The first year of Donald Trump’s second term has been marked by increasing authoritarianism at the heart of the US federal government. He has openly defied court orders, worked beyond the established remit of executive power and is making no secret of his strongman ambitions. History tells us that such an authoritarian presence is not new and offers a blueprint for how it might be overcome.
From the 1930s to the 1970s, a congressional committee called the House Un-American Activities Committee (Huac) operated with near impunity. Granted extraordinary powers to investigate subversion and subversive propaganda, Huac sidelined political opponents, ruined careers and crushed organisations.
In popular memory, Huac remains inexorably tied to the “red scare” politics of the 1950s when cold war tensions led to intense anti-communist paranoia in the US. But in reality, it operated across five decades and its demise only came with the careful plotting of a concerted and organised campaign.
Huac derived much of its power from the vagueness of its mandate, with no objective definition of un-Americanism ever being universally agreed. Earl Warren, the chief justice of the US supreme court at the time, even openly questioned in 1957 whether un-Americanism could be defined and, thus, whether it ought to be investigated.
But the committee was not cowed by that lack of definition. For decades, Huac sought to be seen as the sole arbiter of the meaning of un-Americanism. That way, the committee could target its own enemies at will under the guise of investigating un-Americanism for the public good.
Curbing Huac’s authoritarianism was a delicate business. It had extraordinary powers, ill-defined parameters and vituperative members. The committee had also been a fixture of American life for so long that its existence seemed inevitable. The answer to overcoming its authoritarianism came in two separate stages.
Fighting against authoritarianism
First was the building of a broad coalition. Huac had many opponents both in politics and culture, the issue was uniting them behind a single cause.
Individuals, groups and protest movements that had been operating separately had to be encouraged to put their specific concerns aside and coalesce instead around an overall concern for democratic values. It was here that civil liberties protesters first forged an alliance with their civil rights counterparts at the turn of the 1960s.
Civil liberties organisations were primarily concerned with the free speech provision of the US constitution’s first amendment. Civil rights groups, on the other hand, were most concerned with the 14th and 15th amendments’ equal rights provisions. Huac’s assault on American principles was a reminder that these were amendments to the same document and it was the constitution as a whole that needed protection.
Momentum was key. A Huac memo from around that time recorded American civil rights leader John Lewis stating that “civil rights and liberties are the same”. Lewis worked across generational and geographical divides to unite sit-in students at segregated public spaces in the southern states with students who stormed Huac hearings in the west.
However, this activism alone was insufficient. The second stage in bringing Huac’s authoritarianism to heel saw the carefully planned intervention of national mainstream politicians. Here, Congressman Jimmy Roosevelt provided bold but also tactically astute leadership. He delivered a speech from the floor of the US Capitol in 1960 that changed the movement from one designed to protest Huac’s authoritarianism to one demanding the committee’s outright abolition.
Roosevelt used the committee’s own actions against it. As he recognised, Huac’s meticulous record keeping also detailed its own failings. It spent public money on propaganda and its members, including staff director Richard Arens, were found to have been in the pay of scientific racists even as they investigated the civil rights movement. They also used designated wartime powers in peacetime.
Roosevelt stepped back, though, and concentrated on questions of principle at the heart of American democracy and the nation’s founding ideals. In his speech, Roosevelt told the House that Huac was “at war with our profoundest principles”. The un-American committee had used its powers in un-American ways.
By appealing to matters of principle, Roosevelt was also able to appeal to principled members of the new congressional intake following elections that year which saw Democrat John F. Kennedy enter the White House.
Liberal House members had long given Huac a wide berth on account of its reputation. But riding a wave of liberalism, and encouraged by Roosevelt’s political leadership, some of that new intake now actively sought appointment to Huac so they could oppose its authoritarianism head on.
For the first time, the committee shifted from trying to frame civil rights activists as un-American to investigating the un-Americanism of the Ku Klux Klan. Its reformed membership also began opposing the scale of the congressional appropriations that had underwritten its investigations.
Its remaining conservative members were drawn into making increasingly desperate claims to maintain their national profile, but succeeded only in drawing the committee towards ridicule and irrelevance. Huac limped towards the end of the decade and was finally dissolved in 1975.
History tells those in Washington today that democratic pressures can be brought to bear on an authoritarian presence, however entrenched it may appear. Building a broad coalition is vital, as is labelling authoritarian behaviour appropriately. Denying any one individual ownership of what constitutes un-Americanism is equally important.
The record also shows that disparate groups can apply pressure most effectively when they are bound to a single issue. Here, as in the campaign against Huac, that issue is the principle of American democracy.
Roosevelt left three lessons for US citizens. First, that the momentum generated by a growing popular coalition can be harnessed in national politics. Second, that bold and principled leadership brings reward. And third, that elections can be the harbinger of significant and substantive change.
George Lewis has received funding from the British Academy for his research into un-Americanism.
A new trade agreement between India and the UK is due to come into force this year.
The deal is expected to completely remove tariffs from nearly 99% of Indian goods, including clothing and footwear, that are headed for the UK.
In both countries, this has been widely celebrated as a win for economic growth and competitiveness. And for Indian garment workers in particular, the trade agreement carries real promise.
This is because in recent years, clothing exports from India have declined sharply as well-known fashion brands moved production to places like Morocco and Turkey, which were cheaper.
India’s internal migrant workers (those who move from one region of the country to another looking for work) have been hit hardest, often waiting outside factories for days for the chance of a single shift of insecure work.
Against this backdrop, more opportunities for steadier employment and a more competitive sector under the new trade agreement looks like a positive outcome. But free trade agreements are not merely economic instruments – they shape labour markets and working conditions along global supply chains.
So, the critical question about this trade deal is not whether it will generate employment in India – it almost certainly will – but what kind of employment it will create.
Few sectors illustrate this tension more clearly than the manufacture of clothing. As one of India’s biggest exports, its garments sector is expected to be one of the primary beneficiaries of the trade deal.
But it is also among the country’s most labour-intensive and exploitative industries. From denim mills in Karnataka to knitwear and spinning hubs in Tamil Nadu, millions of Indian workers receive low wages and limited job security.
Research also shows that gender and caste-based exploitation is widespread.
So, if the trade deal goes ahead without addressing these issues, it risks perpetuating a familiar cycle where we see more orders and more jobs, but the same patterns of unfair wages, insecurity and – in some cases – forced labour.
Marginalised
For women workers, who form the backbone of garment production in India, these vulnerabilities are even sharper.
Gender-based violence, harassment and unsafe working conditions have been documented repeatedly across India’s export-oriented factories. Regimes which bound young women to factories under the promise of future benefits that often never materialised show how caste- and gender-based discrimination have long been embedded within the sector.
Even in factories that formally comply with labour laws, wages that meet basic living costs remain rare. Many workers earn wages which are not enough to pay for housing, food, healthcare and education, pushing families into debt as suppliers absorb price pressures imposed by global brands.
On the plus side, the India-UK agreement does not entirely sidestep these issues. There is a chapter which outlines commitments to the elimination of forced labour and discrimination.
But these provisions are mostly framed as guidance rather than enforceable obligation. They rely on cooperation and voluntary commitments, instead of binding standards.
While this approach is common in trade agreements, it limits this deal’s capacity to drive meaningful change. But perhaps even more striking is what has been left out.
Despite the role India’s social stratification system, known as caste, plays in shaping labour markets in India, it is entirely absent from the text of the agreement.
Yet caste determines who enters garment work and who performs the most hazardous and lowest-paid tasks. A significant proportion of India’s garment workforce comes from marginalised caste communities with limited bargaining power and few alternatives.
By addressing labour standards without acknowledging caste, the free trade agreement falls short. It could have required the monitoring of issues concerning caste and gender, and demanded grievance mechanisms and transparency measures that account for social hierarchies.
Instead, a familiar gap remains between commitments to “decent work” on paper and the reality which exists on factory floors.
Missed opportunity
If the India-UK deal is to be more than a tariff-cutting exercise, protections around caste and gender must be central to its implementation.
The deal is rightly being celebrated in both countries as an economic milestone. For the UK, it promises more resilient supply chains and cheaper imports. For India, it offers renewed export growth and the prospect of some more stable employment.
