Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mark Chadwick, Lecturer in Law, Nottingham Trent University

“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela – a large tanker, very large, the largest one ever seized actually,” said Donald Trump on December 10. In a dramatic operation, US forces had just taken over an oil tanker called Skipper, which was sanctioned by the US in 2022 while sailing under a different name. “I assume we’re going to keep the oil,” the US president added later.

Venezuela has been under US-imposed sanctions since 2019, when Trump was first in the White House. And recent months have seen US forces target several vessels in the Caribbean, predominantly off the coasts of Venezuela and Colombia, each alleged to be trafficking drugs from the region. These strikes have killed more than 80 people so far.

The seizure of the Skipper marks the latest episode in the increasingly hostile relationship between Trump and Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro. But what does international law have to say about the seizure?

Offering an official legal justification, US attorney-general Pam Bondi stated that US forces acted in execution of “a seizure warrant for a crude oil tanker used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran”. She added that the tanker had been sanctioned for many years “due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organisations”.

The exact position of the seizure is not clear. Some accounts say it was seized “on the coast of Venezuela”, while others suggest the operation took place “in international waters”.

Assuming the seizure took place either in Venezuelan coastal waters or on the high seas, the international legal regime is governed by the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos). The US is not a party to the convention, though it accepts the content as binding.

As a starting point, Unclos confers exclusive jurisdiction to the “flag state”. The Skipper appears to have been flying the flag of Guyana, which borders Venezuela, though Guyanese authorities were quick to attest that the ship was not registered there.

No other state is permitted to board or to enforce jurisdiction unless the seizure takes place in the seizing state’s coastal waters or the situation falls within a specific exception set out within Article 110 of the convention.

Such exceptions apply where there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that the ship is engaged in piracy, the slave trade or, in certain circumstances, unauthorised broadcasting. Exceptions also apply when the ship is without nationality or when the ship is, in reality, of the same nationality as the seizing warship.

Thus, it appears that Bondi’s claim that the Skipper was seized in accordance with domestically imposed sanctions has no standing in international law.

The International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea is also clear that states cannot unilaterally and arbitrarily board and enforce domestic law against foreign-flagged ships outside their own coastal waters unless Unclos provides an exception for doing so. Claims of suppressing criminality or terrorism would not, of themselves, suffice – certainly in relation to seizures on the high seas.

However, the fact that the ship’s registration in Guyana has come under question does open up a possible legal avenue for the seizure. This is because Unclos permits boarding in circumstances where a ship “is without nationality”.

In such circumstances, international law treats ships as “stateless vessels” and as outside the protection of any country. This is a claim that the US advanced in 1982 when seizing a stateless vessel off the eastern US coast controlled by suspected drug traffickers.

Researchers are divided, though, on whether there is a general right to retain the proceeds of such seizures under international law. And notwithstanding the doubts over the Skipper’s registration, this is not the legal approach that the US has sought to rely on.

A further, and perhaps more consequential, question remains: whether the seizure of the Skipper could be characterised as an act of war on the part of the US. International law is concerned with the objective existence of armed conflict rather than declarations of war and, in theory, an instance of “invasion or attack by the armed forces of a state on the territory of another state” would qualify. This could, potentially, include the seizure of another state’s vessel.

Relatively small-scale engagements, however, are not thought to qualify as “armed conflict”. For instance, France’s sinking of a UK-flagged ship called Rainbow Warrior in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1985 is not generally considered to have created a situation of “armed conflict”. Similarly, the Israeli raid on the Comoros-flagged Mavi Marmara in 2010 is not considered to have created a situation of armed conflict between those states.

Other approaches to establishing the existence of armed conflict look at levels of intensity or the organisation of any fighting between militaries. Though, at least for now, the threshold is unlikely to be met with regards to Venezuela and the US. The apparently stateless nature of the Skipper also creates a technical barrier to establishing a situation of “invasion” and, in turn, “armed conflict”.

