A few weeks ago, I bumped into Omran, a musician friend, who was serving salads, humous and pastries in a Lebanese cafe. We met three years ago through  our shared involvement in a project to reform a Syrian orchestra torn apart by the nightmare that has descended on that Middle Eastern nation. A singer from Damascus, he became a refugee in north London and harbours dreams of reviving his musical career. Before we parted, he told me insistently about a new film. “It is called For Sama,” he said. “You must see it.”

Now I have done so — and I understand Omran’s proselytising for this remarkable film. The horror of Syria has sparked some superb documentaries already, showing how protests seeking freedom from brutal dictatorship spiralled into bloodstained despair of civil war. Yet For Sama offers something fresh that goes far beyond being simply another chilling reminder of humankind’s barbarity and the savagery taking place in a collapsed nation. It is a highly personal film — a memoir from a young mother to her new baby — that is one of the most intimate and powerful insights into the realities of war that I have seen.

The film tells the tale in piecemeal chunks of Waad al-Kateab, a headstrong young teenager who had left her family to study at Aleppo University when the Arab Spring protests swept the region in 2011. She reminded me strongly of some students I met in Syria that year, eating in their flat and talking late into the night of their hopes and fears after the first wave of demonstrations spread across the country. Like this film-maker, they were filled with courage, determination and a beautiful idealism as they sought to remove the shackles of Bashar Assad’s regime and friends began to disappear into his torture chambers. I often wonder what happened to them.

Suggested reading

The Syrian conflict shouldn't be treated as a renewed Cold War

By Liam Halligan

Al-Kateab picked up a camera rather than a gun, turning it on her adopted city as peaceful protests were met with bullets, religious fanatics muscled in and Assad’s regime fought back aided by Russia. Much of this we have seen before: the graffiti being sprayed on walls, the dancing demonstrators who think they have won their freedom, the helicopters dropping barrel bombs, the bodies pulled from rubble, the astonishing drone footage of an historic city destroyed on epic scale. One scene of terrified families pushing their belongings along the street as they try to escape the carnage looks eerily familiar, like a throwback to all those Second World War films.

There is value in reminding people that this appalling conflict, which flickers in and out of headlines, continues to corrode Syria and its surrounding nations. Like many foreign reporters, the war has played a significant role in my own life for much of the past decade after spending time in the country, meeting so many refugees and hearing endless tales of trauma and tragedy. Yet what makes this documentary so compelling is how those familiar images of wrecked buildings and destroyed lives are woven around Al-Kateab’s personal story as she falls in love with a young doctor called Hamza and gives birth to her daughter in the besieged city.

So we see the couple getting married, the scan of their baby in the womb, the new mother singing nursery rhymes to the baby like millions more around the world. Yet these mundane images of family life, and others of cooking and eating with friends, are set amidst scenes of mutilated bodies, missing people, mothers screaming over the corpses of their children, rivers of blood swept from the floor of the makeshift hospital that becomes their home. Al-Kateab kept filming and presents a woman’s perspective as the siege tightened and the slaughter intensified, some footage appearing as citizen journalism reports for Channel 4 News.

Suggested reading

Why I'm unrepentant about my trip to Syria

By Giles Fraser

We glimpse what daily life is like when you are trapped inside terror, families caught in a conflict that so scars the world this century. Al-Kateab is not only a courageous journalist but also one capturing the cruellest aspect of this vile war: the targeting of hospitals by Assad and his Russian allies.

Hamza created his hospital with a few colleagues, several of whom are inevitably killed. Eventually it is the only one still functioning in east Aleppo, then it is bombed and they must find another site. This second clinic takes in 6,000 patients in just 20 days before the city falls. Once again this is also their home, where they share a room with another family of five, reduced to eating ant-infested rice as the regime noose tightens.

Sometimes the images of war are subtle, such as the look that passes across al-Kateab’s face as she works at her computer and a blast is heard nearby.There is a playful element as parents try to keep children entertained while crammed into small spaces behind sandbags. There is even a sliver of optimism in one gruelling scene showing frantic medical staff saving the life of an injured woman and the baby cut from her womb.

But mostly it is traumatic, such as when the child, with tears in his eyes, tells her that his friends are no longer there or — most painful of all — the two stunned boys covered in dust as they bring in their dead sibling, then kiss his head.

Suggested reading

The dangerous influence of expats

By Mary Dejevsky

This power comes from a personal narrative, at times almost like a shaky home video, showing desperate attempts of normality during life in hell. The baby drinks milk in a nest of blankets — then a helicopter flies overhead, bombs fall and sirens scream again as ambulances bring more casualties to the hospital.

Sama does not cry like a normal baby, notes her mother. An exhausted Hamza, working all hours to save lives amid chaos, finds solace in the family’s garden that provides a metaphor for the desecration of war. He takes delight in his efforts to grow flowers and trees, the couple enjoy a fall of snow – then their small oasis is destroyed in another of the remorseless attacks.

This remarkable film, spliced together in stuttering form and set to a sombre score, seeks to explain to Sama why her parents joined the revolt and stayed in the ruins. At the start, the mood feels light when she says she cared only for the uprising.

Later, the couple could have left the infant in Turkey with family members but chose to return in gripping scenes. At one point, as people file in near-darkness down to a basement during another assault, she asks her baby: “Will you ever forgive me?”

But this question of forgiveness goes far wider: to a world that accepts such horror and shows so little sympathy to its victims.

As Omran said, you must see this film.

I attended on a heavily discounted pass, representing a great abolitionist charity, and it is just as well. Cinderella couldn’t afford this ball. NGO ‘discounted’ tickets started at £599, with £1,495 the premium rate (not including VAT of course).

It’s a cause everyone can get behind. But the only trouble is, there’s no way on earth the people actually doing frontline anti-slavery work could afford to be here. For the price of the cheapest ticket, a Latvian charity could run their prevention work for a month. And that’s not including the travel and accommodation.

Further reading

Normalising sex work benefits pimps and traffickers

By Meghan Murphy

I have been in and around the anti-trafficking world since the late Nineties, and have watched big business pile-in. I’m not against this per se. And I’m glad the issue is finally getting the attention it warrants: business needs to up its game to eradicate slavery from their supply chains. But there’s a world of difference between authentic efforts to clean up business practices and window-dressing.

It’s hard to tell how much corporate sponsorship has actually helped. As things stand, there is nothing to prevent businesses from requiring all of their suppliers to meet human rights standards. And there’s nothing to prevent those businesses from policing their supply chains to ensure they’re not full of slaves. But how many have actually chosen this route? As big fashion brands chase lower labour costs, it seems the problem is getting worse.

