Category: The Conversation – Global Perspectives

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

History’s path is never linear. But its turns can be very sharp.

It is rare to be able to identify the moment when we can say “this is the point at which everything changed”.

So have we reached the point where we can say the United States is in a constitutional crisis? Has American democracy failed? Has the US descended into authoritarianism?

If the answers to those questions weren’t clear already, they are now.

Yes. It is happening. Right now.

Not because of one incident, but a series of moments and choices, events within familiar historical structures, that are pushing the US over the edge.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk, and the choices made by the administration in its aftermath, is one such moment. It was immediately clear the Trump administration would use Kirk’s murder as a pretext for accelerating its authoritarian project, weaponising it to destroy opponents, both real and imagined.

In a video address from the Oval Office, Trump blamed the “radical left” and promised a crackdown on “organisations” that “contributed” to the crime. His vice president, JD Vance, hosted Kirk’s podcast, effectively making it a tool of state-sponsored media.

On that show, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller promised “we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks”.

In the MAGA-verse, terms such as “radical left”, “networks” and “organisations” are code for any form of opposition or dissent – including the Democratic Party and traditional media. It is worth noting here that “radical left” is now shifting to terms as broad as “left-leaning”, progressive or, even more subversive, liberal.

The Trump administration is promising to go after the fundraising architecture of its opposition, broadly defined. And it will. It is already using the agencies of the federal government – including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service – to threaten, punish and obliterate those who oppose it.

And the moments keep coming. On Wednesday, Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, appeared on another far-right podcast. Carr – a Project 2025 contributor – suggested that broadcasters running the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show were risking “the possibility of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC” due to Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death.

That night, ABC announced that Kimmel’s show would be suspended indefinitely.

Kimmel’s moment follows Stephen Colbert’s. It follows another moment earlier in the week, when Trump berated senior Australian Broadcasting Commission journalist John Lyons, aggressively telling him he was “hurting” Australia and that he would tell the Australian prime minster as much. The ABC has since been barred from Trump’s UK press conference, ostensibly for “logistical reasons”.

In the firehose of these moments, it can be difficult to see them in context. But they are all connected – part of a deliberate, carefully planned program to destroy anyone or anything that opposes or even questions Republican orthodoxy as defined by Trump.

The Kirk moment, the Kimmel moment, and all the rest, must be understood in that broader framework. This week, too, the Trump administration announced it was deploying the National Guard into Memphis, Tennessee. It will likely also send the National Guard into Chicago, as it has long been threatening. It has already despatched the National Guard into Los Angeles and Washington DC.

Trump and his cronies are openly musing about other “Democrat cities”. The point is to sow fear and suppress dissent. It is working.

This month, in the aftermath of a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, Trump promised to end mail-in voting. The Trump-aligned Supreme Court is poised to gut a key provision of the Voting Rights Act intended to prevent racial discrimination. The mid-term elections are still over a year away.

Incredibly, we are only eight months into the second Trump administration. But the moments will keep coming, and the speed at which they arrive will likely accelerate.

Taken together, they paint a very grim picture for the future of US democracy, constrained though it already is. The widespread, coordinated suppression of dissent – and the extended chilling effect that suppression has – are ripping apart the fabric of American political life.

It is here. It is happening. History is being made before our eyes.

This is a monumental change. For the United States. For the world.

Emma Shortis is Director of International and Security Affairs at The Australia Institute, an independent think tank.

– ref. Jimmy Kimmel’s cancellation is the latest sign we’re witnessing the end of US democracy – https://theconversation.com/jimmy-kimmels-cancellation-is-the-latest-sign-were-witnessing-the-end-of-us-democracy-265574

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Debjani Ganguly, Professor of Literature, Australian Catholic University

“She was my shelter and my storm.” With these words in the opening pages of her memoir, Arundhati Roy unfurls a narrative of extraordinary filial bonds that renders trite those therapeutic memoirs of family dysfunction scattered across the publishing world.

Even Philip Larkin’s memorable poem beginning with, “They f..k you up, your mum and dad,” does not come close, though Roy’s anger is recognisable in these lines with which Larkin’s poem ends: “Get out as early as you can / And don’t have any kids yourself.”

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Review: Mother Mary Comes to Me – Arundhati Roy (Penguin Random House)

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Roy walked away from her abusive maternal home in Kerala at the age of 17. While training as an architect in Delhi she did not see her mother for the next seven years. She also never had children. When her lover’s young daughters ask her if she is their new mother, she quickly disavows her role and requests they call her “Noonie,” a word from a folk song in Massey Sahib, the film in which Roy acted in her early twenties.

Roy’s memoir is a powerful rendition of her mother, Mary Roy, who terrifies her children and compels them to find their place in the world bereft of the push and pull of natal intimacy. Yet when Mary dies, Roy feels orphaned at the loss of her novelistic subject, that “unpredictable, irreplaceable spark of mad genius”.

Mary remains a formal “Mrs Roy” to her daughter except when she is terminally ill. Arundhati Roy calls her “Kochamma” then. Little Mother.

The work captures in its early pages the terror of living with a formidable parent who rages against motherhood, and who makes it very clear Arundhati was an unwanted second child, the one who barely escaped being aborted by a wire hanger.

But Mrs Roy, the divorcee with an alcoholic ex, and a single mother shunned even by her own family, was also a pioneering educator and feminist icon. Mary Roy established an experimental coeducational school in Kottayam in the southern Indian state of Kerala at a time when such women-led enterprises were unheard of. Her life revolved around the school and her office was her home.

Arundhati and her brother Lalith lived in the dorms with other pupils. Mrs Roy, who suffered from debilitating asthma attacks, revelled in the veneration of her pupils and devoted staff even as she showed no mercy when they erred or failed to meet her needs.

A few comic scenes in the memoir revolve around these acolytes. One is described as a “frightened minion carrying her asthma inhaler as though it were a crown or a sceptre”.

As a child, Arundhati was so afraid she would be held responsible for Mrs Roy’s death if she suffered a fatal asthma attack she found herself breathing for her mother, becoming a “valiant organ-child”.

School and home merged in the early years of the children’s upbringing. They had no sanctuary against hard discipline and no privacy in which to cry in shame. For Arundhati, living with Mrs Roy was like picking her way through a

minefield without a map. My feet and fingers and sometimes even my head were often blown off, but after floating around untethered for a while, they would magically reattach themselves.

