Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dafydd Townley, Teaching Fellow in US politics and international security, University of Portsmouth

Following the shooting of his political ally, the far-right activist and commentator Charlie Kirk, on September 10, Donald Trump has signalled his intention to pursue his political enemies – what he refers to as the “radical left”. In the days following Kirk’s assassination, the US president took to social media to announce he was planning on designating the antifa movement a terrorist organisation.

Calling antifa a “SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER”, Trump also threatened to investigate any organisations funding antifa. And when Kirk’s widow, Erika, said she forgave the person who has been arrested for the murder, Trump said he did not. “I hate my opponent,” he told people at a memorial event for Kirk at the weekend.

But Trump’s decision to target his ideological opponents faces significant legal and constitutional issues.

It’s not the first time that Trump has threatened such action. In 2020, he threatened the same thing on social media in response to the widespread protests following the death of George Floyd. But just as is the case in the present day, there was no legal process to designate any domestic group as a terrorist organisation.

Trump also appears to have misunderstood what antifa is. He represents it as a defined organisation, when it is more like a broad ideology. Mark Bray, a historian at Rutgers University, New Jersey, described the movement as similar to feminism. “There are feminist groups, but feminism itself is not a group. There are antifa groups, but antifa itself is not a group,” he said.

Antifa is shorthand for “anti-fascist”. It has no centralised leadership or defined structure. Despite being able to mobilise to oppose far-right groups with protests and counter-demonstrations, the movement’s dispersed character hampers efforts to classify it as an organisation of any formal kind.

Plans to use Rico laws

One of the laws Trump has suggested that US attorney-general Pam Bondi could use against antifa is the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (Rico) Act of 1970. This was passed by Richard Nixon to tackle organised crime, but its application has since been extended to investigate various other organisations and individuals. This has included Donald Trump himself, over alleged irregularities in Georgia during the 2020 presidential election.

Although it would be challenging, the Trump administration might try to use Rico laws to break up antifa’s network if the movement is classified as a terrorist organisation. Authorities could argue that specific individuals are engaged in a series of racketeering activities, including any acts of violence or other criminal behaviour linked to the movement. But this method would undoubtedly face considerable legal challenges.

If the US government finds a way to define antifa as a group and identify people as members – it’s not clear at the moment whether this might be possible – it would then be possible to seek out and attempt to prosecute anyone who facilitates their activities or gives them funds. But as David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University, North Carolina, told the BBC this week: “Under the First Amendment, no one can be punished for joining a group or giving money to a group.”

Nevertheless, antifa activists may be subject to increased surveillance if the movement is proscribed. Such actions would mirror the FBI’s extra-legal counterintelligence programme (Cointelpro) that targeted the new left in America during the 1960s. Civil rights groups and Democrats would inevitably raise serious questions concerning executive overreach and possible violations of civil liberties.

Power grab

Labelling antifa as a terrorist group would allow the federal government to circumvent state-controlled law enforcement. It may seek to do so especially in Democrat states and cities where authorities might be hesitant to act against liberal or left-wing demonstrators. Federal agencies such as the FBI and Department of Homeland Security might be drafted in to lead investigations and prosecutions, superseding state authorities.

This consolidation of power would create further legal and political difficulties. While the Posse Comitatus Act is supposed to bar the use of federal military personnel for domestic law enforcement, there are exceptions. If the president invokes the Insurrection Act of 1807 it would give him the power to deploy troops to restore order.

Antifa’s classification as a terrorist organisation could have profound effects on the first amendment rights of large numbers of law-abiding US citizens. It would be a serious danger to American democracy if US citizens were unable to voice their protest and exercise their right to free speech because of this classification.

A decision to vilify anti-establishment rhetoric would set a dangerous precedent for silencing dissent and infringing fundamental constitutional rights in the US during the 21st century.

The administration’s position on domestic extremism has changed significantly with Trump’s plan to label antifa as a terrorist organisation. The political consequences are far-reaching, potentially setting important precedents for the balance between civil liberties and US national security. This could shift the focus more toward security and potentially harm individual freedoms.