The corporate take-over has failed to make a positive difference to the lives of trafficked women, partly because cash tends to be injected into the already established, well-funded NGOs with bigger profiles than those who are actually making a real difference. A story broke only last week about the anti-slavery NGO, Prajwala, which has been lauded by praised by celebrities and governments alike, yet now stands accused of exploiting the women it shelters.

Further reading

Questioning the misogynistic veil isn't racist

By Julie Bindel

It’s a narrative that cuts across the whole aid industry. It is at the heart of the two-year Civil Societies Future inquiry which was published last week, which concluded that charities have become disconnected from the people they are meant to serve. They are focusing, instead, on chasing cash, growing bigger and protecting brands. In my experience, too, the anti-trafficking organisations that do make a difference are those smaller grassroots ones, run by those who can best support the victims – such as women of colour who understand the misogyny and racism that underpins the slavery business.

It has become fashionable for big corporations and trusts to throw money at this issue, mainly thanks to the efforts of those small human rights organisations which have worked so hard to expose how many enslaved, trafficked labourers have been working within corporate supply chains. But as I listened to these businesses “sharing best practice” in combatting trafficking, I heard nothing remotely innovative or new. It felt like it was just a way of enabling those businesses to put something in their Corporate Social Responsibility reports.

Further reading

Why woke keyboard warriors should respect their elders

By Julie Bindel

What really left a bad taste in my mouth, though, was when a young woman was wheeled out to talk about ‘sex work’. She wept as she begged the room – filled with rich Westerners – for money, on behalf of the NGO Kranti.

I know very well that these stunts are part and parcel of the fundraising ‘business’ these days. Comic Relief does it to great effect and it convinces thousands of Westerners to put their hands in their pockets. But small, grassroots NGOs tend to balk at displaying survivors in this way, considering it patronising and undermining.

There were several delegates there who agreed with me. But they were loathe to be identified lest their personal quest for funding be scuppered. Like an abusive relationship, the money seduces and enamours, only then to become the monster you can’t live with, can’t live without.

No one can be certain of his motives, but as British Muslims on social media began to talk about it, the suicide acquired a significance beyond the act itself. Suddenly, a place of worship and sanctuary became the cornerstone of a discussion for which no-one seemed really ready. One rooted in issues of cultural trauma, family, honour and an overzealous belief in prayer being the solution to all problems.

There had been uncomfortable attempts by the community to grapple with the issue of mental health previously but this one moment – of a man plunging to his death before what Muslims regard as God’s House – became a signal that silence could no longer persist. People had to talk.

For too long the response of British Muslims, particularly those of south Asian heritage, to such stories has been problematic. Though some have spoken poignantly about the problem, others have underlined the ignorant attitudes prevailing within the community.

Further reading

Poor mental health is bad for the economy

By Charlotte Pickles

In their eyes, the dead man had committed an abominable act directly before God. The mention of mental illness was not enough to stir them to pause and reflection. As they saw it, he had stained himself in the worst way, in an inexcusable manner.

Sadly, this unforgiving view is why many British Muslims struggle to discuss mental health. The man wasn’t seeking redemption or excuses for his sins, but probably hoping for an end to his suffering; he may have wished God’s House to be the last thing he saw on earth. There’s something deeply saddening in that; worse still is the fact that so many refuse to attempt to understand his case and others like it.

There was little compassion for this man’s suffering – even though it led to his death. Many Muslims see sin as a human flaw, but mental illness is not a flaw in that sense. It’s not a human weakness conditioned by our own behaviours and actions, but something uncontrollable.

The absence of compassion is a symptom of the wider struggle to discuss mental health within British Muslim families, which arises from a toxic fusion of religious misunderstanding and cultural values. Islam supposedly tells people life is a test and that they should embrace its sharp edges and desolate moments. To speak about mental suffering, in that interpretation, is to reject God’s plan and not to have faith in religion to solve the pain.

Further reading

'The Inner Level', inequality and why sad is the new hip

By Richard Godwin

It doesn’t matter that that pain can leave you feeling like you’re drowning in constant black waves. Faith, and particularly prayer and its power, is the log you are supposed to hold on to stop you from being swept under. Dr Ghazala Mir, a researcher at Leeds University, argues that “This stigma does involve the idea that maybe if you need treatment, there might be something wrong with your faith identity in the first place.”

This is the retort that has greeted many who try to discuss the issue, or to argue that prayer alone isn’t enough to solve mental illness. People are told their weak faith is the cause of their depression – yet depression can affect enthusiasm for anything, including praying. There is fear and guilt in thinking prayer won’t solve the problem. So when you pray and find the solution slipping further away, you feel helpless. Your despair spirals.

Religion is often entwined with culture; most British Muslims of a south Asian background are influenced by their cultural roots simply by the differences from Muslims of other ethnic backgrounds. In particular, a tight-knit family structure is central to their identity. There is a constant demand to protect a family’s reputation and not to disappoint, to be what religion and culture demands, and avoid what the community gossips about.

Further reading

The bureaucratic fracturing of government can destroy lives

By Peter Franklin

For women, the ties and obligations to family are even tighter. Secrecy, fear, shame and honour mean everything. Reputation is everything, especially for a woman, because – to put it crudely – it can lower her value for marriage in parts of the community. Stories of ‘honour’ violence and supernatural possession are examples of the misogyny they face within families. The concept of demonic possession, in particular, affects women who exhibit signs of mental illness; the prescribed solution requires an exorcism but damages their name and status irrevocably. And of course, how as Muslims can you deny that demons exist?

I lost years of my life to mental illness. It was always there like a shadow, returning when I least expected it. After years of struggle and grind I thrived in university, feeling as if I had been unshackled. But my religion became an obstacle, deepening the problems. Faith strangled me with doubts, shame – and terror that I was sinning for refusing to accept prayer as the only road out of this gloom.

I lost count of how many times I stood on a train platform thinking there was a way for these thoughts to stop. Maybe it was the fear of God that stopped me from acting then, but it was also the fear of God that for years stopped me exploring solutions beyond prayer. Reconciling with roots I felt were holding me down but still couldn’t break from, was and remains a struggle.

Further reading

Young British muslims are putting their money where their mouth is

By Katie Harrison

Finding a solution to mental illness is not easy, especially to those of us suffering from it for years. Understanding it is like wading into an ocean of bottomless depths, or as a friend put it, “trying to keep a door open with a piece of string.” Perhaps it’s an inner war with no end that we will always be fighting. That’s how it feels.

