Chapter 8 studies what we can do so that people do not fall into traps of trying to believe in conspiracy theories that resist falsification. Belief in conspiracy theories often starts by looking at important societal authorities and a certain amount of suspicion about these authorities. The chapter examines when conspiracy thinking feels so good that people exaggerate their levels of suspicion of what is actually going on in society. The chapter also explains how the online quality of our modern way of living tends to amplify levels of suspicion and the ease with which conspiracy theories are spread. The chapter distinguishes between three different motivations that often are equated with each other, yet that drive conspiracy thinking in different ways. One important motivation is epistemic and concerns people trying to make sense of what is going on in their world. Another important motivation is existential and concerns people trying to deal with threats in their life. Yet another motivation concerns group identification. This includes people wanting to belong to unique groups that give them a sense of belonging. The three motivations point out different ways of trying to intervene when people start falling for exaggerated suspicion and conspiracy thoughts.

The technological evolution currently being experienced globally, comes with a tremendous number of different advanatages. However, there are also new threats and vulnerabilities that are being exposed that can adversely affect national security. This is evident in the social media environment. Therefore, the current research needs to focus on understanding the balance between pros and cons in a pragmatic way to understand the actual and potential impacts (physical and psychological) on society.

Western hoolock gibbons (Hoolock hoolock) and eastern hoolock gibbons (Hoolock leuconedys) represent the ape group in India. The seven northeastern states (Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura, Nagaland and Manipur) support the entire gibbon population in India, where their distribution is limited to the southern bank of the Dibang–Brahmaputra River system. Rapid loss of habitat, habitat fragmentation and hunting are the major threats to hoolock gibbons in India. The launch of the Indo-US Primate Project provided motivation to conserve the hoolock gibbon in the region. Research, education and awareness, training, capacity building and socioeconomic development programmes, carried out during and after the Indo-US Primate Project, created a healthy environment for the conservation of gibbons in India. Ex-situ conservation practices like rescue and rehabilitation, translocation, conservation breeding programmes and community-based conservation have been the result of collaborations between the government and non-governmental organisations over the past two decades, thus raising new hope for the survival of these species. The recent declaration of protected areas will ensure the long-term survival of the gibbons and its habitats. We feel that all stakeholders should emphasise the development of workable plans for the conservation of gibbons after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The importance of plant diversity to humankind is immense. Plants are primary producers defining and supporting ecosystems worldwide and providing a wide range of ecosystem goods and services. Vascular plants are species characterised by a well-developed system of specialised cells that transport water, minerals and photosynthetic products and provide structural support enabling plants to grow on land. Flowering plants, also known botanically as angiosperms, are by far the largest group of vascular plants. They are characterised by their distinctive reproductive structures, the flowers. Designed to be pollinated by wind, insects or other animals, all flowers have ovules, which become seeds after fertilisation, enclosed within an ovary. In contrast, the gymnosperms (see Box 2.1), which include conifers and cycads, have reproductive structures with naked seeds that are not enclosed. The other groups of vascular plants are ferns and fern allies which do not produce seeds.

Threats are not protected speech, but defining what constitutes a threat has been problematic, particularly when it comes to online speech. We start with a look at threats against the US president, beginning with a 1798 prosecution for threatening John Adams, and leading up to the passage in 1917 of the first federal legislation against threatening the president. We will look at WW I-era prosecutions for threatening the president, leading up to a 1969 Supreme Court decision, Watts v. US, distinguishing true threats from protected political speech. And we conclude with two cases of online threats: the prosecution of Anthony Elonis for posting threats on Facebook, and a case where two tourists were denied entry to the US because of joking tweets that were treated as threats by US Border Agents. We conclude that threats, like obscenity, remain unprotected speech, but defining what is and what is not a threat in any particular case remains a problematic, subjective decision.

