In the run-up to the 50th anniversary of Francisco Franco’s death on Nov. 20, 2025, the left-leaning Spanish government led a vigil honoring the many victims of the dictator’s regime.
While the exact numbers remain impossible to determine, historians estimate that Franco’s men killed up to 100,000 people during the brutal Spanish Civil War, and tens of thousands were executed during his dictatorial rule from 1939 until his death in 1975. Hundreds of thousands more were imprisoned, sent to labor camps or subjected to political persecution. To these figures, we must add the roughly half a million people who fled or were forced into exile.
Among the multitudes of Francoism’s victims were women and children who endured psychological and physical abuse in prisons, orphanages and asylums. Yet for decades their experiences have remained marginal in the public narrative – highlighting the uneven acknowledgment of different groups of victims amid Spain’s broader struggle to confront its past.
Still, their stories remain alive in the testimonies of the women who were imprisoned by the regime. In the summer of 2024, I conducted research at the Documentation Center of Historical Memory in Salamanca, collecting documented written accounts of traumatic experiences suffered by Spain’s female population under Franco. They reveal the extent to which Francoist repression was structured through gender, framing women as inherently subordinate and subjecting those who resisted the regime’s patriarchal order to especially severe punishment.
Franco’s gendered violence
My study explores the testimonies of women imprisoned during the civil war or subsequent decades, all of whom endured suffering related to their motherhood. While some were detained for their ideological allegiance to the republic that preceded Franco’s ascent, others had no formal partisan affiliations or were merely related to men who did.
The earliest testimony I came across was from a woman detained in 1939, just three years after Franco, a military general, led an uprising against the democratically elected government of the Second Republic that precipitated the civil war and his subsequent reign.
Franco gives a fascist salute as he and his Nationalist forces enter Barcelona in March 1939. AP Photo
Under Franco’s dictatorial regime, women’s roles were rigidly controlled by the ideology of National Catholicism, which linked femininity, motherhood and loyalty to the state. The church reinforced this vision, “dictating that women served the fatherland through self-sacrifice and dedication to the common good.”
Those who defied the patriarchy were criminalized and subjected to “re-education” focused on religious values.
Women’s so-called “redemption” under this reeducation was no less violent than their confinement. As one witness described, in May of 1939 the auditorium of Las Ventas prison was prepared to celebrate “two girls and a boy (… recently) born in prison.” During the ceremony, a choir “composed of forty inmates, including opera singers, music teachers, violinists, and amateurs,” had to perform the national anthems with the fascist arm-raised salute.
Yet confinement itself was particularly brutal.
According to Josefina García, a woman imprisoned during the 1940s, guards regularly insulted and beat inmates. “If you were at home behaving like decent women, you wouldn’t be here,” she recalled one saying. García continued: “Of course, they used a crude, sexist language. The police ‘used words’ in a way that sometimes leave a mark deeper than a bruise.”
Gender also played a role in the type of punishment prisoners received. Following their arrest, women were subjected to head shaving, forced ingestion of castor oil and the subsequent public humiliation of being made to walk in circles while defecating. In addition, they were often subjected to sexual violence by prison guards or interrogating officers.
Recounting her experience, another witness reported the case of an 18-year-old sister of a guerrilla fighter in Valencia who “was subjected to terrible torture, stripped naked in a room with several Civil Guards who pricked her breasts, genitals, and stomach with … needles.”
A protester holds a banner with an image of an unknown woman – a victim of the Franco regime. AP Photo/Paul White
Motherhood as battleground
One of the most painful aspects of Franco’s repression was the forced separation of mothers and their children.
Upon incarceration, women frequently lost custody of their sons and daughters, who were placed in orphanages or adopted by families loyal to Franco and his regime. Such violent ruptures of the maternal bond were more than an act of personal cruelty – they were a calculated political strategy rooted in the broader Francoist ideology.
By stripping women of their children, the regime both punished them and reinforced its narrative that only “loyal” women could be true mothers.
Meanwhile, child-rearing or birth during incarceration was marked by fear and uncertainty. In certain cases, newborns were allowed to stay with their mothers for a short time. However, a lack of proper nourishment and mental exhaustion made breastfeeding an impossible task.
At times, women who began to lactate were denied the possibility of nursing their infants, leading to physical pain and emotional torment.
More often, babies were permanently taken away altogether, deemed at risk of being “contaminated” by their mothers’ ideological values.
“When I was arrested, my son was five days old,” one victim, Carmen Caamaño, reported. “About a year later, they said I no longer needed to breastfeed him and took the child out of the prison. Some friends had to take him in because I had no family there.”
Women pay tribute to victims of the Franco regime in front of a flag of the Spanish Republic. P Photo/Alvaro Barrientos
There were also countless cases in which children were imprisoned alongside their mothers. With no other relatives to care for them, these children suffered from hunger, disease and a lack of basic hygiene in their overcrowded cells. For mothers, the psychological burden was immense as they were forced to watch their children suffer, yet they had no power to protect them.
In the summer of 1941, about six or seven children died daily in these prisons from starvation and diseases, according to accounts of survivors.
Trauma and resistance
Alongside trauma, there were also moments of resistance.
Mothers in prison looked for ways to nurture their children despite scarcity and fear. Testimonies I reviewed relate cases of inmates sharing food, telling stories and protecting children as best they could. These small acts of care were a quiet but powerful form of defiance.
Yet for many women, the trauma of these losses never healed. Survivors often speak of the pain of separation as an open wound that lasted a lifetime. Children raised in prisons or separated from their families carried the scars into adulthood.
Even decades after the regime ended, many descendants still struggle with the weight of this silenced past. Yet because of Spain’s Amnesty Act of 1977, which was granted for past political crimes, those responsible for atrocities committed under Franco have seldom been held accountable.
Histories of the Franco years often leave the grief of the intergenerational trauma in the shadows. And for the victims themselves, the traumatic motherhood experiences under his dictatorship reveal more than just personal suffering – they expose how authoritarian power can reach into the most intimate parts of life.
Zaya Rustamova received funding to conduct this study from Radow J. Norman College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Kennesaw State Unviversity.
World leaders clap as, from left, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Croat President Franjo Tudjman and Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic sign the Dayton Peace Agreement.Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
On Nov. 21, 1995, in the conference room of the Hope Hotel on the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, the leaders of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia initialed an agreement that brought the three-and-a-half-year war in Bosnia to an end. Three weeks later, the General Framework Agreement, known as the Dayton Peace Accords, was signed.