One last question remains: whether Venezuelan officials were right to characterise the US military as “pirates, high seas criminals, [and] buccaneers”. It’s a tempting comparison to make, certainly, with the tendency to brand waterborne foes as “pirates”, an age-old rhetorical device that dates at least as far back as Roman orator Cicero, writing in the first century BC.

However, it is erroneous to apply the label to state or state-sponsored acts, with Article 101 of Unclos being clear that piracy can only be committed by private actors operating from private vessels. Whatever other legal issues the seizure might raise, being characterised as piracy is not one of them.

Mark Chadwick has previously received funding from the Arts & Humanities Research Council

– ref. What does international law tell us about the US seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela? – https://theconversation.com/what-does-international-law-tell-us-about-the-us-seizure-of-an-oil-tanker-off-the-coast-of-venezuela-271859

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Roman Birke, Assistant Professor in Modern European History, Dublin City University

The new US national security strategy marks a significant historical turn. It shifts the focus from global overpopulation to anxieties around population decline in the western world. Coupled with renewed criticism of Europe’s military weaknesses, the strategy updates longstanding anti-European narratives.

US-European relations have so profoundly influenced the course of the 20th and 21st centuries that New York University historian Mary Nolan refers to this era as the “transatlantic century”. The relationship revolved around military interventions and consumer cultures.

American involvement was decisive in both world wars and in the European wars following the breakup of Yugoslavia. Europe also emerged as a crucial area for the expansion of American consumerism and market norms.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the interplay between military interventions and market cultures shaped not only cooperation but also mutual resentment. In Europe, as early as 1902, people were beginning to express anti-American sentiments which were often centred on fears of cultural domination.

Later, British bands such as the Clash and the German band Rammstein amplified these perceptions in popular culture, with songs such as I’m So Bored with the U.S.A. (the Clash) and Amerika (Rammstein).

In turn, anti-European ideas in the US centred on perceived European military weakness – a critique with some historical evidence to support it. The lend-lease agreements supplied the UK and the Soviet Union with desperately needed military aid. Without it, neither country would have been able to sustain their war efforts against the Nazi advance in Europe.

After the cold war, Americans expected Europeans to assume a greater share of global security responsibilities. But, in two major cases, Europe fell short of these expectations.

During the internationally coordinated intervention against Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991, the US contributed more than half a million troops. The UK, France, and Italy together only contributed 93,000.

Germany supported the military campaign only financially. This imbalance prompted US commentator Charles Krauthammer to label the US “the lonely superpower”.

At the end of the 1990s, the Nato-led bombing campaign against Serbia was likewise carried largely by the US. US aircraft conducted 70% of strike missions and 90% of defence missions. Without American intelligence support, meanwhile, the campaign would have faltered.

As one leading German diplomat admitted: “Kosovo was two or three sizes too big for us.”

The Iraq war in 2003 reinforced US perceptions of European weakness. Countries like Germany and France did not support the war and, in the language of the hawkish American right, these countries were cast as emasculated and mocked as “Euroweenies” and “EU-nuchs”.

US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a leading advocate of the war, was celebrated as a hyper-masculine “stud”.

It is a striking twist that today’s “America first” conservatives embrace the critique of the Iraq intervention that had been aired in Europe. It is, they say, not their war. But Europe’s continued dependence on the US, particularly in its support to Ukraine, appears to confirm perceptions of military weakness.

Population enters the debate

Anti-European sentiments related to military interventions have a long history. Now, concerns about Europe’s native population decline represent a new element of the US national security strategy.

In modern history, population trends have consistently generated anxiety. They ranged from Malthusian fears of food shortages in the late 18th century to 20th-century worries about global overpopulation.

As I show in my own research, Europe and American thinkers were key in shaping this debate. Advocates of population control on both sides of the Atlantic coordinated campaigns to reduce global fertility rates, particularly in developing countries.

Overpopulation arguments still simmer. But it has recently been overshadowed by a major shift towards concerns about population decline.

Elon Musk has become the American embodiment of this trend. Not only did he father many children but turned demographic decline into a political cause. He has argued that a “collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far”.

In Europe, this position is embraced by populist anti-immigration parties. Their resentments resonate because they tap into real demographic trends.