Before their life within the confines of the school, the children had roamed wild in their ancestral village of Ayemenem, memories of which Roy celebrates vividly in her Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things.

Blowing up the gilded cage

The memoir alternates between vignettes of Mrs Roy’s excruciating cruelty towards Arundhati and her brother, and her astonishing courage in challenging the norms of the patriarchal Syrian Christian community that chewed her up and threw her out like roughage.

Mary Roy’s own childhood in an abusive home where her entomologist father beat her and her mother – routinely throwing them out of the house in the dark of the night – sharpened her determination to take on the entire legal establishment decades later. She challenged the Travancore Christian Succession Act of 1916 that denied daughters from the Syrian Christian community their rightful share of inheritances.

In 1986 she won a landmark case in the Supreme Court of India that gave Mary and countless other women in Kerala their inheritance rights. Mary’s brother and her widowed mother, who had once threatened to evict her from their family cottage when she was a young, single mother, experienced Mrs Roy’s delayed wrath when they were forced into penury by her action.

The memoir also cuts a swathe through the Arundhati Roy’s dual authorial self: screenplay writer and renowned novelist and activist-writer of narrative non-fiction. We get a fascinating backstage tour of her evolution as a writer, a lover, a friend, and a political conscience-keeper on the global stage – currently the bête noire of India’s right-wing government.

Roy famously shunned her bird-in-a-golden-cage celebrity status after The God of Small Things won the Booker in 1997. At the turn of the millennium, she observed with dread the rise of the Hindu Right in her beloved country, especially the euphoria around India’s creation of the nuclear bomb in 1998. In 2001 she published her soul-stirring essay on 9/11, The Algebra of Infinite Justice.

What followed was an intimate and often precarious engagement with some of the iconic grassroots movements in contemporary India: the Narmada Bachao Andolan movement (Save the Narmada River), which opposed the building of a huge dam that would inundate the Narmada valley and destroy the habitation of millions across four Indian states and the Maoist Naxalites in India’s heartland, who engaged in guerrilla warfare to protect tribal lands from vast mining conglomerates.

In 2024, due to her advocacy on behalf of the Kashmiri people caught in the crossfire between India and Pakistan, the Modi government threatened to prosecute Roy under a draconian law reserved for anti-national activities.

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Read more:
The prosecution of Arundhati Roy is business as usual for the Modi government – and bad news for freedom of expression in India

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We begin to understand Roy’s intrepid embrace of danger, her shunning of domestic security and career comforts when she, at her most disarming, reveals to the reader that she cannot seem to help it.

With a childhood that felt like living on the edge of a ledge from which a fall was inevitable at any moment, she has grown accustomed to precarity. For years after The God of Small Things, she writes,

I wandered through forests and river valleys, villages and border towns, to try to better understand my country. As I travelled, I wrote. That was the beginning of my restless, unruly life as a seditious, traitor-writer. Free woman. Free Writing. Like Mother Mary taught me. I hadn’t just avoided the gilded age. I had blown it to smithereens.

Mary Roy’s volatility also helped incubate Arundhati’s novelistic self, a self that could stand apart and assess the turbulence around her. Towards the end of her memoir, she confesses that while she could never quite anticipate her mother’s changeable moods, she had learned “to stand outside the range of their clawing, lashing fury”.

‘Read this as you would a novel’

Some of the most compelling passages in the memoir are about Arundhati Roy’s quest for what she calls her prey, a grazing language-animal she struggled to find for ages.

Language, she claims, was rarely her friend, rarely amenable to taming. When she arrives at the realisation that she is ready to devote herself to The God of Small Things, she writes, “I knew then that I had hunted down my language-animal. I had disembowelled it and drunk its inky blood.”

Her language-animal has surrendered yet again to the power of her claw-pen. In Mother Mary Comes to Me, Roy’s novelistic self appears in full command as she steers the flow of rage, outrage, wonder, sorrow and joy with just the right touch, and at just the right moment, each time it threatens to overwhelm the narrative.

In her wry, inimitable style she writes,

most of us are a living, breathing soup of memory and imagination [..] so read this book as you would a novel. It makes no larger claim.

Not surprisingly, the magical alchemy of The God of Small Things reemerges at startling moments in this work. Unforgettable characters, images, turn of phrase, and the coruscating rhythm of the prose, remind us why Roy remains an indubitable literary force almost three decades after her blockbuster first novel.

Debjani Ganguly has received funding from the ARC and the Mellon and Chiang Ching Kuo Foundations.

– ref. Magical alchemy: Arundhati Roy’s compelling memoir illuminates a ‘restless, unruly’ life – https://theconversation.com/magical-alchemy-arundhati-roys-compelling-memoir-illuminates-a-restless-unruly-life-262506

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Sarah Wilson, PhD Candidate in Emerging Technologies Governance, Institue for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

Last month, courts on both sides of the Atlantic delivered a clear verdict: when classifying titanium dioxide as carcinogenic, regulatory agencies had overreached.

These parallel legal defeats expose deeper questions about who gets to interpret contested science.

In the modern world, legal decisions – especially ones dealing with regulation – are increasingly based on complex science. But sometimes, the science isn’t settled. When certainty remains elusive, who gets to be the authority?

The case of titanium dioxide

Titanium dioxide lies at the heart of the recent legal challenges. It’s a white mineral powder used in many everyday products such as paint, sunscreen, toothpaste and even food.

For decades, titanium dioxide was considered safe. However, in the early 2000s, with the advent of nanomaterials science, it became widely available in nanoparticle form. And scientists found that typical titanium dioxide powder contains some nanoparticles too.

Research emerged showing these tiny titanium dioxide particles may interact with biological systems differently compared with their larger counterparts. This sparked controversy about a substance previously thought to be safe.

The turning point came in 2010, when the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified titanium dioxide as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”. This means there’s limited evidence for human carcinogenicity, but there could be some evidence from animal studies, or simply evidence that the substance has the characteristics of a carcinogen.

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Read more:
Does this cause cancer? How scientists determine whether a chemical is carcinogenic – sometimes with controversial results

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In the case of titanium dioxide, the classification was primarily based on studies in rats. The animals had more lung tumours when they breathed in high concentrations of titanium dioxide particles.