But it’s unlikely that the Trump administration will be deterred by any constitutional considerations. This is an executive branch that has acted first and sought justification through the courts. There will be a lengthy legal process if Trump follows through on this. But by the time courts make their final decision, the damage will already have been done to the US political system.

Dafydd Townley 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. Going after ‘antifa’: Donald Trump’s plans to crush his political foes – https://theconversation.com/going-after-antifa-donald-trumps-plans-to-crush-his-political-foes-265686

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Emma Long, Associate Professor of American History and Politics, University of East Anglia

Donald Trump is attempting to sue the New York Times. In a lawsuit filed on September 15 the US president charged that the paper, two Times journalists and also the publisher Penguin Random House committed libel and defamation against him in series of articles and a book discussing his business experience and time on The Apprentice TV show.

Trump claims the publications were designed to damage his business reputation, sabotage his candidacy in the 2024 election, and interfere with the election. According to the lawsuit, they were published in “bad faith, out of hatred and ill-will directed towards President Trump without any regard for the truth”.

A federal judge threw out the lawsuit on September 19, but did so on a legal technicality without addressing the content of the allegations. Trump’s lawyers have said they will refile so the issues involved remain active.

Trump’s lawsuit is governed by a 1964 Supreme Court ruling, New York Times v. Sullivan. One of the most celebrated of cases handed down by the court during the era known as the rights revolution, the ruling has provided the press in the US with one of the most protected spaces in the world in which to operate.

Read more:
The case that saved the press – and why Trump wants it gone

The Sullivan case

On March 29 1960, the New York Times published an advertisement funded by northern supporters of Martin Luther King. Headlined Heed Their Rising Voices, it described a number of actions the city government of Montgomery, Alabama had taken to thwart the civil rights movement’s anti-segregation protests and to punish those involved. The city’s police commissioner, L.B. Sullivan, sued the paper for defaming him, even though he was not mentioned by name.

His case rested on the fact there were a small number of factual inaccuracies in the advertisement and that it undermined his professional reputation. A southern jury, upholding Sullivan’s claim, awarded him damages of US$500,000 (£371,000) – roughly equivalent to US$5 million today.

Dismissing Sullivan’s claim, a unanimous Supreme Court established the key test that has governed US press freedom regarding public officials ever since. The “actual malice” test requires evidence that information was published “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not”.

This means that by themselves, factual inaccuracies are not sufficient to make a case. And since most journalists and commentators seek to be diligent about the material they publish, the ruling has historically created an extremely high bar for litigants. This has granted the media in the US freedoms that extend well beyond those in many other nations.

In legal terms, then, Trump’s case is highly likely to fail.

Wider context

Sullivan also has important things to say in a country currently embroiled in debates about the scope of free political speech and press commentary.

Under pressure from Trump, broadcaster CBS cancelled The Late Show in July, hosted by frequent Trump critic Stephen Colbert, while ABC has now suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show. The latter move followed a furore over comments the host made about Trump’s reaction to the death of far right conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

The debates have also been driven by Trump’s history of lawsuits against those who disagree with him – including, most recently, the Wall Street Journal, and also against ABC and CBS over issues separate to the rows over their talkshow hosts. He has also launched an investigation into former special prosecutor Jack Smith and taken action to put pressure on law firms representing Trump critics as well as against Harvard University, among others.

In 1964, the Supreme Court understood the importance of the context in which the case had been brought, namely the civil rights movement. In the 1960s, libel suits were used by southern states to attempt to control news coverage of civil rights demonstrations. Officials knew that white southern juries would not find in favour of northern newspapers sympathetic to desegregation.

When the Supreme Court considered its judgment in Sullivan, the New York Times was facing 11 other libel suits in Alabama alone with a total of more than US$5 million at stake. CBS was defending five libel suits in southern states with a total cost of almost $2 million.

Fearful of unfavourable verdicts and monetary damages that risked bankruptcy, some media outlets limited or stopped outright coverage of civil rights protests, just as southern segregationists wanted. This was what the court called a “chilling effect … on First Amendment freedoms”. Fear of consequences can limit people’s willingness to speak out, and self-censorship takes the place of official regulation.

In such a context of intimidation, warned the court, “the pall of fear and timidity imposed upon those who would give voice to public criticism is an atmosphere in which the first amendment freedoms cannot survive”. Americans today of all political persuasions would be wise to pay attention. Good, effective political debate can only happen when participants do not fear or risk retaliation for critical commentary.

Politics was also no place for the thin-skinned, warned the justices in 1964. The commitment to first amendment freedoms meant debate “should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and […] it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials”. A public official, wrote Justice Arthur Goldberg in concurrence, “must expect that his official acts will be commented upon and criticised”.

While unlikely that they anticipated the type of vitriol increasingly familiar to us in the age of social media, the principle nevertheless remains: criticism of job performance is inherent in public roles. If you don’t like it, don’t get involved, and certainly don’t use the law of libel and defamation to seek redress for hurt feelings.

In its Sullivan judgment, the Supreme Court understood the dangers to free speech in a time of polarised debate. Its ruling contains important warnings for Americans that extend well beyond the latest Trump lawsuit.

Emma Long 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. New York Times v Sullivan: the 60-year old Supreme Court judgment that press freedom depends on in Trump era – https://theconversation.com/new-york-times-v-sullivan-the-60-year-old-supreme-court-judgment-that-press-freedom-depends-on-in-trump-era-265598

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Peter Coppola, Visiting Researcher, University of Cambridge

What gives rise to human consciousness? Are some parts of the brain more important than others? Scientists began tackling these questions in more depth about 35 years ago. Researchers have made progress, but the mystery of consciousness remains very much alive.

In a recently published article, I reviewed over 100 years of neuroscience research to see if some brain regions are more important than others for consciousness. What I found suggests scientists who study consciousness may have been undervaluing the most ancient regions of human brains.

Consciousness is usually defined by neuroscientists as the ability to have subjective experience, such as the experience of tasting an apple or of seeing the redness of its skin.

The leading theories of consciousness suggest that the outer layer of the human brain, called the cortex (in blue in figure 1), is fundamental to consciousness. This is mostly composed of the neocortex, which is newer in our evolutionary history.

The human subcortex (figure 1, brown/beige), underneath the neocortex, has not changed much in the last 500 million years. It is thought to be like electricity for a TV, necessary for consciousness, but not enough on its own.

There is another part of the brain that some neuroscientific theories of consciousness state is irrelevant for consciousness. This is the cerebellum, which is also older than the neocortex and looks like a little brain tucked in the back of the skull (figure 1, purple). Brain activity and brain networks are disrupted in unconsciousness (like in a coma). These changes can be seen in the cortex, subcortex and cerebellum.

What brain stimulation reveals

As part of my analysis I looked at studies showing what happens to consciousness when brain activity is changed, for example, by applying electrical currents or magnetic pulses to brain regions.

These experiments in humans and animals showed that altering activity in any of these three parts of the brain can alter consciousness. Changing the activity of the neocortex can change your sense of self, make you hallucinate, or affect your judgment.

Changing the subcortex may have extreme effects. We can induce depression, wake a monkey from anaesthesia or knock a mouse unconscious. Even stimulating the cerebellum, long considered irrelevant, can change your conscious sensory perception.

However, this research does not allow us to reach strong conclusions about where consciousness comes from, as stimulating one brain region may affect another region. Like unplugging the TV from the socket, we might be changing the conditions that support consciousness, but not the mechanisms of consciousness itself.

So I looked at some evidence from patients to see if it would help resolve this dilemma.

Damage from physical trauma or lack of oxygen to the brain can disrupt your experience. Injury to the neocortex may make you think your hand is not yours, fail to notice things on one side of your visual field, or become more impulsive.

People born without the cerebellum, or the front of their cortex, can still appear conscious and live quite normal lives. However, damaging the cerebellum later in life can trigger hallucinations or change your emotions completely.

Harm to the most ancient parts of our brain can directly cause unconsciousness (although some people recover) or death. However, like electricity for a TV, the subcortex may be just keeping the newer cortex “online”, which may be giving rise to consciousness. So I wanted to know whether, alternatively, there is evidence that the most ancient regions are sufficient for consciousness.

There are rare cases of children being born without most or all of their neocortex. According to medical textbooks, these people should be in a permanent vegetative state. However, there are reports that these people can feel upset, play, recognise people or show enjoyment of music. This suggests that they are having some sort of conscious experience.

These reports are striking evidence that suggests maybe the oldest parts of the brain are enough for basic consciousness. Or maybe, when you are born without a cortex, the older parts of the brain adapt to take on some of the roles of the newer parts of the brain.

There are some extreme experiments on animals that can help us reach a conclusion. Across mammals – from rats to cats to monkeys – surgically removing the neocortex leaves them still capable of an astonishing number of things. They can play, show emotions, groom themselves, parent their young and even learn. Surprisingly, even adult animals that underwent this surgery showed similar behaviour.

Altogether, the evidence challenges the view that the cortex is necessary for consciousness, as most major theories of consciousness suggest. It seems that the oldest parts of the brain are enough for some basic forms of consciousness.

The newer parts of the brain – as well as the cerebellum – seem to expand and refine your consciousness. This means we may have to review our theories of consciousness. In turn, this may influence patient care as well as how we think about animal rights. In fact, consciousness might be more common than we realised.

Peter Coppola 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. Major theories of consciousness may have been focusing on the wrong part of the brain – https://theconversation.com/major-theories-of-consciousness-may-have-been-focusing-on-the-wrong-part-of-the-brain-264609

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dan Nicolau, Reader, Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, King’s College London

A £150 billion technology prosperity deal between the US and the UK was announced during President Donald Trump’s recent state visit to the UK.

But what kinds of technologies could it advance and how will these benefit the British public?

The Conversation asked Dr Dan Nicolau, who researches the interface of biology and computing, medical science and artificial intelligence (AI), at King’s College London for his thoughts.

AI has been the focus of this deal, but what other technologies could it benefit?

It’s a large amount of money, even for a wealthy medium-sized country like the UK. The big unknown is whether the various technical challenges associated with these technologies are overcome. It’s a big bet. It’s important if you want to see big economic benefits over the next ten years, say.

Those challenges include hallucinations by AI, where they invent information. The other thing relates to whether we have enough electricity. The government could build nuclear power plants. But that’s a big commitment over many years.

It’s also not totally clear that some of these tech advances directly translate to economic growth. There’s a quantum computing component to this deal and it’s directed towards developing lots of new medicinal drugs.

It’s not completely clear that if you had 100 new drugs for cancer that you would have the capacity to do the clinical trials to see that they worked. Maybe AI can accelerate the clinical trials but all of this is a big question mark. It’s a big bet that we can solve these problems in three to four years so we can get some economic growth over the next ten years.

Occasionally, there is some big breakthrough with quantum computing. Last year, Google announced that it had built a processor that drastically reduces the errors that quantum computers are prone to. But it’s not clear that running quantum computers at very cold temperatures or scaling or reducing the error rates translate into concrete breakthroughs. It might do, but it’s a little bit of a gamble. We don’t necessarily know if we’ll have answers in the next five years, but I think we’ll know a lot more in the next two.

Of the potential technologies, such as self-driving cars, drones and advanced chips, which could yield real benefits to people?

The question is about timescale. If I knew that I had a drug that could cure breast cancer or lung cancer, say. Even if I could prove that scientifically, it would be ten years before anyone could receive that drug. That’s because I’d have to publish the paper, it would have to be tested in mice, then clinical trials in humans.

In other areas, like for example, accounting, planning, contracts in law – all of that stuff, things can be done now. Some things can be done so much faster, it’s hard to imagine there wouldn’t be major economic impact in two years. Because AI tools are able to accelerate writing computer code, I think that’s an area where we’d see half of code, maybe, being automated in the next two years. Whether that’s good for people in coding jobs, let’s see.

With drones, there are a couple of challenges – they can’t operate alone so they need constant human supervision. We’re working on a project where we’re trying to upload a fly brain into a drone. The fly already knows how to fly so if you put its brain into a drone, the drone will be able to fly on its own. AI tools can really help with that and making cheap, genuinely autonomous drones and other things like mini submarines for example.

Also, drones can only operate for short periods of time. So if AI tools were able to help them recharge on their own or share tasks, they could go from something that’s used by hobbyists and the military to self-driving cars, drug delivery to people at home, all of that stuff becomes much much easier. It opens up infrastructure development for drones, like highways in the sky specifically for drones. The potential economic openings are huge, but each of them has a question mark over them.