But the agreement’s long-term legitimacy will rest on whether it also delivers social justice.
India can use the deal to strengthen labour protections and ensure growth does not come at the cost of dignity and safety. The UK, as a major consumer market, can use its leverage to insist on enforceable standards for fair wages and decent work.
For trade deals do not simply move goods across borders – they shape the conditions under which those goods are produced.
Pankhuri Agarwal receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust as an Early Career Research Fellow.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Domenico Vicinanza, Associate Professor of Intelligent Systems and Data Science, Anglia Ruskin University
For half a century, computing advanced in a reassuring, predictable way. Transistors – devices used to switch electrical signals on a computer chip – became smaller. Consequently, computer chips became faster, and society quietly assimilated the gains almost without noticing.
These faster chips enable greater computing power by allowing devices to perform tasks more efficiently. As a result, we saw scientific simulations improving, weather forecasts becoming more accurate, graphics more realistic, and later, machine learning systems being developed and flourishing. It looked as if computing power itself obeyed a natural law.
This phenomenon became known as Moore’s Law, after the businessman and scientist Gordon Moore. Moore’s Law summarised the empirical observation that the number of transistors on a chip approximately doubled every couple of years. This also allows the size of devices to shrink, so it drives miniaturisation.
That sense of certainty and predictability has now gone, and not because innovation has stopped, but because the physical assumptions that once underpinned it no longer hold.
So what replaces the old model of automatic speed increases? The answer is not a single breakthrough, but several overlapping strategies.
One involves new materials and transistor designs. Engineers are refining how transistors are built to reduce wasted energy and unwanted electrical leakage. These changes deliver smaller, more incremental improvements than in the past, but they help keep power use under control.
Another approach is changing how chips are physically organised. Rather than placing all components on a single flat surface, modern chips increasingly stack parts on top of each other or arrange them more closely. This reduces the distance that data has to travel, saving both time and energy.
Perhaps the most important shift is specialisation. Instead of one general-purpose processor trying to do everything, modern systems combine different kinds of processors. Traditional processing units or CPUs handle control and decision-making. Graphics processors, are powerful processing units that were originally designed to handle the demands of graphics for computer games and other tasks. AI accelerators (specialised hardware that speeds up AI tasks) focus on large numbers of simple calculations carried out in parallel. Performance now depends on how well these components work together, rather than on how fast any one of them is.
Alongside these developments, researchers are exploring more experimental technologies, including quantum processors (which harness the power of quantum science) and photonic processors, which use light instead of electricity.
These are not general-purpose computers, and they are unlikely to replace conventional machines. Their potential lies in very specific areas, such as certain optimisation or simulation problems where classical computers can struggle to explore large numbers of possible solutions efficiently. In practice, these technologies are best understood as specialised co-processors, used selectively and in combination with traditional systems.
For most everyday computing tasks, improvements in conventional processors, memory systems and software design will continue to matter far more than these experimental approaches.
For users, life after Moore’s Law does not mean that computers stop improving. It means that improvements arrive in more uneven and task-specific ways. Some applications, such as AI-powered tools, diagnostics, navigation, complex modelling, may see noticeable gains, while general-purpose performance increases more slowly.
New technologies
At the Supercomputing SC25 conference in St Louis, hybrid systems that mix CPUs (processors) and GPUs (graphics processing units) with emerging technologies such as quantum or photonic processors were increasingly presented and discussed as practical extensions of classical computing. For most everyday tasks, improvements in classical processors, memories and software will continue to deliver the biggest gains.
But there is growing interest in using quantum and photonic devices as co-
processors, not replacements. Their appeal lies in tackling specific classes of
problems, such as complex optimisation or routing tasks, where finding low-energy
or near-optimal solutions can be exponentially expensive for classical machines
alone.
In this supporting role, they offer a credible way to combine the reliability of
classical computing with new computational techniques that expand what these
systems can do.
Life after Moore’s Law is not a story of decline, but one that requires constant
transformation and evolution. Computing progress now depends on architectural
specialisation, careful energy management, and software that is deeply aware of
hardware constraints. The danger lies in confusing complexity with inevitability, or marketing narratives with solved problems.
The post-Moore era forces a more honest relationship with computation where performance is not anymore something we inherit automatically from smaller transistors, but it is something we must design, justify, and pay for, in energy, in complexity, and in trade-offs.
Domenico Vicinanza 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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aleksandra Ancite-Jepifánova, Research Affiliate, CEU Democracy Institute, Central European University
Khanke IDP (Internally Displaced Person) camp in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in August 2025.Aleksandra Ancite-Jepifanova
The sun burns down on a small village less than 20 miles north-east of Mosul, Iraq. Milisia, 14, and her sister Madlin, 13, greet me at the gate in flawless, almost accent-free German. They lead me into the yard of a grey, rectangular, one-story building where their family rents a single room.
We sit in the heat, joined by their mother and two younger brothers, aged nine and ten. Their eyes hold a mixture of hope and despair – as if I am both a bridge to the world they lost and a reminder of it. The girls hand me a carefully preserved plastic folder: their end-of-year school assessments from Germany.
I flip through the papers, and a teacher’s note catches my eye: “Despite not having German as her mother tongue, Madlin was always able to express herself clearly. She participated eagerly in lessons, was open and receptive to new content, and always strived for her own creative ideas. In written work, she was focused and willing to make an effort.” (translation from German.)
This folder is one of the few tangible remnants of a life that was abruptly torn apart a year ago. Until October 2024, the family lived in Adlkofen, a small municipality in Bavaria, southern Germany. But when I met them, in late August 2025, they were over 2,000 miles away in Babirah (Kurdish: Babîrê), a village in Iraqi Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region of Iraq.
Madlin and Milisia’s family are not ordinary returnees. They are Yazidis (also spelled Yezidis or Ezidis), a non-Muslim religious minority native to northern Iraq. In 2014, Islamic State (IS) unleashed a campaign of mass killings, abductions, enslavement, sexual violence, and forced indoctrination against Yazidis – a horror that made international headlines and forced thousands to flee.
Multiple international bodies and western states, including Germany and the UK, have officially recognised IS atrocities against the Yazidis as genocide.
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Germany, home to the largest Yazidi diaspora outside Iraq, initially granted protection to those fleeing IS. But in recent years, asylum approval rates have plummeted. Following an informal readmission agreement with Iraq in 2023, Germany began deporting Yazidis back to the country they had fled.
This situation has drawn my attention as a refugee and human rights scholar, leading me to explore how genocide, displacement, and European refugee law intersect. In Iraqi Kurdistan, I met Yazidis deported from Germany to document their experiences and witness the human consequences of Germany’s approach as part of my ongoing research.
Milisia’s family is among the people recently deported. They had lived in Germany for nearly six years. The children went to school, learned the language, and for Milisia, life meant responsibilities far beyond her age – translating, interpreting, and advocating for her family. Now, she feels a deep sense of betrayal by the country she once called home, whose language she speaks and whose values she embraced.
Milisia remembers the deportation date; it is etched in her memory: October 5, 2024. Her voice trembles with anger as she recounts, in German, what happened:
It was 5 am. We were sleeping when men in police uniforms surrounded the house. The social worker opened the door – she had a key. We will never forget it, we were so scared … It was really terrible … We have rights too.
The police separated them. The mother and the girls in one car, the father with the boys in another, and drove straight to the airport. Milisia described the helplessness and disbelief: “We couldn’t even pack our things. If they had sent us a letter beforehand, we could have gotten a lawyer, we could have asked our teachers at school. But they didn’t even send us a letter.”
The assault in August 2014 forced over 350,000 Yazidis to flee their homes in Sinjar (Kurdish: Shingal), a mountainous district in north-western Iraq near the Syrian border and the historic centre of the community.
Tens of thousands have made their way to Europe and other western countries, often through dangerous routes in the absence of legal alternatives.
A broken promise
The Yazidi case has become a clear illustration of the limits of European refugee protection frameworks when applied to a community targeted for genocide. Asylum law is geared toward proving individual persecution, not addressing the collective and structural harms that follow mass atrocities.
This gap is particularly visible in Germany, home to the world’s largest Yazidi diaspora – over 230,000 people, including earlier migrant generations. About 100,000 Iraqi Yazidis have sought asylum in Germany since 2014.