The war over Bosnia was the most brutal and devastating of the wars spawned by the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Attacked from the moment it moved toward independence in early 1992 by militias supported by the neighboring nations of Croatia and Serbia, Bosnia was born under fire and nearly perished. Half of its population of 4.4 million were forcefully displaced, and over 100,000 people died during the conflict.
The peace agreed to at Dayton left Bosnia, or Bosnia and Herzegovina as it is known in full, intact as a country but divided into two entities, Republika Srpska – a secessionist entity proclaimed by ethnonationalist Serbs in January 1992 – and the Bosnian Federation. Meanwhile, an international military force was deployed to secure the peace.
But it was an ugly peace: The patient was saved, but left deformed and weak. As scholars who have written extensively about the Bosnian war and its aftermath, we believe the legacy of the Dayton Peace Accords, 30 years on, is decidedly mixed.
The sorting of ethno-territories
Bosnia’s life after Dayton can be divided into three roughly decade-long eras: reconstruction, stalemate and permanent crisis.
The first decade was the toughest but most hopeful. With peace enforced by an international force including U.S. and Russian troops, Bosnians returned to their war-shattered country.
But restoring the country’s social fabric proved hard. While the international community aspired to reverse ethnic cleansing, the obstacles were immense.
Under the Dayton Accords, Bosnians were promised the right to return home. But this was complicated by the fact that many houses were destroyed, while others were occupied by those who had forcefully displaced them.
By the summer of 2004, the UNHCR, the United Nations agency coordinating returns after the peace agreement, announced that it had achieved 1 million returns. What became evident, however, is that “minority returns” – that is, people returning to places where they would be a minority community – were limited. Many returnees reacquired their old property after a struggle but promptly sold it to build a life elsewhere among people who were the same ethnicity as them.
The first decade was peak liberal international statebuilding. An international high representative charged with “civilian implementation” of the Dayton Accords centralized control over military and intelligence functions at the state level. A central state border service and investigations agency was created. So also was a central state court, state-level criminal codes and an indirect taxation authority to unify indirect tax collection and finance state institutions.
Bosnia’s trajectory, though, stalled in 2006 when the high representative stepped back from state building. In April 2006, a package of constitutional amendments designed to streamline Dayton by strengthening central state institutions fell two votes short in the state Parliament.
Surprisingly, the package was not blocked by parties from Republika Srpska, traditional obstructionists, but by former Prime Minister Haris Silajdžić’s Bosniak-dominated party. This failure set the stage for a decade of polarization and stalemate.
Silajdžić campaigned for abolition of the entities – Republika Srpska and the Bosnian Federation – and the creation of a single united Bosnia. Republika Srpska’s leading politician, Milorad Dodik, answered by floating the prohibited idea of an entity independence referendum.
With the high representative largely passive, Bosnia was stalemated between incompatible horizons, each side strong enough to block but too weak to prevail.
Dodik turned referendum talk in Republika Srpska into a steady repertoire of threat, while casting central state institutions in Sarajevo as rotten, artificial and destined to fail. In the process, Dodik and his family got rich, creating a classic patronal power network across Republika Srpska.
The word “inat” is a shared idiom across Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs. It is stubborn uprightness, a combination of narcissism and spite. Politics increasingly rewarded those who could perform “inat” more vividly than their rivals.
Central state institutions in Bosnia did not collapse but became sclerotic. Procedures multiplied, confidence thinned and decision-making settled into a theater of anticipatory vetoes where the point was less to implement a program than to keep imagined endpoints – the creation of a unified nation on one side; an independent Republika Srpska on the other – alive and to make the other side feel the pain of their impossibility.
A country on the brink
A decade of stalemate slowly evolved into a condition of permanent crisis.
In November 2015, Bosnia’s Constitutional Court ruled that the marking of Jan. 9 as “Republika Srpska Day” – a celebration of virtual independence – was discriminatory and illegal under human rights law.
Dodik, the Republika Srpska’s de facto leader, responded by organizing an extralegal referendum whose result asserted that the Republika Srpska population wanted the date retained.
Defiance evolved into active subversion of the constitutional order and provisions of Dayton. The Republika Srpska parliament passed laws that directly challenged central state institutions built in the first postwar decade. With weak enforcement capacity, the Bosnian state was unable to command compliance.
When in 2021 a new high representative was appointed over Russian objections, Dodik rejected his authority outright. By then, Bosnia was routinely described as “on the brink” of war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with the president of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, on Feb. 21, 2024. Sergei Bobylyov/AFP via Getty Images
Meanwhile, people and institutions in the Bosnian Federation aligned with Ukraine and the West. A giant geopolitical rift ran through the country: two entities, two different realities.
In February 2025, the drama peaked when Bosnia’s Constitutional Court barred Dodik from political life. Predictably, he rejected the top court’s authority, and a standoff ensured. Dodik hired figures close to the Trump administration such as Rudy Giuliani to lobby on his behalf. By the end of October 2025, they had succeeded in getting U.S. sanctions on Dodik removed in exchange for him agreeing to leave the Republika Srpska presidency.
The ugly peace endures
To distant observers, Bosnia may register as a success story because it has not returned to war. But the peace forged at Dayton bound Bosnia in a straitjacket that has kept it divided since.
Yet, unloved as it may be today, the Dayton Accords preserved Bosnia. It stopped a war, enabled freedom of movement, permitted economic revival, regularized elections, revived cultural life and allowed more than 1 million people to exercise their right of return.
As peace agreements go, the Dayton Peace Accords wasn’t the worst – but it is far from the best.
Gerard Toal received funding from the US National Science Foundation in the past for research on Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Adis Maksić 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.
Travelling on Africa’s roads comes with many challenges. The biggest is arriving at your destination safely. The continent is one of the hotspots of global road trauma. Its traffic deaths account for about one quarter of the global number of victims, despite having less than 4% of the world’s vehicle fleet.
The situation in sub-Saharan Africa is particularly dire. Road crashes affect this region more than any other in the world. Its road fatality rate of 27 per 100,000 people is three times higher than Europe’s average of 9 and well above the global average of 18.
Then there’s Africa’s road infrastructure. Despite recent rising investments in road developments, the quality of roads in many African countries is generally low. This has been captured in research reports, the World Economic Forum’s surveys and the International Monetary Fund’s cross-country road quality ranking.
Crashes and poor roads are not the only things that can make travelling a less-than-pleasant experience. Another is a lack of toilets. You are in deep trouble if nature calls you while travelling on Africa’s roads. When planning roads and mobility, the authorities rarely include access to adequate, safe and clean toilets.
In 2020 a public interest lawyer, Adrian Kamotho Njenga, successfully sued some authorities in Kenya, compelling them to provide toilets for travellers.