But cultural values of family honour and pride, as well as religious demands of confidence in God, should not become deterrents for talking about illness.The mental health charity Mind has begun working with British Muslim communities to tackle this, reporting positive feedback.

What has certainly helped is exposure to western culture. As the older generations of British Muslims were more swayed by their cultural roots, younger generations are more influenced by a British culture which has started to challenge the stigmas around mental health, particularly the gender stereotypes which prohibit men – and women – from displaying emotional vulnerability

Will things change? If the traditional ‘stiff upper lip’ is now allowed to tremble. I can only hope that the same thing will happen within my community. The shameful silence imposed by my religion cannot persist.

British air attack has been sustained since 2016, against both Mosul and Raqqa to simultaneously undermine the Caliphate. Syria has been more complicated than Iraq with the abiding need to de-escalate tension with Russia. Notwithstanding the Boris-Sergei banter, there has long been a specific military hotline to explain the purpose of RAF deployments to the Russians and to deconflict with long-range Russian air activity. Each nation’s air campaign plan keeps to its respective side of the Euphrates. The priority is to work with Russia in domains where the Kremlin has greatest influence.

In the three years since Operation Shader began, British air power has made significant progress in helping free 5.5 million people from Daesh rule. And not one civilian casualty has been ‘collaterally damaged’ by British strike aircraft.  Interestingly, this British air effort over Iraq and Syria has been ten times that mounted over Afghanistan, where British troops were lost in worrying numbers.  But you wouldn’t know any of this from the official media gurus. Perhaps they realise that that the 2018 strategic question will be – where do we focus the intelligence stare next, Raqqa or Russia?

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

The factories left first, of course. Apple’s suppliers are from nearly 30 other countries. Apple’s citizen-identity is now left solely in ownership of the ideas produced by the American engineers and executives who design the next big Apple products.

They are leaving too, now. It’s not immediately noticeable, for if you drive through Cupertino you’ll still see employees and a headquarters. The company isn’t leaving, but the value they create for our country is.

Here’s how it works. The valuable intellectual property of Apple America’s best and brightest creations is sold cheaply to subsidiaries in low-tax countries. Then, when Apple sells the products, it re-routes them from assembly centres in China through the foreign subsidiary holding the intellectual property. The income from export sales gets booked there, not in the US.

What began as American intellectual property – the ingenuity supposed to be America’s competitive advantage in the 21st century – is now owned by a nation-less archipelago of corporate jargon.

If Apple, the most successful enterprise of the information age, is not American, then something is wrong with our model. Globalisation is based on the assumption that economic gains from a more open global economy will offset losses in American jobs. What happens if the gains get shipped abroad along with the jobs?

Some further reading: Apple’s Exports Aren’t Missing: They Are In Ireland – Council on Foreign Relations.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Senator Tom Cotton’s contribution: ObamaCare’s central feature has been repealed.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

Crucial evidence is emerging on the ground in places like Jordan, where some things have been made to work, and Lebanon, where economics have lost out to politics. Meanwhile, the balance of conversation about refugees in Europe is stuck on whether or not they are coming this way. They are not. Media images of refugees are emotive but dishonest, showing them in camps or on boats, when in fact they are in cities like Jordan’s capital, Amman, trying to fend for themselves.

Countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Ethiopia, where a refugee jobs pact has been struck, will determine where and in what conditions refugees live. These ideas and experiments need the oxygen of attention and journalistic scrutiny to keep career politicians and multilateral lenders honest about what is working and what is not.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

The reason is that according to the Nature Conservancy Colombia is the second most biologically diverse country on Earth.  It is home to one of every 10 species of plants and animals on the planet and has 1,870 bird species the largest diversity of birds of any nation.

Colombia is a stunning example of multiple innovative conservation policies that set the example for the rest of the world. One I remember from my childhood was the Páramo de Sumapaz, one of several high mountain spongy ecosystems that are unique in holding, filtering, and releasing massive amounts of clean water.  These Páramos supply several of Colombians largest cities with potable water.  There has been a concerted effort to preserve and protect these remarkable natural assets.

This is only one example of a complex system of conservation initiatives that Colombia has put in place including protection of three of Latin America’s largest rivers the Magdalena, Orinoco, and Colombian Amazon River basins.

It’s too bad that Carlos Escobar, the FARC guerillas, kidnappings, and other negatives are well known but these remarkable efforts remain-under reported.

https://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/latinamerica/colombia/index.htm

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

The next stage is ensuring that the international community does actually work together to hold these terrorists to account, and the eyes should now be on how each individual country responds to the terrorists returning to their home countries, including to Europe.

The focus on Daesh and other conflicts within the Middle has meant that the unprecedented changes in Saudi Arabia have gone largely unnoticed. The statement from the Saudi Crown Prince that he plans to return the country to a liberal Sunni Islam has set the country down a path to modernisation and liberalisation.

From small steps such as allowing women to drive, to major infrastructure projects like the $500 billion economic zone along the Red Sea, the changes afoot in Saudi Arabia will shift the power balance within the country and the region, from the ultra-conservatives to those who want to see it fit for a future where it isn’t reliant on oil.

Saudi Arabia’s shift in its politics, economics and interpretation of Islam will have repercussions within the region. In the West, that could be seen a positive, but in the Middle East it could lead to further tension and conflict.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

There are three types of threat involving ‘nuclear terrorism’.

(1) The least likely but most devastating

The most unlikely is that a terrorist group would design and manufacture a nuclear device, which they could detonate in a major city, since no terror group is realistically capable of miniaturising (or ‘weaponising’) the warhead of a ballistic missile. For sure the technology is easy to glean from the internet, but the realities of building ‘a Bomb’ are costly and complex.

Although Al Qaeda has sought to get its hands on both the expertise and the materials, only states with a large industrial and scientific base have, in practice, the engineering skills to build an implosion device (which involves precision triggers simultaneously causing atomic fission or fusion) and it requires sophisticated processes and thousands of centrifuges to manufacture even small quantities of highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium. No terrorist group has been able to acquire or manufacture such materials, though not for want of trying, from the 25 countries which possess them. In every case they were the victims of sting operations by intelligence services, to the point that a joke went that whenever such materials were being hawked around, the seller was the CIA and the buyer Mossad.