Naturally, regulators responded. California added airborne titanium dioxide of certain particle sizes to its Proposition 65 list in 2011. This meant products with it, such as spray-on sunscreens and cosmetic powders, would need warning labels.

Eight years later, the European Commission also classified titanium dioxide powder as a suspected carcinogen. This resulted in mandatory warning labels on products with titanium dioxide powder sold in Europe.

Decisive – or not so much?

A warning label might seem decisive. However, beneath it lies a profound scientific uncertainty. It’s a common challenge with emerging fields such as nanoscience.

For titanium dioxide, the uncertainty manifested in two ways.

First, as with many suspected carcinogens, the IARC classification ignited debate within the scientific community. Could animal study results meaningfully predict human cancer risk? Animal studies often demonstrate a strong mechanism for harm, but it’s not possible to test directly in humans. That makes it tricky to establish cause and effect.

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Read more:
If ‘correlation doesn’t imply causation’, how do scientists figure out why things happen?

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Second, studies on nano titanium dioxide toxicity continue to yield inconsistent and contradictory findings. Current research shows toxicity heavily depends on several factors, from exposure to individual susceptibility.

Evidence in the courts

The scientific complexity on titanium dioxide created fertile ground for legal challenges. Industry groups contested both “carcinogenic” rulings, arguing regulators had misinterpreted the science.

The courts ultimately agreed. On August 1 2025, Europe’s highest court sided with the titanium dioxide industry. It found European regulators had failed to consider all relevant factors when assessing scientific evidence.

This ruling hinged on something highly technical. The courts found regulators had used an incorrect particle density value when calculating lung overload in rat studies. This undermined their assessment of whether the animal data reliably predicted human cancer risk. The court nullified the classification entirely.

Similarly, on August 12 2025, a US federal court struck down warning requirements for titanium dioxide in cosmetics.

While acknowledging the warnings were technically accurate sentence-by-sentence, the court found the underlying science didn’t meet the established legal standard of being “purely factual and uncontroversial”.

In part, the warnings were deemed “controversial” because significant scientific debate persists.

The legal landscape is changing

These court rulings represent a critical evolution in regulatory science.

In their initial classification decisions, the US and European agencies prioritised precaution. They recognised that animal studies typically come before human evidence, and that research on nano titanium dioxide was still emerging.

They followed the proper established processes and made reasonable decisions under uncertainty.

In both cases, the courts used legal knowledge standards to reject these scientific applications. This blurs the boundary between science and how courts oversee regulatory processes.

Critics argue courts “are not scientists” and lack the expertise to make these types of decisions. Judges are trained for legal complexity and shouldn’t replace the decisions of trained scientific committees in areas of scientific uncertainty.

When courts and science intertwine

Rulings such as the ones on titanium dioxide raise several important questions for our legal system.

How much do judges really understand science? Should judges be able to override trained scientists to resolve technical disputes? Or does judicial oversight effectively balance against regulatory overreach in complex scientific contexts?

When should regulators act on complex science? Since the 1950s, many toxic substances present this dilemma: controlled human studies are unethical, and widespread exposure eliminates the unexposed control groups needed for comparison. Should agencies wait for definitive proof – which may not be possible to obtain – or act on evidence of potential harm to protect public health?

Can scientists effectively communicate uncertainty? Emerging science is in a constant state of uncertainty. By contrast, legal systems require definitive decisions within specific timeframes. When scientific consensus is lacking, how can scientists help regulators and courts proceed?

These questions aren’t just about interpreting science. As complex technologies continue to be integrated into our daily lives, scientific uncertainty could increasingly become a legal concern. How do we make sure our legal institutions are up to the task?

This is a big challenge, but one thing is clear: scientific and legal experts must work together to find the solution.

Rachael Wakefield-Rann receives research funding from various government and non-government organisations. She does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would financially benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond her academic appointment.

Sarah Wilson 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. Court rulings increasingly demand scientific certainty – but that’s not always possible – https://theconversation.com/court-rulings-increasingly-demand-scientific-certainty-but-thats-not-always-possible-264991

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Philip Johnson, Lecturer, College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University

In the past few weeks, the United States military has been involved in multiple fatal strikes on boats in international waters off the coast of Venezuela.

The first airstrike was on September 5 and killed 11 people. The second occurred this week, killing three people. No efforts were made to apprehend the vessels or identify the people before the strikes.

President Donald Trump has claimed the boats and the people on them were trafficking illegal drugs bound for the US, dubbing them “narcoterrorists”.

The White House has provided little detail about the attacks in general, and no evidence the boats were trafficking drugs. It’s possible they weren’t.

Here’s what’s going on in the region and what might happen next.

Why is this happening now?

During the 2024 presidential election campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to crack down on immigration from Latin America.

He often drew a connection between crime and immigration, especially from Haiti and Venezuela (though some of the cases of gang crime he cited have since been questioned or debunked).

Once in office, Trump declared a number of gangs as terrorist organisations, including one Venezuelan group, Tren de Aragua.

The Trump government has claimed that Venezuelans deported from the US were members of Tren de Aragua, often without much substantial evidence.

Trump has also entertained the idea of using the US military to target criminal groups.

This is now reality, through a large military buildup deploying multiple warships, submarines and fighter jets to the Caribbean.

A tumultuous history

This is the latest chapter in a long and sometimes hostile relationship between Venezuela and the US.

Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves, affording the country political and economic influence within the region. This has made Venezuela a valued ally, and sometimes a competitor, to the United States.

But for the past two decades or so, relations have been more antagonistic.

When left-wing populist President Hugo Chavez was in power in Venezuela in 2002, the US was accused of giving tacit approval to a coup attempt against him.

America has also imposed economic sanctions against the country since 2005. These particularly ramped up under Trump’s first administration against Chavez’s successor and current president, Nicolas Maduro.

While less popular than his predecessor, Maduro remains extremely powerful. US attempts to destabilise his government, including one in 2019, have been unsuccessful.

Although many in Venezuela would welcome a change of government, any US intervention in the region is likely to be immensely unpopular. It provides a nationalist rallying point for Maduro: a way to boost his local support.

What do we know about the gang?

Trump claims both boats were operated by the Tren de Aragua gang.