It is not a uniquely African problem. Similar challenges exist in the US and the UK.
I am a senior researcher in mobility governance at the Transport Studies Unit of the University of Oxford. My research interests include toilet access within mobility systems. In a recent paper, I drew attention to the road safety benefits of toilets.
I argue that enhancing drivers’ reasonable and reliable access to toilets can yield road safety benefits in ways that are comparable to enforcing laws against drunk or fatigued driving.
I searched academic databases such as Scopus and reviewed several papers. I found that improving toilet access for drivers was rarely researched as a road safety strategy in Africa. But it can enhance safer driving by reducing driver distraction and other unsafe driving practices that lead to road traffic crashes.
Road traffic crash losses in Africa are immense. Not long ago, the African Union was lamenting that they drain an estimated 2% of its member states’ GDP annually. Bringing the problem under control will require investing in a wide range of interventions, including unconventional ones – such as making it easy for drivers to “go” while on the road.
Road safety benefits of toilets
Driving while pressed for the bathroom can be a torturous experience and a significant distraction. It could make drivers a danger to themselves and other road users by diverting their attention away from the road and traffic conditions. The physical urgency can affect their judgment and reaction to dangerous situations.
The distraction and the urgency can make the driver impatient, and inclined to start speeding, tailgating, or trying reckless manoeuvres to get to the nearest place where they can ease themselves.
Research has shown that people who cannot urinate when their bladder is full experience cognitive or attention impairment that is equivalent to staying awake for 24 hours.
The cognitive deterioration associated with the extreme urge to void is also equivalent to having a blood alcohol concentration level of 0.05%. This is equivalent to or exceeds the blood alcohol concentration limits that Tunisia (0.05%); Sudan and Mauritania (0%); Morocco (0.02%); Mali (0.03%), Madagascar (0.04%), and other African countries impose on drivers.
All this suggests that driving while pressed for the bathroom is as dangerous as drunk or fatigued driving. It also implies that enhancing access to toilets can yield road safety benefits comparable to enforcing laws against drunk or fatigued driving.
Toilets should be integrated within road developments and mobility systems.
Time to invest in toilet access within mobility systems
For starters, governments on the continent can build more public toilets. Africa is one of the key locations of global toilet poverty. The World Health Organization says that some 779 million people on the continent do not have reasonable and reliable access to adequate, safe and clean toilets. Building more public toilets can help address general toilet poverty on the continent as well as in the context of mobility.
Refreshingly, in Ghana for example, private developers are investing in rest stops along highways. These social road transport infrastructures serve as places for commuters to relax, access goods and services, and socialise during their journey break. They often have toilets that travellers pay to access. Governments can explore ways to support these private provisions to expand and become more affordable.
Rest stops are often located on the outskirts, however. Most drivers and other road users operate in cities. When in need of a toilet while out and about, some drivers and other urban commuters are likely to use the toilet facilities available in fuel stations, hotels, restaurants, banks, coffee shops, hair salons, and other establishments in cities.
Not much is known about their cost, safety, cleanliness and location, or the embarrassment associated with using them. Researchers will have to investigate these issues and share the findings with the public.
When more people are aware of the issues, there could be a shift in thinking to demand and support better access to toilets as part of mobility policy.
Festival Godwin Boateng is affiliated with the American Restroom Association (ARA)
Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Awni Etaywe, Lecturer in Linguistics | Forensic Linguist Analysing Cyber Terrorism, Threatening Communications and Incitement | Media Researcher Investigating How Language Shapes Peace, Compassion and Empathy, Charles Darwin University
Words are powerful tools. Violent extremists know this well, often choosing their phrasing extremely carefully to build loyalty among their followers. When wielded just so, they can do enormous harm.
Because their words are chosen so deliberately, researchers can look for patterns, trends and red flags. What exactly do extremists say that builds followings, incites hatred and violence, and can ultimately lead to deadly attacks?
Our research looking at the rhetoric of the extremists behind some of recent history’s worst terror attacks sheds light on this question. We’ve identified six key tactics terrorists use to mobilise people behind their cause.
By being able to spot the tactics, we can dismantle the language and protect people and communities from radicalisation.
Divide and conquer
In previous work, we examined the language of far-right incitement in the Christchurch shooter’s 87-page manifesto.
Our latest work analysed jihadist texts. These included al-Qaeda’s former leader Osama bin Laden’s speeches after September 11, and Islamic State’s former leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s statements in the organisation’s magazine.
We used linguistic analysis to focus on how language was used strategically to both reduce and accentuate cultural differences. We examined how inciters use words to create bonds and obligations to mobilise violence.
We found two main types of incitement messages: those that strengthen connections in the group to build a shared purpose, and those that separate the group from outsiders and paint others as enemies.
This kind of messaging can divide society and make people strongly identify with the group. As a result, following the group’s rules – even extreme actions – can feel like proof someone truly belongs and is loyal.
But in violent extremism, commands alone are often insufficient to inspire violence or mobilise support. So how do extremists use these underlying strategies to get people to act?
6 rhetorical tactics
Once violence has been established as a moral duty by isolating the group, there are six key techniques extremists deploy.
1. Weaponise difference
Extremists don’t just label outsiders as different. They frame them as immoral and dangerous. “Us” versus “them” becomes the backdrop for later calls to action.
Inciters link loyalty and honour to threats from outsiders. Osama bin Laden urged violence against pro-US Arab governments, calling them “traitor and collaborator governments […] created to annihilate Jihad”.
The Christchurch shooter, Brenton Tarrant, attacked nongovernmental organisations supporting immigrants, calling them “traitors”. He called immigrants “anti-white scum” and compared them to a “nest of vipers” that must be destroyed.
Dehumanising outsiders strengthens group bonds and can have deadly consequences.
2. Evoking heroes and icons
Extremists use famous people, places or events to make their audience feel part of a bigger story. Names like “Saladin” or places like “Hagia Sophia” and “Londinium” link followers to icons or past struggles, making them feel like defenders or avengers.
Tarrant said:
this Pakistani Muslim invader now sits as representative for the people of London. Londinium, the very heart of the British Isles. What better sign of the white rebirth than the removal of this invader?
3. Repurposing religious texts
Extremists use not religion itself, but twisted and decontextualised versions of religious texts to justify violence.
Quoting God or religious figures makes the message seem legitimate and frames violence as a moral or spiritual duty. This strengthens followers’ loyalty and belief that violent acts serve “our” shared values.
Tarrant quoted Pope Urban II of the first Crusade, while Al-Baghdadi misquoted Allah.