At present there are approximately 16,000 nuclear warheads, of which over 90% are under US or Russian control. All nine existing nuclear armed states heavily guard their arsenals, which do not involve bombs or missiles simply lying around ready to use: they are in various states of disassembly, except for those actively deployed on bomber bases, in silos, submarines and so on. These have complex codes for arming and activation. Civil nuclear plants also have their own security forces and multiple systems to prevent Chernobyl-style nuclear accidents being deliberately brought about by intruders or insiders, though the risk of external cyber interference has increased in recent years as one can indirectly glean from US and Israeli use of the ‘Olympic Games’ virus to destroy Iranian centrifuges (and the retaliatory remote attack on Saudi Aramco’s operating computers) shows. Simply crashing an airliner into a nuclear plant is otiose too, since the critical areas are encased in thick concrete, and there are systems to shut down the reactor in the event of earthquakes which such an attack would resemble.

The prospect of an existing nuclear armed state supplying a terrorist surrogate or proxy with a functioning nuclear device is routinely said to be greatly diminished by nuclear ‘forensics’. Effectively, if a nuclear bomb were to be detonated, scientists could establish the fingerprints of the constituent materials, as one can do with, for example, a cargo of crude oil, which would result in instant nuclear devastation being visited on, say, a guilty North Korea or Pakistan by the victim of such an attack.

In reality, though many nuclear warheads were destroyed by the newly independent post-Soviet successor states, many databases on the whereabouts of such materials are incomplete, as is nuclear mapping. As for an existing nuclear state being taken over by an extremist movement (and only Pakistan fits this picture), both the US and China have plans to seize its nuclear arsenals before a device found its way to a terror group.

(2) A ‘dirty’, radioactive bomb

This brings us to the most likely form of nuclear terrorism: a ‘dirty bomb’ or radiological dispersion device, in which radioactive materials are spread by a conventional explosion. Such materials are present in everyday carbon monoxide detectors or emergency exit signs, but in practice the main concern is with isotopes used in hospitals to treat cancers or within complex machinery. Such materials would have to be acquired, moved and stored in some quantities – though the core of the ‘Little Boy’ bomb used on Hiroshima was the size of a football weighing 180lbs – which would not be without major risks for the perpetrators. Though the physical aftermath of such an attack would resemble most conventional terrorist bombings, fear that a wider area had been contaminated by materials which are toxic and long-lasting would result in mass panic, regardless of how easily the authorities carried out an extremely expensive clean-up.

(3) A non-nuclear but high-devastation alternative terror attack

The final point our interlocutor made was effectively ‘why bother’? He explained that Osama bin Laden was “a one-off megalomaniac” – with a background in civil engineering – who successfully combined a long-established terrorist strategy of high-jacking passenger aircraft with his obsession with bringing down tall buildings by using planes as guided missiles. The desire to achieve maximum terror by blowing up aircraft has not gone away in the interim, but the means are pretty simple once you are on the plane.

But bin Laden’s successors in the ‘management of savagery’ have adopted an alternative approach which is to ‘inundate the field’ with multiple attackers (some of them self-starters) who can use everything from home-made bombs, via knives, to cars and lorries. This leads to a sense of imminent dread and constant vulnerability on the part of the societies being attacked in this death by a thousand pinpricks approach.

It is far more likely that, at some point, a mass casualty attack will involve a relatively simple and enduringly lethal chemical – like mustard gas (or a nerve agent like sarin which has already been used by sect-like terrorists in Japan) or, most probable, ramming a tanker load of liquid chlorine into a public space like the entrance to a railway or metro station. Acquiring such a cargo is much easier than getting hold of a functioning nuclear weapon.

It may be consoling to end with the late Thomas Schelling (1921-2016), a Nobel Prize winner who coined the term ‘collateral damage’ and was the leading theorist of nuclear deterrence. He first floated the idea of nuclear terrorism in 1982, but he changed his mind about not only how easy it might be for terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons, by thinking more about how they might use them. ‘Why squander something that could be used for blackmail and deterrence by actually detonating it?’ – a question few address amidst all the scary talk of nuclear terrorism.

RECOMMENDED FURTHER READING

Andreas Wenger, Alex Wilner Deterring Terrorism (Stanford 2012).

Thomas Schelling: Whatever happened to Nuclear Terrorism?

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

In low income countries, plastics blocking drains is a major cause of flooding. Diarrhoeal diseases are twice as common in communities without waste collection and fumes from burning waste cause an estimated 270,000 premature deaths a year. Microplastics entering the food chain pose serious but as yet unknown consequences for human health, both in the UK and in poor coastal communities around the world that rely on fish as the main source of protein.

Although 90% of the plastic waste in our oceans originates from just ten rivers within Africa and Asia, it’s a global issue that needs a shared response. Talking about waste and diarrhoea is not glamorous and isn’t as moving on TV as a baby albatross eating plastic. But both show we need to re-think our love affair with plastic.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

In compliance with the convention, the UK has laws criminalising genocide. However, as it stands, the UK does not have any mechanism to recognise mass atrocities, which meet the threshold, as genocide. This ultimately means that, by default, the UK is not able to fulfil its obligations under the convention. In fact, over the years, the UK Government’s position has been that ‘any judgements on whether genocide has occurred should be a matter for the international judicial system rather than legislatures, governments or other non-judicial bodies.’

However, in this blind reliance on the ‘international judicial system’, be it the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court or other, the UK fails to consider one fundamental challenge: time. The time that is at essence when the annihilation of a protected group is being perpetrated. Put it differently; if the UK does not have a mechanism to recognise genocide (or attempted genocide), the UK is not able to take necessary steps to prevent or stop the atrocities under the convention obligations. Furthermore, if the UK does not have a mechanism to recognise genocide, the UK is not able to prosecute the perpetrators of the crime under the convention obligations. Awaiting the decision from an ‘international judicial system’ deems the UK’s convention obligations unfulfilled until it is too late.