The group started in Venezuelan prisons before spreading across other Latin American countries, primarily through people fleeing Maduro’s authoritarian regime.

Estimates of the size of the gang are contested and hard to measure, but best guesses put it at around 5,000 members.

Tren de Aragua members have been identified in 16 US states, but there has been little conclusive evidence of large-scale criminal or terrorist activity. In New York, Tren de Aragua has primarily been associated with retail theft.

Why is the US bombing boats?

Destroying individual boats is unlikely to have an impact on drug trafficking into the US. Most fentanyl, for example, is trafficked into the US over land borders by US citizens.

However, bombing the boats does reinforce the idea of an existential threat to the United States that can only be defeated with violence. The same sense of threat is used to justify the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelans to brutal prisons in El Salvador.

The Venezuelan government is of less concern to Trump. Indeed, the White House has authorised increased imports of Venezuelan oil in recent weeks.

Others within the US government are more committed to regime change in Venezuela. For Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the military operations are a direct effort to destabilise what he sees as an illegitimate Venezuelan regime.

Is it legal?

These airstrikes are the first unilateral US military action in Latin America since the invasion of Panama in 1989.

However, the military operations fit within a much longer history of overt and covert intervention in the region.

Scholars have said the decision to attack the boats was likely illegal under the law of the sea.

The US government justifies the attack in the broadest terms: Venezuelan gangs traffic drugs that can kill American citizens, therefore any violence is warranted to prevent this. This is an argument not about legality, but urgent security.

Impunity is the larger point, a display of power in itself. After the first strike, Vice President JD Vance declared “I don’t give a shit what you call it”.

Trump and Rubio have both asserted the strikes will continue, without concern for the possibility that they could be considered war crimes.

Without a clear prospect of legal jeopardy, the strikes will remain available as a way to project US power. The strikes will likely stop, or pause, when the government wants to claim that it has achieved some victory.

Philip Johnson 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. US strikes on Venezuelan ‘drug boats’ have killed 14 people. What is Trump trying to do? – https://theconversation.com/us-strikes-on-venezuelan-drug-boats-have-killed-14-people-what-is-trump-trying-to-do-265481

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Jenny Cooney, Lecturer in Lifestyle Journalism, Monash University

When Robert Redford launched the Utah-based Sundance Institute in 1981, providing an independent support system for filmmakers named after his role in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), it would transform Hollywood and become his biggest legacy.

Redford, who has passed away age 89, was already a huge movie icon when he bought land and created a non-profit space with a mission statement “to foster independent voices, champion risky, original stories, and cultivate a community for artists to create and thrive globally”.

Starting with labs, fellowships, grants and mentoring programs for independent filmmakers, he finally decided to launch his own film festival in nearby Park City, Utah in 1985.

“The labs were absolutely the most important part of Sundance and that is still the core of what we are and what we do today,” Redford reflected during my last sit-down with him in 2013 at the Toronto International Film Festival, while promoting his own indie, All is Lost.

After the program had been running for five years, he told me

I realised we had succeeded in doing that much, but now there was nowhere for them to go. So, I thought, ‘well, what if we created a festival, where at least we can bring the filmmakers together to look at each other’s work and then we could create a community for them?’ And then, to my happy surprise, it grew beyond my imagination.

That’s putting it mildly. An astonishing list of filmmakers can all thank Redford for their career breakthroughs. Alumni of the Sundance Institute include Bong Joon-ho (who workshopped early scripts at Sundance labs before Parasite), Chloé Zhao and Taika Waititi, who often returns as a mentor.

First films that debuted at the festival include Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992), Steve Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), Richard Linklater’s Slackers (2002), Paul Thomas Anderson’s Cigarettes and Coffee (1993), Nicole Holofcener’s short film Angry (1991), Darren Aronofsky’s Pi (1998) and Damian Chazelle’s Whiplash (2014).

Australian films which recently made their Sundance debut include Noora Niasari’s Shayda (2023), Daina Reid’s Run, Rabbit, Run (2023) and Sophie Hyde’s Jimpa (2025).

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Read more:
A pretty face helped make Robert Redford a star. Talent and dedication kept him one

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Creating a haven

For anyone lucky enough to have attended Sundance in the early days, it was a haven for indie filmmakers. It was not uncommon to see “Bob”, as he was always known in person, walking down the main street on his way to a movie premiere or a dinner with young filmmakers eager for his advice.

Watching Redford portray Bob Woodward in the Watergate thriller All the President’s Men (1976) was one of my earliest inspirations for pursuing a career in journalism. Also, nurturing a crush since The Sting (1973) and The Way We Were (1973) made it hard not to be intimidated crossing paths with him in Park City.

Bob, however, quickly made you forget the icon status. Soon, you’d just be chatting about a new filmmaker he was excited to support, or his environmental work (he served as a trustee for five decades on the non-profit organisation, Natural Resources Defense Council).

Everyone felt equal in that indie film world, and Redford was responsible for that atmosphere.

In 1994, I waited in a Main Street coffee shop for Elle MacPherson to ski off a mountain and do an interview promoting her acting role in the Australian film Sirens. Later that day, I commiserated over a hot chocolate with Hugh Grant as he complained about frostbitten toes from wearing the wrong shoes and finding himself trekking through a snowstorm to the first screening of Four Weddings and a Funeral.

In the early days, Sundance was a destination for film lovers, not hair and makeup people, inappropriately glamorous designer gowns or swag lounges.

The arrival of Hollywood

But eventually, there was no denying the clout of any film making it to Sundance, and Hollywood came knocking.

“In 1985, we only had one theatre and maybe there were four or five restaurants in town, so it was a much quieter, smaller place and over time it grew so incredibly the atmosphere changed,” Redford reflected during our interview.

Suddenly all these people came in to leverage off our festival and because we are a non-profit, we couldn’t do anything about it. We had what we called ‘ambush mongers’ coming in to sell their wares and give out swag and I’m sure there will always be those people, but we are strong enough to resist being overtaken by it.

The festival resisted but the infrastructure gave in. In 2027, the Sundance Film Festival will finally relocate to Boulder, Colorado after a careful selection process aimed at ensuring the spirit of Sundance remains.