4. Tailored grievances and inflammatory language
Inciters tailor grievances before audiences voice them. Words like “humiliation”, “injustice” or “cultural loss” help bind followers to a common cause.
Osama bin Laden spoke of Muslims living in “oppression” and “contempt”. While the Christchurch shooter warned of “paedophile politicians” and that immigration would “destroy our communities”.
Naming and labelling unites followers and divides outsiders.
5. Metaphors and messages of kinship
Osama bin Laden hailed his audience through metaphor as “soldiers of Allah”, while describing enemies “under the banner of the cross”. Such contrasts intensify loyalty and hostility at once.
On the other hand, kinship terms pull people in. Words like “brothers”, “sisters”, “we” and “our” make strangers feel like family. Calling followers “our Muslim brothers” turns political duty into a personal, moral duty — like protecting family.
Osama bin Laden used familial terms to build loyalty among followers. Maher Attar/Getty
Tarrant did this too. His line “why should you have peace when your other brothers in Europe face certain war?” links violence to family safety and future generations.
By contrast, “they” and “them” mark outsiders as non-kin. That sharp us versus them grammar strips empathy and makes exclusion or harm easier to justify.
6. Coercion into violent actions
In addition to commands, recommendations, or warnings that explicitly instruct someone to do something, there’s also coercion. It makes violence feel like care for the group.
Extremists do this by framing violence as duty. Phrases like “it is permissible” in jihadist texts shift violence from taboo to obligation, as in “it is permissible to take away their property and spill their blood”.
They also frame the outgroup as an existential threat. This justifies preemptive violence as self-defence or necessity, as in Tarrant’s “mass immigration will disenfranchise us, subvert our nations, destroy our communities, destroy our ethnic binds […]”.
What can be done with this research?
Extremist rhetoric does not just exist online. It echoes in protests, forums and political debates.
Countering extremism means understanding its tactics. Policymakers, educators and community leaders can help by identifying and deconstructing these tactics if they encounter them.
Teaching critical literacy is also key so communities can spot and resist coercion.
We can also create counter-messages that affirm belonging without fuelling polarisation.
Extremist language hijacks shared values, turning them into obligations to hate and harm. Stopping violence before it starts means dismantling this language through education, transparency and proactive communication.
Awni Etaywe is affiliated with Charles Darwin University, Australia – a Lecturer in Linguistics and a researcher specialising in forensic linguistics, focusing on countering violent extremism, threatening communication, and incitement to hatred and violence.
The world’s most valuable publicly listed company, US microchip maker Nvidia, has reported record $US57 billion revenue in the third quarter of 2025, beating Wall Street estimates. The chipmaker said revenue will rise again to $US65 billion in the last part of the year.
Just weeks ago, Nvidia became the first company valued at more than $US5 trillion – surpassing others in the “magnificent seven” tech companies: Alphabet (owner of Google), Amazon, Apple, Tesla, Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp) and Microsoft.
Nvidia stocks were up more than 5% to $US196 in after-hours trading immediately following the results.
Over the past week, news broke that tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s hedge fund had sold its entire stake in Nvidia in the third quarter of 2025 – more than half a million shares, worth around $US100 million.
But in that same quarter, an even more famous billionaire’s firm made a surprise bet on Alphabet, signalling confidence in Google’s ability to profit from the AI era.
Buffett’s new stake in Google
Based in Omaha, Nebraska in the United States, Berkshire Hathaway is a global investing giant, led for decades by 95-year-old veteran Warren Buffett.
Berkshire Hathaway’s latest quarterly filing reveals the company accumulated a US$4.3 billion stake in Alphabet over the September quarter.
The size of the investment suggests a strategic decision – especially as the same filing showed Berkshire had significantly sold down its massive Apple position. (Apple remains Berkshire’s single largest stock holding, currently worth about US$64 billion.)
Buffett is about to step down as Berkshire’s chief executive. Analysts are speculating this investment may offer a pre-retirement clue about where durable profits in the digital economy could come from.
Buffett’s record of picking winners with ‘moats’
Buffett has picked many winners over the decades, from American Express to Coca Cola.
Yet he has long expressed scepticism toward technology businesses. He also has form in getting big tech bets wrong, most notably his underwhelming investment in IBM a decade ago.
But that framing misunderstands Buffett’s investment philosophy and the nature of Google’s business.
Buffett is not late to AI. He is doing what he’s always done: betting on a company he believes has an “economic moat”: a built-in advantage that keeps competitors out.
His firm’s latest move signals they see Google’s moat as widening in the generative-AI era.
Two alligators in Google’s moat
Google won the search engine wars of the late 1990s because it excelled in two key areas: reducing search cost and navigating the law.
Over the years, those advantages have acted like alligators in Google’s moat, keeping competitors at bay.
Google understood earlier and better than anyone that reducing search cost – the time and effort to find reliable information – was the internet’s core economic opportunity.
Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 2008, ten years after launching the company. Joi Ito/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
Company founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page started with a revolutionary search algorithm. But the real innovation was the business model that followed: giving away search for free, then auctioning off highly targeted advertising beside the results.
Berkshire Hathaway likely sees Google’s track record in these areas as an advantage rivals cannot easily copy.
What if the AI bubble bursts?
Perhaps the genius of Berkshire’s investment is recognising that if the AI bubble bursts, it could bring down some of the “magnificent seven” tech leaders – but perhaps not its most durable members.
Consumer-facing giants like Google and Apple would probably weather an AI crash well. Google’s core advertising business sailed through the global financial crisis of 2008, the COVID crash, and the inflationary bear market of 2022.
By contrast, newer “megacaps” like Nvidia may struggle in a downturn.
There’s no guarantee Google will be able to capitalise on the new economics of AI, especially with so many ongoing intellectual property and regulatory risks.
Google’s brand, like Buffett, could just get old. Younger people are using search engines less, with more using AI or social media to get their answers.
But with its rivers of online advertising gold, experience back to the dawn of the commercial internet, and capacity to use its platforms to nurture new habits among its vast user base, Alphabet is far from a bad bet.
Disclaimer: This article provides general information only and does not take into account your personal objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is not intended as financial advice. All investments carry risk.
Cameron Shackell works primarily as an Adjunct Fellow at The University of Queensland and Sessional Academic at QUT. He also works one day a week as CEO of a firm using AI to analyse brands and trademarks.
The average Australian drinks almost 60 litres of soft drink a year. Many people see diet soft drinks as a “healthier” choice than regular ones, and when it comes to sugar, that’s true.