This means, that over the last 70 years, the UK has been in breach of the convention obligations. To address the UK’s long-standing failures under the convention, Lord Alton introduced the Genocide Determination Bill, a private members’ bill. The bill aims to ‘provide for the High Court of England and Wales to make a preliminary finding on cases of alleged genocide; and for the subsequent referral of such findings to the International Criminal Court or a special tribunal.’ The bill that has a potential of ensuring that the UK can fulfil its convention obligations will be considered at the House of Lords in 2018.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

Warning signs have been there in recent months. Crises in Venezuela, Nigeria, Yemen, and South Sudan made headlines for different reasons; but each has led to malaria cases spiking. The emergence of drug-resistant malaria in Southeast Asia triggered concerns of a possible worldwide health security risk if it crosses to Africa. Finally, this month the UN cautioned that funding for proven mosquito nets, quick diagnosis and drugs has plateaued, falling short of what’s needed globally. Why isn’t this bigger news? Because malaria is an ongoing epidemic, a constant killer often accepted as if it were a common cold. Moreover its 445,000 casualties are mainly politically underserved pregnant women and children in Sub-Saharan Africa. Unlike other disasters it’s the silent tsunami going under the radar. Yet with 6 out of 10 of the most affected countries being Commonwealth nations, their heads of government have an opportunity when they meet in London next April to change all of that.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

The truth is the state of the global economic architecture is disastrously weak.  No global trade round for almost a third of the life-time of the GATT itself (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade which became the World Trade Organisation and whose whose seventieth anniversary we celebrate this year), actual measures of wealth creation such as industrial output are weak (GDP often masks this poor performance, as it includes government and consumer spending).  Consequently, politicians and even some economists seem to have accepted that we live in a new normal of stalled economic growth out into the future.  Some have said the age of innovation is over.  For the poor around the world, accepting this would be a catastrophe. It would mean budget deficits and austerity for the foreseeable future.

But it is wrong.  There are plenty of gains that can still be wrung out of the global trading system. It has barely scratched the surface in the area of services (where the UK is the second biggest exporter in the world).  If we can achieve even a small amount of those gains, we could be looking at a very different future for ourselves and for the world.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

In the north-east of Nigeria, Boko Haram continues to target local Christian communities mercilessly. Over three years have passed since they declared a caliphate in the region, and abductions, forced conversions, rape, pillaging and murder remain commonplace. The perpetrators are the herdsmen of the Muslim Fulani Tribe. They come at day and night with machetes and hack the unarmed Christian villagers to death. Whole villages are razed to the ground, the churches burnt. Local policemen and the army, placed in the region to ‘protect’ the Christians, instead choose to overlook the atrocities. Indeed, they often aid the Fulani herdsmen, supplying weapons and vehicles; the national government is run by a Fulani President and the whole situation is mired in corruption and complicity.

The only publicity the situation has garnered internationally was in 2014 when 300 Chibok schoolgirls were abducted by Boko Haram. Since then, the western press has chosen to focus on Brexit and Trump while the schoolgirls remain missing. Christians are being murdered and their villages destroyed across Nigeria and the world will continue to turn a blind eye.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

This “sea change” change will be stimulated by radically novel technologies, largely US-led but being cloned by Russia and China. These include a vast range of autonomous and guided unmanned vehicles, operating above, below and on the surface of the sea, linked to integrated data-sharing networks, artificial intelligence and a range of increasingly hypervelocity missiles.  Ballistic missiles will also enter the scene, not only capable of attacking land and sea targets, but also to neutralise space-based communications, reconnaissance and data-bearing satellites. Meanwhile, directed energy weapons (solid state lasers) are already operational and an electro-magnetic rail gun (projecting a high impact projectile at Mach 7 to over 100 nautical miles) has already passed the proof of concept stage.

The shape of the future already exists in the US Navy’s three Zumwalt class destroyers (pictured above), which, at 14, 500 long tons, displace about the same as German pocket battleships.  Their futuristic (although surprisingly retro) hull forms will provide the development platforms, along with high volume electrical generation (up to 78 Megawatts), for directed energy and rail gun technologies.

Despite its massive superiority at sea, the US will have to continue to invest heavily to maintain its lead while other ambitious navies, notably China and Russia are likely to follow closely.  The rest will struggle to remain within touching distance, especially as they doggedly persist with traditional ship programmes well into the future.  As a result, the world will be divided into countries that can prevail at sea and those that, frankly, need not bother.

A related under-reported from last week by Robert Rozenkranz – also noted the development of defence technologies with the capability of upsetting the current global order: Hyper-sonic missiles that could transform warfare and the balance of global power.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

In 2005, the UN established an UN Ethics Office, which is supposed to protect UN whistleblowers from retaliation. However, as the Washington-based Government Accountability Project (GAP) has found, more than 95% of UN whistleblowers’ complaints to the Ethics Office never get investigated, and whistleblowers receive little support from this office.

Unfortunately, UN whistleblowers are in for an even harder time.  A revised whistleblower protection policy adopted in January 2017 says that whistleblowers face the threat of being “disciplined” if their allegations or complaints are found to be false or based on “rumours”. This means that if a staff member suspects wrongdoing in his or her department, and makes a complaint so that further investigations can be carried out, and then it is determined that there was no wrongdoing (which usually happens as the UN rarely admits to wrongdoing), that staff member could face disciplinary action.

In essence, the revised policy is a gagging order on UN whistleblowers and a significant step backwards in improving accountability and transparency within the UN.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

Or because we don’t know anything about them…

And then there are subjects which we can’t bear to consider. Issues which trigger such a profound mix of emotions that we would rather avert our eyes and pretend it will go away.

So it is with social care.

The public policy issue that affects every single household in Britain.

The issue that terrifies politicians.

The issue that is imperilling the survival of the National Health Service.

And yet the issue that has consistently been overlooked.

There are three reasons we refuse to address this question. And they are all to do with emotion.

• First we fear our own vulnerability. We recoil at the thought that we will need care ourselves – we insure against the unlikely event of a domestic burglary and yet resist any opportunity to provide for the probability that we will one day need help to get dressed. We know that there are more people with profound disabilities living among us, but we would rather pretend it’s not happening.
• Second we discount the sheer work of caring. Largely done by women, largely behind closed doors, largely in private – it’s our dirty little secret that we don’t want to consider.
• Third we treasure our own asset wealth to the point that we refuse any suggestion that we should pay for our own care in any shape or form, as the Prime Minister discovered to her cost.

For these reasons we hide from the reality that one in three of us will survive cancer and will need care. That many of our children will grow to adulthood with multiple and complex needs. That mental illness will affect us all, and that we will live longer and largely healthier lives. But rather than make the adjustments we need to make, both public and private, we prefer to hide behind the sofa like children watching a particularly scary episode of Doctor Who, accepting the lying adult assurance that this will never happened to us.

We cannot continue to avoid facing these consequences of our economic, medical and social progress. We need to acknowledge our fragility, honour the work of care, and recognise that our current prosperity is part of the solution to the looming crisis of social care. But first we need to make the emotional adjustment to see what is in full view if only we choose to see.