In the immediate aftermath of the IS attacks, Germany responded generously: between 2014 and 2017, more than 90% of Iraqi Yazidi asylum claims were approved. In addition, a number of federal states introduced targeted reception programmes to support Yazidi women and children who were especially at risk. Among these efforts, the Baden-Württemberg special contingent stood out, providing a pathway for roughly 1,100 survivors of IS captivity to relocate to Germany.
But after IS lost territorial control in 2017, the German approach shifted. Authorities concluded that group-specific persecution had ended, in practice setting a legal cut-off for the genocide.
Approval rates declined sharply. In 2023, fewer than 40% of the roughly 3,400 applications from Iraqi Yazidis were accepted, while about 40% were outright rejected. Another 7.5% resulted in temporary suspensions of deportation, offering no long-term security. The remaining cases were dismissed as inadmissible under the Dublin Regulation, which assigns responsibility for an asylum claim to another EU member state.
This shift has created a hierarchy of protection within the same minority: those who arrived before 2018 typically retain refugee status, while later arrivals – often from the same camps and with identical experiences of displacement – are rejected.
At the same time, conditions in Iraq remain shaped by the consequences of genocide. Sinjar is still devastated and reconstruction is slow. Infrastructure is largely destroyed, armed groups continue to operate, the security situation remains volatile. The district’s status is disputed and large areas are contaminated with landmines. Whole neighbourhoods lie abandoned and basic services are minimal. Mass graves continue to mark the terrain.
In the Kurdistan Region, displaced Yazidis face discrimination in accessing employment and social marginalisation. Tens of thousands have lived in IDP camps for more than a decade, with no viable path to return or integration – conditions that, for many, are an ongoing legacy of genocidal violence.
In January 2023, the German parliament formally recognised Yazidi genocide. Lawmakers acknowledged that its effects remained “omnipresent,” that tens of thousands of Yazidis still lived in camps, and that return to Sinjar was “hardly possible”.
Yet, the recognition remains largely symbolic. It has no influence on asylum decisions, a disconnect that is seen by members of the Yazidi community as a “broken promise”. Between January 2024 and June 2025, more than 1,000 Iraqis were deported. Although the government does not publish disaggregated data, Yazidis are frequently reported to be among them.
Those deported include families with school-age children whose lives were abruptly interrupted. Milisia’s family is not an isolated case. In summer 2025, German media reported on the Qasim family of six, who were returned to Sinjar on the very day their legal appeal succeeded – though the decision arrived only after their plane had taken off.
‘We cannot even go to school in Iraq. Everything is gone.’
Most Yazidis in Iraq come from Sinjar, but others – like Milisia’s family – have lived in villages in the Nineveh Plains closer to Duhok, the third largest city in the Kurdistan Region. Babirah, where they now live, sits amid a patchwork of communities and is surrounded by Arab-majority villages. To reach it, I drove past settlements marked by Arabic signs and men in traditional dishdashas.
Babirah lies about 80 miles north-east of Sinjar. In August 2014, as IS pushed into Sinjar and advanced toward their villages, Milisia’s family fled. Their own village was not occupied, but IS destroyed Yazidi temples as it moved through the area. The family escaped to a site near Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region, and spent four months in an IDP camp. When they eventually returned, their home had been looted.
A Yazidi village in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, August 2025. Aleksandra Ancite-Jepifánova
The sense of insecurity never fully lifted. “We were always scared … always thinking we would be forced to leave again. That feeling never went away,” Najwa, 35, the children’s mother, recalls. By then, several of her siblings already lived in Germany, and her parents had been sponsored there in 2016. Two years later, she and her husband decided to join them. “We sold our car, household belongings, and some sheep, and spent our savings to pay smugglers and take our children somewhere safe.”
In late 2018, they began the journey to Germany via Turkey. Their youngest child was two. They crossed waterways in plastic boats and continued on foot. “The smugglers put us in a black car,” Najwa says, “and hid us the whole way until we reached Germany.”
After arriving, they applied for asylum. They first stayed in a reception centre near Nuremberg, then in shared housing, before moving into a small two-room apartment covered by state assistance. The father worked part-time in a restaurant; Najwa cared for the children and took them to school. The children integrated quickly – speaking German, making friends, and settling into school and kindergarten.
But because they arrived in Germany in 2018, their asylum claim was rejected. Authorities argued there was no longer group-based persecution of Yazidis in Iraq. Their appeal was dismissed in May 2022, and in October 2023 their request to suspend deportation was denied. While officials noted that the children were enrolled in school, the decision made no reference to their formative years in Germany, their fluency in German, or educational prospects in Iraq.
“When we came to Germany, I was seven and my sister was six,” Milisia says. “My brothers were very small. Now we’re 14 and 13.”
The deportation uprooted them entirely. Since October 2024, the children have not attended school, as schools in the area require prior instruction in the local curriculum – a system they have never been part of. They cannot read or write Kurdish or Arabic. “We only speak German with each other,” Milisia explains. “In Germany I was in seventh grade. Only two more years and I could start vocational training. But they sent us back. Now everything is gone.” Her sister adds quietly, “Sometimes children in the village make fun of us because we don’t go to school.”
The family now rents a single room with grey, faded walls, furnished only with a cupboard and an old ceiling fan. The father does casual day labour, earning roughly 10,000 Iraqi dinars (around £6) per day. He suffers ongoing health problems following surgery in Germany and was in hospital during the interview.
A single room in which Milisia’s family lives after their deportation from Germany, August 2025. Aleksandra Ancite-Jepifánova
“I don’t know how we are going to build a life here,” Najwa said. “The money my husband earns is barely enough to survive. We don’t feel we belong in Iraq. We have nothing here … I just want a decent life for my children. I don’t want to live in Iraq.”
She adds that living in a village surrounded by Arab communities with a complex history of conflict only heightens the family’s sense of vulnerability.
Trapped in limbo, the family still holds on to the hope of returning to Germany, even if it means taking irregular and dangerous routes. “Even if we don’t find any legal way to go back, we will try other ways,” Najwa said. “But we don’t have money anymore to pay smugglers, and there are no options left now.”
A permanent state of limbo
Other Yazidis living in the Kurdistan Region are displaced from Sinjar. Saad, 24, recently deported from Germany, embodies the limbo many face – unable to return to their original homeland, yet unable to rebuild a stable life in Kurdistan.
I met Saad and his mother in Shekhka, another Yazidi village. We sat on floor cushions in the house they rent – the fifth since they fled Sinjar 11 years ago. Saad’s father was killed in 2007, when his mother was 25 and Saad was five. In August 2014, when IS advanced on Sinjar, Saad – then 12 – escaped with his mother and two younger brothers. They spent several days stranded on Mount Sinjar before reaching Syria and eventually the Kurdistan Region. His grandparents, unable to walk, were captured along with a young female relative. The family never learned what happened to them.
In the Kurdistan Region, they initially took shelter in a school building. Later, relatives of Saad’s mother who lived in the Shekhka village invited them to stay. Over the years, they moved between five different houses as owners reclaimed the properties. “We had nothing permanent,” Saad’s mother says. The family survived on menial labour—harvesting vegetables, cleaning gardens.
Saad never received proper schooling. He attended school for only half a year after displacement. “After what we saw – running from IS, hearing gunshots, people crying – the children couldn’t focus,” his mother said. “They were too traumatised.”
In 2021, Saad heard about the Belarus–Poland route to Europe. The family sold land belonging to his grandfather in Sinjar to pay a smuggler. In October that year, he flew from Baghdad to Damascus and then to Minsk, before moving through forests to the Polish border.
Saad during his time working at McDonalds in Germany. Saad Nawaf Abdo
He endured cold, rain and repeated pushbacks. “One time Polish guards threw away our belongings, even our passports, and humiliated us,” Saad recalls. Eventually, he made his way to Germany, driven from Poland by a Ukrainian smuggler.
In Germany, he applied for asylum, but his claim and appeals were rejected. He completed an integration course, worked at McDonald’s, lived in a shared apartment and sent money home for his mother’s surgery and basic needs.
“At least I could provide for myself and help my family,” he says. Then, one night, police came to his door.
They were banging so hard I thought it would break. They gave me 40 minutes to pack and took me straight to the airport.
Saad said he received no prior notice of the deportation. Today, he and his family rent a house owned by a Yazidi woman who lives in Australia. “Once she told us to leave because she was coming for two months,” his mother recalls. “We begged her – we had nowhere else to go. She finally let us stay.”
Returning to Sinjar is not an option. Their home in their native village is destroyed, there is no reliable electricity or water, and Saad’s mother suffers from chronic health problems requiring regular treatment. Above all, the trauma of 2014 remains close. “When we go to Sinjar, we remember everything – how IS attacked us, burned our houses,” she says. They visit only occasionally to see relatives or Saad’s father’s grave.
Saad during a visit to Sinjar in October 2025 after his deportation from Germany. Saad Nawaf Abdo
German authorities often argue that Yazidis can find work in the Kurdistan Region. Saad, who speaks the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish like most Yazidis, shakes his head. “They don’t understand. I didn’t finish school. I don’t speak Arabic or Sorani (the main dialect in Iraqi Kurdistan). How can I work?”
He and his mother are also affected by instances of misrepresentation and online hate speech from segments of the local Muslim Kurdish population. “People post insults about Yazidis. No one stops them. We are treated as the lowest,” Saad’s mother says.
Since his return, Saad and his brothers, now 19 and 20, work seasonal agricultural jobs – harvesting vegetables from 3am until late morning for about 14,000 Iraqi dinars each (around £8) a day. This work is available only for several months each year, leaving the family’s total income around or below the poverty line in the Kurdistan Region. “When Saad went to Germany, we hoped he could take us there legally,” his mother says. “But nothing happened.”
Saad’s passport now carries a deportation stamp, barring legal re-entry. “I want to go to Germany again, but I cannot legally enter,” he says. He remembers Germany with longing: “There, I could work. I didn’t have to wake up before dawn to dig potatoes under the sun…Now even that work here has stopped – the season is over.”
His mother added, quietly: “When Saad came back, he was in a very bad state. I had to be both mother and father. I tried to calm him – otherwise he might have taken his own life.”
‘I’ve always lived in the camp’
While Milisia’s and Saad’s families live in Yazidi villages, over 100,000 Yazidis remain displaced in IDP camps near Duhok. Eleven years after IS’s initial attack, these camps – originally intended as temporary shelters – have become a lasting part of Kurdistan’s landscape, permanent settlements of waiting and uncertainty. For many, moving abroad is the only thing that offers hope.
Even being returned to an IDP camp does not protect Yazidis from deportation from Germany. Authorities and courts have adopted a narrow interpretation, arguing that basic needs will be met in the camp. This approach has led to cases where people are sent back to the very camps they once fled, undoing years of integration in Germany and reinforcing the cycle of displacement and despair.
Khanke IDP camp in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in August 2025. Aleksandra Ancite-Jepifánova
Saber, 27, is one such example. German media reported on his case after he was deported to Sharya IDP camp in the Kurdistan Region, where he now lives in a tent after four years in Germany. He had worked full time, spoke fluent German and had been well integrated into daily life.
Others with precarious residence status in Germany face similar risks, often separated from family members who remain in the camps. German restrictions on family reunification have kept many families apart for years: wives run households alone, children grow up without fathers, and men in Germany wait in legal limbo, while families survive in tents. For these families, Germany represents the only hope for a durable solution.
Layla, 40, and her children have lived in Khanke IDP camp since fleeing Sinjar in 2014. As I walked through the camp, tents stretched in neat rows, children played on dusty paths – a generation that has never seen life outside the camp. After repeated fires in standard tents, residents were permitted to rebuild their shelters using concrete blocks, while the roofs remain temporary. Layla’s family now occupies a single small room, furnished with a few plastic chairs, a sofa, a TV and a refrigerator.
Layla’s children at Khanke IDP camp, where they have lived for most of their lives, August 2025. Aleksandra Ancite-Jepifánova
Layla’s husband left for Germany in 2017, travelling irregularly. His asylum application was initially rejected, but he later received a Duldung – a temporary suspension of deportation. This status did not allow family reunification, leaving the family stranded in the camp. He now works at McDonald’s in Hanover and has obtained a residence permit, which would allow family reunification – but too late for Layla’s two sons, who also live in the camp and are now young adults. Only Layla and her daughter remain eligible, provided the father earns a sufficient income. Their eldest son, in his early twenties, who migrated irregularly in 2021, now faces deportation back to the same camp. Layla’s daughter, 13, explained:
I don’t remember my father. I only speak with him on the phone.
Layla added: “It’s very difficult to live without a husband. The children should have their father. I handle everything alone – the hospital, shopping. All the burden is on me.”
Returning to Sinjar is not an option. Their home is destroyed, the area abandoned. “No one from our village lives there anymore,” Layla said. For her daughter, the camp has become permanent: “I don’t remember Sinjar. I’ve always lived in this camp.” Her mother echoes this: “Even when people ask where we are from, we say, ‘We are from the camps.’”
Germany represents hope. “In Germany, there is safety, human rights and work,” Layla said. “I left school young. If I were in Germany, I would go back and finish. Women can work and have a life. Here, there is nothing.” Both mother and daughter are learning German. The daughter studies online and can now introduce herself in German: “If I go to Germany, I want to study. I want to become a doctor and help sick people.”
Layla expressed frustration at Germany’s shift in policy. “We were hoping Germany would continue helping us. At first, we felt supported, that people were standing behind us, but then they stopped. We have survived so many genocides. Every time it happens, we survive, and then it happens again.” Her message to Germany is simple:
We don’t want much. Just stop deporting Yazidis. Give them permanent residence and reunite the families.
‘We ran from monsters’
Nearby in the same camp, Majida, 38, lives with her six children in a small room; the camp has been their home since 2014. Her husband, Kamal, left for Germany in 2017, hoping to secure protection and eventually reunite the family, following the path of a friend who had managed to do so.
Majida and her six children, aged between 11 and 18, in Khanke camp, in August 2025. Aleksandra Ancite-Jepifánova
Instead, his asylum claims were repeatedly rejected, leaving him in a precarious legal status and unable to bring them. “We haven’t seen him for eight years,” Majida says.
Before 2014, Kamal had worked for years to build their house in their Sinjar village. “It was our dream,” Majida recalls. “We moved in and lived there only one year before IS came. Then we fled, and the house was destroyed.”
When they first arrived at the camp, they believed it would be temporary. “At first, we thought this would last only a few days. But year after year, we realised no one is going to do anything for us.”
“We don’t see any future here – not in the camp, not in Sinjar,” she said. The family recently returned to Sinjar to process ID cards, their first visit since fleeing over a decade ago. “I didn’t want to go,” Majida says.
When I went there, I remembered everything – my childhood, our neighbours, those who were killed, how we escaped. I cried. But I was grateful I could save my children. We ran from monsters.
The Iraqi government offers four million Iraqi dinars (around £2,300) to each displaced Yazidi household willing to return and rebuild. Yazidis and rights groups say the amount is far too small. Majida’s family spent around 30 million dinars (around £17,000) to build their house.
Majida said she does not feel accepted in the Kurdistan Region either. Life in the camp is largely isolated, and the family has little interaction with Muslim Kurds, the dominant group in the area, which contributes to feelings of insecurity. Majida believes Yazidis are not seen as part of the wider community.
Fear and mistrust run deep. Even if new houses were built in the Kurdistan Region, Majida said she would still prefer the camp among other Yazidis over a two-storey home in a Muslim-majority area.
I don’t trust the government. I’m afraid everything that happened to me will happen to my children too. Even when I take them to the playground in the neighbouring town, I don’t feel safe.
Discrimination in employment adds to these sentiments. Yazidis are often excluded from jobs in the food industry because their non-Muslim faith is seen as incompatible with handling “halal” food.
Majida’s six children are now aged between 11 and 18. Raising them alone has been exhausting. Majida cries as she recalls the early years without her husband.
We have been through so many difficulties. At the beginning, the children were selling beans on the street. My husband was hiding in Germany, unable to work, unable to send money. NGOs later trained me in sewing, so I opened a small tailoring business. But the money is never enough. I spent so much on hospitals and doctors, and to send the children to school. It was still not enough.
In desperation, and tired of waiting for a legal path to family reunification, Majida and her children attempted to reach Europe irregularly through Turkey in 2023. They were caught and returned to Iraq.
One of her sons, now 18, added: “In Germany, you can build your future – go to school, work. Here, we don’t know what will happen.” Another son said: “Once we finish school, we’ll try to find a way to go to Germany. That’s our only hope.”
Majida’s husband, Kamal, 45, lives in the German city of Braunschweig, near Hanover. I interviewed him separately via video call. Kamal lives in refugee accommodation, sharing a small room with another man, and works shifts at warehouses.
After eight years marked by asylum rejections, periods of irregular status and hundreds of euros spent on legal fees, Kamal has recently been granted a temporary two-year residence permit. While the permit may lead to permanent residency, it allows family reunification only in exceptional humanitarian cases – a threshold so high that reunification with his family remains out of reach.
During the interview, Kamal broke down in tears. “We don’t have a future in Iraq. Yazidis have always been targeted, and I believe it will happen again,” he says.
I came to Germany hoping they would protect my family. Everyone talked about human rights here. But my life is on hold. Every night I cry because I miss my children. I haven’t seen them in years, and they no longer know me.
He added: “There is no humanity left for me, and I have lost hope in Germany. I don’t know what to do. Will I stay alone like this for the rest of my life? Sometimes I even think about ending my life. It’s too much.”
Sinjar will never be the same again
Instead of family reunification in Germany, many Yazidi men now face the risk of being deported back to the camps. This is what happened to Ali, 42. In autumn 2023, he joined protests in Berlin against the deportation of Yazidis, speaking to German media outside the parliament. Only weeks later, in December 2023, Ali himself was deported, after five years in Germany. He initially returned to the IDP camp in the Kurdistan Region where his wife and seven children had lived since 2014, after fleeing Sinjar.
Ali had arrived in Germany in late 2018, hoping eventually to bring his family. He paid around US $10,000 to smugglers – money borrowed from relatives and taken from his savings. His asylum claim and subsequent appeals were rejected. During his years in Germany, he worked in construction. In autumn 2023, he received a deportation notice.
We spoke on the phone while I was in Duhok and he was in Sinjar, where he moved a few months ago after leaving the camp. His children, now aged between five and 18, barely knew him. “When I came back to the camp, they asked, ‘Who is this man?’” he says. “I tried to give them something; they wouldn’t take it because they didn’t know me. It took them about a year to get a little bit used to me. Even now, they don’t act normally around me. None of them sleep next to me – they always sleep with their mum. I always feel like a stranger to them. Even when I try to be close, to kiss them, they don’t return it. It’s a strange feeling.”
Ali and his family spent 11 months in the camp after his deportation. He struggled with his mental health and eventually decided to return to Sinjar.
Their house had been completely destroyed. Ali applied for the government compensation of four million Iraqi dinars, but the family has not yet received it. “We are living in someone else’s house,” he explains. “When the owners return, they’ll ask us to leave.” Much of their street remains destroyed or abandoned.
To survive, the family works in orchards planting vegetables, but the income is unstable and seasonal. As Ali puts it, “Here and the camp – both places are bad.”
What needs to change
Although the Islamic State was militarily defeated, the harm inflicted on the Yazidis did not end in 2017. For a small, historically persecuted minority rooted in a single region, prolonged displacement in undignified conditions perpetuates the long-term consequences of genocide. With no viable local solutions, relocation abroad has become the only realistic way for many Yazidis to rebuild their lives.
Crucially, the numbers involved are low. After a peak of around 37,000 applications in 2016, annual asylum claims by Iraqi Yazidis in Germany have recently fallen to around or below 4,000. Germany’s largest refugee support NGO, Pro Asyl, estimates that up to 10,000 Yazidis currently face the risk of deportation back to Iraq.
At a minimum, Germany should grant secure temporary residence to Yazidis who arrived after 2017, with the right to work and family reunification, alongside a clear path to permanent status. Children’s rights must be prioritised to prevent the loss of education and belonging seen in cases like Milisia’s.
A draft law proposed by the German Green Party would offer a three-year residence permit to Yazidis from Iraq who arrived by July 2025, recognising both ongoing instability in Iraq and Germany’s special responsibility after acknowledging the genocide. Whether it will pass remains uncertain.
Ultimately, addressing the Yazidi case requires a tailored approach that recognises genocide survivors as a distinct vulnerable group and provides durable solutions that prevent the continuation of displacement and harm.
Ali still believes the only viable long-term solution for Yazidis is to move abroad. He sees Germany as offering safety, freedom of religion and future opportunities.
There, nobody asks about our religion, nobody cares about that, and we would have a future. Here [Sinjar], it will never be like before 2014. We always have fear inside.
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Aleksandra Ancite-Jepifánova 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.
The author would like to thank Ghazi Murad Ismael for assistance with fieldwork in Iraq.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ahmed Elbediwy, Senior Lecturer in Cancer Biology & Clinical Biochemistry, Kingston University
Copper peptides act as little helpers that tell your skin cells to repair and rebuild themselves.Yaroslav Astakhov/ Shutterstock
Peptides have become one of the skincare industry’s most popular ingredients. It’s no wonder why, with evidence showing these powerful molecules hold the secret to healthier, firmer and more radiant skin.
But out of the many peptides that exist, one in particular has been gaining attention lately in the beauty industry: copper peptides.
It’s not surprising that copper peptides are garnering so much attention. This peptide is special because of its ability to multitask – with research showing that not only does it help make the skin firmer and more supple, it also protects the skin from damage.
The human body naturally produces many types of peptides. Each supports vital body functions, acting like tiny building blocks of life. Many help form the foundation of essential proteins – such as collagen and elastin, which help keep skin healthy and youthful.
The three main types of peptides in cosmetics are: carrier peptides, signal peptides and neurotransmitter-inhibiting peptides.
Carrier peptides aid in wound repair by physically transporting important minerals into the cells to initiate repair.
Signal peptides can prevent ageing by stimulating the activation of the skin’s fibroblasts – specialised skin cells that produce substances such as collagen, a protein which helps maintain the skin’s elasticity.
Neurotransmitter-inhibiting peptides act like botulinum toxin, relaxing facial muscles by blocking the signals that make them contract. This may reduce wrinkles.
Copper peptides are actually a type of carrier peptide. They’re produced naturally by your body. But as we age, the concentration of copper peptides in our bodies drops. Applying synthetic, lab-made versions – found in creams, serums and masks – can help replenish these molecules and help your skin.
Copper peptides were first discovered in 1973. Research found that these molecules aided wound healing, which is why the first commercialised carrier peptide in 1985 was designed to deliver copper into wounded tissue.
After gaining research attention for this role, further studies examined what other functions copper peptides had on the skin. Researchers found that they had anti-ageing, anti-inflammatory and renewing properties and also supported hair growth.
Copper peptides act as little helpers that tell your skin cells to repair and rebuild themselves. They do this by boosting collagen and elastin, key proteins that keep your skin feeling smooth and firm.
Copper peptides have been also found to reduce inflammation and calm skin redness, too. But perhaps most crucially, they have been found to act as antioxidants, fighting damage caused by pollution and the sun’s ultraviolet rays.
On top of that, copper peptides improve wound healing. This is why they’re often used after cosmetic treatments – such as face and neck lifts and micro-needling – that can damage the skin. Copper infused wound dressings are also used to help chronic wounds heal faster.
Overall, skin cell studies have shown that copper peptides increase collagen production, improve skin thickness and skin elasticity. Clinical trials and lab tests confirm these benefits, making copper peptides one of the most researched anti-ageing ingredients.
Trials show copper peptides can increase collagen and improve skin texture. marevgenna/ Shutterstock
For best results, you might want to try applying it twice a day – first in the morning so it can act as a potent antioxidant, then in the evening so it can replenish collagen overnight.
Copper peptides can also penetrate the skin more effectively when delivered with microneedles, which makes them even more useful in advanced skincare products.
Copper peptides v other peptides
Other peptides do work well on the skin – such as palmitoyl-based peptides and acetyl hexapeptide-8 peptide – both of which fight wrinkles. But these both work differently to copper peptides.
Palmitoyl peptides signal the skin to make more collagen, while acetyl hexapeptide-8 relaxes facial muscles to reduce expression lines, acting like a less expensive version of botulinum toxin.
Copper peptides stand out among these other peptides because they can do the work of multiple peptides in one. Copper peptides boost collagen, improve skin healing and fight oxidative stress. This appears to make them better at preventing the signs of ageing.
Some skin cell studies show they work even better when combined with other well known skincare ingredients, such as hyaluronic acid (which boosts hydration).
Copper peptides themselves can also cause, in a few people, some skin irritation and mild allergic reactions. If you find you experience these symptoms after using copper peptides, stop use immediately.
Copper peptides are more than just a trend – they’re backed by science. They help keep skin healthy and speed up healing. They might even play a role in future cancer treatments.
Research has shown copper peptides turn on genes that tell damaged cancer cells to shut themselves down and stop replicating. They’ve also been shown to fix other genes that control cell growth and repair.
If you’re curious about skincare, copper peptides may be worth incorporating into your daily routine. Just remember that good, healthy skin also needs other measures – such as sunscreen, hydration and a healthy lifestyle.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
You will likely have heard of probiotics. These are live microorganisms that, when consumed in sufficient amounts, can benefit health. They occur naturally in foods such as yoghurt, kefir, kimchi and sauerkraut and are also sold as supplements.
You may also know that for these probiotics to thrive, they need to be fed. That food comes in the form of prebiotics, which are non-digestible fibres found in everyday foods such as garlic, onions, leeks, bananas and oats. Prebiotics pass through the digestive system largely intact, where they become fuel for beneficial gut bacteria.
More recently, another term has begun appearing on supplement shelves: postbiotics. So what are they, and do we actually need them?
Postbiotics are the beneficial compounds produced when gut bacteria, including probiotics, break down prebiotics. In other words, they are not live bacteria themselves, but the substances those bacteria produce. These include short-chain fatty acids, enzymes, vitamins, amino acids and, in some definitions, structural components such as fragments of bacterial cell walls and parts of dead microorganisms.
Although postbiotic supplements are relatively new, postbiotics themselves are not. They have been produced in our intestines for as long as humans have had gut bacteria. What is new is the idea of consuming them directly, rather than relying on the gut microbiome to make them.
So, if postbiotics are the end product, should we skip probiotics and prebiotics and go straight to postbiotic supplements? The short answer is no. The longer answer lies in the evidence.
Postbiotics are a broad and diverse group of compounds, and research into their health effects is still at an early stage. Some studies suggest potential benefits, but the quality, strength and relevance of the evidence vary widely.
Certain postbiotics, for example, have been linked to improved mood and better sleep quality. Other findings come from laboratory studies, such as reduced invasion of colon cancer cells in cell cultures or protection against E coli infection in tightly controlled experiments. These results are interesting, but they cannot be directly applied to humans without further investigation.
Animal studies suggest some postbiotics may increase the surface area of the gut, which could improve nutrient absorption. However, results seen in animals do not always translate to people.
There is also limited evidence from human studies. One specific postbiotic, butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid produced when gut bacteria break down fibre, has been linked to potential improvements in symptoms among people with inflammatory bowel disease.
A double-blind, placebo-controlled study found that supplementation with a heat-killed strain of Lactobacillus pentosus reduced the likelihood of older adults developing the common cold. Another review concluded that a heat-killed strain of Lactobacillus acidophilus may reduce both the risk and duration of diarrhoea in children.
Some postbiotics, such as exopolysaccharides, have shown promise in enhancing immune responses in cell and animal studies. However, these findings remain preliminary.
One form of postbiotic is already used in medical practice. Bacterial lysates are products made from broken-down bacteria and are prescribed in some countries to help prevent recurrent respiratory tract infections in people who are particularly vulnerable. These lysates are made from components of the bacteria that cause infection and work by stimulating the immune system. Outside of these specific clinical uses, however, evidence supporting postbiotic supplements remains limited.
Practical advantages but limited evidence
When researchers refer to advantages of postbiotics, they are usually describing practical and technical factors rather than proven health superiority. Unlike probiotics, which are live microorganisms, postbiotics are non-living compounds. This makes them more stable, easier to store, and less sensitive to heat, oxygen and time. As a result, the amount present in a supplement is more likely to match what is listed on the label.
Postbiotics may also be safer for certain vulnerable groups, such as people who are severely immunocompromised, because they do not involve ingesting live bacteria. These features make postbiotics attractive from a manufacturing and safety perspective.
However, these practical advantages do not mean postbiotics are more effective for improving health. Evidence for benefits in humans remains limited and is highly specific to individual compounds. There is also a lack of standardisation. Because postbiotics include a wide range of substances with different biological effects and dose requirements, findings for one postbiotic cannot be assumed to apply to others.
For most people, supporting the gut microbiome through a varied diet rich in fibre and fermented foods remains the most reliable way to generate postbiotics naturally, while also delivering broader nutritional benefits that supplements cannot replicate.
Perhaps most importantly, postbiotic supplements cannot replicate the wider benefits of whole foods. Eating live yoghurt, for example, provides probiotics alongside calcium and protein. Pairing that yoghurt with a banana feeds the probiotics with prebiotic fibre, while also supplying potassium and vitamin B6. Together, these foods allow the gut to produce postbiotics naturally, while delivering a broad range of nutrients at the same time.
Cost is another consideration. Supplements can be expensive, and for most people, investing that money in a varied diet rich in fibre and fermented foods is likely to deliver greater overall health benefits.
So where does that leave postbiotics? They are a promising area of research and may prove useful in specific clinical settings or vulnerable populations. For now, however, the evidence does not support replacing probiotics and prebiotics with postbiotic supplements for the general population.
At present, the most reliable way to benefit from postbiotics is to let your gut do what it evolved to do. Eating a diet that includes both probiotic foods and prebiotic fibres allows gut bacteria to produce postbiotics naturally. Until research on supplements becomes stronger and clearer, focusing on whole foods remains the most practical and evidence based approach.
Rachel Woods 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.
Iran’s latest wave of unrest is often explained in familiar terms: economic collapse, sanctions, inflation, or sudden political anger. But this framing misses what is actually unfolding.
What we are witnessing is not simply another protest cycle. It is the result of a decades-long erosion of belief in the ideological foundations of the Islamic Republic. It is about the slow disintegration of a worldview that once claimed to explain everything: how people should dress, think and live.
Totalitarian systems rarely fall through dramatic revolutions alone. More often, they unravel from within, as the distance grows between what the state demands and what people actually live by.
Today, if you walk through Tehran, you’ll see many women not wearing the hijab. Even when they walk past morality police – who, by law, should enforce its wearing – nothing happens.
I’m a researcher who looks at how the relationship between socio-cultural conditions and consumer behaviour in Iran leads to social conflicts. My work has suggested that, as in the situation described above, where overt acts of actual resistance are brutally suppressed, people rely on mundane and everyday small acts of defiance to navigate or moderate their institutional restrictions.
In healthy societies, laws, norms and everyday practices tend to evolve together. But in totalitarian systems this is not possible. As political philosopher Hannah Arendt argued in The Origins of Totalitarianism, ideology replaces facts. Once that ideology is challenged, it cannot be revised – because revising it would jeopardise the state’s legitimacy.
We see this clearly in Iran. When there is drought or economic hardship, people are told that God is testing them, rather than being given structural or political explanations.
In this way in Iran, the hijab takes on a particular significance. The regulations around how this head covering should be worn are not simply a dress code, but a political apparatus of control.
Despite growing public demands to relax the mandatory hijab rules, the state remains reluctant to do so because any such reform would threaten its own claim to be an Islamic state where people adhere to the rules.
This is where the contradiction becomes clear. On the one hand, people are becoming more educated, more connected, and more able to compare different ways of living. They can see how people in other countries dress, work and live. This exposure can challenge the ideology.
On the other hand, the state cannot revise its ideology without undermining its own legitimacy. It cannot admit that its foundational beliefs were wrong, because those beliefs are what justify its right to rule.
As a result, the legal pillar of the system becomes increasingly rigid. But this rigidity produces something very important – plasticity within institutions.
My research in how this has worked in Iran shows it has created a growing gap between different layers of social life: between what is legally required, what feels socially normal, and what people cognitively accept as reasonable. In other words, the system gets out of sync with itself.
Over time, this introduces a kind of malleability. People begin to sense this gap. They learn how to navigate it, bend it and quietly push against it. This is often where change begins, not with dramatic revolutions, but through everyday acts of adjustment and defiance.
At the same time, this legal rigidity leaves state authorities with no choice but to rely on coercion and force to safeguard their institutions.
Violence is not power
This brings us to another key insight, also from Hannah Arendt: the distinction between power and violence. Power, she argued, comes from collective legitimacy, from people believing in a system. Violence is what is used when the legitimacy is gone.
So, when a government increasingly relies on surveillance, intimidation and punishment, it’s is not a sign of strength. It is a sign of weakness.
This can be seen in what the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, recently said about Iran: “If a regime can only stay in power through violence, then it is effectively finished.” And over time, the use of force tends to backfire
Some state custodians begin to doubt. Some begin to disagree. Some begin to resist internally leading to fragmentation within the system. When coercive measures are coupled with wrongdoing, such as corruption by state custodians, it further widens this fragmentation.
This tends to create uncertainty inside the system itself. People no longer trust their custodians. And when trust disappears, institutions become fragile. And any shock – economic, political, environmental – can cause societal rupture.
This pattern is not unique to Iran. In China, for instance, secondhand luxury consumption has become a way to challenge hyper-capitalist hierarchies.
In totalitarian systems, everyday life becomes a political arena. And that is existentially dangerous for a totalitarian system. Eventually, a point will be reached where people no longer follow rules because they believe in them. They may still comply, but only under threat of punishment if they don’t.
Across the world, totalitarian regimes face a similar challenge: how to control educated, connected populations who can compare realities. Ideological control becomes harder when people can see alternatives. This is why such systems obsess over the internet. Education destabilises ideologies.
Iran shows that totalitarian ideologies do not crumble overnight. They erode through decades of quiet resistance. Through what might be called the politics of ordinary life.
This is what makes this moment historically significant. The crisis in Iran is not merely economic. Economic hardship exists everywhere. What makes Iran different is that the institutional trust has already collapsed.
What we are witnessing is not simply unrest. It is the slow death of an ideology. And once belief is gone, no amount of force can bring it back.
Mahsa Ghaffari is affiliated with University of Portsmouth
When a solar storm strikes Earth, it can disrupt technology that’s vital for our daily lives. Solar storms occur when magnetic fields and electrically charged particles collide with the Earth’s magnetic field. This type of event falls into the category known as “space weather”.
The Earth is currently experiencing one of the most intense solar storms of the past two decades, reminding us of the need for ways to understand these events.
An international team of researchers (including us) is working on a spacecraft mission that would enable researchers to study the conditions that create solar storms, leading to improved forecasts of space weather.
The proposed mission, known as Mesom (Moon-enabled Sun Occultation Mission), aims to create total solar eclipses in space. This would allow researchers to view the Sun’s atmosphere in more detail than ever before.
The need for a better understanding of solar storms is evident from looking at past disruptions. In 1989, for example, the Canadian province of Quebec was forced into a nine-hour electricity blackout by a coronal mass ejection (CME) – a huge burst of hot plasma and magnetic field thrown off from the Sun’s atmosphere towards space.
The event, which affected both Canada and the US, is estimated to have cost tens of millions of US and Canadian dollars – both in lost business productivity and the need to replace damaged power equipment.
In May 2024, a succession of similar solar eruptions caused thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit to abruptly drop in altitude. GPS outages cost US farmers alone an estimated US$500 million (£370 million).
But these storms were significantly weaker than one in 1859, also the result of a CME, which is known as the Carrington Event. Electrical currents flowing through telegraph wires caused a range of effects in telegraph offices across North America and Europe. Operators received electric shocks – with one in Washington DC receiving a serious injury – and sparks triggered small fires in some telegraph offices.
Today, a Carrington-like event would have far more dramatic consequences on our
technology-dependent world, as has been recognised by different UK governments since 2012.
Yet, our view of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the solar corona – from which CMEs and other adverse space weather events originate – remains dazzled by the bright light emanated from the Sun itself. A new UK-led spacecraft mission aims to change that by recreating total solar eclipse conditions in space.
Better forecasting
During total solar eclipses, the incredibly high-intensity radiation emanating from the visible surface of the Sun is occulted (covered) by the Moon, leaving behind a faint glow of light that comes directly from the outer layers of the Sun’s atmosphere, the corona.
Observing the physical processes in the corona at different timescales and wavelengths is key to enabling better forecasting of space weather – a crucial part of protecting Earth against Carrington-like events – as well as solving longstanding mysteries of our star. These include how the hot plasma of its volatile atmosphere is confined and released by the evolving magnetic fields that thread through it.
Coronal mass ejections explained.
Unfortunately, total solar eclipses are predictable yet rare events that only last for a few minutes. All total eclipses predicted in the 21st century will last less than seven minutes each, and will occur only once every 18 months, on average.
Total solar eclipse measurements from the ground are also subject to weather conditions and suffer from distortions and loss of detail, caused by the interaction of the faint coronal light with the Earth’s atmosphere.
For decades, scientists and engineers have observed the corona by artificially
covering the Sun using clever optics and instrument design inspired by the
pioneering work of Bernard Lyot, a French astronomer who first come up with the
idea of a “coronagraph”.
Coronagraphs are telescopes equipped with an occulting disk to block out the overwhelming radiation emanated from the visible surface of the Sun, along with optical stops and filters that are positioned to suppress the light diffracted (scattered) by the disk itself.
In a coronagraph, the faint coronal light can finally reach the instrument’s focal plane, where it is converted into digital signals using photoelectric sensors. This is the working principle of the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (Lasco 3) onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (Soho 4) spacecraft, which has returned stunning images of the Sun’s corona since its launch in 1995.
However, even ground-based and space-based coronagraphs cannot capture images of the deepest layers of the Sun’s atmosphere, due to artifacts – artificial effects such as streaks of light that appear in images – and instrument limitations that significantly degrade the quality of the measurements closer to the Sun’s surface.
Neither is the recently launched Proba-3 able to image the solar atmosphere’s deepest layers. Proba-3 is a European Space Agency-led technology demonstration mission that relies on a pair of satellites flying in a close formation (up to 150m apart during observations) to recreate total solar eclipse conditions in space.
Celestial neighbour
An alternative approach, first proposed by UK Airbus engineers Steve Eckersley and
Stephen Kemble, advocates the use of celestial bodies as natural occulters (covers).
The idea is to fly a spacecraft mission in the shadow cast by a celestial object to enable prolonged and high-quality measurements of the corona down to the Sun’s chromosphere – the layer of the Sun’s atmosphere located just below the corona. This would effectively recreate the same total solar eclipse conditions we experience occasionally on Earth, but without the degradations caused by the atmosphere of our planet.
Our celestial neighbour, the Moon, is a more perfect sphere (its polar radius is only 2km shorter than the equatorial one) and does not have a thick atmosphere, which makes it among the best natural occulting disks found in the solar system.
A pool of engineers at the Surrey Space Centre has investigated the possibility of using the Moon as a natural occulting disk for studying the solar corona, and came up with the Mesom concept.
Mesom is a mini-satellite mission that capitalises on the chaotic dynamics of the Sun-Earth-Moon system to collect high-quality measurements of the inner Sun corona once a month, for observation windows as long as 48 minutes – much longer than the sporadic total solar eclipse on Earth.
Funded by the UK Space Agency, the feasibility study of Mesom has grown into a wider international consortium led by UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory and including the Universities of Surrey and Aberystwyth, plus partners from Spain, the US and Australia.
The project has recently been submitted to the European Space Agency for consideration as a future mission. The current mission design proposes a launch in the 2030s, returning at least 400 minutes of high-resolution, low-altitude coronal observations during its two-year nominal science operations.
To collect the same amount of data on Earth, eclipse hunters would have to wait for more than 80 years. This makes Mesom a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to unravel some of the secrets of the Sun’s atmosphere.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In 1926, the West End of London offered a dazzling range of evening entertainment. Choices included watching Fred Astaire and his sister Adele on stage at the old Empire theatre in Lady, Be Good!, or experiencing The Big Parade silent movie at the Tivoli on the Strand with a full live orchestra.