Incumbent Prime Minister Dr ‘Aisake Eke, who took on the role nine months ago, and his predecessor Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni, who resigned ahead of a no-confidence motion, are contesting the election.Photo: RNZ Pacific
Polls have opened in Tonga on Thursday for voters to elect their 17 representatives in the Legislative Assembly, while the kingdom’s nobles will also elect nine of their own representatives today.
More than 200 polling stations are operating across the country’s islands, with a team of about 600 officials co-ordinating voting. About half of the polling stations are on Tongatapu.
There are 71 candidates vying for a seat in parliament, including eight women.
The electoral roll has more than 64,000 voters, however Supervisor of Elections Peter Vuki does not expect that many ballots to be cast.
Voter participation has declined in the past 15 years, which Vuki said was due to a range of reasons, including large numbers of registered voters being overseas on polling day.
He said with a polling station in every village, anyone who is registered to vote should be turning up today.
“It should be easy for them to get to either the community hall or church hall that we’re using for these elections. So hopefully they will turn up and cast [a ballot],” Vuki said.
“It is very important to vote – it’s very important for all of us.”
Incumbent Prime Minister Dr ‘Aisake Eke, who took on the role nine months ago, and his predecessor Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni, who resigned ahead of a no-confidence motion, are contesting the election. Both men are being touted as key players for the prime ministership. Two nobles’ representatives – Lord Fakafanua and Lord Tu’ivakano – have also expressed interest in being prime minister.
Following the election, the newly convened Legislative Assembly is responsible for nominating one of its elected members to be appointed by the King as the Prime Minister. Following that, the prime minister picks his Cabinet, up to four of whom may be from outside parliament.
Polling stations for the general public will close at 4pm local time.
The nobles’ election process runs from 10am to 12pm. Results are announced at each polling station once voting finishes.
The overall count is then tallied at the Electoral Commission’s office in Nuku’alofa.
Vuki said he expected the results to be announced tonight.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Shelley Mitchell, Senior Extension Specialist in Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Oklahoma State University
Pecans have a storied history in the United States. Today, American trees produce hundreds of million of pounds of pecans – 80% of the world’s pecan crop. Most of that crop stays here. Pecans are used to produce pecan milk, butter and oil, but many of the nuts end up in pecan pies.
Throughout history, pecans have been overlooked, poached, cultivated and improved. As they have spread throughout the United States, they have been eaten raw and in recipes. Pecans have grown more popular over the decades, and you will probably encounter them in some form this holiday season.
I’m an extension specialist in Oklahoma, a state consistently ranked fifth in pecan production, behind Georgia, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. I’ll admit that I am not a fan of the taste of pecans, which leaves more for the squirrels, crows and enthusiastic pecan lovers.
The spread of pecans
The pecan is a nut related to the hickory. Actually, though we call them nuts, pecans are actually a type of fruit called a drupe. Drupes have pits, like the peach and cherry.
Three pecan fruits, which ripen and split open to release pecan nuts, clustered on a pecan tree. IAISI/Moment via Getty Images
The pecan nuts that look like little brown footballs are actually the seed that starts inside the pecan fruit – until the fruit ripens and splits open to release the pecan. They are usually the size of your thumb, and you may need a nutcracker to open them. You can eat them raw or as part of a cooked dish.
The pecan derives its name from the Algonquin “pakani,” which means “a nut too hard to crack by hand.” Rich in fat and easy to transport, pecans traveled with Native Americans throughout what is now the southern United States. They were used for food, medicine and trade as early as 8,000 years ago.
Pecans are native to the southern United States, and while they had previously spread along travel and trade routes, the first documented purposeful planting of a pecan tree was in New York in 1722. Three years later, George Washington’s estate, Mount Vernon, had some planted pecans. Washington loved pecans, and Revolutionary War soldiers said he was constantly eating them.
Meanwhile, no one needed to plant pecans in the South, since they naturally grew along riverbanks and in groves. Pecan trees are alternate bearing: They will have a very large crop one year, followed by one or two very small crops. But because they naturally produced a harvest with no input from farmers, people did not need to actively cultivate them. Locals would harvest nuts for themselves but otherwise ignored the self-sufficient trees.
It wasn’t until the late 1800s that people in the pecan’s native range realized the pecan’s potential worth for income and trade. Harvesting pecans became competitive, and young boys would climb onto precarious tree branches. One girl was lifted by a hot air balloon so she could beat on the upper branches of trees and let them fall to collectors below. Pecan poaching was a problem in natural groves on private property.
Pecan cultivation begins
Even with so obvious a demand, cultivated orchards in the South were still rare into the 1900s. Pecan trees don’t produce nuts for several years after planting, so their future quality is unknown.
To guarantee quality nuts, farmers began using a technique called grafting; they’d join branches from quality trees to another pecan tree’s trunk. The first attempt at grafting pecans was in 1822, but the attempts weren’t very successful.
Grafting pecans became popular after an enslaved man named Antoine who lived on a Louisiana plantation successfully produced large pecans with tender shells by grafting, around 1846. His pecans became the first widely available improved pecan variety.
The variety was named Centennial because it was introduced to the public 30 years later at the Philadelphia Centennial Expedition in 1876, alongside the telephone, Heinz ketchup and the right arm of the Statue of Liberty.
This technique also sped up the production process. To keep pecan quality up and produce consistent annual harvests, today’s pecan growers shake the trees while the nuts are still growing, until about half of the pecans fall off. This reduces the number of nuts so that the tree can put more energy into fewer pecans, which leads to better quality. Shaking also evens out the yield, so that the alternate-bearing characteristic doesn’t create a boom-bust cycle.
US pecan consumption
The French brought praline dessert with them when they immigrated to Louisiana in the early 1700s. A praline is a flat, creamy candy made with nuts, sugar, butter and cream. Their original recipe used almonds, but at the time, the only nut available in America was the pecan, so pecan pralines were born.
During the Civil War and world wars, Americans consumed pecans in large quantities because they were a protein-packed alternative when meat was expensive and scarce. One ounce of pecans has the same amount of protein as 2 ounces of meat.
After the wars, pecan demand declined, resulting in millions of excess pounds at harvest. One effort to increase demand was a national pecan recipe contest in 1924. Over 21,000 submissions came from over 5,000 cooks, with 800 of them published in a book.
Pecan consumption went up with the inclusion of pecans in commercially prepared foods and the start of the mail-order industry in the 1870s, as pecans can be shipped and stored at room temperature. That characteristic also put them on some Apollo missions. Small amounts of pecans contain many vitamins and minerals. They became commonplace in cereals, which touted their health benefits.
In 1938, the federal government published the pamphlet Nuts and How to Use Them, which touted pecans’ nutritional value and came with recipes. Food writers suggested using pecans as shortening because they are composed mostly of fat.