What has been under-reported, however, is the quiet transition of leadership on the peace process. The United States and the United Kingdom spearheaded efforts from the start of the war until very late in the Obama presidency. Today, Russia, Iran and Turkey are now in pole position, leading the Astana Process. Who can reasonably argue that Russian and Iranian aspirations for a post-war Syria will cohere with those of the West, and especially the Syrian people?

President Trump inherited this situation from President Obama, who did not exert enough energy to end the conflict, wary as he was of getting the United States bogged down in another Iraq-like war or even another Libya, after the NATO bombing campaign. He held fast to this commitment, even after Asad crossed the red line in Autumn 2013. Yet, one lesson that should have been learned years ago – in Afghanistan, Somalia and elsewhere – is that we ignore (or discount) unpleasant parts of the world at our peril. As the war in Syria dragged on, nasty side-effects of the conflict festered, and spread further afield. In addition to the migration crisis, hundreds of civilians have been killed and injured in several dozen ISIL-inspired and ISIL-directed attacks in Europe and North America. Populist politicians in Europe and the United States deftly exploited these issues to their benefit.

President Trump has in fact continued the Obama policy of taking a back seat, despite his one-off event of launching 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian air base near Homs in April 2017. This was not followed by any meaningful diplomatic push to get all parties to the table and promote a fair settlement. Instead, he too stepped back, while Russia, Iran and Turkey have deftly manipulated the situation to their advantage.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

A few months later, the conventional wisdom that ‘it’s the economy, stupid’, was challenged in the General Election campaign. It was the dog that didn’t bark, ignored by campaigners and media alike – perhaps because they made the assumption that Corbyn’s Labour would be trounced. Again, BritainThinks’ research found that the economy rarely featured in voters’ spontaneous comments.

In the past, politicians have worked very hard to establish their economic credentials. They had to, because, in the past, economic credibility mattered much, much more than anything else in a party or leader: it was a rare election where the winning party was less trusted to run the economy.

Now, the question of politicians’ economic competency remains under-reported with media attention diverted elsewhere. The economy continues to be low on voters’ priorities. Yet many commentators presume that this will be the issue that disqualifies Corbyn from No10 Downing Street. However, if economic debate continues to be absent from the political centre stage, and the media scrutiny that accompanies it, all bets are off.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

The size of the whole of Western Europe, DRC is home to huge mineral wealth which, amongst other things, is vital for mobile phone technology, and to a huge swathe of rainforest – one of the world’s most important “lungs”. The scale of untapped human potential is vast and, if stable and well governed, the country could grow enough food and generate enough clean energy to serve the whole continent.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals cannot be met if poverty in Congo isn’t addressed. The future of the whole of Africa is tied up in the future of DRC and it is a future we should all be concerned about.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

The physician agreed (and wrote the prescription). So why did he begin with mild reluctance? Not an innate desire to avoid pharmacological interventions (else he would not have written the prescription.)

The conflict arose from a clash of algorithms. I had taken a statistical model to the surgery with me — a very informal one, but a model nonetheless; “Given the input of my family history, I believe my innate long-term probability of heart disease to be high, and wish to minimise that risk.”

Physicians tend not to think in terms of statistical model but the machines which sit on their desktops do. Dr P typed in various numbers (inputs) to describe me, which included family history, and various blood tests, and metabolic measurements, and lifestyle indicators… and the classification algorithm in his surgery’s software returned: “Medium risk.” The computer, in other words, said no.

On this occasion, and with this algorithm, the human discussants over-ruled its decision but with the rise of machine intelligence — a fancy-sounding name for “classification or prediction algorithms built on huge amounts of data” (to which Peter Franklin gives a very good introduction here) — the potential for conflict between the human users of the systems and the system itself, increases. And it’s not clear whose rights will take precedence.

Should you qualify for parole? An algorithm might determine that.

Should you be allowed to board an aircraft? An algorithm will determine that.

How should you drive from A to B?

Which irritating adverts will decorate your internet browsing experience?

Which film does Netflix suggest you watch next?

What insurance deal will the Halifax offer you on home contents cover?

Is it worthwhile spending money on a drug to prolong your life? An algorithm, increasingly, determines all of these.

Now in a sense there’s nothing new here. Statisticians have built classification models for aeons (slight exaggeration) but there’s a difference — morally, definitely and, surely, legally — between me (as a statistician) showing you (as user/customer/patient) the model I’ve built and you deciding whether or not you agree with its form and are happy with its predictive abilities — and a proprietary black box system, whose precise structure is not made available to you, deciding (for example) whether or not you should be sent home from court or locked up in a prison. You — as “user” — won’t have a say in how the model has treated your data. You won’t know how it combines the inputs; which inputs it rates most highly; the operating characteristics of its rule (how often it makes the wrong decision.)

What — morally, legally, culturally — should be done about this? It’s an open question. There’s a good discussion of the issue by Olhede and Wolfe¹ in Significance, the Royal Statistical Society/American Statistical Association co-publication[1.  Olhede, S. and Wolfe, P. (2017), When algorithms go wrong, who is liable?. Significance, 14: 8–9. doi: 10.1111/j.1740-9713.2017.01085.x].

Go figure, as the American statisticians might say. But figure it out quickly, before a machine-derived algorithm decides that it’s a waste of time to do so.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

Domestic violence is found in all social classes, but it is especially prevalent in lower income groups. Women from these groups are likely to have fewer housing options should they leave an abusive partner. It seems they have a more easily ignored voice in the media as well. In recent weeks the UK has been caught up in a media storm over what constitutes sexual harassment, some of it amounting to a disputed but unwanted pass: an allegation of this type can now endanger a ministerial career. Yet the state’s growing failure to protect women who live in terror of serious injury and even murder by partners or ex-partners seemingly doesn’t spark political outrage in the same way. We urgently need to re-think our priorities.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

The most significant story of the year (and one of the biggest of the decade) is the emphatic defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, a massive setback for Islamist militants and their murderous ideology. The Islamic State and its followers remain a major threat in North and East Africa, parts of the Middle East, and in Europe, but their caliphate stretching from Mosul to Raqqa has been almost completely decimated…

• According to the US State Department, just 2% of territory once held by ISIS remains in their control.
• ISIS lost 50% of its territory in 2017 alone, with five million people liberated in the last 12 months.
• A total of 7.7 million people have been freed from the brutal grip of Daesh since Operation Inherent Resolve began.

By any measure this is a huge achievement. This may go down in history as the year when the free world finally turned the tide against the Islamist menace. And none of this would have been possible without American leadership with the support of key allies like Great Britain. The world is a safer place when the United States is prepared to lead, and Britain is prepared to fight alongside it.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

The leading cause of death for under 50s.

