Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By T.J. Thomson, Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication & Media, Queensland University of Technology

Amid the alarming images of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine over the past few days, millions of people have also seen misleading, manipulated or false information about the conflict on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Telegram.

One example is this video of military jets posted to TikTok, which is historical footage but captioned as live video of the situation in Ukraine.

Visuals, because of their persuasive potential and attention-grabbing nature, are an especially potent choice for those seeking to mislead. Where creating, editing or sharing inauthentic visual content isn’t satire or art, it is usually politically or economically motivated.

Disinformation campaigns aim to distract, confuse, manipulate and sow division, discord, and uncertainty in the community. This is a common strategy for highly polarised nations where socioeconomic inequalities, disenfranchisement and propaganda are prevalent.

How is this fake content created and spread, what’s being done to debunk it, and how can you ensure you don’t fall for it yourself?

What are the most common fakery techniques?

Using an existing photo or video and claiming it came from a different time or place is one of the most common forms of misinformation in this context. This requires no special software or technical skills – just a willingness to upload an old video of a missile attack or other arresting image, and describe it as new footage.

Another low-tech option is to stage or pose actions or events and present them as reality. This was the case with destroyed vehicles that Russia claimed were bombed by Ukraine.

Using a particular lens or vantage point can also change how the scene looks and can be used to deceive. A tight shot of people, for example, can make it hard to gauge how many were in a crowd, compared with an aerial shot.

Taking things further still, Photoshop or equivalent software can be used to add or remove people or objects from a scene, or to crop elements out from a photograph. An example of object addition is the below photograph, which purports to show construction machinery outside a kindergarten in eastern Ukraine. The satirical text accompanying the image jokes about the “calibre of the construction machinery” – the author suggesting that reports of damage to buildings from military ordinance are exaggerated or untrue.

Close inspection reveals this image was digitally altered to include the machinery. This tweet could be seen as an attempt to downplay the extent of damage resulting from a Russian-backed missile attack, and in a wider context to create confusion and doubt as to veracity of other images emerging from the conflict zone.

What’s being done about it?

European organisations such as Bellingcat have begun compiling lists of dubious social media claims about the Russia-Ukraine conflict and debunking them where necessary.

Journalists and fact-checkers are also working to verify content and raise awareness of known fakes. Large, well-resourced news outlets such as the BBC are also calling out misinformation.

Social media platforms have added new labels to identify state-run media organisations or provide more background information about sources or people in your networks who have also shared a particular story.

They have also tweaked their algorithms to change what content is amplified and have hired staff to spot and flag misleading content. Platforms are also doing some work behind the scenes to detect and publicly share information on state-linked information operations.

Read more:
What can the West do to help Ukraine? It can start by countering Putin’s information strategy

What can I do about it?

You can attempt to fact-check images for yourself rather than taking them at face value. An article we wrote late last year for the Australian Associated Press explains the fact-checking process at each stage: image creation, editing and distribution.

Here are five simple steps you can take:

1. Examine the metadata

This Telegram post claims Polish-speaking saboteurs attacked a sewage facility in an attempt to place a tank of chlorine for a “false flag” attack.

But the video’s metadata – the details about how and when the video was created – show it was filmed days before the alleged date of the incident.

To check metadata for yourself, you can download the file and use software such as Adobe Photoshop or Bridge to examine it. Online metadata viewers also exist that allow you to check by using the image’s web link.

One hurdle to this approach is that social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter often strip the metadata from photos and videos when they are uploaded to their sites. In these cases, you can try requesting the original file or consulting fact-checking websites to see whether they have already verified or debunked the footage in question.

2. Consult a fact-checking resource

Organisations such as the Australian Associated Press, RMIT/ABC, Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Bellingcat maintain lists of fact-checks their teams have performed.

The AFP has already debunked a video claiming to show an explosion from the current conflict in Ukraine as being from the 2020 port disaster in Beirut.

3. Search more broadly

If old content has been recycled and repurposed, you may be able to find the same footage used elsewhere. You can use Google Images or TinEye to “reverse image search” a picture and see where else it appears online.

But be aware that simple edits such as reversing the left-right orientation of an image can fool search engines and make them think the flipped image is new.

4. Look for inconsistencies

Does the purported time of day match the direction of light you would expect at that time, for example? Do watches or clocks visible in the image correspond to the alleged timeline claimed?

You can also compare other data points, such as politicians’ schedules or verified sightings, Google Earth vision or Google Maps imagery, to try and triangulate claims and see whether the details are consistent.

5. Ask yourself some simple questions

Do you know where, when and why the photo or video was made? Do you know who made it, and whether what you’re looking at is the original version?

Using online tools such as InVID or Forensically can potentially help answer some of these questions. Or you might like to refer to this list of 20 questions you can use to “interrogate” social media footage with the right level of healthy scepticism.

Read more:
3.2 billion images and 720,000 hours of video are shared online daily. Can you sort real from fake?

Ultimately, if you’re in doubt, don’t share or repeat claims that haven’t been published by a reputable source such as an international news organisation. And consider using some of these principles when deciding which sources to trust.

By doing this, you can help limit the influence of misinformation, and help clarify the true situation in Ukraine.

T.J. Thomson has received funding from the AAP, the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and from the Australian Research Council through Discovery Project DP210100859. He is also a past contributor to the Australian Associated Press.

Daniel Angus receives funding from Australian Research Council through Discovery Projects DP200100519 ‘Using machine vision to explore Instagram’s everyday promotional cultures’, DP200101317 ‘Evaluating the Challenge of ‘Fake News’ and Other Malinformation’, and Linkage Project LP190101051 ‘Young Australians and the Promotion of Alcohol on Social Media’.

Paula Dootson has received funding from the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, Queensland Government, and Natural Hazards Research Australia.

– ref. Fake viral footage is spreading alongside the real horror in Ukraine. Here are 5 ways to spot it – https://theconversation.com/fake-viral-footage-is-spreading-alongside-the-real-horror-in-ukraine-here-are-5-ways-to-spot-it-177921

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Hepburn, Director of the Centre for Energy and Natural Resources Law, Deakin Law School, Deakin University

When estimating the amount of greenhouse gases a project – such as a new mine or power station – would release, it’s important to be as accurate as possible. This is not only because of the impact an approved project will have on the climate, but because the data are used to determine Australia’s national emission targets.

And yet, a report released this week by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) showed one in five fossil fuel projects emit far more greenhouse gases annually than what was originally estimated – as much as 20 times more in some years.

This is a huge concern, as Australia’s industrial emissions increased by 60% between 2005 and 2020. What’s more, if estimates are grossly inaccurate, Australia’s emission-reduction targets will not be grounded in a credible assessment of greenhouse gas outputs.

So which projects had the biggest discrepancies? And why are there such significant errors?

Enormous discrepancies

When fossil fuel companies seek approval for a new project they must submit an environmental impact statement to the relevant government department. This statement is crucial for all projects with the potential to significantly impact the human environment. Estimating the amount of emissions likely to flow from a project each year is a critical part of the environmental impact process.

With a team of undergraduate students from the Australian National University, ACF investigated 48 fossil fuel projects. They found 11 had significantly exceeded their estimation of annual emissions.

The projects involved fit into three broad categories: gas projects, coal mines in Queensland’s Bowen Basin, and coal mines in New South Wales.

The worst discrepancy, in terms of overall aggregate emissions, came from Chevron’s West Australian Gorgon liquefied natural gas project. The ACF report found the project emitted 16 million tonnes of CO₂ more than it anticipated. Its annual reported emissions in its environmental impact statement ranged from 157% to 226%.

The project was initially approved on the basis it would sequester at least 80% of emissions from its offshore gas drilling plan over the project’s first five years via carbon capture and storage.

Chevron told the ABC it disputed the research. A spokesperson said:

The assumptions underpinning calculations used for the ACF report appear to be incorrect.

While it acknowledged delays in its carbon capture and storage system, Chevron said it is committed “to make good on this shortfall”.

(This includes) the acquisition and surrender of 5.23 million greenhouse gas offsets and a $40 million investment in Western Australian lower carbon projects. Chevron Australia shares and takes seriously the expectations of our community and governments in regard to lowering emissions and addressing the challenge of climate change.

There were also significant discrepancies at other major projects run by several major fossil fuel companies, with one gas project estimated to have overshot its projected emissions by 1,800-2,000%.

So how are emissions calculated?

The method used depends upon the type of project. Underground coal mines in operation must vent gas for safety purposes, so the infrastructure needed to measure emissions with reasonable accuracy already exists, although fugitive (leaking) emissions will still need to be calculated.

Other projects such as onshore gas drilling must calculate their estimate by taking into account all potential emissions. This may include, for example, the amount of diesel likely to be used or the global warming potential any methane that might be released from deeper coal seams.

According to the ACF, one of the most significant factors that may be contributing to inaccurate emission estimates is our changing understanding of the global warming potential of methane.

Read more:
Stemming methane leaks from oil fields, pipelines and landfills could help us slow global warming quickly

The latest scientific assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated that methane has about 28 times greater global warming potential than CO₂. This is higher than previous assessments. The ACF report suggests this factor may account for some level of inaccuracy, if environmental impact statements are grounded in those previous assessments.

However, this factor and other reasonable margins for error cannot fully explain the degree of inaccuracy we’re seeing. While inaccuracies will vary from case to case, the ACF report says the errors may stem from a failure to, for example, install technology, or accurately evaluate diesel emissions, or consider the methane intensity of coal in the Bowen basin.

Whatever the case, the gap between estimated and reported emissions suggests a fundamental regulatory failure.

The ‘safeguard mechanism’ isn’t working

The safeguard mechanism is a federal government policy that’s supposed to cap industrial emissions. It requires large fossil fuel companies to report emissions where they exceed 100,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per year.

Where this occurs, operators must either buy carbon credits to offset the emissions, or pay a penalty. The imposition of this arbitrary baseline is problematic for two main reasons.

First, it’s grounded in absolute tonnes of CO₂ equivalent rather than “emission intensity”. Emission intensity refers to the volume of emissions per gross domestic product, and is a preferable measure because it corresponds with production – it’ll rise if expected production increases.

Second, the mechanism is too high. Many operators are exceeding their estimates, but not reaching the baseline of 100,000 tonnes. This means there are no consequences for inaccurate estimates.

Read more:
Be worried when fossil fuel lobbyists support current environmental laws

What needs to change?

Without strong regulation, large emitters can continue to emit significantly more than estimated without incurring additional costs, until those emissions breach the safeguard baseline. This needs to change.

The safeguard mechanism should set the baseline on the estimated emissions, which approval for a project is based upon. If a project exceeds those estimates, giving regard for a reasonable margin of error, the mechanism should be triggered.

This would mean approved projects that emit well beyond the estimate must either mitigate or offset those excess emissions.

The ACF report found if baselines were set on the estimates when projects were approved, the companies responsible for excess emissions would’ve been required to surrender more than 24 million Australian carbon credit units. At the current average price of A$12.06 per unit, they would have had to pay more than A$290 million.

Under such a law, the federal government could be confident the estimated emission impacts from proposed projects are actually reliable.

Read more:
How Australia’s geology gave us an abundance of coal – and a wealth of greentech minerals to switch to

Samantha Hepburn was not involved in the research and preparation of the Australian Conservation Foundation’s report. She endorses the findings, and has sought assistance from ACF in the writing of this article. She is currently writing a longer journal article for ACF on this topic.

– ref. 1 in 5 fossil fuel projects overshoot their original estimations for emissions. Why are there such significant errors? – https://theconversation.com/1-in-5-fossil-fuel-projects-overshoot-their-original-estimations-for-emissions-why-are-there-such-significant-errors-177714

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Scott Morrison and his ministers have strongly attacked China over its failure to denounce Russia’s attack on Ukraine or to use its influence to press President Putin to pull back.

This comes as the government says that, working through NATO, it will contribute towards non-lethal military assistance and medical supplies for Ukraine.

The contribution will take the form of Australia providing NATO with funds, expected to run into several million dollars, for this assistance, which could include items such as body armour.

Australia continued on Friday to ramp up sanctions in concert with other western countries, with oligarchs targeted as well as key Belarusian individuals and entities.

China has urged “all sides to exercise restraint”. It would not call Russia’s attack an “invasion”.

Morrison seized on a report in the South China Morning Post that said China had announced it was fully open to Russian wheat imports. It had previously restricted imports of Russian grain.

The Prime Minister said this was “unacceptable”, condemning China for extending a “lifeline” to Russia when it was invading another country.

Morrison also said international sporting events, including the Formula 1 and the men’s volleyball world championship, both scheduled for Russia later this year, should not be held there. He said he commended any Australians who said they would not participate in events in Russia.

“We should be taking every step we can to ensure Russia pays a price in the international community for their violent and aggressive acts in relation to their action against Ukraine,” he told a news conference in Adelaide.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton said it was “deeply disturbing, that China has essentially encouraged Russia”.

“China is the one country that could pick the phone up to President Putin now and say turn back and pull back from this dreadful mistake that you’re making,” Dutton said. “They’re not prepared to do that it seems”.

“I think they’re probably watching to see what the world reaction is so that they can make their own calculations down the track in relation to Taiwan,” Dutton told the ABC.

Dutton told Sky: “This alliance between China and Russia really should be an alarm bell for the world and we need to stand united and the west needs to be as strong as we have been since at least the Cold War”.

Finance Minister Simon Birmingham had the same message, saying China’s response was “deeply troubling”.

“They, whilst at the UN Security Council, have called for restraint. They have not been clear in their condemnation of Russia – in fact, far from it.

“Their foreign minister has suggested that he understands the territorial concerns of Russia.

“There is no justification for understanding those territorial concerns.

“Ukraine was a peaceful, democratic, sovereign nation whose territorial boundaries should have been respected and have been violated in the most obscene and abusive ways by Russia,” Birmingham told Sky.

Michelle Grattan 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. Morrison turns blowtorch on China for being soft on Russia – https://theconversation.com/morrison-turns-blowtorch-on-china-for-being-soft-on-russia-177929

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ellie Martus, Lecturer in Public Policy, School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University

In 1973, the world’s post-war boom hit the rocks. Oil producers restricted supply, sending prices soaring. In the aftermath of this oil shock, nations like America began seeking energy independence.

In 2022, we may well see history repeat, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfolds.

Why? Major European nations like Germany have turned to Russian gas to fill the gap between coal plants retiring, the move away from nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster, and the point where zero emissions renewables and storage can act as full replacement.

With around 40% of the EU’s gas coming from Russia, the invasion will focus the minds of European leaders on the question of whether they can rely on these supplies. The war in Ukraine comes as much of the world is already reeling from energy chaos, with pandemic disruptions to transport sending energy prices soaring.

To add still more complexity, the invasion comes just days before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases a report on regional climate impacts and adaptation, which will underscore efforts to reduce damage from fossil-fuel caused climate change.

So how will this play out?

Why Russia matters to world energy consumers

The export of fossil fuels is central to the Russian economy. The nation of 145 million is one of the world’s largest energy exporters. Russia is the leading exporter of gas, the second largest of crude oil, and third largest coal exporter.

But Russia is well aware of its vulnerability in selling fossil fuels to Europe, which is committed to decarbonisation.

The coal lobby in Russia has been actively seeking to expand its Asian markets for years now, due to the risk to exports posed by European climate driven restrictions.

While Europe remains the largest export market for gas, Russia wants to diversify here too by increasing supplies to China.

In 2019, the Power of Siberia pipeline began transporting gas from Siberia directly to China. Only weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia announced a deal for a new pipeline to China.

We are likely to see Russia’s pivot towards Asia intensify in the current climate.

Will this speed up the shift to renewables?

It was only in January that Germany’s new climate and economy minister announced major new measures to accelerate his nation’s slowing renewable roll-out and power industry with clean energy.

And now? We believe the crisis has the potential to accelerate Europe’s trend toward renewables, as it seeks to reduce its reliance on Russian gas.

We may see increased efforts to shift to interdependent renewable generation, such as the proposed offshore windfarms intended to be shared by multiple European nations.

But this is not guaranteed. In the near term, there is a huge risk that the crisis in Ukraine focuses attention on energy security at the expense of decarbonisation.

Read more:
How Russia hooked Europe on its oil and gas – and overcame US efforts to prevent energy dependence on Moscow

We may see a return to coal power. Countries like Germany may even be forced to rethink or delay their nuclear phase out.

Other major fossil fuel exporters such as Australia are already lining up to fill any gaps in European markets.

What does this mean for international climate efforts?

Long regarded a notorious laggard, Russia has not been a willing participant in international climate negotiations.

In the lead up to Glasgow’s COP26 climate conference last year, Russia hinted it might be open to taking a more serious line on climate action. Putin committed the country to carbon neutrality by 2060, and domestic policy developments in recent months suggested a shift was underway.

The war will obviously hinder this. Any potential for greater climate engagement with Russia before the next major climate meeting in Egypt later this year is off the table for the time being.

This is a setback for international climate efforts, given Russia’s role as one of the world’s top five greenhouse gas emitters.

Is other environmental damage likely?

Both traditional and cyber warfare can add substantially to climate emissions and wreak havoc on the environment and on many species. The serious implications for present and future generations were dramatically highlighted this morning with the Russian takeover of Chernobyl.

It is not known what Russia plans to do, but the targeted destruction of nuclear facilities, either as a weapon or an act of defensive deterrence, would likely breach international law.

Wanton environmental destruction is a war crime, on par with targeting of the civilian population and the destruction of cultural heritage. In 2020, the Red Cross issued guidelines for protecting the environment during wartime.

These make the obligations of combatants very clear, though there is a weak history of accountability.

This is a real issue. The founding document of the International Criminal Court notes it is a war crime to intentionally cause “widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the natural environment”, assuming it was clearly excessive relative to the military advantage gained.

Russia signed this document, the Rome statute, in 2000 but never ratified the agreement to become a member. In 2016, Russia announced its withdrawal from the International Criminal Court altogether.

This came after the court ruled Russia’s activity in Crimea following the 2014 annexation of that region amounted to an “ongoing occupation”.

The international community has also come to a historic agreement about the definition of ecocide in 2021, as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”.

That means it is possible the Russian government may be held to account for environmental as well as humanitarian impacts of its aggression.

Read more:
Five essential commodities that will be hit by war in Ukraine

Susan Harris Rimmer receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Queensland Public Service Commission and the Department of Defence.

Ellie Martus 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 Russia’s invasion of Ukraine push Europe towards energy independence and faster decarbonisation? – https://theconversation.com/will-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-push-europe-towards-energy-independence-and-faster-decarbonisation-177914

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Naoise McDonagh, Lecturer in Political Economy, Institute for International Trade, University of Adelaide

The economic sanctions Australia has imposed in the wake of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine are an extension of those applied in 2014 after Russia annexed the Crimea.

As with the US, UK and European Union sanction regimes, Australia’s operate across three areas:

• technological, involving bans on exports of goods for use in oil and gas exploration and weapons production

• financial, involving bans on financial services and financial trading with designated entities

• personal, involving travel bans and limits on commercial relations for designated people

The question is whether they will have consequences for Russia’s economy and so act as a deterrent to further military action.

Certain conditions are needed for sanctions to have coercive power.

• Either there needs to be a large and preferably asymmetric economic relationship between the countries, with the asymmetry favouring the sanctioning country. This might be the case if Russia bought many more goods from Australia than Australia bought from Russia.

• Or the sanctioning country needs to control critical technologies and/or infrastructure that are essential to the targeted country, and the sanctions will cut-off access.

Neither of these conditions hold for Russia and Australia.

Australia’s leverage is negligible

Of Australia’s total A$873 billion two-way trade with all countries in 2019-20, only a miniscule $1.2 billion was with Russia. For both countries this figure is negligible, so asymmetry is irrelevant.

Nor does Australia control any critical infrastructure or technology of consequence to Russia which cannot be sourced elsewhere.

Read more:
Morrison announces sanctions against Russia, warns of cyber retaliation

All told, Australian sanctions will have almost zero real-world consequences for Russia, nor do they imply difficulties for Australian businesses, aside from the tiny fraction who have trade and investment ties with the country.

The only states that have both the potential for effective sanctioning power over Russia and the will to use it are the US, the United Kingdom and the European Union acting as a block, due to large trade relationships and critical dependencies.

Europe has more leverage

Russia is highly dependent on fossil fuel exports, which comprised 39% of total state revenue in 2019. The European Union takes 70% of its gas exports.

Things are not entirely asymmetric because the EU in turn depends on Russia for about 40% of its gas imports.

Sanctions on buying energy would hurt Russia badly, but also result in a very significant price hike across the European Union and to a lesser extent globally – a cost that has made EU leaders cautious about using this most potent of sanctions.

The US has more leverage still

The US has significant power over the global financial system in what amounts to an asymmetric relationship to Russia. This derives from the dominant position of US financial institutions and of the US dollar as the global currency.

This dominance allows Washington to apply sanctions third countries must also enforce, or themselves face becoming financially sanctioned, making these sanctions global in practice – as Iran experienced to devastating effect.

Yet Russia is far larger than Iran economically, so there will be far greater costs from cutting Russia out of the global financial system, if not so much for the US, then for its allies in the European Union, where European banks have tens of billions in outstanding loans to Russian entities.

So far, the US is cautious

Repayments of these loans would be threatened by broad-based financial sanctions, especially banning Russia from the global payments system SWIFT run by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications.

While US sanctions announced on February 24 against Russia’s biggest financial institutions will cause considerable economic disruption and costs, they still do not amount to the full expulsion from the global financial system that was imposed on Iran.

Read more:
Ukraine: sanctions can still make a difference – but only if done right

British sanctions could significantly hurt Putin’s clique of supporting oligarchs in the UK by shutting down “Londongrad”, a term used to describe a city awash with laundered funds from Russian oligarchs.

Freezing the oligarchs’ assets could undermine their support for Putin, but has obvious financial costs to London, and would have to overcome the political influence of Russian elites in London.

Little could deter Putin

Australia cannot hurt Russia using sanctions, and the countries that can hurt Russia have complex calculations to make in calibrating their actions for maximum impact at minimum cost.

That does not mean Australian action is pointless. Australian sanctions exhibit solidarity with allies and add to the international pressure and outcry against Putin’s illegal act of war.

The bigger question is whether any sanctions at all will now deter Putin from following through on his goals, given that the invasion is underway.

Naoise McDonagh is a Lecturer at the Institute for International Trade, University of Adelaide, and President of the Australian Institute of International Affairs South Australia, a not-for-profit educational association.

– ref. All told, Australian sanctions will have almost zero consequences for Russia – https://theconversation.com/all-told-australian-sanctions-will-have-almost-zero-consequences-for-russia-177913

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Haskell-Dowland, Professor of Cyber Security Practice, Edith Cowan University

The Australian Cyber Security Centre is asking organisations and businesses to be on high alert amid Russia’s cyber attack bombardment of Ukraine.

The United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre issued a similar warning, as have New Zealand and the United States Department of Homeland Security.

The Australian Cyber Security Centre has said it is not aware of any specific direct threat to Australia, but that the country could be affected by “unintended disruption or uncontained malicious cyber activities”.

It wouldn’t be the first time a Russian cyber attack has caused serious collateral damage to nations that aren’t its intended target.

Attacks so far

Ukraine has suffered through a sustained digital assault from Russia over the past few weeks. One of the most penetrative attacks came on Wednesday, cutting off access to several Ukrainian government and banking websites – followed by more on Thursday. These were distributed denial of service attacks, in which the perpetrator knocks targeted websites offline by flooding them with bot traffic.

Meanwhile, experts at the internet security company ESET identified a malicious data-wiping malware called “HermeticWiper” circulating on hundreds of computers in Ukraine, Latvia and Lithuania – which they said may have been months in the making.

According to reports, experts from software company Symantec found the malware had affected Ukrainian government contractors in Latvia and Lithuania and a Ukrainian bank.

Read more:
Russia is using an onslaught of cyber attacks to undermine Ukraine’s defence capabilities

How the impact will be felt

Australia’s risk in the face of ongoing cyber attacks from Russia would almost certainly come in the form of a “spill over” effect.

For example, if a Ukrainian bank is targeted and goes offline, this would still impact Australians who use that bank to receive or send money to Ukraine. Attacks on banks are particularly alarming when you consider Ukraine’s dire need for financial aid and economic support right now.

All global business conducted with, or through, the bank will be affected – and the impact could reach virtually anywhere in the world. Similarly, distributed denial of service attacks on Ukrainian news media would also have global ramifications, by limiting the exchange of crucial information.

Another concern is the potential for Russia to cut off gas supplies flowing through Ukraine to Europe, either directly or through a cyber-enabled attack (the Colonial Pipeline attack being a recent example). This also introduces significant market instability, resulting in shortages and driving up prices (including for Australia).

Australian companies are a part of global supply chains. Many will have interests in Russia and/or Ukraine, and thus will also have digital and potentially even direct network connections with them through a virtual private network – a tool that allows users to establish a private network over a public internet connection (but which can also be used to spread malware between the connected devices).

Once a “wiper” malware – the likes of that currently circulating in Ukraine – gets enough footing, it can spread across countries within minutes. If an office in Canberra with a virtual private network connection based in Ukraine becomes compromised, it can allow the malware to jump countries.

The NotPetya malware attack in 2017 is a pertinent example. This “self-propogating” malware spread globally and caused billions of dollars’ worth of damage. It, too, was attributed to a Russian source by investigators, and traced back to the update mechanism for a tax-accounting software application used widely in Ukraine.

Read more:
Three ways the ‘NotPetya’ cyberattack is more complex than WannaCry

Leveraging the chaos

Apart from malicious Russian state-sponsored cyber crime, the current mayhem unfolding in Ukraine provides opportunity for cyber criminals more generally, too.

It’s very difficult to attribute cyber crime. While experts can analyse code taken from malware, this is usually a slow and costly process. Cyber criminals the world over may want to take advantage of the chaos, and try to carry out attacks they may not otherwise get away with.

Among all the noise, and with so many Ukrainians (including cyber security professionals) either displaced or fleeing, the chances of being caught may be lower. Also, it is likely any major cyber affliction will be blamed on Russia – at least initially.

At the same time, we might see an increase in phishing and scam attempts as a result of the crisis. Opportunistic criminals use global narratives to add credibility to their scams. For instance, they may send phishing emails posing as a Ukrainian citizen desperate for emergency funds.

How can businesses protect themselves

A critical step in a defensive posture for companies and organisations in Australia is to determine their exposure level. This means being acutely aware of any direct or indirect connection with Ukraine and Russia, and the online systems and supply chains these countries partake in.

Employers also have a duty of care to employees who may have loved ones or other connections in Ukraine, and may be more vulnerable to various forms of cyber attacks exploiting the current situation.

And of course, the most basic cyber security advice is once more relevant. That is, individuals, businesses and organisations must take special care to ensure all devices are up-to-date and have software patches installed.

The 2017 NotPetya attacks were, in part, successful because the malware exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows – even though a patch to fix it was available at the time. But the massive number of devices that hadn’t been patched meant NotPetya could spread without constraint.

In the case of Ukraine, where pirated software is common, this issue is particularly prevalent. Complications with (or a lack of) proper software licensing means updates may not be accessed or installed.

Paul Haskell-Dowland 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. As Russia wages cyber war against Ukraine, here’s how Australia (and the rest of the world) could suffer collateral damage – https://theconversation.com/as-russia-wages-cyber-war-against-ukraine-heres-how-australia-and-the-rest-of-the-world-could-suffer-collateral-damage-177909

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanne Orlando, Researcher: Digital Literacy and Digital Wellbeing, Western Sydney University

Much of what tweens and teenagers know about the Russia-Ukraine conflict comes from TikTok, Snapchat or Instagram.

Their social media feeds contain images of tanks, bombs and propaganda. Our kids could stumble across extreme footage and we’ll likely never know.

They will also have seen spam and memes about “Vladdy daddy” – the nickname of Russian president Vladimir Putin – pleading with him to avert war.

Here’s how to help your child navigate social media “news” content about war, while minimising any distress.

This is what children will see

Children access news in a different way to adults. They access news less. But when they do, they usually watch a short video on their phone.

Footage about disasters and political conflict has always been on the TV.
However, news on social media is not like watching the 6pm nightly news.

On social media, there is no newsreader contextualising the footage, there are generally no accompanying facts, and often no-one knows the source of the video. Meanwhile, TV news attempts to fact check, including verifying the sources of videos.

As an adult, I question where the videos depicting “bombings” on TikTok, using the hashtags #russia #ukraine #invasion, come from.

Is this real footage, or doctored footage cut and pasted from a different event? Which video is propaganda and which is fact? Is this actually news or something uploaded in the hope of getting lots of views?

Children can’t always spot what’s reliable

On social media, home-made doctored footage sits snugly alongside real news footage from reputable sources. On the surface, such images share similar themes, and have a similar overall appearance. So children can often group them together as “the news”.

Spotting fake news and determining what to trust online is a complex and intellectually challenging task.

Most children don’t question news content they see on social media. They can confuse popularity rankings with quality; they consider the item that tops their search list the most reliable.

An international UNICEF survey found up to 75% of children feel unable to judge the accuracy of the information they find online. This was especially true for children in the 9-11 and 12-14 year-old groups. Coincidentally, this is the same age children begin using social media.

Read more:
Should parents expose children to news on terrorism?

What impact will this have on them?

The basic premise for posting on social media is to get a reaction. Considering what may lie ahead of us with the Russia-Ukraine conflict, footage could be violent and disrespectful of people and their tragic circumstances.

So, it’s likely a child on social media will see war footage and human suffering, while they are on the bus or in between goofy TikToks.

Viewing distressing content can have both immediate and longer lasting effects on children.

In the short term, viewing online violence can increase the likelihood of aggressive thoughts and behaviour, or angry feelings. It can also increase the likelihood of physiological arousal, such as feeling excited or “pumped”.

Long term it can lead to a desensitisation to violence, and lack of empathy for the suffering and hardship of others.

While girls and boys are equally vulnerable to the impacts of online violence, there is no certainty how a child will react. Scenes of violence may horrify one child and induce extreme sadness in another.

Young children (under about age seven) are particularly sensitive to the effects of violent footage because they have difficulty distinguishing between reality and fantasy. For this reason a six-year-old viewing real-life footage of a bombing with dead bodies is likely to act aggressively after viewing, mimicking what they have seen online.

If children share that content, however well-meaning, more people will be exposed to these distressing images.

Read more:
Children own around 3 digital devices on average, and few can spend a day without them

Young people’s news consumption habits also tend to have lasting effects on the way they engage with the news throughout their life.

The habits they develop as children – their news sources and the type of information they accept as factual – impacts how they understand their world and their place in it.

Continually seeing confronting footage of war and military attacks, and other violence, online from a young, vulnerable age also creates the impression violence against another group is the norm and is acceptable.

What can we do about it?

Adults’ focus should be to minimise the harm misinformation, and extreme and violent imagery can have on children. So, education is the key.

Adults can talk to children about war or conflict. They can support them to stay informed, while helping them feel safe and secure.

The best way is to view some footage with them and talk openly about it. Discuss:

• what you see

• the context and the facts

• who uploaded it

• the source of the footage

• any comments added to it.

Aim to get to the bottom of why that footage is there and whether it is reliable. Compare it to footage of the Ukraine-Russia conflict from a reliable source.

You can do this regularly with children, not just with this current crisis. You can focus on any news event or potentially questionable content a child may see online.

Read more:
3 ways to help children think critically about the news

You or your child can also report distressing or misleading content. This can be directly to the social media company. Or if there is high-impact violence, you can report it to the eSafety Commissioner.

As parents, we cannot always be aware of disturbing footage a child may see online. Children are highly vulnerable and while they may have great technology skills, they do not have adults’ life experience and cognitive abilities to handle or analyse what they see. They need our guidance.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800 or Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Joanne Orlando 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 ‘Vladdy daddy’ to fake TikToks: how to guide your child through Ukraine news online – https://theconversation.com/from-vladdy-daddy-to-fake-tiktoks-how-to-guide-your-child-through-ukraine-news-online-177813

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darren Koppel, Research fellow, Curtin University

Environmental scientists see flora, fauna and phenomena the rest of us rarely do. In this series, we’ve invited them to share their unique photos from the field.

This week the federal government announced A$804.4 million over ten years to bolster Australia’s scientific and strategic presence in Antarctica. Of this, $14.3 million is for cleaning up legacy waste from the continent – the abandoned waste and contamination accumulated from over a century of human visitors.

That there’s legacy waste in Antarctica may come as a surprise to some people, as we often think of Antarctica as a pristine wilderness. However, I’ve seen legacy waste first hand when I was in Antarctica over the 2017-2018 summer, researching how this waste impacts local environments.

One study site, for example, was Australia’s Wilkes station, a research station abandoned in 1969 after being buried in snow and ice. A 2013 study estimated its tip site contains 20,000 cubic metres of waste, including leaking oil drums, batteries, dead dogs, building material, and food.

Australia’s responsibility for its historical waste in Antarctica is both a moral and legal imperative. This funding announcement will hopefully be the start of a renewed push to clean up this once pristine frontier.

Waste and the Madrid Protocol

Humans have occupied Antarctica since the early 1900s. But the big push into Antarctica occurred during the International Geophysical Year in 1957-1958, which saw 12 nations build 60 stations. Today, there are 158 locations with over 5,342 buildings, including currently operating and abandoned research stations and field camps.

Read more:
A krill aquarium, climate research, and geopolitics: how Australia’s $800 million Antarctic funding will be spent

Australia and other nations signed the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty System, or “the Madrid Protocol”, which came into force in 1998. The Madrid Protocol designates Antarctica a “natural reserve, devoted to peace and science” and requires its comprehensive protection. Australia played a leading role in its development, including by ensuring mining was banned in Antarctica.

Thanks to the Madrid Protocol, human activities in Antarctica today generally pose a low-risk to the environment.

Pollution in Antarctica can come from a number of sources. Contaminants including metals, microplastics, and persistent organic pollutants can hitch a ride on wind and ocean currents. However, these are so low in concentration they’re unlikely to cause harm.

Tourism and active research stations also generate contamination from wastewater, diesel exhaust and incineration smoke, and localised fuel spills. These sources are generally well managed and new technologies are being implemented to minimise these impacts.

Prior to the Madrid Protocol, waste from stations was pushed into the ocean, buried or incinerated on land, or placed in tip sites – many of which remain today. Abandoned research stations and field camps, old oil spills, and historical tip sites still dot the continent and are generally unmanaged.

Competing with nature for ice-free land

A key issue is where this legacy waste is located. Over three-quarters of stations are built on the ice-free Antarctic coastline, which makes up just 0.06% of the continent. This is a practical decision because coastal locations are more accessible by boats, and moving ice sheets have a tendency to become icebergs).

But while building on the ice-free coast is good for us, it can cause problems for local wildlife. Ice-free areas are rare real-estate in Antarctica and much of the land-based biodiversity depends on it.

Marine birds and mammals nest among the rocks, lichens and mosses live in and around the streams of melted ice, which are also home to microinvertebrate communities (think tardigrades) and different types of microalgae. Concentrating our human activity to these areas concentrates our impact to Antarctica’s most sensitive ecosystems.

Australia, in many ways, is leading the Antarctic national programs developing clean-up technologies and science. For example, developing new technologies to remediate soils contaminated by fuel spills and undertaking studies to map the types of contaminants associated with legacy waste.