Redford stepped back from being the public face of the festival in 2019, dedicating himself instead to spend more time with filmmakers and their projects. But he supported the move to Colorado, and said in his statement of the announcement

Words cannot express the sincere gratitude I have for Park City, the state of Utah, and all those in the Utah community that have helped to build the organization.

The spirit of Sundance lives on, but it just won’t be the same without Bob on the streets or in the movie theatres.

Jenny Cooney 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. ‘To my happy surprise, it grew beyond my imagination’: Robert Redford’s Sundance legacy – https://theconversation.com/to-my-happy-surprise-it-grew-beyond-my-imagination-robert-redfords-sundance-legacy-265478

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Ang Li, ARC DECRA and Senior Research Fellow, NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Housing, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne

This year, ten days of extreme heat in Europe killed roughly 2,300 people, severe flooding on the New South Wales coast left more than 48,000 stranded, and wildfires in Los Angeles destroyed at least 16,000 homes and other buildings.

Events such as these signal what climate scientists have long warned: climate-related extremes are becoming more frequent and intense.

Poor housing can leave us more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. So in today’s warming world, it’s increasingly important our homes and our housing system are climate resilient. This means they must protect us from heatwaves, floods and bushfires, and keep out air pollutants. And the housing system must function to provide affordable and secure housing.

Location is important too. Australia’s first National Climate Risk Assessment, released this week, estimates 8.7% of residential buildings are in very high-risk areas (prone to hazards). This proportion is projected to increase to 13.5% by 2090 in a scenario with a high global warming level.

Housing and health are inextricably linked. In a new paper published in the Lancet Public Health, my colleagues and I identify several ways climate change affects our homes, and in turn, our health.

On a basic level, housing shields us from the elements. But when we look at the bigger picture, resilient housing and housing systems have a key role to play in helping us face the challenges of climate change.

How does climate change affect our homes and our health?

Climate change can lead to deterioration in the indoor conditions in our homes.

For example, extreme temperatures can compromise air quality by making building materials more likely to degrade and generate pollutants. Particulate matter and other hazardous air pollutants from bushfire smoke can infiltrate indoor environments. Both of these processes can contribute to poor indoor air quality. This is not to mention that extreme heat outside can lead to unbearable temperatures indoors.

Meanwhile, floods, storms and cyclones can cause structural and water damage to homes. This can expose occupants to toxins, for example from contaminated water, and increase the risk of allergic reactions, respiratory problems, and infectious diseases (such as water-borne and mosquito-borne diseases).

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Eradicating mould would save millions in health-care costs: how our homes affect our health

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Climate change and housing security

The risks associated with climate change can also influence housing security and affordability.

Both housing insecurity and unaffordability are significant predictors of poor mental health and wellbeing, and both are already significant problems independent of climate change.

But a changing climate exacerbates these problems. Equally, the housing crisis leaves us more vulnerable to climate change.

Climate-related disasters put a strain on housing costs and general cost-of-living pressures. Residents may need to pay for maintenance and repairs alongside their mortgages and rental payments. Meanwhile, increasing extreme weather events push insurance premiums higher. All this puts pressure on housing affordability.

Extreme temperatures also increase the risk of energy poverty. Not being able to adequately heat or cool a home can negatively affect both physical and mental health for its occupants.

What’s more, climate-related disasters can drive forced relocation, with flow-on effects to health and wellbeing through disruption to family life, loss of income, gender-based violence, social disconnection, and reduced access to services.

Notably, the effects of climate change reduce the supply of affordable housing, especially affordable rentals, which are more likely to be damaged or lost from hazards, for example due to lower structural quality. Lower-income renters as a result find it harder to compete for the remaining stock.

There are also other examples showing the effects of climate change on housing are inequitable, with the consequences flowing disproportionately to less advantaged groups.

When areas with low climate risk become more desirable, this can drive up housing and other costs in an area. Climate “gentrification” can displace low-income households to higher risk and less protected areas. We’ve seen this happen in countries including the United States and Denmark.

What does climate-resilient housing look like?

Housing needs to protect people from the growing risks posed by climate change. In a physical sense, this means it must be robust enough to bear more intense weather conditions, be energy efficient, and have good thermal performance that allows for both ventilation and climate control.

To achieve this, climate-resilient housing should include features such as:

• well-constructed foundations, walls and roofs
• ventilation and insulation
• energy-efficient cooling and heating
• exterior shading and roof reflectivity
• building materials that are fire- and heat-resistant.

Building codes need to be cognisant of the changing climate, while existing housing may need to be upgraded.

We’ve seen some signs of progress. For example, updates to the National Construction Code in recent years have accounted for the increasing impact of climate change, by raising energy efficiency and thermal performance standards, among other measures.

There is also a need for stronger tenant protection policies. Rental housing is disproportionately of poor quality, yet it houses a large portion of the more vulnerable people in the population. Minimum standards for rental housing must be climate resilient.

But housing people well isn’t just a question of the physical construction of homes.

Climate-resilient housing should be affordable, secure and provide residents the chance to access opportunities for work, education and social connection that sustain wellbeing.

So much public discussion has focused on the need to meet housing supply targets, but we can’t forget that people need to be housed well to flourish.

This article is part of a series, Healthy Homes.

Ang Li receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Heat, air quality, insurance costs: how climate change is affecting our homes – and our health – https://theconversation.com/heat-air-quality-insurance-costs-how-climate-change-is-affecting-our-homes-and-our-health-263278

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Samuel Cornell, PhD Candidate in Public Health & Community Medicine, School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney

If you could, would you pay to live forever? Some Silicon Valley billionaires aren’t just making tech products – they’ve set their sights on immortality.

Social media is flooded with influencers promoting peptides, “functional” mushroom powders and other (often non-evidence-based) hacks said to maximise your lifespan. Some even claim to reverse your “biological age”.

The quest to live longer, look younger or just live one’s “best life” has become a booming industry, encompassing treatments as diverse as ice baths, saunas, cryotherapy chambers and even red light therapy.

But behind much of the marketing and social media posts are commercial interests willing to cater to a population fearful of ageing and dying.

Nobody lives forever

The key reason humans aren’t immortal hinges on evolution. This process favours genetic traits promoting successful reproduction and adaptation over those promoting unlimited lifespan for individuals.

The ancient Greeks told cautionary tales about life extension. Those who reached for immortality mostly found this came at a terrible cost. The mythical Tithonus, for example, was doomed to endless ageing and decline after being granted eternal life without eternal youth.