The government even put a price ceiling on pecans to encourage consumption, but consumers weren’t buying them. The government ended up buying the surplus pecans and integrating them into the National School Lunch Program.
While you are sitting around the Thanksgiving table this year, you can discuss one of the biggest controversies in the pecan industry: Are they PEE-cans or puh-KAHNS?
Shelley Mitchell 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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Estrella Luna-Diez, Associate Professor in Plant Pathology, School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham
The mighty Feanedock Oak in Derbyshire has provided an anchor habitat for many lifeforms, including people, for more than 200 years.Lucy Neal, CC BY-NC-SA
The Feanedock Oak stands out so clearly in Derbyshire’s section of the National Forest, you’d think it was calling to you. Surrounded by open fields, hawthorn hedges and young beech forest, a majestic old oak like this anchors the English countryside.
As the highest expression of our woodlands, oaks support more life in the UK than any other native tree. At the foot of the Feanedock oak, you can hear and see – at a glance – wrens, blackbirds, spiders, squirrels, song thrush, hoverflies, butterflies, blackcaps, woodlouse, ants and chiffchaffs. For more than two centuries, it has provided an anchor habitat, including for humans – a tumbled-down dwelling lies under its shade.
How well any English oak (Quercus robur) thrives affects everything living on and around it, from canopy to soil. In recent years of heat and drought, the Feanedock Oak has lost two large boughs.
In the summer of 2023, dendrochronologists – who research and date trees through their growth rings – took samples from the tree’s trunk to study its “healthy” and “poor” years of growth. They counted 195 rings but did not get to the centre of the tree – so it was probably seeded in the early 19th century, if not earlier. As a sapling, it would have greeted Derbyshire miners walking across the fields from nearby villages to work in the newly-dug coal shafts or the many industrial potteries in the area.
More than 200 years later, in July 2023, the Feanedock Oak (now measuring around 120 feet) played a central role in Ring of Truth. This creative collaboration between tree scientists and artists from the Walking Forest collective imagined a legal case set in the year 2030 between a claimant, the oak (in whose shadow the case was heard), and the UK government.
Ring of Truth’s imagined court case is heard at the Timber Festival, July 2023. RB Films, CC BY-NC-SA
The counsel for the claimant – real-life rights of nature lawyer Paul Powlesland – set out his argument to the judge and jury, claiming the government had breached legal obligations set out in the 2008 Climate Change Act. Scientists from the University of Birmingham – including one of us (Bruno) – acted as expert witnesses, bringing evidence of the threats posed to the tree from increased heat, atmospheric CO₂, soil damage and disease.
After hearing all the evidence, the assembled audience – in the role of jury – voted for their verdict. Many were acutely conscious that the claimant had been standing in this spot far longer than anyone else present – a silent witness to the damage done by humans on the environment and landscape. They ordered the secretary of state for climate and ecological breakdown (as the job is known in 2030) to cease breaching legal obligations to protect this and all “anchor oaks”, and the communities that thrive or suffer with them.
That powerful moment under the Feanedock Oak opened a door to a deeper question: how and what do trees remember?
Until recently, little was known about how memory might function in long-lived organisms like trees which experience decades, even centuries, of shifting environmental pressures. So this is what our multidisciplinary research collaboration – featuring artworks, performances and even a musical composition as well as groundbreaking science – set out to discover.
On the Memory of Trees, by Scott Wilson, was composed using data collated by the Membra project.
How trees’ memories work
For trees, memory is not a metaphor but a biological reality, written into their cells. One of the most remarkable forms this takes is epigenetic memory: the ability of a tree to record its life experiences and allow those experiences to shape its future, without changing the sequence of its DNA.
As Membra (full name: Understanding Memory of UK Treescapes for Better Resilience and Adaptation), we’ve studied a number of ecologically vital and culturally significant UK species including oak, ash, hazel, beech and birch. Together, they have helped us understand how trees register and respond to environmental stress, offering a powerful glimpse into how their memories are carried through woodlands.
At the heart of this process is DNA methylation, where chemical tags known as methyl groups are added to the tree’s DNA over time. While not rewriting the genetic code, they do alter how it is read. These chemical signatures can turn genes on or off, dial responses up or down, and fundamentally shift how a tree grows, adapts, or defends itself. In oaks, for example, long-term drought exposure over decades is associated with changes in DNA methylation, suggesting that trees may adjust their gene expression in response to repeated stress.
These epigenetic memories may allow trees to respond more quickly to drought, disease or climate extremes, and could even be passed to the next generation. In some plant species, this kind of inheritance is well documented, but in long-lived trees, it remains an open question – one with critical implications for forest regeneration and resilience.
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So far, our research has shown trees respond to stress in ways that can extend well beyond the immediate event. Exposure to drought or high CO₂, for example, can leave lasting marks on a tree’s growth and internal chemistry, and may shape how it responds to future conditions. But the strength of this memory appears to depend on the nature of the stress: it is more pronounced when the stress is particularly strong, such as disease, or when it occurs repeatedly over time, such as chronic drought.
A surprising result came from oak, where we observed that DNA methylation itself changes depending on the time of year – with methylation levels lowest in early spring, then increasing as the seasons progress. This suggests the imprinting of memory in trees may be far more dynamic than previously thought, and that the timing of stress events within the growing season could influence how strongly that memory is encoded.
All our studied species and associated environmental conditions have now been sequenced. In every case, we have found evidence of these memories of past stresses. In ash trees, for example, we’ve begun to detect methylation changes linked to ash dieback pressure, offering clues as to how trees regulate their defences over time as a disease progresses.
Trees are certainly resilient. They bend, adapt and endure, holding the memory of storms and seasons within their very bodies. But even their deep-rooted strength has limits. The challenges they now face are faster, more frequent and more severe than at any point in their evolutionary history.
This means what we are learning from their memories is not just a story of survival, but a warning. They are telling us there could come a point when they can no longer cope.
Even young trees remember
It is easy to be awed by a centuries-old oak. But what often goes unnoticed is the quiet crisis beneath the canopy. Across many UK woodlands, the next generation is missing.
Surveys show steep declines in most species of young trees (seedlings and saplings) due to a growing list of pressures: prolonged drought, warming temperatures, shifting herbivore populations, and an expanding wave of pests and pathogens. According to a study of nine sites in England and Scotland, co-authored by one of us (Bruno) and currently under review, the sapling mortality rate has increased from 16.2% in the period up to 2000 to 30.9% two decades later.
