Category: The Conversation – Global Perspectives

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Scott McLean, Adjunct Associate Professor, University of the Sunshine Coast

Ange Postecoglou has been sacked by two Premier League clubs in four months: Tottenham Hotspur in June (two weeks after winning the Europa League), then Nottingham Forest in October after just 40 days and eight games (with six losses and two draws).

His time at Forest was the shortest non-interim reign in Premier League history.

The Premier League’s average tenure for managers is short and trending shorter, currently around two years.

Remove the combined 15 years of Pep Guardiola (nine years at Manchester City), and Mikel Arteta (six years at Arsenal), and that two-year average plummets for the remaining 18 managers, highlighting a league-level state of constant reset.

So, what does Postecoglou’s latest sacking say about his coaching style, and the team owners and boards who make these decisions?

What is ‘Ange-ball’?

Postecoglou’s playing style, nicknamed “Ange-ball”, is brave, attacking and high-intensity.

It is a style that has delivered multiple league titles and cups across three continents – Australia, Asia and Europe – and the 2015 Asian Cup with the Australian national team.

With the ball, Postecoglou uses “inverted full-backs” (left- and right-sided defenders who can move into midfield to create a numerical advantage), and prioritises quick passes and build-up play from the back rather than playing the ball long.

Without the ball, his sides press high up the field and try to win it back fast, accepting risk in the space left behind the high defensive line.

It’s exciting and effective when executed properly, but is vulnerable if personnel don’t fit key positions or if players are still learning their roles.

It was these vulnerabilities that may have proved his downfall.

Was Nottingham Forest a great fit?

Nuno Espírito Santo, the manager Postecoglou took over from at Forest, was the opposite to “Ange-ball”.

His team was comfortable sitting behind the ball with a compact shape and lower defensive block. With the ball, he prioritised quick and direct counterattacks and a threat at set-pieces (such as corners and free kicks).

Essentially, it was a “minimise chaos” model.

Swapping to Postecoglou’s controlled chaos overnight is like taking a fleet of delivery vans to a Formula One grid.

Which begs a basic question: if Forest wanted instant results, was Postecoglou the right choice for a squad that was recruited and set up to play a contrasting style?

If you change any operating system, you must accept a period of bugs.

Postecoglou’s method asks for lightning-quick centre-backs, midfielders who can resist pressure and keep the ball, and full-backs who can step into midfield.

If you haven’t recruited for that and you don’t allow time for players to learn it, you’re setting the coach up to fail.

It’s telling that £120 million (A$247 million) of Forest’s summer signings were not included in Postecoglou’s final team selection.

Systems change is behaviour change. It needs repetition, role clarity, and a bit of psychological safety.

None of that happens in a few weeks.

Is Postecoglou’s style unsustainable?

Elite sport is a performance business and Postecoglou’s performances were deemed untenable at both Spurs and Forest.

But do proactive coaches like Postecoglou succeed at the very highest level?

Yes, when clubs support the vision. Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal and Roberto De Zerbi’s (former) Brighton all play with brave positioning, pressing and attack-minded structures.

Further, they recruit or develop players who fit that philosophy.

Postecoglou was mostly unwavering in his risk-and-reward style, yet he showed he could adapt. He won the Europa League by playing a more measured and defensive style.

Ultimately, after two years in charge at Tottenham, he was let go after a poor Premier League finish.

Nottingham Forest sacked him minutes after a 3–0 loss to Chelsea, before the players could even take their boots off, let alone settle into their new roles.

Owners, control, and the ‘do something’ button

Sacking a coach provides a visible lever, a perceived control mechanism that calms headlines and fan unrest, even though research on managerial turnover shows in-season changes don’t always generate improvements and can increase performance variance in the short term.

In other words, you might get a brief “new manager bounce” but you also amplify unwanted noise.

In the business world, a new chief executive needs roughly 18 months to show a transformation is working, and about two to three years to complete a full turnaround. And this assumes they can assemble the right team in their first six to nine months, and the board stays the course.

If global businesses give leaders time to show a plan is working, then sacking a football manager after a handful of games isn’t “elite standards” – it’s absurd.

Either club owners need to rethink their timelines, or they should stop pretending they want real transformation at all.

If owners want true transformation, they must resist reaching for the “do something” button at the first bump and tolerate some initial mess.

Where to from here?

No one more than Postecoglou will understand that from a league results standpoint, he failed at both Spurs and Forest.

Perhaps his full-throttle approach in the world’s toughest league was naive.

It’s hard to know whether other clubs will be put off by these recent sackings and Postecoglou still has a place in top-level management. Time will tell.

Scott McLean is the Director of sports consulting company- Leverage Point Consulting

– ref. Ange Postecoglou’s sackings may say more about the Premier League’s attention span than him – https://theconversation.com/ange-postecoglous-sackings-may-say-more-about-the-premier-leagues-attention-span-than-him-267848

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Andreas Schloenhardt, Professor of Criminal Law, The University of Queensland

The spectacular heist of jewellery from the Louvre museum in Paris has many people wondering how a theft like this could occur in broad daylight and what might happen to the items that were stolen from the museum.

In a matter of minutes, four thieves were able to enter through a first-floor window, break into secure glass displays, and take nine items of jewellery of immeasurable value.

Although an alarm was set off and museum guards were nearby, the thieves were able to escape quickly, using motor bikes to get away. They dropped one stolen item, a diamond and emerald-encrusted royal crown that had belonged to Empress Eugénie, Napoleon III’s wife.

Their loot include jewellery from French imperial times – brooches, necklaces, earrings and a tiara. The French prosecutor’s office said the jewels were worth some 88 million euros (A$157 million), not including their historical value.

The speed and professionalism of the heist shows this was a well-planned crime, carried out by highly skilled perpetrators. That suggests they are linked to organised criminal groups.

Several media outlets reported a number of smaller thefts from French museums in recent weeks, including gold nuggets from the Paris Natural History Museum. There is no suggestion these thefts were linked to the Louvre heist.

What might happen to the loot?

The stolen jewellery includes well-known pieces that are easily recognisable. This will make it difficult, if not impossible, to sell them on the black market, even to well-heeled collectors and buyers.

This problem is well-known from other museum heists – such as the theft of the Canadian “Big Maple Leaf” giant gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum in 2017 or the famous heist of 13 masterpieces by Degas, Manet and Rembrandt from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990. Those paintings have never been recovered.

Instead, most experts believe one of two scenarios are more likely.

In the first, the jewellery would be broken down into smaller pieces. Diamonds and other gemstones may be taken out, altered and then offered for sale. Silver and gold may be used to manufacture other pieces or may be sold separately.

This scenario would make it easy to conceal the origin of the pieces and sell them openly or online. The combined value, however, would be significantly lower compared to leaving the pieces intact. It is thus doubtful the thieves targeted the specific jewellery for this purpose.

Scenario two would involve the thieves, or more likely the masterminds behind them, trying to sell the pieces back to the Louvre or trying to extort money from the French government for their return.

This may be done through brokers or other middlemen and may not happen for a while, until there is less public and media attention and the perpetrators feel sufficiently safe to contact – directly or indirectly – museum or state authorities.

Given the historical significance of the pieces coupled with the embarrassment caused by the heist, the Louvre and the French government would be keen to have the pieces returned as swiftly as possible and might be willing to negotiate, albeit secretively.

Much of this remains, however, speculation. Only a few days have passed since the heist occurred and many questions about the events, perpetrators and their motives remain unanswered. And just who may be behind this spectacular heist from France’s largest museum has everyone guessing.

Similarities with a Dresden museum heist

The Louvre theft brings to mind the jewellery heist at the Green Vault at the Zwinger Palace in Dresden, Germany, in 2019.

In this case, the perpetrators had closely examined the museum’s security system for many days and were able to enter the building without being caught on camera. They entered through a window on the first floor and within minutes stole 21 pieces of jewellery from several displays.

Unlike the Paris heist, the Dresden thieves entered at night and used brute force to damage the displays to take their loot.

Some years after the robbery, German authorities were able to identify and arrest the thieves involved in the heist – all five were members of a notorious Berlin-based crime family.

The perpetrators have since been tried and convicted and are serving long jail times. Most of the jewellery was retrieved and returned – unaltered – to its famous home.

It is hoped the French authorities will soon be similarly successful.

Andreas Schloenhardt 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. What will happen to the Louvre jewellery after the heist? There are two likely scenarios – https://theconversation.com/what-will-happen-to-the-louvre-jewellery-after-the-heist-there-are-two-likely-scenarios-267966

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Adam Simpson, Visiting Scholar at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University; Senior Lecturer, International Studies, University of South Australia

Sanae Takaichi has made history by becoming Japan’s first female prime minister. However, this was hardly a win for feminist or progressive politics.

Takaichi is a right-wing ultraconservative whose policy positions derive from traditionalist perspectives on the role of women, Japanese history and society more broadly.

She has the same anti-immigrant positions as conservatives and right-wing populists the world over, defending “national identity and traditional values”, while emphasising the importance of strong economic growth.

Far from solving Japan’s economic problems, however, policies that restrict immigration tend to cause labour shortages and inflation.

Japan is the canary in the coalmine for many developed countries suffering a
demographic crisis due to falling birth rates. Japan’s population has declined for 16 consecutive years.

Unless Takaichi adopts a more pragmatic approach on immigration, her tenure could be one of economic stasis and relative decline.

How did Takaichi become prime minister?

Takaichi was elected leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party earlier this month. Her rise to prime minister was delayed, however, when the LDP’s junior partner, the Komeito party, withdrew from the governing coalition over the LDP’s handling of a political funding scandal.

The LDP has minorities in both the upper and lower houses of Japan’s Diet, or parliament, and requires coalition partners to govern.

After extensive negotiations that will require compromises from all sides, the right-wing Japan Innovation Party, known as Ishin, agreed to support Takaichi and her LDP-led government.

However, the new coalition is still two seats short of a majority in the lower house and will require additional parliamentary support. This means Takaichi’s minority government will be more precarious and constrained than previous governments.

Japan’s demographic crisis

Japan’s population peaked at around 128 million in 2008 and has steadily declined ever since. It’s around 124 million today.

Last year, the fertility rate (the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime) fell to a record low of 1.15.

Under current projections, Japan’s population is expected to fall to 87 million by 2070 and 63 million by 2100, when only half the population will be of working age.

The issue is therefore not simply one of a declining population, but also an ageing population, with rising pension and medical costs. Many professions in Japan, such as teachers, doctors and caregivers, are already facing acute labour shortages.

Immigration as a political lightning rod

While previous governments have acknowledged the declining population is a significant problem, they have done little to address the issue. Various initiatives have brought foreign residents or workers into the country, but there has been a reluctance under LDP governments to introduce programs with the scale and commitment – in terms of integrating immigrants into Japanese society – to make a significant difference.

This means these programs have had only modest success. Japan’s number of foreign-born residents reached a record high of 3.6 million this year, representing around 3% of the population. But this is far lower than many other developed economies.

This increased foreign population has resulted in a record number of “foreign” babies being born in Japan, with Chinese, Filipino and Brazilian mothers topping the list. This has somewhat offset the
declining figures for newborns from Japanese parents.

Japan’s tourism industry is also booming, with almost 37 million visitors coming last year.

Taken together, this increasing number of foreigners in Japan has resulted in the rise of anti-immigrant parties and policies, including the far-right Sanseito party. This, in turn, prompted the LDP to move further to the right to avoid losing votes to Sanseito and other populist parties.

This partly explains why Takaichi’s nationalist rhetoric has resonated with the ageing conservative LDP base.

Takaichi advocates for foreign workers in specified fields where the country has labour shortages, albeit under strict criteria (such as Japanese language ability, training and oversight). And she opposes the mass settlement of immigrants, or the large-scale granting of political rights to foreign residents.

While her policies have so far been short on detail, she has framed foreigners as a danger to national cohesion that needs to be strictly controlled.

Pro-natalist policies pushed instead

Across the world, older populations tend to be more susceptible to anti-immigrant scare campaigns from right-wing conservative media and politicians.

Japan is no exception. Politicians such as Takaichi, therefore, see electoral benefits in colouring immigration and foreigners as a threat to social harmony or cultural heritage.

Unfortunately, as a result, ageing countries like Japan that are most in need of immigration are often the most resistant to it.

Instead, many right-wing conservatives in these countries promote pro-natalist policies – encouraging women from the dominant racial or ethnic group to have more babies – as a solution that boosts populations and maintains cultural and racial homogeneity.

Hungary is one such example. The right-wing nationalist government of Viktor Orban has provided generous financial benefits to parents at a cost of around 5% of Hungary’s GDP. Though Hungary’s birth rate was above the European average in 2023, it has fallen since then.

Conservatives are pushing Japan to take a similar pro-natalist approach rather than rely on increased immigration.

With Takaichi as prime minister, Japan is unlikely to see an improvement in women’s independence and status in society, a significant rise in birth rates, or increased immigration. Japan’s demographic crisis is therefore set to continue, and probably worsen, in the foreseeable future.

Adam Simpson 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. Japan’s economy needs foreign workers, not the nationalist approach pushed by its new leader – https://theconversation.com/japans-economy-needs-foreign-workers-not-the-nationalist-approach-pushed-by-its-new-leader-267417

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Kinda Alsamara, Lecturer in the School of Languages and Cultures, The University of Queensland

Women’s political participation is often treated as a measure of a country’s commitment to equality and democracy.

Earlier this year, Syria’s new leader, President Ahmed al-Sharaa, described his country as moving in a “democratic direction” after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship in late 2024. He said:

If democracy means that the people decide who will rule them and who represents them in the parliament, then, yes, Syria is going in this direction.

Yet, in Syria’s recent parliamentary elections, women only won six seats in the 210-member body. Exclusion was not merely reflected in the outcome, it was engineered into the very structure of the process.

A long history of marginalisation

Assad ruled Syria with an iron fist for more than two decades through widespread repression, war crimes and systematic violence against civilians.

Parliamentary elections were highly controlled, with Assad’s Ba’ath Party and its allies dominating every vote. Women held between 6% and 13% of seats from 1981 to the end of Assad’s tenure, according to estimates from a global organisation of national parliaments.

Although the parliament had little real power, it served to legitimise Assad’s rule through the appearance of a democratic process.

In December 2024, al-Sharaa’s Islamist-led coalition took advantage of the power vacuum created by the decline of Iran’s regional influence and the collapse of its allied armed groups to oust Assad and dissolve Syria’s symbolic legislature.

Al-Sharaa’s rise was initially hailed as a potential turning point toward political reform and reconciliation. However, early signs suggest that entrenched patterns of marginalisation – especially of women – are continuing to shape Syria’s politics.

How women (and others) were sidelined

The recent parliamentary elections in early October did not factor in the people’s will, nor were they permitted to vote. They weren’t involved in the process at all.

Instead, the elections were overseen by a government body called the Supreme Judicial Committee for Elections, appointed by al-Sharaa. Its composition was revealing: nine men and only two women.

The process was complicated and deliberately exclusionary. The Supreme Judicial Committee was tasked with forming electoral subcommittees around the country, which then reviewed applicants for individuals to be appointed to electoral colleges. Only those selected were allowed to participate in the voting process or nominate candidates.

Ordinary citizens had no direct role in the election.

Under this framework, the electoral colleges selected representatives for two-thirds of the parliament seats. Al-Sharaa will appoint the remaining third.

Unsurprisingly, women’s representation in the subcommittees was minimal. Drawing on raw figures published on the official Syrian election website, women only constituted about 11% of all subcommittee members (18 out of roughly 180 nationwide).

Even where women did have decent representation, no female parliamentarians were elected. In Damascus, for example, women comprised nearly a third of the registered applicants (44 out of 145) for the electoral college and a third of the local subcommittee members. Yet, not a single woman from the capital was elected.

Minority representation was also limited. Of the 119 members elected so far, only ten belong to religious or ethnic minorities, including Kurds, Alawites and Christians (who won just two seats). Christians are believed to make up 10% of Syria’s 24 million population.

Previous research on gender and political institutions has shown that exclusionary electoral structures tend to produce exclusionary outcomes. Syria’s case fits this broader pattern.

Syrian officials have explained women’s exclusion as a cultural matter. Mohammad Taha al-Ahmad, the head of the Supreme Judicial Committee for Elections, appeared on television to express “surprise” at the low number of female candidates, attributing it a society that traditionally views politics as the domain of men. He said the results also reflected alliances (based on established male networks) that formed among members of the subcommittees.

While such attitudes undoubtedly shape gender dynamics, they cannot by themselves account for the low participation of women in the election.

Women were constrained from the outset. Invoking “culture” shifts the blame away from the institutional barriers.

Ultimately, this was not a free or fair election. When women’s involvement is reduced to symbolic inclusion under state supervision, elections cease to be instruments of representation and become performances of legitimacy.

What can be done?

Reversing this pattern requires more than rhetoric. There must be institutional reform, including:

• gender quotas that reserve a proportion of candidacies or seats for women, allowing them to gain political experience and visibility

• increased funding, training and local networking initiatives to help women build community-based constituencies

• reforming electoral processes to move toward more direct, transparent voting that limits alliances among elites and presidential control

• instituting new school curricula and civil society programs that normalise women’s participation in public life and challenge gendered perceptions of political leadership.

Until such reforms are enacted, Syria’s elections will continue to reflect not popular will, but the entrenched hierarchies of a state that governs through exclusion.

The authors 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. Syria’s new leader promised democracy. Then he excluded women from parliamentary elections – https://theconversation.com/syrias-new-leader-promised-democracy-then-he-excluded-women-from-parliamentary-elections-267625

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Dennis Altman, Vice Chancellor’s Fellow and Professorial Fellow, Institute for Human Security and Social Change, La Trobe University

The latest allegations against Prince Andrew, in Virginia Giuffre’s book Nobody’s Girl, and reports that he and his wife, the Duchess of York, maintained contact with Jeffrey Epstein after his conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, present an ongoing problem for the royal family.

Giuffre, who died by suicide earlier this year, accused Andrew of sexually assaulting her on three occasions when she was 17. He has repeatedly denied the accusations.

King Charles moved swiftly, ordering his brother to forsake both his title of royal highness and surrender the other orders of nobility that are bestowed on children of the monarch, whether deserved or not.

The removal of royal titles from Prince Andrew – still his name – is hardly the first time the royals have been ruthless in pursuit of respectability. Like other royal families who have survived into the 21st century, they combine celebrity with a keen sense of self-preservation.

History suggests that when scandal strikes, the royal instinct is to remove embarrassments from public view. This is more difficult when dealing with adults in an era of celebrity journalism. When Prince John, son of George V (who was king from 1910-1936), was found to be epileptic, he was carefully removed from public view and even from contact with his family. John died aged 14 and is largely forgotten.

More distressing was the revelation through a television documentary that two cousins of Queen Elizabeth II who had intellectual disabilities were institutionalised and ignored by the family, although the palace has denied this.

But these are minor examples compared to the scandals surrounding the abdication of Edward VIII, the refusal to allow Princess Margaret to marry Peter Townsend and the very public exile of Prince Harry to California. It seems the second in line to the throne has a peculiarly troubled life, as Prince Harry made clear in his memoir, Spare.

Those scandals all revolved around unsuitable marriages: Edward abdicated when he was forbidden to marry Wallis Simpson; Margaret finally married Tony Armstrong Jones and subsequently divorced him; Harry’s defection from Britain was the direct consequence of his marriage to Meghan Markle.

But whereas Edward could not marry a divorced woman, Charles divorced Diana while heir to the throne and after her death married his long-time mistress, Camilla. In time, Camilla has gone from being excoriated as “the other woman” to a widely accepted queen.

One has to go back a century at least to find a royal prince whose alleged behaviour is so clearly reprehensible – and presumably criminal – as that of Andrew. That he has escaped prosecution is itself troubling, although he paid Guiffre a very considerable settlement while maintaining his total innocence.

Like Harry, Andrew can only be removed from the line of succession by an act of parliament, but he is, after all, only eighth in line to the throne. The king has clearly decided Andrew will no longer be part of the official royal family, unlike his other siblings Anne and Edward.

Perhaps luckily, the prince cannot be shipped off to become a colonial governor, as was the fate of the Duke of Windsor during the second world war. Andrew will presumably be left to his own devices in the grounds of Windsor Castle, banished from family gatherings, which are always at the mercy of the paparazzi.

Hard questions may be asked about the cost to the British taxpayer of maintaining Andrew and Sarah, who live in a luxurious lodge and presumably are well cared for by servants. The British public seem largely unconcerned at the cost of maintaining even non-working members of “the firm”, rather as Australians rarely question the cost of maintaining seven vice-regal residences to maintain the fiction we are a monarchy.

Will this scandal affect the position of the royals? Almost certainly not: in Britain, as in Australia, the enthusiasm for abandoning constitutional monarchy appears to be declining. People can separate their outrage at Andrew from their respect for the monarchy, which is helped by the rise of populist autocrats such as US President Donald Trump.

When Trump visited Britain last month, he was a guest of Charles, who used his role as head of state consummately to flatter Trump with pomp and ceremony, while making clear he did not endorse all his positions.

With the popular William and Kate patiently waiting their turn, the British monarchy is likely to manage even a scandal as great as this one.

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Dennis Altman is the author of God Save the Queen: the strange persistence of monarchies, Scribe 2021.

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If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available. In Australia, you can contact Lifeline at 13 11 14 for confidential support.

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

– ref. How damaging to the royal family is the scandal surrounding Prince Andrew? – https://theconversation.com/how-damaging-to-the-royal-family-is-the-scandal-surrounding-prince-andrew-267983

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By David Smith, Associate Professor in American Politics and Foreign Policy, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

On November 5 the US Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments about the legality of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. As important as the tariff issue is, the stakes are much higher than that.

Trump has been claiming vast powers, at the expense of other branches of government, on the grounds of various “emergencies”. He has used these claims to justify sending troops to US cities and deporting non-citizens without due process under a law dating from 1798.

Trump imposed sweeping global tariffs under the auspices of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977. Most legal experts agree, and so far three lower courts have ruled, that this act gives him no such power.

This case now presents an important test of the Supreme Court’s willingness to impose limits on Trump’s emergency powers.

The powers Trump is claiming

The US Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to set tariffs. Since the 1930s, Congress has passed a series of laws granting presidents the authority to adjust existing tariffs and deploy them to protect industries that are crucial to US national security.

The tariffs Trump has imposed this year go beyond the powers any previous president has had.

Some of Trump’s tariffs on goods in specific sectors such as steel and aluminium are authorised under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act because of their importance to military industries.

But to justify blanket tariff rates on entire countries, regardless of the goods involved, Trump has turned to the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA).

This allows the president to block economic transactions and freeze assets after declaring an emergency. These actions usually target hostile powers or individuals. An emergency is an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US, originating “in whole or substantial part outside the United States”.

Trump originally claimed tariffs against Canada, Mexico and China were necessary to force those countries stop the traffic in fentanyl, which causes more than 70,000 overdose deaths in the US every year. Yet less than 1% of the fentanyl that enters the US comes from Canada.

For the “liberation day” tariffs affecting every other country in the world, Trump declared the annual US trade deficit in goods constituted “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States”.

This trade deficit has been running since 1976, and it widened during Trump’s first administration.

The court case

The Trump administration is being sued by a group of small businesses that have been hurt by the 2025 tariffs, and which claim Trump had no right to impose them. They are supported by a bipartisan group of legal scholars.

Two federal courts and the US Court of International Trade have so far ruled IEEPA does not give the president the power to set tariffs.

The IEEPA was an amendment to the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act, which the then president Richard Nixon used to impose 10% import tariffs during a trade crisis in 1971. The Trump administration has argued that because those tariffs were upheld by courts, Trump’s are also valid.

But the IEEPA, passed in 1977 following post-Watergate reforms of emergency powers, was intended to limit executive power, not expand it.

In the words of a report from the House Committee on International Relations that underpinned the reforms, “emergencies are by their nature rare and brief, and are not to be equated with normal ongoing problems”.

What will the Supreme Court do?

The weakness of the administration’s legal arguments is reflected in Trump’s public statements about why the Supreme Court must uphold his tariffs. These statements increasingly read like blackmail notes. He has said striking down the tariffs would “literally destroy the United States of America”.

As well as bringing in billions of dollars in revenue, Trump claims five of the eight wars he has supposedly ended were thanks to tariff leverage, and “if they took away tariffs, then they’ve taken away our national security”.

Striking down tariffs could be economically disruptive. It would weaken US leverage in trade negotiations, and raise the possibility of large tariff refunds.

These threats may persuade conservative Supreme Court justices who already take an expansive view of executive power, and who have so far enabled Trump’s accumulation of it.

However, the one area where Supreme Court conservatives might be willing to limit Trump’s powers is where they interfere with economic orthodoxy.

In a ruling allowing Trump to fire commissioners of some small, independent agencies, the court also appeared to protect members of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, because of its “distinct historical tradition”.

The Supreme Court has since temporarily blocked Trump’s attempt to fire one of the Federal Reserve governors, Lisa Cook. The judges may also decide that allowing a president to impose unlimited new taxes is a step too far.

Even if the Supreme Court does strike down the IEEPA tariffs, Trump is unlikely to abandon tariffs as a policy tool. They are a core part of his identity.

The administration has already vowed that if it loses in the Supreme Court, it will find other ways to impose tariffs under different laws that “have the same effect”.

The significance of the Supreme Court’s decision may not be about the tariffs themselves, but about whether it recognises any limit to presidential power.

David Smith 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 Supreme Court showdown looms for Trump’s tariffs. Will it limit presidential power? – https://theconversation.com/a-supreme-court-showdown-looms-for-trumps-tariffs-will-it-limit-presidential-power-267630

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Dean J. Miller, Senior Lecturer, Appleton Institute, HealthWise Research Group, CQUniversity Australia

Has a camouflaged athlete running on a dirt road ever shouted health advice through your phone? Sometimes these videos are motivational and get you off the couch to start exercising; sometimes they’re educational. But can their advice help us civilians?

Let’s look at what it means to follow the “military sleep method”. There are various versions circulating on social media, including claims it can help you drop off in two minutes.

It certainly sounds appealing.

I research sleep and the body clock. And in field work, I have been part of several high-performance environments, helping athletes and military personnel counter fatigue and jet lag, and to get better sleep.

Here’s why the military sleep method might work for soldiers. But could it also work for you?

Just 3 steps to sleep?

The military sleep method, as the name suggests, is meant to help military personnel prime their body for sleep, regardless of the environment.

The first mention of the method is credited to a sports performance book called Relax and Win.

Reports of the military sleep method can vary slightly depending on the source. But three key components remain consistent:

1. progressive muscle relaxation: contracting and relaxing the muscles of the face, then the shoulders and arms, before moving down through the chest and legs

2. controlled breathing: breathing is slowed and controlled, emphasising longer exhalations

3. visualisation: imagining a calm environment, such as floating on calm water or lying in a quiet field.

Is this science or folklore?

As you may expect, the militaries of the world are not publishing their sleep techniques in open access journals. So there are no specific validations of the military sleep method in mainstream science.

So, let’s compare it to the recommended first-line treatment for insomnia, known as cognitive behaviour therapy for insomnia, or CBT-I.

This involves several key components:

1. cognitive therapy: challenging unrealistic beliefs and worries about sleep

2. stimulus control: strengthening the bed–sleep connection by avoiding non-sleep activities in bed and only lying down when sleepy

3. sleep restriction: initially limiting time in bed to build sleep pressure

4. sleep hygiene: maintaining healthy routines and environments, such as limiting caffeine and alcohol, keeping a consistent schedule, and making the bedroom a relaxing space, not associated with other activities

5. relaxation techniques: using techniques such as mindfulness, progressive muscle relaxation, or breathing, to reduce arousal and help you fall asleep.

Sounds familiar?

Notice the similarities between the military sleep method and CBT-I? Some context is also similar. For instance, soldiers may be sleep deprived, and sleep restriction is part of CBT-I. They have also been trained to have strong control of their thoughts, and CBT-I uses cognitive therapy.

Differences between the two also relate to the high-performance military environment. For instance, defence personnel will have no control of their sleep hygiene.

In other words, think of the military sleep method as sharing aspects of CBT-I, but tailored to defence personnel and focusing on three things they can control.

Can you really fall asleep in 2 minutes?

Based on these similarities, it is entirely possible the steps outlined in the military sleep method can help most of us fall asleep faster. But do we really need to fall asleep in two minutes?

In an unfortunate hit to the ego, most of us are not high-performance personnel. It is unlikely we experience the psychological and physiological demands the military sleep method was intended for. So for civilians, falling asleep in two minutes is an unrealistic goal.

As a general guideline, consistently falling asleep within eight minutes is considered unusual, and consistently falling asleep within five minutes can be a sign of excessive daytime sleepiness.

For civilians working nine-to-five and maintaining a regular schedule, falling asleep within ten to 20 minutes is considered normal.

But if you are a shift-worker, new parent, or have a diagnosed sleep disorder, these numbers may not apply.

So, should I sleep like a soldier?

Soldiers are trained extensively on how their physiology functions in challenging environments. The aim of this training is to give them as much control over their bodies as possible, including how best to fall asleep.

The military sleep method is a catchy way to package healthy sleep techniques. In practice it’s a blend of tools already grounded in sleep science (relaxation, breathing and visualisation).

It won’t harm your sleep to try it, but shift the goalposts away from the two-minute target.

If you’re fixated on falling asleep within two minutes, and start worrying when you don’t, that very worry can make it harder to sleep.

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If you’re having ongoing problems with your sleep, or suspect you may have a sleep disorder, see a medical professional, such as your GP, for advice and assessment. If needed, they’ll refer you to a sleep specialist.

Dean J. Miller 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. Will the ‘military sleep method’ really help me fall asleep in 2 minutes? – https://theconversation.com/will-the-military-sleep-method-really-help-me-fall-asleep-in-2-minutes-265193

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Gwyneth Peaty, Research Fellow, School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry, Curtin University

Historically, horror films have been popular during times of social upheaval, as they allow audiences to work through collective cultural anxieties by tapping into their greatest fears. And “fear” is often built around ideas of what is “abnormal” – that is, different from socially constructed norms.

Throughout horror film history, disability has often been used as a visual shorthand marking the boundary between normal and abnormal.

Disability has long featured problematically as a metaphor for horror, evil or monstrosity. But a new wave of filmmakers are using horror to reflect on the lived experiences of people with disability.

Obsessive avengers

In horror, people with physical or intellectual disability often feature as villains driven by an obsessive desire for revenge on a world that caused their pain. We see this trope repeated in a number of slasher films from the 1970s and ‘80s, including Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th (1980), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974).

Disability film scholar Martin Norden describes this horror archetype as the obsessive avenger:

an egomaniacal sort, almost always a male, who does not rest until he has his revenge on those he holds responsible for his disablement and/or violating his moral code in some other way.

This connection between disability and villainy is no accident. In preparing for his role as Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, actor Gunnar Hansen observed students with intellectual disability at a specialist school, and adopted their mannerisms.

An evolving landscape

Disabled people are speaking out online about how their lives are impacted by harmful stereotypes of disability in the media. And this push for advocacy and awareness has led to shifts in cultural attitudes and film content policies.

In 2018, the British Film Institute announced it would no longer fund films that represent people with facial differences as evil or villainous. This decision was in direct response to the #IAmNotYourVillain campaign run by UK charity Changing Faces.

Under increasing scrutiny, filmmakers have also been called out for using disability as a symbol of horror, evil, or monstrosity.

Warner Bros was forced to apologize in 2020 after Anne Hathaway’s character in The Witches was criticised for stigmatising limb differences. Viewers noticed the resemblance between her “claws” in the film and a real-life genetic condition called ectrodactyly. This led to the #NotAWitch hashtag trending on social media.

Actor Lupita Nyong’o has apologised for using spasmodic dysphonia, a real larynx disorder, as inspiration for her evil doppelganger’s voice in Jordan Peele’s 2019 film Us.

The National Spasmodic Dysphonia Association pointed out:

Spasmodic dysphonia is not a creepy voice; it’s not a scary voice. It’s a disability that people are living with and [they] shouldn’t be judged on.

Also in 2019, director Ari Aster was criticised for using the character of Ruben, a disabled child, for shock value in the horror hit Midsommar. As film critic Emma Madden argued in an article for The Guardian:

In keeping with Aster’s previous film Hereditary, in which physical and mental disability provides a metaphor for trauma and familial dysfunction, the disabled body once again becomes the monstrous body, used to convey a monstrous world.

From monster to hero

Many disabled people are huge fans of horror. The goal of critique is not to destroy monsters, or erase the horror genre, but to reduce its narrative dependence on ableism.

As horror fan Lotto Ramsay points out:

I want to feel horror. I don’t want to be the horror.

Today’s filmmakers are increasingly creating horror stories where the protagonist is disabled – perhaps in response to changing audience expectations and commentary. In doing so, they can interrogate the idea of “normal” in new ways. Some more recent horror films have even framed physical disability as an advantage, such as in Bird Box (2019) and A Quiet Place (2018).

In the slasher film Hush (2016), protagonist Maddie Young (Kate Siegel) is a deaf writer who uses American Sign Language to communicate. Stalked by a vicious killer she can’t hear, Maddie draws the audience into her desperate struggle for survival, encouraging them to identify with a disabled character in a horror context.

Of course, having a disabled protagonist does not guarantee the film will be free from ableism or negative stereotypes. The Advent Calendar (2021), a horror film with a wheelchair user at its centre, falls into old stereotypes by framing disability as something that needs “fixing”.

Just as we can look back on past horror as reflective of outdated attitudes towards race, gender and sexuality, so too does horror reflect the changing social construction of disability.

And this means future horror creators have a chance to tell stories which people with disability can enjoy – rather than feel targeted by.

Katie Ellis receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Gwyneth Peaty 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. The uneasy history of horror films and disability – https://theconversation.com/the-uneasy-history-of-horror-films-and-disability-263344

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Timothy McKenry, Professor of Music, Australian Catholic University

In 1844, Berlin was struck by a cultural fever critics labelled Lisztomania.

The German poet Heinrich Heine coined the term after witnessing the almost delirious reception that greeted Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt in concert halls across Europe.

One widely circulated drawing from the 1840s crystallises the image. Women swoon or faint, others hurl flowers toward the stage. Men also appear to be struck by the pianist’s magnetic presence (or perhaps by the women’s reaction to it).

These caricatured depictions, when paired with antagonistic reviews from contemporary critics, may still shape our cultural memory of Liszt.

He is often depicted not simply as a musician but as the first modern celebrity to unleash mass hysteria.

What happened at Liszt’s concerts?

We know a great deal about Liszt’s hundreds of concerts during the 1830s and ‘40s, thanks to reviews, critiques, lithographs and Liszt’s own letters from the time.

His programs combined works by the great composers with his own inventive reworkings of pieces familiar to audiences. Virtuoso showpieces also demonstrated his command of the piano.

Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata or Pathétique Sonata might appear alongside Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, performed in Liszt’s highly expressive style.

Schubert was represented through songs such as Erlkönig and Ave Maria, reworked for piano alone.

Liszt also turned to the most popular operatic works of his time. His Réminiscences de Norma (Bellini) and Réminiscences de Don Juan (Mozart) transformed familiar melodies into large-scale fantasies. These demanded both virtuosity and lyrical sensitivity.

In these works, Liszt created symphonic structures on the piano. He wove multiple themes into coherent musical dramas far more than simple medleys of well-known tunes.

Liszt often closed his concerts with the crowd-pleaser Grand Galop Chromatique. This encore demonstrated his showmanship and awareness of audience expectations.

As critic Paul Scudo wrote in 1850:

He is the sovereign master of his piano; he knows all its resources; he makes it speak, moan, cry, and roar under fingers of steel, which distil nervous fluid like Volta’s battery distils electrical fluid.

His audience’s response, it would seem, regularly spilled beyond the conventions of polite concert etiquette and social decorum.

Artist and showman

In a series of 1835 essays titled On the Situation of Artists, Liszt presents musicians such as himself as “tone artists”, condemned to be misunderstood. Nevertheless, they have a profound obligation to “reveal, exalt and deify all the tendencies of human consciousness”.

At the same time, a letter to the novelist George Sand reveals Liszt was acutely aware of the practicalities of concerts and the trappings of celebrity.

He jokes that Sand would be surprised to see his name in capital letters on a Paris concert bill. Liszt admits to the audacity of charging five francs for tickets instead of three, basks in glowing reviews, and notes the presence of aristocrats and high society in his audience.

He even describes his stage draped with flowers, and hints at the female attention following one performance, albeit directed toward his partner in a duet.

This letter shows an artist who is self-aware, sometimes amused, and sometimes ambivalent about the spectacle attached to his art.

Yes, Liszt engaged with his celebrity identity, but clearly also felt a measure of distance from it. He was aware the serious side of his art risked being overshadowed by the gossip-column version.

Much of the music criticism of the time functioned in exactly this way. It was little more than the work of gossip writers, many disgusted by the intensity of audience reactions to Liszt’s performances.

Gossip, poison pens, and the making of Lisztomania

Not everyone shared the enthusiasm of Liszt’s audiences. Some critics attacked both his playing and the adulation it provoked.

In 1842, a writer using the pseudonym Beta described the combined effect of Liszt’s performance and the public’s response, writing that:

the effect of his bizarre, substance-less, idea-less, sensually exciting, contrast-ridden, fragmented playing, and the diseased enthusiasm over it, is a depressing sign of the stupidity, the insensitivity, and the aesthetic emptiness of the public.

Similarly, poet Heinrich Heine suggested Liszt’s performance style was deliberately “stage managed” and designed to provoke audience mania:

For example, when he played a thunderstorm on the fortepiano, we saw the lightning bolts flicker over his face, his limbs shook as if in a gale, and his long tresses seemed to drip, as it were, from the downpour that was represented.

These and other accounts fed the mythology of Lisztomania, portraying women in his audience as irrational and hysterical.

The term mania carried a medicalised, pathologising tone, framing enthusiasm for Liszt as a form of cultural sickness.

Lithographs, caricatures, and anecdotal reports amplified these narratives, showing swooning figures, flowers hurled on stage, and crowds behaving in ways that exceeded polite social convention.

Yet these accounts are not entirely trustworthy; they were shaped by prejudice, moralising assumptions, and a desire to sensationalise.

Liszt’s concerts, therefore, existed at a fascinating intersection: extraordinary artistry and virtuosity, coupled with the theatre of audience reception, all filtered through a lens of gossip, exaggeration and gendered panic.

In this sense, the phenomenon of Lisztomania foreshadows the dynamics of modern celebrity. (It was also the subject of what one critic described as “the most embarrassing historical film ever made”.)

Just as performers like the Beatles, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift provoke intense public devotion while simultaneously facing slander and sensational reporting, Liszt’s fame was inseparable from both admiration and the poison pen of his critics.

Timothy McKenry 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. Lisztomania: why did women go gaga for 19th century pianist Franz Liszt? – https://theconversation.com/lisztomania-why-did-women-go-gaga-for-19th-century-pianist-franz-liszt-264889

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Jongkil Jay Jeong, Senior Fellow, School of Computing and Information System, The University of Melbourne

The world’s largest cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), has experienced a major outage that has impacted thousands of organisations, including banks, financial software platforms such as Xero, and social media platforms such as Snapchat.

The outage began at roughly 6pm AEDT on Monday. It was caused by a malfunction at one of AWS’ data centres located in Northern Virginia in the United States. AWS says it has fixed the underlying issue but some internet users are still reporting service disruptions.

This incident highlights the vulnerabilities of relying so much on cloud computing – or “the cloud” as it’s often called. But there are ways to mitigate some of the risks.

Renting IT infrastructure

Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of diverse IT resources such as computing power, database storage, and applications over the internet. In simple terms, it’s renting (not owning) your own IT infrastructure.

Cloud computing came into prevalence with the dot com boom in the late 1990s, wherein digital tech companies started to deliver software over the internet. As companies such as Amazon matured in their own ability to offer what’s known as “software as a service” over the web, they started to offer others the ability to rent their virtual servers for a cost as well.

This was a lucrative value proposition. Cloud computing enables a pay-as-you-go model similar to a utility bill, rather than the huge upfront investment required to purchase, operate and manage your own data centre.

As a result, the latest statistics suggest more than 94% of all enterprises use cloud-based services in some form.

A market dominated by three companies

The global cloud market is dominated by three companies. AWS holds the largest share (roughly 30%). It’s followed by Microsoft Azure (about 20%) and Google Cloud Platform (about 13%).

All three service providers have had recent outages, significantly impacting digital service platforms. For example, in 2024, an issue with third-party software severely impacted Microsoft Azure, causing extensive operational failures for businesses globally.

Google Cloud Platform also experienced a major outage this year due to an internal misconfiguration.

Profound risks

The heavy reliance of the global internet on just a few major providers — AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud — creates profound risks for both businesses and everyday users.

First, this concentration forms a single point of failure. As seen in the latest AWS event, a simple configuration error in one central system can trigger a domino effect that instantly paralyses vast segments of the internet.

Second, these providers often impose vendor lock-in. Companies find it prohibitively difficult and expensive to switch platforms due to complex data architectures and excessively high fees charged for moving large volumes of data out of the cloud (data egress costs). This effectively traps customers, leaving them hostage to a single vendor’s terms.

Finally, the dominance of US-based cloud service providers introduces geopolitical and regulatory risks. Data stored in these massive systems is subject to US laws and government demands, which can complicate compliance with international data sovereignty regulations such as Australia’s Privacy Act.

Furthermore, these companies hold the power to censor or restrict access to services, giving them control over how firms operate.

The current best practice to mitigate these risks is to adopt a multi-cloud approach that enables you to decentralise. This involves running critical applications across multiple vendors to eliminate the single point of failure.

This approach can be complemented by what’s known as “edge computing”, wherein data storage and processing is moved away from large, central data centres, toward smaller, distributed nodes (such as local servers) that firms can control directly.

The combination of edge computing and a multi-cloud approach enhances resilience, improves speed, and helps companies meet strict data regulatory requirements while avoiding dependence on any single entity.

As the old saying goes, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.

Jongkil Jay Jeong received prior funding from the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia.

– ref. An Amazon outage has rattled the internet. A computer scientist explains why the ‘cloud’ needs to change – https://theconversation.com/an-amazon-outage-has-rattled-the-internet-a-computer-scientist-explains-why-the-cloud-needs-to-change-267954