Fast forward to today, the longevity industry has the backing of venture capital funds, celebrity investors and pharmaceutical companies.

But much of this money is being funnelled into products and services with little or no evidence for how they actually improve health or lengthen lifespan.

In his well-publicised quest for life extension, US venture capitalist Bryan Johnson reportedly spends millions and undergoes constant medical testing with the impossible aim of never dying.

Johnson’s longevity regimen includes a hyper-controlled diet, hundreds of daily supplements and strict sleep and exercise routines. He has even received transfusions of his own son’s blood plasma.

We see three major problems with the longevity industry that are a cause for concern.

Profit before evidence

Innovation is central to the longevity industry, attracting an influx of Silicon Valley investors seeking to “hack” the ageing process. Yet, these innovations are infrequently backed by high-quality evidence.

For example, full-body MRI is marketed as a way to identify cancer and other abnormalities early before they are harder to treat. Yet, there is no evidence these scans improve health outcomes. Medical colleges around the world do not recommend full-body MRI in healthy individuals.

Tests like these can lead to “incidentalomas” – unexpected findings that may prompt unnecessary follow-up procedures, costs and anxiety.

The longevity industry pitches itself as a disruptive alternative to mainstream health care. But it still depends on that system to function. Scans, blood tests and experimental treatments inevitably flow back into hospitals and clinics for follow-up, specialist consultations and interventions.

This puts added strain on already stretched services – both financially and in terms of workforce – while arguably delivering little benefit to population health.

Test and you shall find

Despite widespread public enthusiasm for screening tests, experts have long warned more testing does not always lead to better health.

One of the clearest risks is overdiagnosis – when an abnormality or disease is diagnosed that will never impact a person’s health during their lifetime. The more you test, the more you’ll find – much of it clinically irrelevant. This creates a self-affirming cycle.

Unnecessary investigations can result in overdiagnosis, incidental findings and potentially cascades of further unnecessary procedures or tests.

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Read more:
We analysed almost 1,000 social media posts about 5 popular medical tests. Most were utterly misleading

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Longevity isn’t the same as prevention

Marketers of longevity claim their services and products are part of “preventive” medicine: spotting disease before it strikes and keeping people healthier for longer.

But the longevity movement differs drastically from the public health principle of prevention.

Prevention, in mainstream medicine, is about simple, evidence-based measures. This includes immunisations and screening for cancer at the right ages.

But there’s no clear evidence many of the exhaustive tests and treatments the longevity industry promotes improve long-term outcomes for otherwise healthy people.

They simply cost a lot of money, are resource intensive and may lead to further unnecessary testing.

Why this matters

By medicalising ageing, the longevity movement is a classic example of disease mongering. It also risks embedding ageism into everyday commerce – pathologising normal ageing rather than accepting it as part of life.

It also risks diverting attention and resources away from important and basic public health system functions that can improve quality of life for millions as we all gracefully age.

The hype around many unfounded longevity claims distracts us from what we already know works: regular exercise, healthy food, sound sleep, meaningful relationships and fair access to evidence-based medical treatment.

Samuel Cornell receives funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

Brooke Nickel receives fellowship funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). She is on the Executive Committee for Wiser Healthcare and the Scientific Committee of the Preventing Overdiagnosis Conference.

Sean Docking 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. A booming longevity industry wants to sell us ‘immortality’. There could be hidden costs – https://theconversation.com/a-booming-longevity-industry-wants-to-sell-us-immortality-there-could-be-hidden-costs-264879

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Daryl Sparkes, Senior Lecturer, Media Studies and Production, University of Southern Queensland

Hollywood is the place where having a great face will get you far. Think Errol Flynn, James Dean, George Clooney, Brad Pitt – a handsome appearance opens acting doors.

Those good looks, the magical smile, the natural charm all became synonymous with Robert Redford, who has died aged 89.

But good looks can only get you so far. You still need the acting chops as well as the strength of character to make a real impression in the world of cinema, and in the world itself.

Redford had this all in spades.

The young actor

After a rough start in life, including the death of his mother and dropping out of college, Redford began acting at 23 on Broadway and in small roles in quality television productions such as The Untouchables (1963), Maverick (1960), Dr Kildare (1962) and The Twilight Zone (1962), to name a few, which all honed his screen presence.

He made his feature film debut with a minor role in Tall Story (1960), alongside Jane Fonda (also her debut). This started a lifelong friendship between the two. They would act on several productions together, and Fonda admitted she was in love with Redford her whole life.

His talent was soon recognised. He was nominated for his first Emmy in 1962 for his supporting role in the TV movie The Voice of Charlie Pont.

After this, Redford soon became an in-demand actor. Larger roles in film and TV soon came his way, many as a romantic character.

Films such as Inside Daisy Clover (1965), This Property is Condemned (1966) and Barefoot in the Park (1967) portrayed Redford as the lover/husband to strong female characters, the first two with Natalie Wood, the third, again, with Fonda.

The birth of an icon

His good looks sometimes grated on Redford, which led him to refuse a role in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) and being turned down for the lead in The Graduate (1967). He went in search of more diverse roles.

This led to a film that didn’t just make Redford a star, but a Hollywood icon.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) was one of the greatest actor partnerships in Hollywood history. Paul Newman was a much bigger star than Redford at the time of the movie’s release, but arguably it propelled Redford’s star beyond anyone else at that time.

Redford portrayed Sundance with sly wit, simmering masculinity, sardonic smartness and, well, just outright sexiness. Suddenly both teenage boys and girls had his poster on their bedroom wall. The world fell in love with him.

Redford was on a roll. Over the next half-decade came hit after hit, including The Candidate (1972), The Way We Were (1973) with Barbara Streisand, The Sting (1972) again with Newman, and The Great Gatsby (1974), to name but a few. Redford was cemented as the lead man du jour.

The saying “lightning never strikes twice” never reckoned on Redford. In 1976 he took on his next highly iconic role alongside Dustin Hoffman in All the President’s Men.

It could be said that Hoffman, well regarded as the actor’s actor, was eclipsed by Redford in his role as Watergate journalist Bob Woodward. To me it was a travesty that Redford (or Hoffman, for that matter) was not nominated for Oscars in these roles.