In some species such as elm and now ash, diseases have brought populations close to the point of lack of regeneration – when a woodland can no longer sustain itself. To counter this threat, young trees must be highly adaptable – not just in form, but at the molecular level. At Membra, scientists are exploring whether young trees imprint environmental stress more readily than older ones, and whether that memory, recorded through changes in DNA methylation, influences their survival.
One way we have tested such transgenerational changes is to expose trees (oak and hazel) to the elevated levels of CO₂ that are expected in the UK by 2050. This was done in the Birmingham Institute for Forest Research (Bifor) facility in a Staffordshire woodland – one of the world’s largest climate change experiments, where tree “arrays” (circular patches of woodland) are exposed to 150 parts per million (ppm) of CO₂ above ambient concentrations.
Membra’s research there has found that the offspring of trees exposed to these CO₂ levels respond very differently to further environmental stressors – in ways that can make them more resilient. For example, acorns from CO₂-exposed oaks were notably larger and their seedlings showed both faster growth and improved resistance to pathogens like powdery mildew – a strong sign that environmental conditions experienced by parent trees can shape offspring resilience.
To date, molecular analysis shows the inherited memory of this exposure is imprinted in the tree genes that are involved in defence mechanisms. The direct link with resilience should be identified in the next few years as our data analysis progresses.
Strikingly, these beneficial effects were most pronounced during “mast” years, when trees produce a bumper crop of seeds, suggesting that the reproductive cycles of mature oaks as well as resource availability are key to the oaks’ successful inheritance of stress-adaptive traits. Similarly, seedlings from oak trees that had undergone repeated drought exposure have shown increased drought tolerance – which suggests some trees may “prime” their offspring to be more resilient in the face of repeated climate stress.
Our work also shows that young trees can be artificially primed for resilience. For instance, early treatment with certain natural compounds enhances oak seedlings’ resistance to powdery mildew disease, triggering biochemical and transcriptional responses that allow them to mount a faster and stronger defence. This priming acts like a kind of immunological memory – in this case not inherited but induced – and could potentially open up new avenues for improving forest health and regeneration.
Importantly, species differ widely in how they pass on environmental experiences to their progeny. Hazel trees subjected to the same elevated CO₂ conditions in the Bifor woodland produced both smaller nuts and seedlings that often failed to thrive after germination. So, rather than assuming a one-size-fits-all strategy for seed sourcing, forestry managers may need to tailor decisions based on species-specific responses to past environmental stresses. Recognising the importance of parental environmental history, especially for stressors like drought, could shape how we select and prepare the next generation of trees.
This may also mean rethinking how and when we collect seeds. In species such as oak, collecting from mast years may improve the odds of transmitting beneficial adaptive traits. In all cases, understanding how trees’ memory works, not just within a tree’s lifetime but across generations, offers a crucial tool for building more adaptive, resilient treescapes in this rapidly changing world.
Tree rings such as those sampled from the Feanedock Oak record much more than just a tree’s age. They hold evidence of how trees respond to changing climates, rising carbon levels and extreme events.
Studies using these natural archives (the rings) have shown that rising atmospheric CO₂ is already changing how trees grow and photosynthesise. In some oaks, it has led to faster growth and more carbon being stored – a hopeful sign.
But this acceleration may come with hidden costs. Trees that grow quickly not only reach maturity sooner but may also die younger, potentially limiting the long-term stability of forest carbon storage.
And these shifts are not just a concern for the trees themselves – they ripple outward. Faster growth can alter forest structure, affecting biodiversity and resilience. In the UK and globally, trees face an escalating cascade of challenges including pollution, drought, storms and disease – and increasingly, these pressures overlap.
Understanding how different trees’ memories will mediate their responses to new, more stressful conditions is key to predicting which species will thrive, adapt or decline. Artificially priming young trees by exposing them early to stress may enhance their memory and survival.
In recent years, a wave of tree planting, often tied to carbon offsetting schemes, is rapidly reshaping landscapes across much of the UK. National and local governments have launched large-scale initiatives such as the England Tree Action Plan. These programmes aim to restore canopy cover, improve biodiversity and contribute to net-zero goals. Local authorities, environmental charities, landowners and corporate offsetting partners are among those overseeing the planting, with guidance and funding provided by the Forestry Commission and Defra.
However, the choice of species is often constrained by budget and availability, which can result in limited diversity and mismatches between trees and local ecological conditions. Fast-growing species like sycamore, alder, and hybrid poplar are frequently used, while slower-growing native species with deeper ecological value may be underrepresented.
Planting trees without understanding their long-term ecological roles – or their capacity to remember and adapt – also risks repeating old mistakes that could compromise long-term resilience. Selecting the right trees to face future climate threats requires more than just numbers. A forest full of fast-growing, short-lived trees may have a very different effect on the local ecosystem than one with long-lived, memory-bearing individuals. In the worst-case scenario, such woodlands will fail to regenerate and die out.
Climate models indicate a future of warmer, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers in the UK, which will challenge many native species. Diseases such as ash dieback have already transformed landscapes, with over 80% of ash trees expected to be lost in many areas. This is not just a loss of a species but a loss of the biodiversity that depends on it.
Our work highlights the value of sourcing seed from trees that have survived historic drought and understanding how memory, resilience and adaptation are embedded in the biology of many older individuals. Future woodlands will need to blend ancient wisdom with modern science, combining genetic diversity, environmental memory and community stewardship to thrive.
This legal shift complements the scientific insight from Membra: that mature woodlands, with deep memory and biodiversity, are not replaceable. And as Ring of Truth’s imagined court case made clear, it is a travesty if trees such as the Feanedock Oak are thought of as little more than machines to extract human-created carbon from the atmosphere.
Their social, cultural and ecological roles are vast. Listening to Indigenous and local communities with long-held tree knowledge, and empowering tree guardians in cities and villages alike, is vital to fostering a meaningful public practice of tree stewardship.
As one Walking Forest participant put it, time spent with trees creates space and renewed agency for surviving the climate and nature crises: “We are like trees. The stronger we root and allow ourselves, like them, to be nurtured by those around us, the better we are at withstanding the strongest of storms”.
Another said: “I see the bigger picture now, of how we are related to the forest – at one with nature because we too are part of the ecosystem.”
By weaving together artistic performance, scientific insight and ancestral knowledge, the Walking Forest collective has sought to expand how we understand our relationship with woodlands – connecting women, trees and ecological justice across time.
One powerful example is the 107-year-old Monterey Pine planted by suffragette Rose Lamartine Yates, the last known survivor of a historic arboretum planted by women activists at Eagle House in Batheaston, Somerset. A place of recovery for women who were politically active as part of the suffrage movement, this was the home of the Blathwayt family – and known as the Suffragettes’ Retreat.