How likely is it that some of these problems can be overcome, do you think?

The billion pound question. With the hallucination problem with AI, there is no viable solution on the horizon. There are lots of patches and some of them are quite clever.

We don’t understand the reason hallucinations are happening because it’s a science problem and there are hardly any scientists working on it. OpenAI has 100 scientists in that team and 1,000 engineers. Google is the same. The engineers can’t fix it because it’s not an engineering problem.

But it’s wider than that. LLMs will provide answers based on the data that they’ve been fed, but they’re missing common sense. Until these problems are solved they’re not going to be able to operate without loads of human oversight.

Dan Nicolau 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 US-UK tech deal could yield significant benefits for the British public – expert Q&A – https://theconversation.com/how-us-uk-tech-deal-could-yield-significant-benefits-for-the-british-public-expert-qanda-265707

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Bailey, Professor of Business Economics, University of Birmingham

Car manufacturing at Jaguar Land Rover recently ground to a halt after a “catastrophic” cyber-attack.

Forced to shut down plants in the UK, Slovakia, Brazil, India and China, the disruption comes at a challenging time for the company. It had already postponed the launch of new models after the uptake of electric vehicles stalled. And Donald Trump’s tariffs have been a major cause of concern for the British car industry as a whole.

Profits at Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) will undoubtedly take a hit, as they did at M&S and Co-op when they were the victims of cyber-attacks earlier this year.

Normally, JLR makes around 1,000 cars a day, with the average price of a new vehicle around £72,000. That means JLR is missing out on daily sales of some £72 million, and profits of £5 million a day.

The firm has now extended the shutdown to September 24 2025, by which time the loss of revenues will be around £1.7 billion and the hit to profits some £120 million. There are even fears that this could go on until November, and restarting production will be a complex business given the “build to order” nature of premium cars (when vehicles are only manufactured after a customer purchase is confirmed).

But the longer the shutdown goes on, the more likely it is that those customers will simply decide to go elsewhere. For the time being, spare parts can’t be ordered, cars can’t be serviced, and new car sales will stall, in what is usually a particularly busy month.

The firm’s brand image will take a battering too, to add to recent social media derision which has included an attack from Donald Trump and a much maligned brand relaunch last year which centred on the controversial design of its “Type OO” concept car.

There are also livelihoods at stake. The company’s supply chain, centred in the west Midlands region of the UK, supports as many as 200,000 jobs.

The longer the shutdown goes on the bigger the impact on the supply chain. Firms have already sent staff home, while others are running out of money. According to the Unite union, some supply chain workers have been told to apply for state benefits.

Road ahead

For its part, JLR has said that it can survive the shutdown but that its supply chain will need help – a call echoed by the union and some members of parliament.

And the UK government really needs to start thinking about a financial lifeline to keep the supply chain going. That could be in the form of a furlough scheme to keep workers in place or some sort of loan scheme for supply chain firms.

Both were used during COVID and thought to have safeguarded some 4 million jobs.

Emergency support in response to shocks is common in other countries like Germany, and has been used in the UK car manufacturing supply chain before, after the MG Rover closure in 2005, and also after the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami which saw the interrupted flow of key components from Japan shut down production at Honda.

That support came via the regional development agency Advantage West Midlands (in the case of MG Rover) and later the Manufacturing Advisory Service (after the Japanese earthquake).

Both agencies have since been scrapped, underscoring the lack of any “place-based” or region-specific industrial policy capacity in England. That really needs to change.

The Department for Business and Trade and its new secretary of state Peter Kyle need to be doing more than just monitoring the situation. It needs to start thinking about how emergency support could be provided to the supply chain. A huge number of jobs depend on JLR getting up and running again – and quickly.

David Bailey receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council through the UK in a Changing Europe Programme.

– ref. Cyber-attackers slammed the brakes on Jaguar Land Rover’s manufacturing – here’s why the UK government should step in – https://theconversation.com/cyber-attackers-slammed-the-brakes-on-jaguar-land-rovers-manufacturing-heres-why-the-uk-government-should-step-in-265126