By now Redford wasn’t just seen as the “pretty boy” but as a serious actor who took on more and more dramatic roles in The Electric Horseman (1979), Brubaker (1980), Out of Africa (1985) and Indecent Proposal (1998).

Being on screen for over five decades, younger audiences possibly wondered who the grizzled old man playing agent Alexander Pierce in two Marvel movies in 2014 and 2019 was.

A lasting legacy

Beginning in the 70s, Redford increasingly yearned to also be behind the camera.

As early as 1969 he took on the executive producer role in Downhill Racer.

Into the 80s he began directing. His feature directorial debut, Ordinary People (1980), won him his one and only Oscar (although he was given an honorary one in 2002).

He would go on to direct and produce notable films such as The Horse Whisperer (1998), A River Runs Through It (1992) and Quiz Show (1994), among others.

He was still working as an executive producer up until recently on the TV series Dark Wind (2022–25).

Away from the cameras, Redford was widely known as a philanthropist, environmentalist and a strong supporter of American First Nations and LGBTQI+ rights.

Publicly, though, Redford will probably be most remembered for the Sundance Institute and the film festival that sprang from it.

The largest independent festival in the United States, it gave a leg up to hundreds of up-and-coming independent filmmakers over the years including Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Jane Schoenbrun, Kevin Smith and Paul Thomas Anderson.

When we look back on his body of work, though, one thing becomes plainly obvious.

While Redford may have used his looks to initially open the Hollywood doors to success and fame, it was his talent and dedication to his craft that kept those doors open.

A versatile actor, director and producer who gave back to the industry just as much, if not more, than he took. For this, Redford was much, much more than a pretty face.

Daryl Sparkes 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. A pretty face helped make Robert Redford a star. Talent and dedication kept him one – https://theconversation.com/a-pretty-face-helped-make-robert-redford-a-star-talent-and-dedication-kept-him-one-265426

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Matthew Sharpe, Associate Professor in Philosophy, Australian Catholic University

Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old Utah man suspected of having fatally shot right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, is reportedly not cooperating with authorities. Robinson was apprehended after a more than two-day manhunt and is being held without bail at the Utah County Jail.

While a motive for the shooting has yet to be established, Utah Governor Spencer Cox has highlighted Robinson’s links to gaming and the “dark internet”.

Bullet casings found at the scene were inscribed with various messages evoking gaming subcultures. One of the quotes – “Notices bulges, OwO what’s this” – can be linked to the furry community, known for role-playing using animal avatars.

Another message – “Hey, fascist! Catch! ↑ → ↓↓↓” – features arrow symbols associated with an action that allows players to drop bombs on their foes in Helldiver 2, a game in which players play as fascists fighting enemy forces.

One casing reads “O Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Ciao, ciao!”, words from an Italian anti-Mussolini protest song, which also appears in the shooter game Far Cry 6. Yet another is a homophobic jibe: “if you read this you are gay LMAO”.

If Robinson does turn out to be a shooter radicalised through online gaming spaces, he would not be the first. Previous terrorist shootings at Christchurch (New Zealand), Halle (Germany), Bærum (Norway), and the US cities of Buffalo, El Paso and Poway were all carried out by radicalised young men who embraced online conspiracies and violent video games.

In each of these cases, the shooter attempted (and in all but the Poway shooting, succeeded) to live stream the atrocities, as though emulating a first-person shooter game.

A growing online threat

The global video game market is enormous, with an estimated value of almost US$300 billion (about A$450 billion) in 2024. Of the more than three billion gamers, the largest percentage is made up of young adults aged 18–34.

Many of these are vulnerable young men. And extremist activists have long recognised this group as a demographic ripe for radicalisation.

As early as 2002, American neo-Nazi leader Matt Hale advised his followers “if we can influence video games and entertainment, it will make people understand we are their friends and neighbours”.

Since then, far-right groups have produced ethnonationalist-themed games, such as “Ethnic Cleansing” and “ZOG’s Nightmare”, in which players defend the “white race” against Islamists, immigrants, LGBTQIA+ people, Jews and more.

Studying radicalisation in gamer circles

For many, the Kirk shooting has resurfaced the perennial question about the link (or lack thereof) between playing violent video games and real-world violence.

But while this is an important line of inquiry, the evidence suggests most radicalisation takes place not through playing video games themselves, but through gaming platform communication channels.

In 2020, my colleagues and I studied an extraordinary data dump of more than nine million posts from the gaming platform Steam to understand this process.

We found evidence of radicalisation occurring through communication channels, such as team voice channels. Here, players establish connections with one another, and can leverage these connections for political recruitment.

The radicalisation of vulnerable users is not instantaneous. Once extremists have connected with potential targets, they invite them into platforms such as Discord or private chat rooms. These spaces allow for meme and image sharing, as well as ongoing voice and video conversations.

Skilful recruiters will play to a target’s specific grievances. These may be personal, psycho-sexual (such as being unable to gain love or approval), or related to divisive issues such as employment, housing or gender roles.

The recruit is initiated into a fast-changing set of cynical in-jokes and in-group terms. These may include mocking self-designations, such as the Pepe the Frog meme, used by the far-right to ironically embrace their ugly “political incorrectness”. They also use derogatory terms for “enemies”, such as “woke”, “social justice warriors”, “soyboys”, “fascists” and “cultural Marxists”.

Gradually, the new recruit becomes accustomed to the casual denigration and dehumanisation of the “enemies”.

Dark and sarcastic humour allow for plausible deniability while still spreading hate. As such, humour acts an on-ramp to slowly introduce new recruits to the conspiratorial and violent ideologies that lie at the heart of terrorist shootings.

Generally, these ideologies claim the world is run by nefarious and super-powerful plutocrats/Jews/liberals/communists/elites, who can only be stopped through extreme measures.

It then becomes a question of resolve. Who among the group is willing to do what the ideology suggests is necessary?

What can be done?

The Australian Federal Police, as well as the Australian parliament, has recognised the threat of violence as a result of radicalisation through online gaming. Clearly, it’s something we can’t be complacent about.

Social isolation and mental illness, which are sadly as widespread in Australia as they are elsewhere, are some of the factors online extremists try to exploit when luring vulnerable individuals.