Over two million problem users.

Responsible for more deaths a year than guns or cars.

2017 was the year that America’s opioid epidemic made the headlines. With story after devastating story of families and communities ravaged by lives lost to addiction. It was also the year that big pharma came under the spotlight for their role in fuelling this “public health emergency”, having flooded states with millions upon millions of pills. (More than forty states are suing the pharmaceutical companies, reminiscent of the mass litigation against tobacco (some background)).

Amid this notable coverage, the murky relationship between big pharma and the health professionals who prescribe their drugs has been under-reported. Mainstream media has barely touched on the broken ethics of doctors taking payments from pharma companies. Yet research shows that even a $20 lunch can influence prescribing habits, and the higher the payments doctors receive, the higher the rate at which they prescribe the promoted drugs. Research published this summer revealed drug companies made 375,000 opioid-related payments to doctors in just 29 months. One in five family doctors – health professionals implicitly trusted to do the best thing for patients – have received payments relating to these highly addictive narcotics.

The role of big pharma is half the story, the willingness of doctors to cosy up to them – facilitated by millions of dollars in payments and gifts – is the other half. But that isn’t making front-page news.

FURTHER REPORTING FROM UNHERD ON THE OPIOID CRISIS

1. Ian Birrell describes what he saw on a trip to Dayton, Ohio, in ‘The even more deadly hurricane surging across America’
2. Charlotte Pickles examines the role of doctors in enabling the spread of opioid addiction in ‘The cosy relationship between big pharma and doctors is killing people’
3. Peter Franklin writes about how legally prescribed opioids have developed the criminal market for such narcotics in ‘How to create a drug epidemic’

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

Some of you might be scratching your head at the title of this entry to UnHerd’s under-reported series. Wasn’t our argument that blanket coverage of these two events had driven other stories, events and trends to the margin of news bulletins and newspapers? I can’t deny it. It was and is. But, as the contribution from Gisela Stuart (below) sets out, quantity doesn’t always mean quality. The huge media coverage of both Britain’s vote to leave the EU and of America’s most controversial president of modern times has been partial in key respects.

Let’s start with Gisela Stuart’s argument – which is focused on Brexit:

“If you are nurturing ambitions to win a gold medal in the 100m sprint, then don’t waste your money on a book which claims to tell you how to win a gold medal. Wrong question! Go for one which tells you how to run faster than anyone else – because, if you do, you will win that gold medal.

Asking the wrong question, or putting answers into the wrong context has been a feature of most of post-Brexit referendum reporting. It’s all been about what will happen if we don’t do this or that. Looming gloom and disaster is prefixed as simply not yet having come to pass. Good news is framed as being an act of Brexit defiance.

This is our chance of national renewal and rewriting rules in peace time conditions. Some things we have not addressed because we could overcome structural difficulties with short-term fixes e.g. our skills shortage and lack of productivity. Others, we had subcontracted much of the legislation and the debate to EU level e.g. worker’s rights, agriculture & fisheries, animal welfare, regional policy.

Our newspapers should be overflowing with reports on how this massive return of power should not just happen at Westminster, but be devolved to our cities and regions. That it is not, is a reflection of an amazingly illiberal liberal elite, which dismisses everything that does not fit into its preconceived mindset as being simply “delusional”.”

I can’t speak for Gisela but at least for me – and her text doesn’t contradict my analysis – the bias in Brexit coverage is not necessarily ideological (although it’s contributory). The biases are of the kind emphasised within the audio documentary on media short-termism that I presented in UnHerd’s first week. I argued then that a news industry that is hooked on Twitter, on serving rolling 24/7 news channels and beating daily newspaper rivals to scoops should not be allowed to allowed to set a nation’s agenda. Yes, accountability through the fourth estate is central in a functioning democracy but it shouldn’t become too powerful and so end up discouraging long-term planning by politicians, business people and even football managers. Interestingly, Justin Webb of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme appeared to sympathise when I interviewed the interviewer for the audiodoc. He half-joked that once Cabinet ministers and other politicians had appeared in the hot seat opposite him or his early morning co-interrogators, they should switch off TV/ radio/ social media feeds for the rest of the day and concentrate single-mindedly on the hard grind of making the government machine function.

In the coverage of Brexit across written and broadcast media, three of the biases that are effectively hardwired into nearly every branch of today’s current affairs industry are particularly evident (and exist almost regardless of any political disposition):

• There’s the short-termism, exacerbated by the introduction of numerous intra-day deadlines in bids to stay ahead in the hyper-competitive internet culture;
• There’s negativity because – as encapsulated in the ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ maxim – shock and anxiety (often sourced from quotable and not especially authoritative contacts) will always shift more copies or attract more eyeballs than nuance or balance;
• And constant speculation because ‘scoop’ remains an average journalist’s favourite word – partly because more careers take off or become remembered for exclusives than because of thorough briefing-style reporting.

If you don’t believe my ‘tomorrow’s fish’n’chip paper’ assessment, I recommend you go back – randomly – to a podcast, newspaper front page or, eg, Channel 4 package from almost any time in the last few months and a high proportion of the revisited output is now largely or completely irrelevant – overtaken by real events within the UK-EU divorce process. I’m reminded of Lionel Shriver’s words within her confession of her very serious news addiction: “All the time and energy we squander on transitory, trivial shifts in governmental power, strategy, and policy might be devoted to learning about other places and other spheres.” Allan Mallinson suggested a lot more reading of history.

Fortunately the public hasn’t entirely succumbed to the media’s time frame for making pre-judgements. In one of the more interesting survey results from the last year…

• Ipsos-MORI found that nearly twice as many Brits thought Brexit would be bad for the economy over the next five years as expected it to be good.
• Over a longer time frame, however, of a decade or two there was a small lead for believing Britain would end up being better off.

While many in the media might give the impression that quarterly economic data or a run of clever parliamentary performances matter enormously, a large proportion of too-busy-just-managing-to-worry-about-every-twist-and-turn audiences are focused on the horizon. This must partly explain the relative stability seen in the regular revisiting of the Leave or Remain question by opinion poll companies.

‘Fake news is an exaggerated problem’ is the argument made in this short UnHerd video. The bigger problem is the excessive short-termism, negativity, hunger for controversy and over-focus on politics (rather than technology, culture, religion and other upstream powers) that arises when democracies, markets and societies become excessively fascinated by news and end up serving its neophilia.