But on a damp Tuesday evening 100 years ago, around 40 members of the Royal Institution – one of the UK’s most influential science research and education charities – chose instead to visit a makeshift laboratory on an upper floor at 22 Frith Street in Soho.
Reportedly all attired in evening dress, they were responding to an invitation from the then little-known Scottish inventor John Logie Baird. The event became a landmark moment in television history.
Baird successfully demonstrated an experimental prototype that could augment broadcast radio with live moving pictures. It was the world’s first demonstration of a mechanical television system able to show human faces. At the time, Baird called the display a “televisor”.
The best account of the evening came from William Chaney Fox, a Press Association journalist and close friend of Baird. He recalled that the demonstration room in Frith Street could only accommodate a handful of people, each of whom was televised while other guests inspected the received image in an adjacent room.
Fox had been put in charge of the unexpectedly large turnout. But as each group departed, he overheard that most viewers were not much impressed with what they had seen.
A much sought-after dream
By the start of the 20th century, sending still images over long distances by telegraph had become routine. But watching moving pictures at a distance remained a much sought-after dream.
Over the following decades, company-funded research departments (notably in the US, Germany and UK) sought to develop all-electronic television from scratch. Years of costly research and development finally resulted in these prototype TV sets and broadcasts reaching a public audience from the mid-1930s.
However, in the previous decade, Baird had spotted a more rapid route to market for moving pictures. Inspired by work in Europe and the US, he sought to make a profitable business out of long-forgotten ideas for television.
Those 19th-century ideas could, Baird realised, be adapted into a version of television using spinning discs of lenses that would require minimal investment. He pursued the difficult task of televising conventionally lit scenes that would show the human face in detail and texture.
Whereas an established company would have kept work-in-progress behind closed doors, the perilous state of Baird’s finances suggests he needed to promote his version of television heavily through demonstrations.
But due to the size of his apparatus, demonstrations from early 1926 were largely confined to his laboratories. These demonstrations, he hoped, would allow him to gain publicity and encourage potential investors in his work – while still concealing details of his methods from competitors.
‘An error of judgment’
From late 1925, Baird began promoting via hobbyist press what he retrospectively described as “true television”. He extended an open invitation to members of the Royal Institution to witness this at a demonstration to be held on the evening of January 26, 1926.
Remarkably, none of the attending members published any comment on their experience, suggesting they had not recognised the significance of what they experienced.
The only first-hand report was printed in the Times two days later as a minor event. When E.G. Stewart of the Gas, Light and Coke Company visited Baird in April 1926 (perhaps with a view to investing), he concluded that it would be “an error of judgment” for Baird to place the equipment as presented on the market.
Baird’s television apparatus used at Frith Street was centred on a large spinning disc of lenses, operating as a television camera that generated a vision signal of 30 vertical lines and a transportable display that converted the signal back to an image. The equipment gave a television picture which, from Stewart’s report, appeared as a thin strip of the image sweeping across the display just five times per second.
Of course, 100 years ago, there were no standards for television picture quality, so success depended on the watcher’s subjective experience of seeing something vaguely recognisable. Given the limited detail, 30-line television relied heavily on the uncanny human ability to discern faces and expressions from even the crudest and most distorted of displayed images.
Following a demonstration he attended some months later, Fox wrote that Baird had improved the picture, giving “the first appearance of true detail [where] people recognised one another when they were transmitted”.
This might explain why the attendees at Frith Street had seemed unimpressed, as the demonstration presumably lacked those same recognisable features. At every demonstration, Baird emphasised he was not presenting a finished product but a work-in-progress that required more time, effort and money. Throughout the remainder of 1926, positive reports from influential dignitaries became more frequent, indicating significant progress.
In the following years, Baird’s Frith Street demonstration on January 26, 1926 was retrospectively identified as the watershed moment when television transitioned from being a dream into a period of practical reality. In the process, Baird came to be immortalised – in the UK, at least – as the inventor of television by being first to show faces with detail and texture in reflected light.
Restored version of singer Betty Bolton filmed by Baird’s 30-line TV system. Copyright: D.F. McLean.
From 1927, Baird continued to promote and develop his approach to television, securing recognition for being first in showing television in colour and in receiving images live in New York, sent by radio from London.
This and his experimental Europe-wide 30-line television service from 1929 to 1932 inspired the BBC to pursue a superior service for the public by exploiting new developments in electronics from the Baird Company’s competitor, Marconi-EMI.
Forty years after his death in 1946, Baird was described by Daily Telegraph journalist L. Marsland Gander as “an eccentric visionary with a passion for gadgetry”. Unfortunately, despite his landmark achievements in the history of television, Gander also described Baird as “constantly in financial trouble”.
Donald McLean does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
People who don’t eat meat may be less likely than meat eaters to reach the age of 100, according to a recent study. But before you reconsider your plant-based diet, there’s more to these findings than meets the eye.
The research tracked over 5,000 Chinese adults aged 80 and older who participated in the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey, a nationally representative study that began in 1998. By 2018, those following diets that don’t contain meat were less likely to become centenarians compared with meat eaters.
On the surface, this appears to contradict decades of research showing that plant-based diets are good for your health. Vegetarian diets, for example, have been consistently linked to lower risks of heart disease and stroke, type 2 diabetes and obesity. These benefits come partly from higher fibre intake and lower saturated fat consumption.
So what’s going on? Before drawing any firm conclusions, there are several important factors to consider.
Your body’s needs change as you age
This study focused on adults aged 80 and older, whose nutritional needs differ markedly from those of younger people. As we age, physiological changes alter both how much we eat and what nutrients we need. Energy expenditure drops, while muscle mass, bone density and appetite often decline. These shifts increase the risk of malnutrition and frailty.
Most evidence for the health benefits of diets that exclude meat comes from studies of younger adults rather than frail older populations. Some research suggests older non-meat eaters face a higher risk of fractures due to lower calcium and protein intake.
In later life, nutritional priorities shift. Rather than focusing on preventing long-term diseases, the goal becomes maintaining muscle mass, preventing weight loss and ensuring every mouthful delivers plenty of nutrients.
The study’s findings may, therefore, reflect the nutritional challenges of advanced age, rather than any inherent problems with plant-based diets. Crucially, this doesn’t diminish the well-established health benefits of these diets for younger and healthier adults.
Maintaining muscle mass in older age is important, and that requires protein. CCISUL/Shutterstock.com
Here’s a crucial detail: the lower likelihood of reaching 100 among non-meat eaters was only observed in underweight participants. No such association was found in older adults of healthy weight.
Being underweight in older age is already strongly linked with increased risks of frailty and death. Body weight therefore appears to be a key factor in explaining these findings.
It’s also worth remembering that this was an observational study, meaning it shows associations rather than cause and effect. Just because two things occur together doesn’t mean one causes the other.
The findings also align with the so-called “obesity paradox” in ageing, where a slightly higher body weight is often linked to better survival in later life.
Notably, the reduced likelihood of reaching 100 observed among non-meat eaters was not evident in those who included fish, dairy or eggs in their diets. These foods provide nutrients that are essential for maintaining muscle and bone health, including high-quality protein, vitamin B12, calcium and vitamin D.
Older adults following these diets were just as likely to live to 100 as meat eaters. The researchers suggested that including modest amounts of animal-source foods may help prevent undernutrition and loss of lean muscle mass in very old age, compared with strictly plant-based diets.
What this means for healthy ageing
Rather than focusing on whether one diet is universally better than another, the key message is that nutrition should be tailored to your stage of life. Energy needs decline with age (due to decreased resting energy expenditure), but some nutrient requirements increase.
Older adults still require adequate protein, vitamin B12, calcium and vitamin D – especially to preserve muscle mass and prevent frailty. In older adulthood, preventing malnutrition and weight loss often becomes more important than long-term chronic disease prevention.
Plant-based diets can still be healthy choices, but they may require careful planning and, in some cases, supplementation to ensure nutritional adequacy, particularly in later life.
The bottom line is that our nutritional needs at 90 may look very different from those at 50, and dietary advice should reflect these changes across the lifespan. What works for you now might need adjusting as you age – and that’s perfectly normal.
Chloe Casey 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.
