Liam Payne: the death of a favourite celebrity can be painful – but collective grief can help – https://theconversation.com/liam-payne-the-death-of-a-favourite-celebrity-can-be-painful-but-collective-grief-can-help-242039

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –