Category: The Conversation – Global Perspectives

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Liz Evans, Adjunct Researcher, English and Writing, University of Tasmania

In the 1990s, I was a rock journalist striving to assert myself as a young woman, working at the heart of the United Kingdom’s male-dominated music press. I loved my job. I met and interviewed all my favourite bands, and spent my twenties and early thirties in a whirl of parties, clubs, gigs and all-expenses trips to America and Europe.

I began my career through a combination of ignorance, bloody-mindedness, and good timing. With no idea about the protocol of editorial commissions, I was annoyed when a music paper failed to publish my unsolicited live review of a friend’s band. Determined to succeed, I followed a tipoff from an artist who lived in a squat with a media contact (this was London in the 1980s), and soon found myself writing for a bi-monthly heavy metal magazine.

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Review: Men Of A Certain Age: My Encounters with Rock Royalty – Kate Mossman; Maybe I’m Amazed: A Story of Love and Connection in Ten Songs – John Harris (John Murray)

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The editor, Chris Welch, was a softly spoken, conservatively dressed man in his late forties whose office walls were lined with photos of himself hanging out with Marc Bolan, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, in his days as a young reporter. I rarely saw him during my year at the magazine, but I’ve never forgotten his gentle demeanour and the trust he placed in my inexperienced, 22-year-old self. Without his support, my life may have taken a very different turn.

Chris was one of a kind. Other than him, respectful, benevolent older men did not figure in my work for the music press.

By contrast, Kate Mossman is a British arts and music writer whose debut book is presented as “a meditation on the powerful archetype of the ageing rock star”. Her fixation with rock’s fading old guard provides a compelling premise for Men Of A Certain Age: My Encounters with Rock Royalty, but the blurb is a little misleading. This is essentially a collection of republished interviews and personal reflections, rather than an in-depth analysis.

That said, Mossman has produced a thoughtful and entertaining retrospective. Her conversations with the likes of Wilko Johnson, Terence Trent D’Arby, Ray Davies (The Kinks), Jeff Beck and Kevin Ayers are humorous, perceptive and beautifully composed.

She describes the Happy Mondays’ and Black Grape’s Shaun Ryder as resembling “a Russian Mafia boss in the corner, whisky in hand, arms elevated by the pressure of a thick leather jacket”. She chats with Paul Stanley of KISS while he applies his makeup before a show.

“Here is my clown white,” he says softly, picking up a pot of the thick, sweat-resistant foundation he discovered in the ‘70s. “And here are my puffs.”

These encounters afford the reader a certain insight into Mossman’s idiosyncratic predilection for wrinkly rock stars twice her age. Yet while the book affectionately probes her strange, decidedly gendered interest, it avoids the glaring issue of structural misogyny that contaminates the music industry.

It’s not as if Mossman is unaware of the sexual politics at play. She positively delights in the “exciting father-daughter energy” of the older man-younger woman dynamic, intentionally exaggerating her youth and assumed innocence in the presence of ageing rockers. She knows men like Tom Jones and Gene Simmons will respond openly to her coltish, unthreatening persona, because what could be safer than “just a pretty lady”? It’s a clever and effective strategy.

I fully appreciate the quality of Mossman’s profiles, but her attempts to lean into the patronising attitudes of rock’s elders land uncomfortably with me. And having once had my own tender skin in the game, I can’t help seeing the book’s negation of sexism as a missed opportunity.

When I was a rock journalist, I never felt advantaged by my gender or energised by the older male rocker’s entrenched misogyny. Quite the opposite.

At Jarvis Cocker’s house party

Twenty or so years before Mossman began pursuing her beloved senior rockers across the US, I was being reprimanded by my editor for my “unprofessional” rejection of the creepy advances of a famous middle-aged musician.

In 1989, I was a staff writer for a fortnightly rock magazine based in London’s Carnaby Street. We smoked and drank at our desks, played loud metal on the stereo, took half-day lunches on record company money and hosted a constant stream of visiting rock stars in all manner of altered states throughout the working day.

One of my regular jobs was to review the singles with a handful of guest musicians, depending on who was in town. This was often a riotous affair that occasionally descended into chaos. One time, a German drummer, old enough to be my dad, asked me to sit on his lap while we listened to the records. When I didn’t see the funny side, he sniggered at my rebuttal and asked if I was having my period. So I walked out, leaving him with his embarrassed band mate in a room shocked into silence.

A year or so later, the editor who scolded me would help bring about my eventual redundancy after I started to retaliate against a toxic male colleague. This man, previously a friend who’d tried to date me, bullied and ostracised me for the entire duration of my employment. I put on a brave face, cried in the toilets and still managed to enjoy my work. But when I eventually reacted, I was blamed for aggravating the situation, and the magazine let me go.

I spent the next eight years escalating my freelance career and writing books. I waded in the ocean with The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft, toasted a Chicago sunrise on tour with Alice in Chains, went snowboarding with a young British band in California, tripped over Jarvis Cocker at his own house party, and gratefully received a pair of secondhand John Fluevog sandals from the closet of Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon in New York. But my confidence remained dented until I published my first academic article in the early 2000s.

Forgive me then, for baulking when Mossman describes herself as “a small girl sitting on the knee of Father Rock” at her first job for the now-defunct UK music monthly, The Word.

While I’m sure she’s attempting to describe a more supportive, paternalistic workplace environment than the one I endured, she is nevertheless referring to a situation in which she, too, was the only woman in a small team of men. In her case, a generational divide reinforced the sense of male authority which left her wondering “who I was without these men, and who I would be”.

Years before Mossman met him, one of the men she mentions reportedly claimed women were unable to write effectively about music. I once encountered him too, and found him to be smooth, charming and arrogant, with the ruthless attitude of a tabloid journalist.

Working with men like this produced some of the worst experiences of my career. Luckily, such occasions were rare, but could be significant. Bands never saw the bigger picture, of manipulated stories and doctored headlines, but their lives were directly affected by decisions made by people they’d often never met.

I remember once having a conversation with Kurt Cobain about power and the media, and telling him journalists like me could only do so much. Ultimately, we were at the mercy of our editors, which is why I tried to pick mine wisely. Musicians don’t have the choice. Under contract with record labels, they are legally obliged to engage with the media and must take what’s on offer. I’d known Nirvana before they were famous, and watching Kurt develop from a shy, goofy kid into a cynical megastar persecuted by the press was heartbreaking.

Part of the reason Mossman’s book sits uneasily with me is because it appears to ignore the hard-won heritage of female music journalists, and the struggles women like me had in the workplace. Deferring to big daddy editors and accommodating the fragile egos of doddery rock gods feels too much like turning the clock back.

More interested in her

Interestingly, at the back of her book, an intriguing detail lies almost buried in the acknowledgments. Here, Mossman says she recently learned her mother was responsible for introducing a bunch of records she thought had belonged to her dad into the family home.

This untold chapter of Mossman’s story speaks volumes about women and rock culture. Swinging like a loose thread, it threatens to unravel so much of what we have come to accept about the world of rock and the stories of its appointed gods.

Hence my other frustration with the book. While Mossman is a critically acclaimed journalist and former Mercury prize judge, nothing can fire my interest in men such as former Journey singer Steve Perry, or the insufferable Sting. I simply don’t care about them. I’m much more interested in her.

Had Mossman developed the snippets of memoir she uses to contextualise her interviews, and foregrounded herself instead of her tired old giants, I believe her book would have been much more powerful. The strongest, most illuminating passages are when she interrogates her past and mines her personal experiences for clues to her adult obsession with the old guys.

Her teenage infatuation with Queen, her discomfort with the irreverence of 1990s pop culture, her desperate need for parental approval, the peculiar sense of shame she feels in writing about people she loves. The way she listens to music through her father’s “imaginary ears”, the energy writing affords her. All of this outshines the perpetually recycled male rock-star myths, no matter how well Mossman interprets them.

Perhaps in trying to convince the reader to share her love for middle-of-the-road musicians, Bruce Hornsby and Glen Campbell, both of whom had their heyday before she was born, Mossman is still trapped in her teenage cycle of needing her parents to approve of Queen. If so, I hope she manages to shake this off and step more fully into her own story with conviction and faith. With her talent, a full-blown memoir would be a runaway bestseller.

In many ways, Mossman’s book highlights the limits of music journalism as a genre. Her long-form profiles are detailed sketches rather than complex studies, reflecting the fleeting nature of the interview format. Ultimately, even with a fascinating subject, this type of interaction will always be a superficial exercise and therefore something of a game.

For Mossman, with her obsessive fan tendencies, this may be hard to accept, but faced with Sting’s smooth professionalism, she has no choice. “There is a desire for connection that drives every interview,” she writes, “and with Sting, it was a connection I never got.”

For me, ten years of music journalism was enough. By 1998, I’d met everyone I wanted to meet and there were only five or six bands I still wanted to hang out with. I was ready to expand my writing skills and deepen my understanding of the human psyche. Funnily enough, given Mossman’s interest in Jungian theory, I retrained as a Jungian psychotherapist.

An elitist boys’ club

I wasn’t the only one to quit music journalism after the 1990s. With magazines folding left, right and centre, many writers moved onto other careers. One of them was John Harris, now a political and arts columnist for The Guardian. We met briefly at the NME during my six-month stint as its rock correspondent, and occasionally ran into each other at Britpop gigs with mutual friends.

Now, NME is an online platform full of celebrity gossip and brimming with ads. But in the early 1990s it still held currency, for emerging bands and music fans alike. So when the editor invited me to interview Alice in Chains and Screaming Trees on tour in America, I was excited.

I arrived at the NME office fresh from the friendly clamour of Kerrang! magazine, and the first thing that struck me was the silence. Everywhere I looked, studious-looking guys with neat haircuts sat typing furiously away at their desks. There was no music, no talking – and, apart from the secretary, no women.

I soon discovered the few female writers who managed to find a way in were either resented (like me), or given “special dispensation”, whatever that meant.

It all seemed so weirdly petty, like an elitist boys’ club. I hated it.

On one occasion, I refused to disclose the location of a secret Hole gig – at the band’s request. I was punished for my disloyalty to the paper by not being allowed to review it. Another time, a couple of journalists offered to “help” me with a two-part feature on the Riot Grrrl movement, even though I’d single-handedly managed to gain the trust of some of the key women on the scene, all of whom despised the male-dominated music press.

The final straw came in the form of a commission to interview Aerosmith. Asked to “get the drug stories”, I argued for a more original angle: by then, the band was clean. But I was shut down and told to be “more humble”.

Needless to say, after spending a lovely afternoon laughing about outlandish but predictable druggy adventures with Aerosmith band members Joe Perry and Steven Tyler (who tried to steal my fake fur coat), I filed my copy and walked away from the NME with my head held as high as it would go.

Autistic and thriving with music

After freelancing for the NME, Harris went on to work for monthly music titles Q and Select. Now, he’s an award-winning journalist with a string of books to his name. His latest one, Maybe I’m Amazed: A Story of Love and Connection in Ten Songs, is his fifth, and arguably his most important work to date.

Harris’ memoir is a beautiful, heartwarming, enlightening and uplifting book that chronicles the profound impact of music on the life of an autistic child. It captures the grief and frustration of two loving parents as they struggle with the UK’s broken education system and underfunded health services, on behalf of their son. And it details the individual nature of autism and the multiple, miraculous ways an autistic person can flourish when given the right support.

As first-time parents, Harris and his partner Ginny, a former press officer with Parlophone Records, are not aware of any issues with their baby, James. He’s a little slow to speak and has some cute, characterful quirks, but nothing seems out of the ordinary until their daughter Rosa is born and the family moves from Wales to Somerset.

Slow to adapt to the new changes in his life, James begins to exhibit ritualistic behaviours that concern Harris. Three weeks after James starts attending his new nursery, Ginny is told her son might be autistic. Suddenly, she and Harris are plunged into a brutal spin of fear, anxiety, guilt, denial and fundamental uncertainty.

Together, the family embarks on a punitive round of tests and assessments as the tyranny of diagnosis takes hold. At first, supportive frameworks carry the weight of a heavy sentence. But Harris and Ginny immerse themselves in research and fact-finding missions to educate themselves about autism. After investing a significant amount of time and money, they manage to establish a viable routine to help James thrive.

It’s not an easy journey. Setbacks, personnel changes and bureaucratic complications are ever-present, but with a small team of specially trained, caring individuals, James makes progress. Meanwhile, as a lifelong music lover, Harris becomes increasingly aware of the profound relationships his son is developing with certain songs by particular bands. Kraftwerk, The Beatles and Mott the Hoople all exert a steadying influence on James, enabling him to communicate in ways he cannot through verbal language.

A visit from musician Billy Bragg, with whom Harris organises an annual talks tent for Glastonbury Festival, results in James actually making music himself. This leads to keyboard lessons and a slot at the school concert. By the time he enters his teens, James is playing bass, and looking every inch the rock star.

Structurally, Harris has produced a masterclass in memoir, seamlessly blending the past with the present. Cleverly shifting between his own life in music and his son’s, he charts his teenage years as a mod, his ill-fated band’s only performance and his forays into music journalism – all of which he now values anew in the context of parenting James.

He describes how the pair share their joy in gigs and experience the deep bond of making music together, sometimes with Rosa on drums. Watching his child come alive through rhythm and melody, Harris finds himself re-enchanted by music and uncovers the wonder of parenting through unexpected and creative channels.

The book delivers a wealth of information about the vast and complicated spectrum of autism, taking a deep dive into medical theories and the world of neurology. By weaving this complex material into his personal experience of huge emotional and practical challenges, Harris keeps it relatable. In many ways, he has forged a map, complete with a beacon of hope: albeit an individualised one. Informative, enriching and engaging, his story of love, persistence and hard-won daily miracles is music writing at its absolute best.

Wildly disparate in content, both Harris’ and Mossman’s books show how music can define us. In this way, their narratives speak to us all.

They remind me of a time when I couldn’t leave home without a Walkman and a spare set of batteries. They take me back to when I was a teenager, when music shaped my social life, determined my image and gave me the courage to withstand an emotionally abusive upbringing. And they return me to my twenties, when music powered my glamorous first career and launched me into a lifelong creative practice.

Ultimately, they remind me the pulse beneath my writing still belongs to music. And who knows? Maybe I’ll expand on that one day.

Liz Evans 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. Friday essay: I loved being a ‘90s rock journalist, but sometimes it was a boys’ club nightmare – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-i-loved-being-a-90s-rock-journalist-but-sometimes-it-was-a-boys-club-nightmare-256474

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Shannon Brincat, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of the Sunshine Coast

A modern-day political inquisition is unfolding in “digital town squares” across the United States. The slain far-right activist Charlie Kirk has become a focal point for a coordinated campaign of silencing critics that chillingly echoes one of the darkest chapters in American history.

Individuals who have publicly criticised Kirk or made perceived insensitive comments regarding his death are being threatened, fired or doxed.

Teachers and professors have been fired or disciplined, one for posting that Kirk was racist, misogynistic and a neo-Nazi, another for calling Kirk a “hate-spreading Nazi”.

Journalists have also lost their jobs after making comments about Kirk’s assassination, as has the late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel.

A website called “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” had been posting the names, locations and employers of people saying critical things about Kirk before it was reportedly taken down. Vice President JD Vance has pushed for this public response, urging supporters to “call them out … hell, call their employer”.

This is far-right “cancel culture”, the likes of which the US hasn’t seen since the McCarthy era in the 1950s.

The birth of McCarthyism

The McCarthy era may well have faded in our collective memory, but it’s important to understand how it unfolded and the impact it had on America. As the philosopher George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Since the 1950s, “McCarthyism” has become shorthand for the practice of making unsubstantiated accusations of disloyalty against political opponents, often through fear-mongering and public humiliation.

The term gets its name from Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican who was the leading architect of a ruthless witch hunt in the US to root out alleged Communists and subversives across American institutions.

The campaign included both public and private persecutions from the late 1940s to early 1950s, involving hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Millions of federal employees had to fill out loyalty investigation forms during this time, while hundreds of employees were either fired or not hired. Hundreds of Hollywood figures were also blacklisted.

The campaign also involved the parallel targeting of the LGBTQI+ community working in government – known as the Lavender Scare.

And similar to doxing today, witnesses in government hearings were asked to provide the names of communist sympathisers, and investigators gave lists of prospective witnesses to the media. Major corporations told employees who invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify they would be fired.

The greatest toll of McCarthyism was perhaps on public discourse. A deep chill settled over US politics, with people afraid to voice any opinion that could be construed as dissenting.

When the congressional records were finally unsealed in the early 2000s, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said the hearings “are a part of our national past that we can neither afford to forget nor permit to reoccur”.

Another witch hunt under Trump

Today, however, a similar campaign is being waged by the Trump administration and others on the right, who are stoking fears of the “the enemy within”.

This new campaign to blacklist government critics is following a similar pattern to the McCarthy era, but is spreading much more quickly, thanks to social media, and is arguably targeting far more regular Americans.

Even before Kirk’s killing, there were worrying signs of a McCarthyist revival in the early days of the second Trump administration.

After Trump ordered the dismantling of public Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs, civil institutions, universities, corporations and law firms were pressured to do the same. Some were threatened with investigation or freezing of federal funds.

In Texas, a teacher was accused of guiding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) squads to suspected non-citizens at a high school. A group called the Canary Mission identified pro-Palestinian green-card holders for deportation. And just this week, the University of California at Berkeley admitted to handing over the names of staff accused of antisemitism.

Supporters of the push to expose those criticising Kirk have framed their actions as protecting the country from “un-American”, woke ideologies. This narrative only deepens polarisation by simplifying everything into a Manichean world view: the “good people” versus the corrupt “leftist elite”.

The fact the political assassination of Democratic lawmaker Melissa Hortman did not garner the same reaction from the right reveals a gross double standard at play.

Another double standard: attempts to silence anyone criticising Kirk’s divisive ideology, while being permissive of his more odious claims. For example, he once called George Floyd, a Black man killed by police, a “scumbag”.

In the current climate, empathy is not a “made-up, new age term”, as Kirk once said, but appears to be highly selective.

This brings an increased danger, too. When neighbours become enemies and dialogue is shut down, the possibilities for conflict and violence are exacerbated.

Many are openly discussing the parallels with the rise of fascism in Germany, and even the possibility of another civil war.

A sense of decency?

The parallels between McCarthyism and Trumpism are stark and unsettling. In both eras, dissent has been conflated with disloyalty.

How far could this go? Like the McCarthy era, it partly depends on the public reaction to Trump’s tactics.

McCarthy’s influence began to wane when he charged the army with being soft on communism in 1954. The hearings, broadcast to the nation, did not go well. At one point, the army’s lawyer delivered a line that would become infamous:

Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness […] Have you no sense of decency?

Without concerted, collective societal pushback against this new McCarthyism and a return to democratic norms, we risk a further coarsening of public life.

The lifeblood of democracy is dialogue; its safeguard is dissent. To abandon these tenets is to pave the road towards authoritarianism.

Frank Mols received ARC funding

Gail Crimmins and Shannon Brincat do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Political witch hunts and blacklists: Donald Trump and the new era of McCarthyism – https://theconversation.com/political-witch-hunts-and-blacklists-donald-trump-and-the-new-era-of-mccarthyism-265389

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Elizabeth Reid Boyd, Senior Lecturer School of Arts and Humanities, Edith Cowan University

Lady Godiva – an icon of protest, myth and sensual defiance – has galloped through centuries of our cultural imagination. She is most widely known for the legend of her naked horse ride, in which she supposedly rode through the city of Coventry, England, in nothing but her cascading hair.

According to the popular tale, Godiva pleaded with her husband, Lord Leofric of Mercia, to lift an oppressive tax that threatened to impoverish the people of Coventry.

Leofric issued a provocative challenge: he would only revoke the tax if she rode unclothed through the town. In a gesture of defiance and compassion, she undertook the ride.

The townspeople, in respect, shuttered their windows, except for one man named Tom, who was struck blind. This is where we get the phrase “peeping Tom”. Moved by her courage, Leofric kept his word and abolished the tax – or so the story goes.

While many historians believe this naked ride never actually took place, Godiva, the 11th century noblewoman, was real – as is her enduring influence.

Godiva has been endlessly remixed, from appearances in literature, to art, to music, to comics, and even chocolate.

Although Godiva has historically been objectified, her legacy is ever-evolving. Through parades and processions, political protest, and philanthropic campaigns, fans and activists alike have transformed Godiva into a symbol of resistance.

The lady behind the legend

Countess Godgyfu (meaning “God’s gift” in Old English) was born around 990 CE and died sometime after 1066. She was the only female Anglo-Saxon landowner listed as “tenant-in-chief” in the Domesday book.

According to historian Daniel Donoghue, this implies an exceptionally high noble status and independent authority, suggesting Godiva held her estate by birth, rather than through marriage.

She married Lord Leofric of Mercia, a powerful Saxon military leader. Her Christian piety and philanthropic influence are credited with inspiring the foundation of the monastic site of Coventry’s original cathedral.

Her will included a string of prayer beads – an early reference to the rosary.

Fanning herstory

The legend of the naked horse ride draws from older mythological traditions.

In his book The White Goddess (1948), English writer Robert Graves interprets Godiva as a medieval manifestation of a pagan goddess. Her symbolic nudity and ritualistic ride echo fertility rites and goddess worship.

Like many medieval legends of pagan or folkloric origin, it was transformed into a Christian narrative over time, intertwined with the real history of the philanthropic Countess Godgyfu.

Fandom offers a compelling lens through which to view Godiva, and the ways her story continues to resonate in contemporary culture.

In the 2016 book I’m Buffy and You’re History, author Patricia Pender explores how fandom enables playful and subversive representations of femininity. For instance, Buffy – a female character who nonchalantly slayed vampires, rather than running screaming – subverted expectations. By riding naked, Godiva, too, subverts expectations.

At the same time, feminist scholars have critiqued representations of nude women in culture and the arts as catering to the male gaze, rather than being subversive. Researcher Melisa Yilmaz argues Godiva has been moulded into a passive symbol of erotic spectacle, rather than female empowerment.

Godiva’s image is also commodified globally, most notably by the Godiva chocolatier.

Yet, reinterpretations of her legend through centuries of fandom offer a counter-narrative.

Women who refuse to be shamed

Godiva became very popular in the 19th century. She is featured in a poem by Alfred Tennyson, in pre-Raphaelite paintings, in works by Salvador Dali, and even in a statuette gifted to Prince Albert by Queen Victoria.

She gained renewed popularity through women writers, activists and suffragists. For instance, in the 1870s, British political activist Harriet Martineau told women who feared exposure and condemnation for taking up controversial causes to “think of the Lady Godiva”.

Once such cause at the time was the campaign against the Contagious Diseases Act. This act, which applied only to women, meant police could arrest women assumed to be prostitutes and have them medically examined.

Similarly, social reformist Josephine Butler entitled her 1888 political play The New Godiva. In it, she wrote about the need for a female campaigner to

compare her[self] to Godiva, stripping herself bare of the very vesture of her soul […] exposing herself to something worse than physical torture.

Radical reclamation

Lady Godiva is widely referenced in film and TV. She was the subject of the historical 1955 film Lady Godiva of Coventry, starring Hollywood starlet Maureen O’Hara, and has appeared as a character in shows such as Charmed (1998–2006) and Fantasy Island (1977–84).

Contemporary women authors have also offered up various twists of Godiva’s tale.
In Judith Halberstam’s young adult novel Blue Sky Freedom (1990), for example, Godiva is the name given to an anti-apartheid resistance leader.

In the DC Comics, the character Godiva is a beautiful woman with powerful hair she can control to her advantage.

She shows up in music, too. The cover of Beyonce’s 2022 album, Renaissance, shows the singer astride a holographic horse in a seemingly Godiva-inspired pose – boldly facing the camera.

In Queen’s song Don’t Stop Me Now, Lady Godiva is likened to a racing car:

I’m a racing car, passing by like Lady Godiva
I’m gonna go, go, go, there’s no stopping me.

Coventry city has had an official Lady Godiva, Pru Porretta, for more than three decades. Porretta’s role involves a range of community and philanthropic work.

Godiva’s legacy in Coventry continues through archaeological sites such as the Coventry Cathedral, guided Godiva-themed walks, and public celebrations including the annual three-day Godiva Festival.

Elizabeth Reid Boyd 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. From a naked rider to icon of resistance, the legend of Lady Godiva lives on – https://theconversation.com/from-a-naked-rider-to-icon-of-resistance-the-legend-of-lady-godiva-lives-on-264347

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Tatsuya Amano, Associate Professor, School of the Environment, The University of Queensland

Despite growing calls for diversity, equity and inclusion in science, a new study reveals how deep-rooted disparities continue to shape who gets to contribute to science.

We surveyed 908 environmental scientists from eight countries with varying levels of income and English proficiency. In our study, published in PLOS Biology today, we found that the gender, language and economic background of scientists significantly affect their ability to publish their work, especially in English.

The results are striking. Women publish up to 45% fewer papers in English than men. Female non-native English speakers from lower-income countries publish up to 70% fewer papers in English, compared with a male native English speaker from a high-income country.

This gap doesn’t necessarily reflect individual productivity. Evidence shows it stems from systemic barriers that limit fair participation in science.

The triple disadvantage

Scientific productivity is often measured by the researcher’s number of publications in English. But this metric overlooks the challenges faced by many researchers around the world.

Women already publish fewer articles, receive fewer citations and win fewer grants than men. They are also more likely to take career breaks for caregiving, and are less likely to be involved in collaboration compared with men.

As English is now the common language of science, non-native English speakers face additional hurdles. They spend more time writing papers, and are more likely to have their work rejected and returned for revision due to issues with English. They also often experience anxiety, imposter syndrome and lower satisfaction when conducting science.

Researchers from lower-income countries also struggle with limited funding, fewer opportunities for international collaboration, and travel restrictions.

When these three attributes intersect, the impact is overwhelming.

Taking English out of it

Importantly, when we looked at publications in English and in other languages combined, the productivity gap narrowed significantly.

Non-native English speakers and scientists from lower-income countries often publish more papers overall compared with their native English-speaking, high-income counterparts at the same career stage.

Levelling the playing field

The findings have serious implications for how we should measure the performance of scientists. Metrics based solely on publications in English can misrepresent the true productivity of researchers who face language and economic barriers.

This is especially problematic in hiring, promotion and funding decisions. The number of publications in English often play a dominant role in these, even in countries where English is not widely spoken.

The Declaration on Research Assessment, a worldwide initiative, advocates that research assessment should focus on what is published rather than where it is published. Including publications in languages other than English in research assessment aligns with this policy.

In fact, publications in non-English languages can provide valuable knowledge, especially in fields such as biodiversity conservation. Recognising the importance of publications in various languages would also enrich global scientific understanding and allow us to tackle global challenges more effectively.

Institutions and funders should also consider disadvantages related to linguistic and economic backgrounds in research assessments. For example, the Australian Research Council has a policy that allows researchers to declare career interruptions due to factors such as caregiving or illness.

To level the playing field, this policy should also account for the systemic disadvantages experienced by non-native English speakers and scientists from lower-income countries.

Toward a more inclusive science

Recording the numbers on these disparities is just the first step. Making a real difference in dismantling these systemic barriers will likely require a fundamental shift in how we conduct science.

For example, artificial intelligence (AI) translation is rapidly improving and becoming more widely available. Would we still need to use English as the common language of science in, say, ten years’ time? We can start envisioning a future where everyone, regardless of linguistic background, can write papers in their own language and read any paper in their own language with the help of AI translation.

If you find yourself struggling in science as a woman, a non-native English speaker, or someone from a lower-income country, remember it’s not just you. The challenges you face often come from bigger systemic barriers in science, not personal shortcomings.

Science is fun. Everyone, no matter their background, should have an equal chance to enjoy it. But as science becomes increasingly global, embracing diversity is not just a matter of equity. It’s essential for fostering innovation and addressing the complex challenges facing our world.

Tatsuya Amano receives funding from the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship and Discovery Project.

– ref. Who gets to do science? A demand for English is hurting marginalised researchers – https://theconversation.com/who-gets-to-do-science-a-demand-for-english-is-hurting-marginalised-researchers-264493

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