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September 29, 2025

By not recognising a Palestinian state, NZ puts its own hard-won reputation on the line

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Robert G. Patman, Professor of International Relations, University of Otago

There seems to be a mismatch between what a UN inquiry recently described as genocide in Gaza and New Zealand’s announcement at the United Nations on Saturday that it will not yet join 157 other countries in recognising a Palestinian state.

The government decision, relayed by Foreign Minister Winston Peters at the UN General Assembly, was welcomed by Israel’s ambassador to New Zealand, who claimed recognition of a Palestinian state legitimises Hamas – a designated terrorist organisation.

On the other hand, former Labour prime minister Helen Clark said, “New Zealand has placed itself very much on the wrong side of history”. She said the government’s position overall was “confusing”.

In practice, the stance of the National-led coalition has certainly been ambiguous. It has called for a lasting ceasefire in Gaza, reiterated its support for a two-state solution, and repeatedly said recognition of a Palestinian state is a question of “when not if”.

However, in January 2024, it also agreed to a small Defence Force deployment as part of a United States-led coalition against Houthi rebel attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, despite the US using its Security Council veto to prevent a ceasefire in Gaza.

Equally striking was the government’s relative silence on President Donald Trump’s proposal in February this year to extinguish the prospect of a two-state solution by taking ownership of Gaza and effectively evicting two million Palestinian residents from the territory.

It also had little to say about the US-Israeli venture to start the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in late May, a controversial move that sidelined the UN in aid distribution and has led to the killing of more than 1,000 Palestinians while seeking food.

And then in June, along with the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and Norway, the government imposed sanctions on two far-right Israeli government ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar ben Gvir for “inciting extremist violence” against Palestinians.

That decision was strongly criticised by the Trump administration, but it seemed to signal the New Zealand position (along with that of its close allies) was hardening.

In August, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon declared Israel’s military assault on Gaza City was “utterly unacceptable”, and said Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “lost the plot”.

None of which, we now know, was enough to convince the government to follow other liberal democracies such as Australia, Canada, the UK, France and Portugal in recognising Palestinian statehood.

NZ’s reputation on the line

The political reasoning, according to Peters, is that while Hamas remains the de facto government of Gaza and “with a war raging”, there is no viable Palestinian state to recognise.

According to the prime minister, this was a “balanced” decision and consistent with an independent foreign policy. But it can also be argued the approach rests on some shaky assumptions.

While Israel has not been able to destroy Hamas, nor has Hamas been able to stop Gaza being reduced to piles of rubble. According to the Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich, such destruction has “no precedent globally. And the world isn’t stopping us.”

By presenting Hamas as an obstacle to the recognition process, the government also seems to be overlooking the governance role the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority in the West Bank could play in Gaza in a future Palestinian state.

Netanyahu has consistently opposed any such role for the Palestinian Authority, a position New Zealand now seems to tacitly accept.

Peters has described the situation in Gaza as “simply intolerable”. If that’s the case, it has been allowed to happen without New Zealand’s recognition of a Palestinian state. So, how does delaying recognition improve things?

After all, Netanyahu has opposed the concept of a two-state solution since the mid-1990s. And his far-right coalition government has pledged to take full control of Gaza and annex the West Bank – in complete violation of international law and numerous UN resolutions.

It is the belated realisation by a number of democracies that Netanyahu will never accept a Palestinian state that has prompted the latest flurry of statehood recognition, before Israel’s attempt to absorb the occupied territories is completed.

Those countries that have now recognised a Palestinian state will have also weighed up the factors for and against doing so. But they have clearly chosen to make a moral and legal stand – albeit symbolic – on the Palestinian right of political self-determination.

By not joining them, there is a real risk New Zealand will be seen as aligning with those states – Israel and the US – that bear significant responsibility for prolonging the catastrophic conflict in Gaza.

If this perception is widely shared, New Zealand’s hard-won reputation as a state that firmly upholds an international rules-based order could be dealt a major blow.

Robert G. Patman 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. By not recognising a Palestinian state, NZ puts its own hard-won reputation on the line – https://theconversation.com/by-not-recognising-a-palestinian-state-nz-puts-its-own-hard-won-reputation-on-the-line-266224

September 28, 2025

Generative AI might end up being worthless — and that could be a good thing

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Fenwick McKelvey, Associate Professor in Information and Communication Technology Policy, Concordia University

In the rush to cash in on the generative artificial intelligence gold rush, one possible outcome of AI’s future rarely gets discussed: what if the technology never works well enough to replace your co-workers, companies fail to use AI well or most AI startups simply fail?

Current estimates suggest big AI firms face a US$800 billion dollar revenue shortfall.

So far, genAI’s productivity gains are minimal and mostly for programmers and copywriters. GenAI does some neat, helpful things, but it’s not yet the engine of a new economy.

It’s not a bad future, but it’s different from the one currently driving news headlines. And it’s a future that doesn’t fit the narrative AI firms want to tell. Hype fuels new rounds of investment promising massive future profits.

Maybe genAI will turn out to be worthless, and maybe that’s fine.

Indispensable or indefensible?

Free genAI services, and cheap subscription services like ChatGPT and Gemini, cost a lot of money to run. Right now, however, there are growing questions about just how AI firms are going to make any money.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been candid about how much money his firm spends, once quipping that every time ChatGPT says “please” or “thank you,” it costs the firms millions. Exactly how much OpenAI loses per chat is anyone’s guess, but Altman has also said even paid pro accounts lose money because of the high computing costs that come with each query.

Like many startups, genAI firms have followed the classic playbook: burn through money to attract and lock-in users with a killer product they can’t afford to miss out on. But most tech giants have not succeeded by creating high-cost products, but rather by making low-cost products users can’t quit, largely funded by advertising.

When companies try to find new value, the result is what journalist and author Cory Doctorow coined “enshittification,” or the gradual decline of platforms over time. In this case, enshittification means the number of ads increase to make up the loss of offering the free service.

OpenAI is considering bringing ads to ChatGPT, though the company says it is being “very thoughtful and tasteful” about how this is done.

It’s too soon to tell whether this playbook will work for genAI. There is a possibility that advertising might not generate enough revenue to justify the massive spending needed to power it. That is because genAI is becoming something of a liability.

The hidden costs of AI models

Another looming problem for genAI is copyright. Most AI firms are either being sued for using content without permission or entering costly contracts to licences content.

GenAI has “learned” in a lot of dubious ways, including reading copyrighted books and scraping nearly anything said online. One model can recall “from memory” 42 per cent of the first Harry Potter novel.

Firms face a big financial headache of lobbying to exempt themselves from copyright woes and paying off publishers and creators to protect their models, which might end up a liability no matter what.

American AI startup Anthrophic tried to pay authors around US$3,000 dollars per book to train its models, adding up to proposed settlement that added up to US$1.5 billion dollars. But it was quickly thrown out by the courts for being too simple. Anthrophic’s current valuation of US$183 billion might get eaten up pretty quick in lawsuits.

The end result of all this is that AI is just too expensive to be owned, and is becoming something like a toxic asset: something that is useful but not valuable in and of itself.

Cheap or free genAI

Meta, perhaps strategically, has released its genAI model, Llama, as open source. Whether this was meant to upset its competitors or signal a different ethical stance, it means anyone with a decent computer can run their own local version of Llama for free.

Open AI models are another corporate strategy to lock in market share, with curious side effects. They are not as advanced as Gemini or ChatGPT, but they are good enough, and they are free (or at least cheaper than commercial models).

Open models upset the high valuations being placed on AI firms. Chinese firm DeepSeek momentarily tanked AI stocks when it released an open model that performed as well as the commercial models. DeepSeek’s motives are murky, but it’s success contributes to growing doubts about whether genAI is as valuable as assumed.

Open models — these by-products of industrial competition — are ubiquitous and getting easier to access. With enough success, commercial AI firms might be hard pressed to sell their services against free alternatives.

Investors could also become more skeptical of commercial AI, which could potentially dry up the taps of seed money. Even if open access models also end up being sued into oblivion, it will be much harder to remove them from the internet.

Can AI ever be owned?

The idea of genAI being worthless might recognize knowledge is intangibly valuable. The best genAI models are trained off the world’s knowledge — so much information that the true price may be impossible to calculate.

Ironically, these efforts by AI firms to capture and commercialize the world’s knowledge might be the thing damning their products; a resource so valuable a price cannot be attached. These systems may be so indebted to collective intellectual labour such that their outputs cannot truly be owned.

If genAI can’t generate sustainable profits, the consequences will likely be mixed. Creators pursuing deals with AI firms may be out of luck; there will be no big cheques from OpenAI, Anthropic or Google if their models are liabilities.

Progress on genAI could stall, too, leaving consumers with “good enough” tools that are free to use. In that scenario, AI firms may become less important, the technology a little less powerful — and that might be perfectly OK. Users would still benefit from accessible, functional tools while being spared from another round of overhyped pitches doomed to fail.

The threat of AI being worth less than anticipated might be the best defence against the growing power of big tech today. If the business case for generative AI proves unsustainable, what better place for such an empire to crumble than on the balance sheets?

Fenwick McKelvey receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec.

– ref. Generative AI might end up being worthless — and that could be a good thing – https://theconversation.com/generative-ai-might-end-up-being-worthless-and-that-could-be-a-good-thing-266046

September 28, 2025

How alcohol contributes to the epidemic of liver disease

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Timothy Naimi, Director, Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research; Professor, School of Public Health and Social Policy, University of Victoria

Research has revealed a steep increase in liver disease in recent years. Meanwhile, there is growing evidence of health harms from alcohol, including drinking at levels that were previously considered “moderate.” These developments make a persuasive case for viewing alcohol consumption from a public health perspective.

As an internal medicine physician and alcohol epidemiologist, I’m interested in the overlap between liver disease and alcohol use among patients and in the general population. As it turns out, these topics are closely related, but maybe in surprising ways.

The liver is essential: humans need it to live. The liver contributes to metabolism and food storage, produces proteins that help with blood clotting and plays a vital role in the immune system.

At the cellular level, alcohol is a toxic substance that is metabolized (broken down) primarily in the liver. When the dose of alcohol is too high, liver cells become inflamed and damaged (liver inflammation is called hepatitis).

Over time, inflamed or damaged cells are replaced by fibrosis, which is the replacement of normal liver tissue with scar tissue, resulting in cirrhosis, or severe scarring and liver dysfunction. Cirrhosis can be fatal on its own and can also lead to liver cancer.

How does alcohol contribute to liver disease?

Liver disease caused by alcohol is referred to as alcohol-related liver disease or ALD, previously called alcoholic liver disease. The heaviest drinkers, often those who have alcohol use disorder (AUD), can develop cirrhosis and liver failure.

But alcohol-related liver disease does not only affect people with AUD/heavy drinking. A growing body of evidence suggests chronic alcohol use at lower levels may also impact liver function and lead to disease, particularly among those with other risk factors for liver disease.

Patterns of alcohol consumption are also important, including among those who may not consume high amounts of alcohol on average. For example, binge drinking (defined as men consuming five or more drinks or women consuming four or more drinks per occasion) is a pattern of consumption that is very damaging to the liver because it results in high blood alcohol concentrations.

Binge drinking can be harmful to the liver, even among people who don’t drink very much on average or don’t have an alcohol use disorder.

Why are deaths from liver disease increasing?

Deaths from liver disease have been increasing dramatically in Canada and the United States over the past two decades. A key factor is increased alcohol consumption during the same period, but this has been trending down over the past couple of years. Between 2016 and 2022, Canadian deaths from alcohol-caused liver disease increased by 22 per cent.

But alcohol isn’t the only key contributor to the rise in deaths from liver disease. Another is the rise of a condition called metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, or MASLD.

Despite the complicated name, MASLD is a type of liver disease that is caused by the same metabolic disturbances that have accompanied the rise of overweight and obesity coupled with inadequate physical activity. This is the same set of risk factors that have led to the increase in diabetes. So one can conceive of MASLD as the liver equivalent of diabetes.

Hepatis C, which is a blood-borne viral infection that can be acquired through injection drug use and needle sharing, is another important contributor to liver disease and cirrhosis.

Even though medical terminology has historically differentiated between alcohol and non-alcohol-related liver diseases, alcohol contributes to the progression of supposedly non-alcoholic liver disease, including MASLD and hepatitis C.

My colleagues and I studied patients with MASLD from the U.S.-based Framingham Heart Study. We found that even among non-heavy drinkers, there was a dose-dependent relationship between the amount of alcohol use and the severity of both liver inflammation and fibrosis.

Similarly, even low levels of alcohol use can hasten the development of liver cirrhosis among those with hepatitis C. For example, research has shown that in patients with hepatitis C, there is an 11 per cent increase in risk of cirrhosis with each one-drink increase in average drinks per day.

Preventing and reducing alcohol-caused harms to the liver

Beyond providing medical care for individual patients with known liver disease, steps need to be taken upstream within the health system. These include screening around alcohol use in primary care, counselling interventions for those with risky drinking habits and treatment for those with alcohol use disorders. To do this effectively, there needs to be more resources available for all of these interventions.

However, treating individuals does not address the larger public health issue: measures are needed to lower alcohol consumption at the population level.

This is a cornerstone of preventing and reducing liver disease and its resulting disability, hospitalizations and death. And the most effective way to reduce alcohol consumption is through alcohol control policies that:

Make alcohol more expensive (for example, alcohol taxes and minimum prices);
Less available (such as restrictions on hours of sale, or the number of locations that sell alcohol), or
Less desirable socially (such as limits on advertising and marketing or sports sponsorships).

In previous research, we found that states with 10 per cent stronger or more restrictive alcohol policies had lower ALD mortality rates. Furthermore, states that increased restrictiveness by even five per cent showed subsequent reductions in ALD.

Liver harm caused by alcohol is a public health problem. Collectively, we need to take better care of our livers by taking steps to reduce alcohol consumption in the population.

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

– ref. How alcohol contributes to the epidemic of liver disease – https://theconversation.com/how-alcohol-contributes-to-the-epidemic-of-liver-disease-262902

September 28, 2025

Acting with one mind: Gwich’in lessons for truth and reconciliation

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Crystal Gail Fraser, Associate Professor, Dept. of History, Classics, & Religion and the Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta

In the early 1920s, on the banks of the Peel River next to the community of Fort McPherson in the Northwest Territories, Dinjii Zhuh (Gwich’in) families gathered in grief. Anglican missionaries were loading children, some as young as two, onto boats bound for the St. Peter’s Indian Residential School in Hay River, close to 2,000 kilometres away by water.

Teetł’it Gwich’in Elder Mary Effie Snowshoe recalled this moment as a “sad story” passed down from her parents. At the centre of it stood Chief Julius Salu. Having lost his daughter to the school earlier that year, Salu declared:

“No more. Nobody is to send their children away again. If anybody is threatened that they are going to go to court over their children, I’m going to be there. If anybody is going to go to jail for this, I’m taking it.”

This was not only an act of defiance but an expression of guut’àii — a Gwich’in principle often translated as “acting with one mind,” or collective strength. Guut’àii reflects the ethic of strength, protection and collective governance that guided our families through the residential school era.

Today, as residential school denialism grows louder in Canada — guut’àii offers lessons for how to resist.

The same strength that sustained our families a century ago can guide us in facing the current assault on truth.

Strength in a northern context

In my book, By Strength, We Are Still Here: Indigenous Peoples and Indian Residential Schooling in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, I argue that strength is an important way to understand northern experiences of residential schooling. Strength was not about individual toughness but about kinship, collective responsibility and ancestral knowledge. But this doesn’t mean the system was not genocidal, or that children didn’t endure violent, prison-like conditions.

The North complicates and sharpens this idea in the following ways:

Distance. Given the far reach of Inuvik’s residential schools — Grollier and Stringer Halls — many children travelled thousands of kilometres. Strength meant writing letters, protecting siblings and holding onto language under isolation.
A multi-nation student body. Dinjii Zhuh, Inuvialuit, Métis, Inuit, Sahtú, Dënesųłįne, and Tłı̨chǫ, Cree, and others lived together. They built solidarity that later fuelled pan-Indigenous political movements in the 1970s. There are a number of Survivor memoirs that outline these stories, including by Stephen Kakfwi, Antoine Mountain and Nick Sibbeston. I also document in By Strength, We Are Still Here how students’ cross-cultural alliances shaped the development of pan-northern activism.
Timing. While southern schools were closing, the North became a testing ground for new institutions into the 1950s and 60s, and until the closure of Grollier Hall in 1996.

Naming genocide

Residential schools were not well-intentioned mistakes. They were designed to destroy Indigenous families, governance structures and societies by targeting children. The United Nations definition of genocide includes “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” Canadian Indian residential schools fit this definition.

Survivors’ testimony, collected by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), is evidence of both harm and strength. As scholar Eve Tuck reminds us, research should not be “damage-centred,” but no damage does not mean no pain. To speak of strength is to hold both truths — genocide and survival — together.

Denialism today

Despite overwhelming historical evidence — the most important being Survivor experiences — as historian Sean Carleton and anthropology graduate student Benjamin Kucher recently wrote, residential schools denialism is increasingly visible in public debate. My contribution here is to show how Gwich’in teachings of strength (guut’àii) offer a framework for resisting it.

Denialists claim that schools weren’t that bad, that the number of missing children is exaggerated, or that Survivors are lying. Others minimize the past by saying times were different. These narratives are not neutral — they undermine Indigenous testimony and weaken public commitments to truth and reconciliation.

How strength resists denialism

Here is where Gwich’in teachings matter.

Strength reframes Survivors not as passive victims but as key advocates of governance and solidarity. Chief Salu’s declaration, mentioned above, is proof of refusal.

Agency under duress is not consent. Acts of solidarity inside institutions of genocide do not absolve those institutions — they indict them. Strength resists denialism by showing how Indigenous Peoples fought to hold communities together, even in the face of attempted destruction.

What’s at stake

Denialism affects how Canadians respond to families still searching for missing children. Demanding “proof” through exhumations ignores the overwhelming evidence already available and pressures communities to move at unsafe speeds.

Surveys show that while Canadians broadly support reconciliation, many still lack meaningful knowledge of residential schools. A 2024 Ipsos poll found that 75 per cent of Canadians believe governments should do more to recognize this legacy.

A 2023 Innovative Research survey found that while 73 per cent of Canadians report being familiar with residential schools, knowledge drops when specific questions are asked. Despite the TRC’s 94 Calls to Action, this knowledge gap creates fertile ground for denialist propaganda.

The good news is that readers do not have to look far for ways to learn and act. For example, the TRC Calls to Action continue as an ongoing initiative, as do the Calls for Justice from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Readers could also consult resources like 150 Acts of Reconciliation or the vast collection of online resources at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.

Dinjii Zhuh strength as a guide forward

What would it mean to confront denialism with guut’àii — acting with one mind?

It would mean centring Survivors’ voices, supporting families with resources and time and refusing to separate stories of suffering from stories of collective strength. It would mean teaching Canadians Indigenous strength is not just survival but structural transformation.

Children who endured residential schools sometimes went on to live full lives and, by Canadian standards, have successful careers. This was despite the system, not because of it. This was because of Indigenous forms of strength, like guut’àii.

This ethic also shapes my forthcoming book with anthropologist Sara Komarnisky, Talk Treaty to Me: Understanding the Basics of Treaties and Land in Canada, which helps Canadians understand the treaties that continue to govern our shared lives. Treaties, like guut’àii, are about collective responsibility — commitments made “with one mind” that remain central to our future together.

Refusing isolation, insisting on truth

When Chief Salu promised to go to jail for his people, he modelled what it means to act with one mind. His words remind us that the history of residential schools is not only a history of harm, but also a history of strength and collective governance.

By standing with Survivors, supporting Indigenous-led truth-telling and rejecting denialism, we can ensure Canada’s future is built on honesty, justice and respect.

Strength is not just survival. It is how Indigenous Peoples have always transformed oppression into collective action, and how we will face denialism today.

Crystal Gail Fraser receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Acting with one mind: Gwich’in lessons for truth and reconciliation – https://theconversation.com/acting-with-one-mind-gwichin-lessons-for-truth-and-reconciliation-262826

September 26, 2025

Why a study claiming vaccines cause chronic illness is severely flawed – a biostatistician explains the biases and unsupported conclusions

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Jeffrey Morris, Professor of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

Biases in designing a study can weaken how well the evidence supports the conclusion. FatCamera/E+ via Getty Images

At a Senate hearing on Sept. 9, 2025, on the corruption of science, witnesses presented an unpublished study that made a big assertion.

They claimed that the study, soon to be featured in a highly publicized film called “An Inconvenient Study,” expected out in early October 2025, provides landmark evidence that vaccines raise the risk of chronic diseases in childhood.

The study was conducted in 2020 by researchers at Henry Ford Health, a health care network in Detroit and southeast Michigan. Before the Sept. 9 hearing the study was not publicly available, but it became part of the public record after the hearing and is now posted on the Senate committee website.

At the hearing, Aaron Siri, a lawyer who specializes in vaccine lawsuits and acts as a legal adviser to Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said the study was never published because the authors feared being fired for finding evidence supporting the health risks of vaccines. His rhetoric made the study sound definitive.

As the head of biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, when I encounter new scientific claims, I always start with the question “Could this be true?” Then, I evaluate the evidence.

I can say definitively that the study by Henry Ford Health researchers has serious design problems that keep it from revealing much about whether vaccines affect children’s long-term health. In fact, a spokesperson at Henry Ford Health told journalists seeking comment on the study that it “was not published because it did not meet the rigorous scientific standards we demand as a premier medical research institution.”

The study’s weaknesses illustrate several key principles of biostatistics.

Study participants and conclusions

The researchers examined the medical records of about 18,500 children born between 2000 and 2016 within the Henry Ford Health network. According to the records, roughly 16,500 children had received at least one vaccine and about 2,000 were completely unvaccinated.

The authors compared the two groups on a wide set of outcomes. These included conditions that affect the immune system, such as asthma, allergies and autoimmune disorders. They also included neurodevelopmental outcomes such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, autism and speech and seizure disorders, as well as learning, intellectual, behavioral and motor disabilities.

A group of kindergarten-age kids in a classroom — Many diagnoses of common childhood conditions like asthma and ADHD occur after children start school.
Ariel Skelley/DigitalVision via Getty Images

Their headline result was that vaccinated children had 2.5 times the rate of “any selected chronic disease,” with 3 to 6 times higher rates for some specific conditions. They did not find that vaccinated children had higher rates of autism.

The study’s summary states it found that “vaccine exposure in children was associated with increased risk of developing a chronic health disorder.” That wording is strong, but it is not well supported given the weaknesses of the paper.

Timeline logic

To study long-term diseases in children, it’s crucial to track their health until the ages when these problems usually show up. Many conditions in the study, like asthma, ADHD, learning problems and behavior issues, are mostly diagnosed after age 5, once kids are in school. If kids are not followed that long, many cases will be missed.

However, that’s what happened here, especially for children in the unvaccinated group.

About 25% of unvaccinated children in the study were tracked until they were less than 6 months old, 50% until they were less than 15 months old, and only 25% were tracked past age 3. That’s too short to catch most of these conditions. Vaccinated kids, however, were followed much longer, with 75% followed past 15 months of age, 50% past 2.7 years of age and 25% past 5.7 years of age.

The longer timeline gave the vaccinated kids many more chances to have diagnoses recorded in their Henry Ford medical records compared with the nonvaccinated group. The study includes no explanation for this difference.

When one group is watched longer and into the ages when problems are usually found, they will almost always look sicker on paper, even if the real risks are the same. In statistics, this is called surveillance bias.

The primary methods used in the paper were not sufficient to adjust for this surveillance bias. The authors tried new analyses using only kids followed beyond age 1, 3 or 5. But vaccinated kids were still tracked longer, with more reaching the ages when diagnoses are made, so those efforts did not fix this bias.

More opportunities to be diagnosed

Not all cases of chronic disease are written down in the Henry Ford records. Kids who go to a Henry Ford doctor more often get more checkups, more tests and more chances for their diseases to be found and recorded in the Henry Ford system. Increased doctor visits has been shown to increase the chance of diagnosing chronic conditions, including autism, ADHD, asthma, developmental disorders and learning disabilities.

If people in one group see doctors more often than people in another, those people may look like they have higher disease rates even if their true health is the same across both groups. In statistics, this is called detection bias.

In the Henry Ford system, vaccinated kids averaged about seven visits per year, while unvaccinated kids had only about two. That gave the vaccinated kids many more chances to be diagnosed. The authors tried leaving out kids with zero visits, but this did not fix the detection bias, since vaccinated kids still had far more visits.

Another issue is that the study doesn’t show which kids actually used Henry Ford for their main care. Many babies are seen at the hospital for birth and early visits, but then go elsewhere for routine care. If that happens, later diagnoses would not appear in the Henry Ford records. The short follow-up for many children suggests a lot may have left the system after infancy, hiding diagnoses made outside Henry Ford.

Apples and oranges

Big differences between the groups of vaccinated and unvaccinated children can make it hard to know if vaccines really caused any differences in chronic disease. This is because of a statistical concept called confounding.

The two groups were not alike from birth. They differed in characteristics like sex, race, birth weight, being born early and the mother experiencing birth complications – all factors linked to later effects on health. The study made some adjustments for these, but left out many other important risks, such as:

• Whether families live in urban, suburban or rural areas.

• Family income, health insurance and resources.

• Environmental exposures such as air and water pollution, which were concerns in Detroit at that time.

Many factors can affect how often a child visits a health care provider.