At the same time, social media algorithms function to shunt users into ever more sensational content. This is something online extremists have benefited from, and learned to exploit.

There is a growing number of organisations devoted to trying to prevent online radicalisation through gaming platforms. Many of these have resources for concerned parents, teachers and care givers.

Ultimately, in an increasingly online world, the best way to keep young people safe from online radicalisation is to keep having constructive offline conversations about their virtual experiences, and the people they might meet in the process.

Matthew Sharpe 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. Charlie Kirk shooting suspect had ties to gaming culture and the ‘dark internet’. Here’s how they radicalise – https://theconversation.com/charlie-kirk-shooting-suspect-had-ties-to-gaming-culture-and-the-dark-internet-heres-how-they-radicalise-265279

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Jon Richardson, Visiting Fellow, Centre for European Studies, Australian National University

A frequent question around peace talks over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is whether Ukraine should give up land as part of an interim or final settlement.

United States President Donald Trump has often suggested this would be a natural and inevitable outcome, particularly given Ukraine has – in his view – a weak hand of “cards”. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the White House last month, Trump told him there was no getting back Crimea, which has been occupied by Russia since 2014.

Trump has jokingly described his motivation for promoting peace in Ukraine as a desire to “get to heaven”. But as the saying goes, the path to hell is paved with good intentions.

Indeed, Trump has aligned himself with many Russian officials on territorial concessions, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who has said history has many examples of peace agreements that shift borders.

It is important to debunk this notion. Acquisition of territory through war has, in fact, been taboo since the end of the second world war and the establishment of the United Nations.

While there have been many military conflicts, there are no evident examples of a UN member country ceding recognised, independent territory to another UN member following a war or invasion.

Wars and conquest

Until the early 20th century, territorial concessions were the norm after wars, backed by all sorts of narratives about hereditary rights, ancient borders, superior civilisations, punishments for unpaid debts or simple law of the jungle.

A classic example was the Treaty of Guadeloupe-Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War of 1846–48. Mexico was forced to cede 55% of its territory, including present-day New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, California, Texas and western Colorado.

In a recent article, Yale academics Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro explain that before the first world war, shifting borders was a legally recognised means by which states resolved disputes. They calculate there were more than 150 territorial conquests around the world before 1945.

The end of the second world war saw massive border changes in Eastern Europe. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin shifted the borders of Poland hundreds of kilometres westward at the expense of Germany, while the Soviet Union swallowed swathes of eastern Poland. Italy also lost some of its pre-war territory to Yugoslavia and France.

The Soviet Union also got to keep regions it had absorbed in the wake of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, including the Baltic States, Moldova, western Ukraine and parts of Finland. These changes reflected the facts on the ground and were accepted at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences.

But in the broader zeitgeist, it was time to put an end to wars of conquest. This was articulated in Article 2 of the UN Charter, which requires states to refrain from the use of force against the “territorial integrity or political independence” of any other state.

The principle was further cemented in UN Security Council resolution 242 following the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, which decrees that acquisition of territory following war cannot be accepted.

That is why the international community has largely rejected any move towards Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, along with the Golan Heights. (The United States, however, accepted the latter in 2019.)

The taboo on conquest since 1945

The only successful territorial conquests broadly accepted by the international community since 1945 have been a few cases of newly independent countries in the 1960s taking over enclaves or neighbouring territory formerly held by colonial powers. This includes, for example, India taking Goa from Portugal.

But other seizures of ex-colonial territories have been broadly rejected, or at least strongly contested. The main examples are Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara and Indonesia’s seizure of East Timor. Indonesia’s takeover of West Papua was accepted by the international community as part of a UN-mandated self-determination process, though this has since been condemned by many as deeply flawed.

South Vietnam’s ultimate takeover by the North might be regarded as a conquest, but neither Vietnam recognised the other as a separate country, seeing the conflict effectively as a continuation of civil war. Neither was a UN member.

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the most blatant attempt to conquer independent territory was Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait. This was repelled by a UN-sanctioned force.

Global opposition to Russia’s seizures

Distinct from invasions, there have been many unresolved border disputes that have occasionally flared into armed conflict. Russia, however, had no such dispute with Ukraine before its 2014 takeover of Crimea.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine negotiated a border treaty to delineate their borders in precise detail. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the treaty in 2003 and later affirmed that Russia had no territorial claim against Ukraine.

An overwhelming number of UN members have rejected Russia’s annexation of Crimea and four other regions of southeastern Ukraine.

However, the initial outrage at the invasion has weakened over time. Many countries have accused the US of a double standard, given its invasion of Iraq in 2003 (even if that didn’t involve territorial conquest). Trump’s statements about acquiring Greenland, Canada, Gaza and the Panama Canal have only further weakened confidence in US opposition to territorial conquest.

As political scientist Tanisha Fazal argues, the norm against territorial conquest risks suffering a “death of a thousand cuts”. Allowing Russia to keep parts of Ukraine could be a terminal blow.

What a lasting peace should look like

Some commentators have argued for an interim settlement under which Russia would retain control of occupied territory without Ukraine ceding it formally. A final settlement would be left to the future.

Some have called this de facto recognition of Russian annexation, but that is a misguided notion. De facto recognition implies acceptance of a new status quo, along with a return to business as usual.

The outcome of the war will only be partially about territory. Russia has imposed a brutal occupation on these regions, with widespread allegations of torture, killings, disappearances, population transfers and thefts of Ukrainian businesses and homes. Ukrainian language, culture and identity are being erased under a draconian regime.

Ukraine appears willing to accept an interim ceasefire to stop the bloodshed. But its territorial integrity should be fully supported by making clear to Russia that its invasion and occupation remain illegal and unacceptable.

This would include maintaining economic sanctions, demanding accountability for war crimes, returning property stolen from Ukrainians, and allowing Ukrainians transferred to Russia to return home. Ukraine must also be given the means to defend itself against a renewed Russian attack.

Advocates of anything less would be condoning and normalising flagrant territorial aggression. They would merit neither earthly rewards, such as Nobel Prizes, nor divine blessings.

Jon Richardson 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. Since WWII, it’s been taboo to force nations to cede land after war. Russia wants to normalise conquest again – https://theconversation.com/since-wwii-its-been-taboo-to-force-nations-to-cede-land-after-war-russia-wants-to-normalise-conquest-again-264590