Suffragettes Adela Pankhurst and Annie Kenney at Eagle House in Batheaston, Somerset, in 1910. Linley Blathwayt/Wikimedia
Between April 1909 and July 1911, at least 47 trees were planted in the grounds of Eagle House to commemorate individual suffragists and suffragettes, many of whom had been imprisoned and tortured. The arboretum afforded the suffragettes an opportunity to imagine the future into which their young trees would grow.
The trees were all bulldozed in the late 1960s to make way for a housing estate – other than Lamartine Yates’s Monterey Pine, planted in 1909, which survives to this day, protected in a private garden. The seeds of this tree are a touchstone of Walking Forest: we have gathered and propagated them, shared them with communities, and created performances and ceremonies that honour the tree’s legacy – connecting past and future generations (of trees and people) in a project to create a woodland that mirrors the original Eagle House arboretum.
Since 2018, Walking Forest artists have travelled overland to UN climate talks to gift seeds from the Monterey Pine to women and youth activists, climate negotiators, Indigenous community leaders and environmental campaigners – connecting with them in this story of resilience and renewal.
In another act of collective mourning and protest, a 100-year-old silver birch cut down for the HS2 rail link was carried through Coventry by more than 40 women during Coventry’s year as City of Culture in 2021. The act made visible the loss of ancient woodland and connected it with human grief, resistance and care.
These stories are not isolated. Across the UK, trees have become flashpoints for protest and protection – from the Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian’s Wall to Sheffield Council’s felling of more than 5,000 healthy street trees between 2014 and 2018 as part of road maintenance.
Walking Forest has collaborated with Membra not only to share scientific knowledge but to offer new ways of knowing through storytelling, ritual and creative action. As climate pressures grow, so too does public awareness of how irreplaceable mature trees are.
We are still only beginning to uncover the complexity of tree memory. Future research may reveal exactly how memory is transferred between generations, how trees prepare for challenges they’ve never seen, and how entire forests might adapt together.
But our collaboration between scientists, artists and communities is already helping to shift how people think about trees, from passive backdrop to learning beings. Through this work, we understand that trees are not just survivors – they are storytellers, record keepers and even teachers.
As our understanding of their memory deepens, so too does our responsibility to listen, learn and act. The future of forests depends not just on what trees can remember, but on what we choose not to forget.
A recent return to the Feanedock Oak, two years after its case was argued in Ring of Truth, found the tree still standing but visibly altered. Its two large, fallen limbs lay cloaked in bramble and nettle. But under its canopy, foxes burrowed, birds sang and fruit trees flowered.
Though imbalanced, this grand old oak holds its ground – a tree of memory and now a symbol of care. We will return again and again to honour its survival, and admire its provision for so many other species in the natural world. The tree reminds us that people need ways to anchor ourselves too, as we navigate uncertain times ahead.
Estrella Luna-Diez receives funding from UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
Anne-Marie Culhane receives funding from UKRI and the NERC.
Bruno Barcante Ladvocat Cintra receives funding from the NERC.
Additional thanks to Lucy Neal, member of the Walking Forest collective, for her written and photographic contributions to this article. Lucy was the creator of Ring of Truth, performed at the Timber Festival in July 2023.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. Canada and the EU have legal remedies at hand that could help the ICC thrive in the years ahead.(Wikimedia Commons), CC BY-SA
Four key staff of the court — including Canadian judge Kimberly Prost — have been sanctioned by President Donald Trump’s administration because of their involvement in investigations related to alleged war crimes committed by American and Israeli officials.
Other allies, including France, Belgium and the European Union have publicly opposed the sanctions, issuing statements in support of the ICC.
Canada has publicly backed Prost, and has recently joined a number of states at the United Nations in supporting the overall work of the court. But Canadian officials have been silent about the American sanctions.
Sanctions fallout
The current wave of sanctions has forced the court to take extraordinary measures, such as paying staff ahead of time and changing email software to openDesk which was developed by the Germany-based Centre for Digital Sovereignty.
This would mean that any American company — including financial institutions — or even Canadian companies with subsidiaries in the U.S. that deal with the court may be subject to penalties and legal action.
Shielding businesses
Not all is lost, however. There are two legal remedies that could be be used to shield the ICC. Canada and the EU could amend key laws designed to protect companies from such actions, which could significantly aid in the operation of the court.
A FEMA amendment was passed in 1996 in response to the Helms-Burton Act in the U.S. that prohibited companies from trading or conducting business in Cuba.
FEMA shields Canadian businesses affected by the Helms-Burton Act and contains specific provisions to protect companies from retaliatory action by the U.S. Similarly, the EBS was passed in the European Parliament to shield European companies from American sanctions.
It was introduced initially as a result of the Helms-Burton Act, and then later revised when the U.S. withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.
Canada and the EU could amend both FEMA and the EBS to ensure that Canadian and European companies are shielded from the effects of American sanctions and can continue to provide key services to the court.
In the case of the EU, most of the ICC’s contractual arrangements with entities like banks, insurers, service providers, technology providers and landlords are with European firms because the court is located in Europe — in The Hague, Netherlands.
Amending the EBS, therefore, would protect these companies from further American sanctions and would ensure they can still provide services to the ICC.
These legal remedies are a proportional response to the U.S. sanctions. They would allow all parties — the U.S. and the ICC’s supporters — to continue to negotiate instead of bringing international criminal justice to a grinding halt.
Ensuring the survival of the ICC
It’s important to note that including the need to shield businesses from U.S. sanctions in any amended legislation in both Canada and the EU legislation isn’t aimed at helping governments in either Cuba or Iran.
The goal is to protect Canadian and European companies from possible legal action or economic fallout if more sanctions are applied. Most importantly, the aim is to ensure that the ICC continues to operate with as little interruption as possible.
Sanctions may have significant effects on businesses, and what’s been identified as Trump’s penchant for “retributive diplomacy” may compel states — and businesses — to think twice before they act.
But FEMA and EBS provide appropriate countermeasures if and when broader U.S. sanctions on the entire ICC are introduced, or if Canadian and European companies unjustifiably suffer due to the imposition of new sanctions.
The ICC is the international organization with the ability to deliver justice and support victims. It’s the “court of last resort” that only gets involved when offending states are unwilling or unable to do so.
National security concerns in the U.S., Canada and the EU stem as much from the committing of mass atrocities as they do from other types of global crimes. That’s why it’s so important for states to support international criminal justice efforts by fulsomely supporting the ICC.
Laszlo Sarkany 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.