If coverage of Brexit has been lop-sided, failing to serve what Gisela believes is “our chance of national renewal and rewriting rules in peace time conditions” (a chance which helps to explain why so many non-voters actually went to the polls in June 2016), there is also a case to made that the media’s approach to Trump has also been fundamentally unsatisfactory. Again (although in his piece for UnHerd today, Senator Tom Cotton enjoys a dig at the difficult-to-contest biases of his country’s rich, coastal media elites), let’s put aside questions of political bias for today and examine biases in underlying methods of the trade – biases worsened by the way new tech has joined previously isolated and therefore more independent-minded reporters together, encouraging herd-like thinking (as persuasively argued by Jonathan Dimbleby). An intervention by Niall Ferguson in September was especially insightful. In remarks to Mark Mardell on The World This Weekend, the historian noted disproportionate attention to what America’s current president says rather than what his administration does. While his Tweets are often repellent and invariably hard to completely ignore, they often don’t lead to any action. A focus on what Mr Trump says with his 280 character platform comes at the expense of what he is doing (or not doing) through his administration’s control of Washington machine. And it’s not irrelevant that hiring pundits to talk about Tweets is much cheaper than employing notebook-and-pen, hard-yards beat/ overseas/ specialist portfolio reporters.

The recording of Professor Ferguson is reproduced below.

Last year I gave up Newsnight. The PM programme was jettisoned as a new year resolution twelve months ago. In the second half of this year I’ve largely given up Marr. I no longer rush to read papers but wait instead for Tweeters I respect to recommend OpEds, features, investigations. It’s an application of the Sopranos approach to time management. I’ve never bought DVD box-sets until consensual reviews are in. It means I’m often late to fashions but I’m increasing the amount of time I can give to books, research, conversation and – I should acknowledge – podcasts. I hope this broader immersion allows me to see the faults of the news industry and makes me a more informed, balanced citizen. There are some very good things happening in journalism and I’m publishing a short guide to them later in the week. But it’s also a worrying time. Trump is attacking the media because he knows its unpopular and, almost uniquely, not much more trusted than him. Even Britain’s BBC could only muster trust from 45% of voters in its reporting of 2017’s general election.

One of the most extraordinary features of the post-Brexit and post-Trump world is how little the media has changed the way it operates (although some are definitely trying). The FT and WSJ are two of the worst offenders in this regard – and I’ll be writing more about both on Wednesday as this under-reported series continues.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

The new tax bill repeals Obamacare’s hated individual mandate.  The mandate requires every American to buy government-approved insurance or pay a fine to the Internal Revenue Service of up to nearly $2,100 per household.  Little wonder it’s been the least popular part of Obamacare.

The media has missed this story for several reasons:

• The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is the most sweeping tax reform in 31 years, so there’s a lot to cover.
• A less charitable, but doubtless accurate, explanation is that liberal reporters support Obamacare and they know the mandate was its beating heart.
• Finally, there’s also a cultural reason the media has missed this story.  Media professionals tend to be concentrated on the East Coast and are upper-middle-class, if not rich.  Most cannot imagine going without health insurance; few probably know anyone who can.  That’s because the mandate falls hardest on working families and poor people.  In Arkansas, for instance, 65,000 people paid the fine in 2016 and 53,000 of those earned less than $50,000 a year. Nationwide, it was 6.7 million people, with 5.3 million earning less than that. Those families deserve better than to be fined by their government for being unable to afford the insurance that the government made unaffordable in the first place. Their story deserves to be told.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

When I tell you that thousands of children in the UK with special educational or physical needs are denied their statutory education and their families subjected to a Kafkaesque existence of seeing their child reduced to a thing to be feared, what say you to that?

The hard facts of this very common experience are known, from Government down. So familiar are Local Authorities with this ugly dance, they spend millions every year on legal fights with parents whose only request is that their child’s special need be met in an educational environment best suited to them. Not much to ask is it?

In fact the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman said in October that these families face a “disproportionate burden” to get the education their child needs. He says while the Educatonal Health and Care plans introuduced in 2014 (and due to cover all SEN cases by April 2018) aren’t a total failure, 80% of complaints have been upheld. Near total failure maybe?

Consider this. Children with a special educational need or diasbility will die earlier, are twice as likely to be bullied at primary school, seven times more likely to be excluded, less likely to be employed, more likely to live in poverty, have much higher rates of mental illness, are more likely to end up in prison.

That list is not inevitable.

It’s in the warp and weave of the system that claims to be built for these families.

Too often it’s a closed room with only the walls to climb.

Whether it’s the murder rate, trends in teenage pregnancy, the number of foreigners in our jails we are far more negative than we need to be – and things are better than we think they are.

Trust is not in inexorable decline – in fact our 2017 Veracity Index found that trust in experts like scientists, professors, the police and even civil servants are all at a historic high.

Looking further afield, our view of what has been happening in much of the world is also too pessimistic;

• There has been a fall of 137,000 people in extreme poverty EVERY DAY for the last 25 years – but only two out of every ten people realise that poverty is reducing around the globe…
• …by contrast, 52% think it has increased.
• And although 85% of one-year-olds have been vaccinated against at least one disease, again, most people think the number is far lower.

So while there are plenty of problems, as we review 2017, let’s remind ourselves that actually the world is becoming a better place in many, many ways – and certainly better than most of us think it is. It’s even the case that other people are generally much happier than we tend to think they are.

Happy New Year!

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.

Much less reported this year, but hugely more significant, was what happened next inside DeepMind’s laboratories. Their new prototype, AlphaGo Zero, was not taught the game by humans, but given the basic rules, and left to learn by playing games against itself. It was then pitted against the original AlphaGo, and won by 100 games to zero.

This month, four hours after starting to play chess, it beat a grand-master using tactics never seen before in the game’s history. The implications are both exciting and frightening…

…Exciting because of the potential problem-solving capacity of technology that is able to learn for itself and, also, to test theories that humans have never considered…

…But frightening because the more ingrained into our world that AI technology becomes, the more power we are investing in computers that are capable of rapid independent learning and decision-making that is beyond our comprehension – and to some degree our control.

And just imagine advanced AI systems being programmed by a hostile power to test for and exploit weaknesses in our own technical infrastructure, or indeed to hack into inferior AI systems attached to that infrastructure, and re-program them to wreak havoc.

It does not bear thinking about, which may be why it’s been so little reported. Perhaps we need a computer to think it through for us.

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Introduction to this Under-reported series.

Summary guide to all under-reported articles in this series.