Why are religious minorities well represented and politically influential in some democracies but not others? Focusing on evangelical Christians in Latin America, I argue that religious minorities seek and gain electoral representation when (a) they face significant threats to their material interests and worldview and (b) their community is not internally divided by cross-cutting cleavages. Differences in Latin American evangelicals’ political ambitions emerged as a result of two critical junctures: episodes of secular reform in the early twentieth century and the rise of sexuality politics at the turn of the twenty-first century. In Brazil, significant threats at both junctures prompted extensive electoral mobilization; in Chile, minimal threats meant that mobilization lagged. In Peru, where major cleavages divide both evangelicals and broader society, threats prompt less electoral mobilization than otherwise expected. The multi-method argument leverages interviews, content analysis, survey experiments, ecological analysis, and secondary case studies of Colombia, Costa Rica, and Guatemala.

In an opinion that made national news, the high court in Maryland reversed the judgment of an intermediate court and upheld the defendant’s conviction for rape. The court explicitly rejected the defendant and intermediate court’s reasoning that consent should be evaluated using a reasonable victim standard. Although the opinion in Rusk is widely cited as a turning point in recognizing sexual violence in nonstranger rape cases, there remained many elements of the opinion that have been the object of feminist criticism.

Emerging neurotechnology offers increasingly individualised brain information, enabling researchers to identify mental states and content. When accurate and valid, these brain-reading technologies also provide data that could be useful in criminal legal procedures, such as memory detection with EEG and the prediction of recidivism with fMRI. Yet, unlike in medicine, individuals involved in criminal cases will often be reluctant to undergo brain-reading procedures. This raises the question of whether coercive brain-reading could be permissible in criminal law. Coercive Brain-Reading in Criminal Justice examines this question in view of European human rights: the prohibition of ill treatment, the right to privacy, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and the privilege against self-incrimination. The book argues that, at present, the established framework of human rights does not exclude coercive brain-reading. It does, however, delimit the permissible use of forensic brain-reading without valid consent. This cautionary, cutting-edge book lays a crucial foundation for understanding the future of criminal legal proceedings in a world of ever-advancing neurotechnology.

Scholars mainly focus on individual movements or movement organizations, but the major impact of contentious politics takes place as the result of cycles of contention in which movements converge, reinforce one another, and come into conflict with counter-movements. In the process of cycles, some movements radicalize and others institutionalize, leading either to violence, pacification, or the combination of the two.

Courtrooms constituted public forums for structuring the speech economy, the social identity of individuals, and the social order as a whole, according to the criteria of gentility. The amorphousness and subjectivity of “noise,” “railing,” and “abuse” made them the ideal vehicles into which to import prevailing conceptions of impolite speech and persons. Prosecutions for these offenses helped clarify distinctions between polite and vulgar, civilized and unrefined, the empire and the wilderness. Threats and menaces constituted a type of insensible speech that was located just at the boundary between language and violence. The criminal law – the most public and formal institution for policing profane speech – became directed primarily against the non-elite; the elite, meanwhile, were generally subject only to private and extralegal sanctions for swearing. For them, their prosecutions became vehicles for demonstrating their facility with legal procedure, possession of genteel qualities such as sensibility, and relative lack of legal accountability for otherwise transgressive speech.

Of the monkeys in Africa, the colobines comprise 19% of the 16 genera and 30% of the 79 species. They occur all across tropical African from sea level to 3,400 m above sea level, and where temperatures range from -7°C to 41°C and mean annual rainfall ranges from 50 cm to 1,100 cm. Ninety-six percent of the 24 species of Africa’s colobines are threatened with extinction, whereas 68% of the subspecies are threatened with extinction. Six of the species are ‘Critically Endangered’, including one that is probably already extinct. The two primary proximate threats to colobines in Africa are forest loss and hunting by humans, while the ultimate threat is humans and their widespread over-exploitation of natural resources. This chapter reviews the biological traits that make Africa’s colobines especially susceptible to extinction through forest loss and hunting, the threats they face, and the impacts of those threats. Predictions are presented concerning which species of African colobine will be among the first extinctions and where Africa’s colobines are expected to persist for at least the coming 30 years. Finally, this chapter presents an overview of the main conservation actions that Africa’s colobines require and gives priorities for research that will support their conservation.