Between 1990 and 2020, central and eastern Europe’s population fell by 8%. The sharpest declines were experienced by some of the poorest countries, among them, Bulgaria – where population fell by 24% – and Romania – where it fell by 17%.

Populist rightwing parties in the US and in Europe advocate boosting native birth rates. They present this as an alternative to a perceived western European model that relies on immigration to sustain welfare states.

In their 2020 study for the Journal of Democracy, sociologist Ivan Krastev and legal expert Stephen Holmes note that the “preoccupation with demographic collapse … manifests as a fear that the arrival of unassimilable foreigners will dilute national identities and weaken national cohesion”.

The speeches of leading rightwing populists, including Hungary’s prime minister, Victor Orban, and Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, vividly illustrate this worldview. Orban insists that, contrary to western Europe, “we Hungarians have a different way of thinking. Instead of just numbers, we want Hungarian children. Migration for us is surrender.”

Vučić similarly warns that without a demographic turnaround, Serbians “will stand small chances to speak about our own survival in the territory of the rest of Serbia”. Comparable sentiments are echoed by western European anti-immigration parties, including Germany’s AfD or France’s Rassemblement National and became a major feature of Trump’s presidency.

Overall, the new US national security strategy marks the culmination of a wider realignment in which the conservative right on both sides of the Atlantic has rallied around demographic decline as a central political concern.

This perceived decline now constitutes a central pillar of US national security thinking. For Europe, meanwhile, Washington’s attempts to bolster European rightwing parties may themselves become a source of instability and polarisation in the years to come.

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

– ref. America’s anti-European attitudes are centred on perceptions of military weakness and the decline of native populations – https://theconversation.com/americas-anti-european-attitudes-are-centred-on-perceptions-of-military-weakness-and-the-decline-of-native-populations-271800

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andy Levy, Reader in Psychology, Edge Hill University

Vaping among teenagers is a growing global health problem.

In the UK, schools are reporting a surge in young people struggling with dependence, including cases of students needing medical attention after vaping in class. In the Netherlands, researchers have found that many teenagers wake up at night specifically to vape, a sign of growing nicotine addiction in adolescents.

And in New Zealand, a widely shared image of a teenager’s blackened, shrivelled lung after three years of vaping renewed fears about the speed at which harm can develop.

These stories show how far vaping has drifted from its original purpose. Once introduced as a safer alternative to cigarettes, it is now embedded in youth culture, driven as much by social influence as by nicotine itself.

E-cigarettes have now become a lifestyle accessory: sleek, flavoured and often perceived as harmless. But behind the clouds of “strawberry ice” and “blueberry burst” vapour lies a powerful lesson in how misinformation shapes behaviour, based less on chemistry than on psychology.

Understanding why vaping feels safe, appealing and difficult to quit requires looking not only at the device but at how our minds process risk, reward and social cues.

Psychology shows that people rarely process health information in nuanced ways. Faced with complex or uncertain evidence, including emerging research on vaping, our brains reduce it to simple categories, such as safe or unsafe.

This mental shortcut helps us make quick decisions without examining every detail. When people hear that vaping is less harmful than cigarettes, many take it to mean harmless, because judging relative risk feels complicated. Brightly coloured devices, sweet flavours and wellness-focused marketing reinforce the perception that vaping is good or safe, even without long-term evidence.

This simplification helps explain why misinformation spreads easily. Once a behaviour is mentally categorised as safe or desirable, people are less likely to question it or seek contradicting evidence. Our natural tendency to think in binaries leaves complex health messages open to distortion, strengthening the influence of marketing and social cues.

Social influence then amplifies the effect. When friends, peers and influencers post vaping content online, the behaviour becomes not just visible but celebrated, making it feel socially normal and desirable. Social proof encourages experimentation and reinforces the idea that quitting would mean losing belonging, identity or enjoyment.

Social media platforms magnify these cues, circulating anecdotes, trends and endorsements. The result is 1 million people in England vaping despite never having smoked regularly, under the illusion of safety.

Vaping took off not only because people were misinformed, but because their brains had reasons to keep believing it was safe. Loss aversion, the tendency to feel losses more intensely than gains, explains part of this.

When vaping seems harmless, the perceived losses of quitting, such as stress relief, enjoyable flavours, social connection and identity, feel immediate and real, while the long-term risks seem distant or unlikely. People hold on to vaping not just because they underestimate the dangers, but because stopping feels like giving up something valuable.

Read more:
Two of the best stop smoking medications have been available in the UK since 2024 – so why is no one using them?

Together, these forces create a self-reinforcing cycle. Binary thinking simplifies risk, social proof builds desirability and loss aversion makes quitting feel costly. Misinformation does not just mislead. It reshapes how people think, turning a harm-reduction tool into a socially embedded, hard-to-quit habit.

The rise of vaping reveals a deeper issue in how health information spreads. In the digital age, public understanding changes faster than scientific consensus. Online trends and anecdotes often outrun the slow, careful process of research, and young people are particularly susceptible.

Once misinformation takes hold, it is difficult to reverse. One in ten UK secondary school pupils currently vape, even though the NHS warns that long-term effects remain uncertain.

If misinformation helped drive the vaping boom by exaggerating its benefits, reversing the trend requires changing what people believe they stand to gain. Improving media literacy is a start, helping people spot when relatable content is actually advertising, when trends are engineered or when claims are overstated.

Public health messages also need to meet people where they are, using short, engaging content that feels native to social media. When influencers and peers highlight the real costs of vaping, such as money, energy and lung capacity, and expose the marketing behind its appeal, perceptions can shift. This taps into loss aversion by making continued vaping feel like the bigger loss.

Combining media literacy with relatable, well-targeted content can change vaping perceptions, make psychological biases work in favour of health and help people resist misleading narratives.

Ultimately, addressing the vaping boom requires understanding the minds and social environments of those caught up in it, not just the science behind the device.

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

– ref. How misinformation may be fuelling teen vaping – https://theconversation.com/how-misinformation-may-be-fuelling-teen-vaping-269476

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

Oecusse, a rugged, remote district of Timor-Leste in south-east Asia, is usually a pretty sleepy place. It’s located on the western side of Timor island, part of Indonesia, and is isolated geographically from the rest of Timor-Leste, which has governed the eastern side of the island since 2002.

But in August, Oecusse was rocked by a large police raid on a suspected scam centre, later linked by a UN report to organised crime networks running scamming operations across south-east Asia. Dozens of foreign nationals were arrested.

All this came at a bad time for Timor-Leste, shortly before its admission into the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in October.

And then in early September, a Facebook post by one of Timor-Leste’s highest political officials made some explosive allegations about a  murky criminal underworld trying to get a foothold in the country.

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Michael Rose, an anthropologist and adjunct lecturer at the University of Adelaide who has lived and worked in Timor-Leste, about how Asia’s scamming gangs set their sights on Timor-Leste as their next frontier – and the movement to keep them out.

Listen to the interview with Michael Rose on The Conversation Weekly podcast, and read the article he wrote for The Conversation about the issue.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Katie Flood and Gemma Ware, with production assistance from Mend Mariwany. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Gemma Ware is the executive producer.

Newsclips in this episode from Australia News 7, CNN and ABC News Australia.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feedor find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.

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

– ref. Asia’s scamming gangs target Timor-Leste as their next frontier – but they may have misjudged the small island nation – https://theconversation.com/asias-scamming-gangs-target-timor-leste-as-their-next-frontier-but-they-may-have-misjudged-the-small-island-nation-271776

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lisa Slominski, PhD with the Department of Historical and Critical Studies, Kingston University

The 2025 Turner prize has been won by Nnena Kalu. It’s a historic win and a groundbreaking moment in the prestigious prize’s history.

Kalu is the first learning-disabled artist, the first artist with limited verbal communication, and the first artist whose practice is facilitated through a specialised studio (ActionSpace, established to support artists with learning disabilities) to win the prize. Her win is both extraordinary and overdue – a pivotal moment for inclusivity in British art and for the visibility of learning-disabled artists.