These factors can affect both the chance of getting vaccinated and the chance of having health problems. They also change how often families visit Henry Ford clinics, which affects what shows up in the records.

When too many measured and unmeasured differences line up, as they do here, the study is unable to fully separate cause from effect.

Bottom line

The Henry Ford data could be helpful if the study followed both groups of kids to the same ages and took into account differences in health care use and background risks.

But as written, the study’s main comparisons are tilted. The follow-up time was short and uneven, kids had unequal chances for diagnosis, and the two groups were very different in ways that matter. The methods used did not adequately fix these problems. Because of this, the differences reported in the study do not show that vaccines cause chronic disease.

Good science asks tough questions and uses methods strong enough to answer them. This study falls short, and it is being presented as stronger evidence than its design really allows.

Jeffrey Morris receives funding from the National Institute of Health and the Annenberg Public Policy Center

– ref. Why a study claiming vaccines cause chronic illness is severely flawed – a biostatistician explains the biases and unsupported conclusions – https://theconversation.com/why-a-study-claiming-vaccines-cause-chronic-illness-is-severely-flawed-a-biostatistician-explains-the-biases-and-unsupported-conclusions-265470

September 26, 2025

Trump’s targeting of ‘enemies’ like James Comey echoes FBI’s dark history of mass surveillance, dirty tricks and perversion of justice under J. Edgar Hoover

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Betty Medsger, Professor Emeritus of Journalism, San Francisco State University

The building in Media, Penn. where burglars in 1971 found evidence of decades of FBI abuses against citizens. Betty Medsger

As a candidate last year, Donald Trump promised retribution against his perceived enemies. As president, he is doing that.

At the Department of Justice, a “Weaponization Working Group” has a long list of Trump’s perceived enemies to investigate. And on the evening of Sept. 25, 2025, former FBI Director – and one of Trump’s prime targets – James Comey was indicted by a grand jury at the behest of a Trump loyalist, his former personal lawyer who was appointed a prosecutor less than a week before and who pushed for the charges against the advice of career prosecutors who said there was no basis for bringing them. The charges came after Trump publicly urged the Department of Justice to indict his adversaries, saying, “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.”

At the FBI, director Kash Patel has conducted a political purge, firing the highest officials at the bureau and thousands of FBI agents who investigated alleged crimes by Trump as well as investigated participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riots.

It marks the first time since J. Edgar Hoover’s 48-year reign as FBI director that the FBI has targeted massive numbers of people perceived to be political enemies.

Trump’s recent fury showed how much he expects top officials in federal law enforcement to carry out his retribution.

He was enraged when Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, decided there was insufficient evidence to charge two people Trump regards as enemies: Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“I want him out,” Trump angrily told reporters on Sept. 19, 2025. Siebert resigned, although Trump claimed he had fired him.

Trump’s most recent demands for retribution came soon after top adviser Stephen Miller’s vow to prosecute leftists in the “vast domestic terror movement” – that the administration blames, without evidence, for Charlie Kirk’s assassination – using “every resource we have.”

As the director of the FBI, Patel will likely be in charge of the investigations of perceived enemies generated by the Department of Justice and the White House. He already has sacrificed the bureau’s independence, making it essentially an arm of the White House.

This isn’t the first time an FBI director has been driven by a desire to suppress the rights of people perceived to be political enemies. Hoover, director until his death in 1972, operated a secret FBI within the FBI that he used to destroy people and organizations whose political opinions he opposed.

A man with a beard and glasses and dark hair standing and appearing to almost be praying. — FBI Director Kash Patel reacts to Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on March 4, 2025.
AP Photo/Ben Curtis

A burglary’s revelations

Hoover’s secret FBI was revealed, beginning in 1971, when a group of people called the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an FBI office and removed files.

This group suspected Hoover’s FBI was illegally suppressing dissent. Given Hoover’s enormous power, they thought it was unlikely any government agency would investigate the FBI. They decided documentary evidence was needed to convince the public that suppression of dissent – what they considered a crime against democracy – was taking place.

A blue historical marker on a pole outside of a building, that commemorates 'FBI OFFICE BURGLARY.' — A historical marker commemorates the site of the burglary that exposed COINTELPRO.
Betty Medsger

In my book “The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI,” I describe how these eight people decided to risk imprisonment and break into the FBI’s office in Media, Pennsylvania.

The files they stole and made public confirmed the FBI was suppressing dissent. But they revealed much more: Hoover’s secret FBI and the startling crimes he had committed. These secret operations had become so extensive that they eventually diminished the bureau’s capacity to carry out its core mission: law enforcement.

Hoover, one of the most admired and powerful officials in the country, had secretly conducted a wide array of operations directed against people whose political opinions he opposed.

The files revealed that agents were instructed to “enhance paranoia” and make activists think there was an FBI agent “behind every mailbox.” Questioning Vietnam war policy could cause anyone, even a U.S. senator, Democrat J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, to be placed under FBI surveillance.

It was the revelation of Hoover’s worst operations, COINTELPRO – what Hoover called The Counter Intelligence Program – that made Americans demand investigation and reform of the FBI. Until the mid-1970s, there had never been oversight of the FBI and little coverage of the FBI by journalists, except for laudatory stories.

A video chronicle about the 1971 break-in at an FBI office in Media, Pa., that uncovered vast FBI abuses.

‘Almost beyond belief’

The COINTELPRO operations ranged from crude to cruel to murderous.

Antiwar activists were given oranges injected with powerful laxatives. Agents hired prostitutes known to have venereal disease to infect campus antiwar leaders.

Many of the COINTELPRO operations were almost beyond belief:

· The project conducted against the entire University of California system lasted more than 30 years. Hundreds of agents and informants were assigned in 1960 to spy on each of Berkeley’s 5,365 faculty members by reading their mail, observing them and searching for derogatory information – “illicit love affairs, homosexuality, sexual perversion, excessive drinking, other instances of conduct reflecting mental instability.”

· An informant trained to give perjured testimony led to the murder conviction of Black Panther Geronimo Pratt, a decorated Vietnam War veteran. He served 27 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. He was exonerated in 1997 when a judge found that the FBI concealed evidence that would have proved Pratt’s innocence.

· The bureau spied for years on Martin Luther King Jr. After it was announced King would receive the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, Hoover approved a particularly sinister plan that was designed to cause King to commit suicide.

A letter to 'KING' urging him to commit suicide, calling him 'filthy, abnormal, fraudulent.' — A letter sent anonymously by the FBI to Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964 urging him to commit suicide.
Wikipedia

· What one historian called Hoover’s “savage hatred” of Black people led to the FBI’s worst operation, a collaboration with the Chicago police that resulted in the killing of Chicago Black Panther Fred Hampton, shot dead by police as he slept. An FBI informant had been hired to ingratiate himself with Hampton. He came to know Hampton and the apartment very well. He drew a map of the apartment for the police on which he located “Fred’s bed.” After the killing, Hoover thanked the informant for his role in this successful operation. Enclosed in his letter was a cash bonus.

· Actress Jean Seberg was the victim of a 1970 COINTELPRO operation. In a memo, Hoover wrote that she had donated to the Panthers and “should be neutralized.” Seberg was pregnant, and the plot, approved personally by Hoover – as many COINTELPRO plots were – called for the FBI to tell a gossip columnist that a Black Panther was the father. Agents gave the false rumor to a Los Angeles Times gossip columnist. Without using Seberg’s name, the columnist’s story made it unmistakable that she was writing about Seberg. Three days later, Seberg gave birth prematurely to a stillborn white baby girl. Every year on the anniversary of her dead baby’s birth, Seberg attempted suicide. She succeeded in August 1979.

There was wide public interest in these revelations about COINTELPRO, many of which emerged in 1975 during hearings conducted by the Church Committee, the Senate committee chaired by Sen. Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat.

At this first-ever congressional investigation of the FBI and other intelligence agencies, former FBI officials testified under oath about bureau policies under Hoover.

One of them, William Sullivan, who had helped carry out the plots against King, was asked whether officials considered the legal and ethical issues involved in their operations. He responded:

“Never once did I hear anybody, including myself, raise the questions: ‘Is this course of action which we have agreed upon lawful? Is it legal? Is it ethical or moral?’ We never gave any thought to that line of questioning because we were just pragmatic. The one thing we were concerned about: will this course of action work, will it get us what we want.”

Ethical? Legal?

The future of the new FBI under Patel and Trump is unclear, especially in light of the president’s known tolerance for lawlessness, even violence. His gifts of clemency and pardons to Jan. 6 rioters are evidence of that.

As for Patel, fired FBI Officials stated in their recent lawsuit over those dismissals that Patel had told one of them it was “likely illegal” to fire agents because of the cases they had worked on, but that he was powerless to resist Trump’s demands.

The recent statements from both Trump and top aide Miller suggest the FBI’s independence, and broader constitutional requirements that the administration remain faithful to the law, are meaningless to them. They suggest that, like Hoover, they would criminalize dissent.

What will happen at the FBI after the internal purge ends? Will retribution fever wane? Will Patel refocus on the bureau’s chief mission, law enforcement? And will the questions asked in Congress in 1975, as the bureau was being forced to reject Hoover’s worst practices, be asked now: Is what we are doing ethical? Is it legal?

This story has been updated to include the indictment of James Comey, former head of the FBI.

Betty Medsger 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’s targeting of ‘enemies’ like James Comey echoes FBI’s dark history of mass surveillance, dirty tricks and perversion of justice under J. Edgar Hoover – https://theconversation.com/trumps-targeting-of-enemies-like-james-comey-echoes-fbis-dark-history-of-mass-surveillance-dirty-tricks-and-perversion-of-justice-under-j-edgar-hoover-265364

September 26, 2025

Digital ID cards: what are they and how will they help the UK deal with illegal immigration?

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tim Holmes, Lecturer in Criminology & Criminal Justice, Bangor University

The UK’s new digital ID card scheme, announced by Keir Starmer on September 26, has two big questions swirling around it. Is it a solution to illegal immigration? And will it give the government too much power to monitor people?

These questions are likely to dominate discussion and debate for some time. A petition has been posted and civil liberty groups and politicians are already questioning the value of the scheme. But what is the reality?

What is a digital ID card?

Similar to the NHS app and various other existing digital cards, the new scheme will create a universal form of identification stored on mobile phones. When accessing public services, the ID could be used in the same way similar schemes are used across Europe, offering the promise of a more efficient process. Estonia has famously operated a digital ID system since 2002.

One of the aspects of the new scheme that may be overlooked in the forthcoming debate is the benefits this would have in potentially reducing bureaucracy, cost, fraud and waiting times when people are trying to prove they are eligible for certain services. While there are concerns over ID cards from a civil liberties point of view, their use in improving efficiency is something to bear in mind.

The other imperative in this scheme is monitoring who has the right to work in the UK. Anyone wanting to work or rent a home in the UK would need one, replacing the current practice of using a variety of documents such as driving licences, national insurance numbers and gas bills.

A phonescreen with the NHS app on it. — There are parallels with the NHS app.
Shutterstock/frank333

There is therefore an expectation that this will affect illegal immigration by deterring people who don’t have the right to be in the UK from trying to get jobs. Employers and landlords would need to examine ID cards to confirm the identity of applicants.

Illegal immigration and the shadow economy

Combating the flow of illegal immigrants has been a consistent problem for both the current Labour government and the previous Conservative regime. The appeal of the UK is related in part to the work opportunities available to those who can make it to the country and blend in.

In principle, the current eVisas scheme and the new digital ID card would cut off access to legitimate work for those entering the country illegally – although groups such as Migrants’ Rights Network have questioned the value of the eVisas scheme for those wanting to prove their immigration status.

With the political debate focusing on trying to stop small boat crossings, this may seem like an indirect way to address a problem – but cutting off access to work could have an impact on the appeal of the UK in the first place.

Those trying to stay in the UK undetected would need to work in the shadow economy and live in accommodation that did not check ID. The shadow economy is estimated to be 10.8% of GDP in the UK. Both activities could lead to increased dependency on organised crime groups and human traffickers.

Research suggests technology has been key in reducing crime over the past 20 years. Solutions to fraud have often been focused on improving security around identification processes, such as the introduction of facial recognition technology in passports. Perhaps digital ID cards are the next hi-tech solution needed to address illegal immigration.

Stepping into the future

ID cards have been tried and proposed before with similar intentions, so this is not a radical new idea. Also, we all carry a collection of digital ID on our phones, so in many respects, people are not being asked to do something we do not already do.

What could capture the public’s attention and concern, however, is the idea that the card is mandatory and universal. If it is only used in the specified circumstances of accessing public services, seeking employment or rented accommodation, then there is no need to see the scheme as anything more than a new way to be efficient.

But will the demand to produce the card outside of these situations become a common practice in efforts to seek out illegal immigrants? What happens to those who do not have access to their digital ID card, or do not want one? Will it create a rift in society by providing more protection from illegal immigration?

These questions are certain to be raised as the government moves ahead with its plan.

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

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Tim Holmes 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. Digital ID cards: what are they and how will they help the UK deal with illegal immigration? – https://theconversation.com/digital-id-cards-what-are-they-and-how-will-they-help-the-uk-deal-with-illegal-immigration-266194

September 26, 2025

How water fuels conflict in Pakistan

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Daanish Mustafa, Professor in Critical Geography, King’s College London

Two children walk along a burst water pipeline in Karachi, southern Pakistan. Asianet-Pakistan / Shutterstock

For ten days in April 2025, Pakistan almost came to a standstill. No freight was moving from its only port city, Karachi, towards the population centres in the north. The cause was the government’s announcement of a project to build six canals to irrigate the Cholistan Desert in the east of the country.

Protesters in the southern Sindh province, fearing diminished water supplies, demanded the immediate cancellation of the project and blocked all highways running northwards. The government soon relented, with prime minister Shehbaz Sharif announcing the project’s suspension in early May.

This was probably, at least in part, because the government was anticipating Indian military action. India blamed Pakistan for the Pahalgam terrorist attack, in which 26 people were killed in Indian-administered Kashmir the previous month. Internal squabbles had to be diffused in the face of external threats.

Geopolitics handed a temporary victory to the protesters. But the potential of water to cause conflict in Pakistan remains a live issue, from households using suction pumps to draw more than their share, to large inter-provincial disputes.

Wars and climate change are inextricably linked. Climate change can increase the likelihood of violent conflict by intensifying resource scarcity and displacement, while conflict itself accelerates environmental damage. This article is part of a series, War on climate, which explores the relationship between climate issues and global conflicts.

As someone who has researched water scarcity in Pakistan for 30 years, I argue that water conflict there is entirely avoidable. It is largely a function of the state’s obsession with supply-side mega projects and a lack of attention to questions of equitable access and quality.

At a time when the effects of climate change are becoming more severe, Pakistan can ill afford to continue its engineering-based approach to water if it is to ensure sufficient access for all.

According to the Pakistani government’s own figures, more than 95% of the available water in Pakistan is devoted to agriculture. It is used to cultivate water-guzzling crops, including rice and sugarcane. Pakistan is the fifth-largest producer and fourth-largest exporter of these crops.

Meanwhile the country’s teeming commercial centre of Karachi, with a population of 18 million, suffers from acute water shortages. Affluent neighbourhoods have water intensive date palms, exotic gardens, golf courses and swimming pools.

But for more than 80% of the city’s poorer neighbourhoods, there is almost complete dependence on water from tankers at up to 30 times the price richer neighbourhoods pay for regular piped water.

Water mains often become battle fronts in Karachi. My own research has documented many instances of violent conflict between different ethnicities and groups around manipulating water mains to gain access.

The minority Christian community in the Gujjar Nala neighbourhood of Karachi, for example, has engaged in violent clashes with the neighbouring Pashtun community over the operation of the regulating valve for allocating water to the two communities.

Conflict has also arisen between the city’s predominantly Urdu-speaking communities of Orangi Town and Altafnagar. Orangi residents attacked and destroyed the overhead water dispenser at the Altafnagar pumping station in early 2015 as it was siphoning water for Orangi to commercial water tankers.

Conflict between provinces

Pakistan is dependent on the Indus River and its tributaries for water. The system recharges the extensive Indus aquifer, which provides up to 80% of the water required for crops in the country.

Inter-provincial conflict over the distribution of Indus River water between upstream Punjab province, where several of Pakistan’s largest cities are located, and downstream Sindh province is an ongoing saga.

Sindh resents any new water mega projects in the powerful Punjab province. Along with the central government, Punjab wants to push forward dams and infrastructure projects in the name of development.

The Sindh-Punjab water conflict had a resolution of sorts in 1991, when the Inter-provincial Water Accord was signed. The agreement allocated water from the Indus River system among Pakistan’s four provinces.

However, Sindh’s civil society and government frequently accuse Punjab of violating the agreement by diverting water from the Indus River without the permission of the chief minister of Sindh, as required by the accord.

Sindhi and Punjabi nationalist politics heavily feature the water conflict in their rhetoric, which is proving corrosive for the federation of Pakistan.

Numerous dams and mining projects in the restive Balochistan province have also alienated the populace against the Pakistani government. They argue that dams are built with little local consultation and become hazards when they are swept away in flash floods. Around 30 dams in Balochistan were swept away during the 2022 floods.

At the same time, massive amounts of water are appropriated by foreign-owned mining operations there. These operations are of little benefit to local populations. The ongoing insurgency in the province, and the associated human rights abuses by the Pakistani state, are not divorced from the politics of water.

A thatched shelter on the banks of the Indus River. — The Indus River has been a source of conflict between Pakistan’s Sindh and Punjab provinces.
thsulemani / Shutterstock

Pakistan’s water development paradigm is based on engineering and infrastructure. But under the greater uncertainty of climate change, what is needed is more adaptive and flexible management of water at the local scale.

The current approach locks the state into fixed management based on assumptions underlying the design parameters of the infrastructure.

During flood season, which typically runs from July to September, the design parameters of dams and other infrastructure are now routinely exceeded. Water has to be released to save the infrastructure, thereby accentuating flood peaks.

The bulk of agricultural water also comes from groundwater, but all the investment is in surface water. It is a common lament in Pakistan that groundwater has been left for unregulated exploitation by private electric pumps, with all the attention devoted to surface water.

In domestic water supply, the obsession for photogenic urban green spaces and mega supply projects also take away water from poor areas and resources from the much-needed maintenance of the distribution infrastructure.

Climate change is a wicked problem that defies centralised decision making in a country the size and diversity of Pakistan. Local knowledge and democratic decision making are the best arbiter of adjustment to climate change and equitable water access.

Yet, in a praetorian state like Pakistan, military-dominated governance is unfortunately moving in exactly the opposite direction.

The research cited in this article emerged from grants funded by United States Institute for Peace (USIP) & Royal Geographical Society.

– ref. How water fuels conflict in Pakistan – https://theconversation.com/how-water-fuels-conflict-in-pakistan-262628

September 26, 2025

A landmark treaty could protect the high seas – and spark new conflicts

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Naporn Popattanachai, Lecturer in Environmental and Marine Law, University of Galway

Two-thirds of the world’s oceans lie beyond national borders, an unregulated expanse under growing pressure from mining, fishing and climate change. Now, a new UN treaty promises to change that – but could also trigger fresh conflicts over who controls the high seas.

The high seas treaty, formally known as the BBNJ Agreement, has finally crossed the threshold to become international law after Morocco became the 60th country to ratify it. This triggers its entry into force in January 2026, opening a new era of ocean governance.

At the heart of the treaty is a plan to create protected areas on the high seas, similar to national parks on land. The goal is to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030, a target agreed under the UN’s global biodiversity framework.

Only countries that sign and ratify the treaty will be bound by its rules (with some exceptions). Those that stay outside the agreement, like China or the US, won’t have to follow the treaty – but will lose a say in shaping the multilateral system of ocean governance. The could act unilaterally, but other states would be able to challenge them under the UN convention on the law of the sea.

The new treaty also lays down very detailed processes, thresholds, and other requirements for environmental impact assessments for activities that could harm the high seas. Countries can expect more regulations for activities – especially offshore activities – in their waters if they could cause damage beyond their maritime borders.

The high seas are a huge source of genetic resources. That means any plant, animal or microbe that could lead to new medicines, crops or industrial materials.

The treaty sets out rules for sharing both the materials and the potentially-lucrative scientific information they generate, so that poorer countries can also benefit from discoveries made in these waters. Detailed rules on access and benefit-sharing will be further developed by the countries that have signed the treaty.

However, the treaty will not apply to fishing already covered by international regulations, or to fish or other marine life caught through such activities on the high seas. Effectively, commercial fishing falls outside the scope of this treaty.

Mining pitted against conservation

But conservation isn’t the only activity on the high seas. Mining companies are keen to extract minerals such as nickel, cobalt or copper from below the deep seabed – often in the same areas where fragile ecosystems and valuable genetic resources can be found.

Deep-sea mining is already regulated by the International Seabed Authority, a separate specialised body established by a UN convention that has already granted many exploration contracts and is now drafting new rules for commercial extraction.

The two regimes – the high seas treaty and the seabed authority – compete and conflict with one another. Protecting marine life may significantly limit (if not prohibit) deep-sea mining, and vice versa.

It’s not yet clear how the new treaty will resolve this potential conflict. The only clue we have is that article 5 (2) of the treaty states it shall be interpreted in a way that “does not undermine” other relevant legal and political bodies. It remains to be seen how the two regimes will coordinate in practice, as well as how these competing interests can be reconciled, where the stakes are very high. When protecting biodiversity could stop lucrative mining projects, tensions seem inevitable.

Before the treaty takes effect in 2026, countries that have signed and ratified the treaty will meet again to agree on details: how protected areas will be chosen, how genetic resources will be shared, and how to handle conflicts with activities like fishing and mining.

For anyone involved in marine conservation and governance, this is an exciting moment. The high seas treaty could transform the way we look after the oceans. It gives us the chance to protect vast, vulnerable ecosystems and ensure the benefits of ocean science are shared more equally. But whether it will deliver on that promise depends on whether states can balance conservation with a growing scramble for deep-sea resources.

Naporn Popattanachai 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. A landmark treaty could protect the high seas – and spark new conflicts – https://theconversation.com/a-landmark-treaty-could-protect-the-high-seas-and-spark-new-conflicts-265908

September 26, 2025

Nigel Farage’s pledge to end indefinite leave could hurt the economy even before an election

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tom Montgomery, Lecturer in Work and Organisations, University of Stirling

Nigel Farage’s proposal to abolish indefinite leave to remain is a shifting of the goalposts for those who have already come to the UK legally and settled.

Framing issues of migration as a crisis has been beneficial for Farage and other British politicians as a political strategy. However, on this occasion there are early indications that these proposals may provoke a more negative reaction from the British public.

The idea that even those already granted leave to remain would have to reapply creates insecurity for thousands of people who have come to call the UK home, which speaks to some of the human costs of such proposals.

We should also consider the potential implications for the economy. Reform claims billions could be saved by ending the right to apply for permanent residency in the UK – a claim that was called into question within days.

This indicates a pressing need for scrutiny of the economic impact a Reform government would have, particularly given that the party leading in polls.

Polls are not just indicators of who may next occupy 10 Downing Street. They also send signals to key actors in the economy about the country’s potential future direction of travel. And these signals matter. To understand how, we can turn our attention to the questions that an end to indefinite leave to remain may pose for the UK labour market.

There is already a problem with skills investment in the UK. Decisions to invest in skills and training often require a commitment to long-term investment before the employer and the employee realise the benefits.

But what happens to such investment when employers are unsure if their staff may be forced to leave? This is particularly relevant for those key sectors where there is a greater reliance on migrant workers.

Then there is the issue of job creation. If an employer is currently deciding where to invest and create new jobs, one aspect they will consider is access to the skills they need.

We know that there are key areas where employers are concerned about skills shortages in the UK. Would the potential end of leave to remain make it riskier to invest in creating jobs in the UK? This is a question employers will already be asking.

And if you are a worker from another country with skills that are in high demand, would these proposals make the UK more, or less attractive as a destination to bring skills?

These economic implications lead us to a key political question: who did Reform consult before making this announcement?

Reform has consistently sought to position itself as on the side of British business. Did they speak to the Confederation of British Industry about whether scrapping indefinite leave to remain would be a good idea? The Federation of Small Businesses? Did they speak to industry federations in the care sector, the hospitality sector, the education sector, or the health sector, where employers rely upon migrant workers?

Farage has also been keen to present himself as standing up for British workers and has in the past year been seeking to win support of grassroots union members. Did he consult any of the trade unions that represent millions of workers across the UK? Or did he consult trade union representatives in sectors that may be affected by these new proposals?

What type of consultation has informed these new proposals matters because it sends an important signal on the approach to governing that Farage intends to adopt should he become the next prime minister. Such signals are also likely to inform decisions made before the next election by employers and workers sustaining the UK economy.

Perhaps owing to the rapid rise of the Reform party and the dominance of two parties in government for generations, it has not received the same degree of scrutiny that previous “governments-in-waiting” have received. But given its dominance in the polls, careful consideration of the impact of its proposals is more necessary than ever.

If we look closer at these latest proposals, we see that they will create a more hostile and uncertain environment for those who have lived and worked in the UK for some years and those considering coming to the country. That may have already created risks for the UK economy.

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

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

Tom Montgomery works in higher education. He has conducted research on issues of social care, migration and labour markets that has been funded by the European Commission.

– ref. Nigel Farage’s pledge to end indefinite leave could hurt the economy even before an election – https://theconversation.com/nigel-farages-pledge-to-end-indefinite-leave-could-hurt-the-economy-even-before-an-election-266174