Kalu’s practice is defined by repetition, rhythm, and layering. She builds sculptural forms by tightly wrapping materials into pulsing, tactile structures, and her drawings accumulate depth through swirling, vortex-like motions.

After more than two decades of working, her recognition has accelerated. There have been acquisitions by Tate and the Arts Council Collection. She secured representation with gallerist Arcadia Missa.

She also presented to wide acclaim at Barcelona’s Manifesta 15 gallery in 2024 and Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery in 2024 to 2025. These accomplishments have all contributed towards her Turner prize win.

I first met Kalu in 2018 when I curated her work in a group exhibition in North London. I worked with her longtime ActionSpace facilitator, Charlotte Hollinshead who helped Kalu to develop her individual arts practice and deliver an extensive range of commissions, projects, events and exhibitions.

Learning of Kalu’s interest in responding to existing architecture, we set aside a structural pillar in the gallery. When they arrived on site, Kalu began wrapping it with tape, film and string. I watched as the form accumulated colour, tension and movement. I was completely hooked.

Over the years, I continued to curate her work – including her first American exhibition in 2020 – and wrote about her practice in my book Nonconformers: A New History of Self-Taught Artists. As I spent more time with her, one question began to preoccupy me: how should curators address Kalu’s position as a learning-disabled artist when she cannot narrate her practice or its relationship to her identity in conventional communication terms?

This question has since become the centre of my PhD research at Kingston University. I now work closely with Kalu and ActionSpace to explore new, more expansive forms of curatorial and interpretive practice – including approaches that acknowledge facilitation, and support structures without diminishing artistic agency.

Kalu’s nomination in April unexpectedly became a critical case study for my research. Watching how the prize, its partners, and the media represented her offered a rare and highly visible window into how institutions handle practices that do not fit standard models of authorship or communication.

Some of the most promising work came from Tate’s Body in Rhythm, Line in Motion film – a short artist video that accompanies each Turner nominee. What stood out was how clearly and transparently it acknowledged the supportive ecosystem around Kalu.

Named contributors spoke from their specific positions – facilitators, curators, and long-time supporters – describing what they observe in her process rather than speculating about intention. The video foregrounded the sounds of her making, the rhythm of her gestures, and the material build-up of the work as legitimate ways of understanding her practice.

If the Tate film offered examples of progress, excerpts of wider media responses revealed how much work remains. Some commentary simply misunderstood the context. A high-profile columnist dismissed the shortlist as “the soppiest ever” and described Kalu’s work as “academic” – an odd accusation for an artist who works entirely through processes developed instinctively at ActionSpace, which were not informed by an art historical discourse.

More troubling were moments when journalists framed Kalu’s disability as a reason to lower artistic expectations. One critic, speaking on BBC Front Row, remarked: “As an art critic, I found it very disappointing; as a human being, I feel I have to support it.”

This kind of response strips learning-disabled artists of agency. It assumes they cannot be both disabled and ambitious, disabled and professional, disabled and excellent. It conflates access with charity, facilitation with compromise, and disability with lack.

Kalu’s career, and now her Turner Prize success, demonstrate precisely the opposite.

Her win is an extraordinary milestone, but it is not an endpoint. The structures surrounding learning-disabled artists remain precarious. Supported studios like ActionSpace are essential cultural infrastructures, yet they operate with limited resources. Curators and institutions are still learning how to communicate about practices that do not fit familiar narratives of artistic intention or authorship.

The Turner Prize has cracked something open. It has made visible what many of us working in this field have long argued: that excellence emerges in many forms, that facilitation can be a creative engine rather than an obstacle, and that disabled artists are central, not peripheral, to contemporary art.

What comes next, how we talk about this win, how institutions respond, and which structures are resourced, will determine whether this moment becomes symbolic or genuinely transformative.

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

– ref. Nnena Kalu has won the 2025 Turner prize – working with her has inspired my work and academic research – https://theconversation.com/nnena-kalu-has-won-the-2025-turner-prize-working-with-her-has-inspired-my-work-and-academic-research-271802