A lingering concern is that contaminants can leach from waste into surrounding environments, particularly in summer when melted ice streams flow through these sites.

My research, published last year, sampled these streams and along the coastlines to measure the concentrations of metals. Copper and zinc, which are toxic at high concentrations, were higher in some streams, and this correlated with a decreased number of algae species.

What’s needed to clean up Antarctica

Despite the protocol being in force since 1998, there’s been a clear lack of action to clean up this waste from many nations. It begs the question: just how committed are we to monitoring human impacts in Antarctica?

My biggest concern is that the lack of any legal enforcement, lack of monitoring, and an uncertainty in how exactly to clean up can be used as an excuse to delay, or even avoid, any effort.

But while cleaning up our legacy waste is a huge undertaking, there have been successful examples, such as the remediation of Australia’s Old Casey Station tip-site in 2003 and 2004.

Likewise, the US’ McMurdo Station operated a nuclear reactor for power between 1961 and 1972, called “Nukey Poo”. The whole site required substantial remediation after it closed in 1972. This involved the removal of 12,000 tonnes of rock and soil over seven years for disposal in the USA to ensure no radioactive contamination was left in Antarctica.

These clean ups, however, are the exceptions rather than the norm, and there’s a lot left to do. The tip site at Australia’s abandoned Wilkes Station, for example, is ten times the size of the Thala Valley tip, which took more than ten years to clean up. And Australia’s other active Antarctic research stations, Mawson and Davis, have historical tip sites that are less studied.

The $14.3 million promised by the federal government to clean this mess will also go towards a new geospatial information system. This will hopefully see proper documentation of all waste sites.

Other necessary steps to clean up Antarctica include the characterisation of the types and quantities of waste, the development of environmental quality standards, and new clean up technologies.

But it will take more than platitudes, and it must be followed by a dedicated effort to actually remove the waste, in line with the Madrid Protocol signed 30 years ago. The funding is a good step towards meeting our obligations, but we need to be in it for the long haul.

Read more:
For the first time, we can measure the human footprint on Antarctica

Darren Koppel worked on an Australian Antarctic Science funded project (AAS4326), received funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship, and received a bursary from Antarctic Science Ltd to conduct research on contaminants in Antarctica. He is not affiliated with the Australian Antarctic Division. Darren is currently employed by Curtin University and is working on a project funded by National Energy Resources Australia to investigate the ecological risk of contaminants from decommissioning activities.

– ref. Dead dogs, leaking oil drums, batteries: Antarctica’s abandoned waste gets funding boost to kickstart the clean up – https://theconversation.com/dead-dogs-leaking-oil-drums-batteries-antarcticas-abandoned-waste-gets-funding-boost-to-kickstart-the-clean-up-177711

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dion O’Neale, Project Lead – COVID Modeling Aotearoa; Senior Lecturer – Department of Physics, University of Auckland; Principal Investigator – Te Pūnaha Matatini, University of Auckland

With Aotearoa New Zealand’s move into phase 3 of its response to the Omicron outbreak, new definitions and protocols for testing and isolation will mean new ways of measuring the impact of COVID-19.

Broadly speaking, there are two aspects to this new regime. The first relates to the changing definitions of who counts as a close contact, and what their isolation requirements are.

The second concerns testing processes, advice for who should get tested when, what sort of test they should take, and how the result is recorded. Switching to phase 3 means a switch to predominantly using rapid antigen tests (RATs).

Testing policy is important because the number of confirmed or probable cases informs our estimate of the number of underlying infections.

New confirmed cases are a lagging indicator of new infections, but a leading indicator of other important metrics like hospitalisations. The more we know about who is newly infected and where, the better we can plan individual and community responses to the outbreak.

RATs and risk

With the high case numbers we’re now seeing with Omicron, speed is key in returning test results. Quick results mean people can modify their behaviour accordingly and isolate if necessary. The sooner people receive a positive result, the sooner they can notify recent contacts, and those people can also isolate.

When case numbers are high, the risk of a false positive from a RAT is very low. This means the extra value from having a more sensitive PCR test is reduced compared with when we had lower case numbers.

Read more:
As New Zealand’s Omicron infections rise rapidly, genome surveillance is shifting gears

Conversely, when case numbers in the community are high, there is a risk of false negative results on a RAT for someone who either has symptoms or is a close contact of a confirmed case.

In such cases the prudent course of action would be to take a second test – either another RAT or a PCR test – and to assume there is still a decent chance you may be infected.

People who have no known exposure to a confirmed case, and no symptoms, can be relatively confident in the accuracy of a negative result from a RAT. And regardless of test results, anyone with COVID-like symptoms should be isolating until they recover from whatever is causing those symptoms, COVID or otherwise.

Estimating actual infection numbers

The move to phase 3 acknowledges that infection and confirmed cases are becoming high enough that many of the processes for monitoring and planning will be stretched and may become inaccurate.

As the number of infections rise, we can expect the “case ascertainment rate” (CAR) will start to fall. The CAR is a measurement of the percentage of total infections at a given point in time that are turned into confirmed cases.

Read more:
15 things not to do when using a rapid antigen test, from storing in the freezer to sampling snot

That is, given an observed number of confirmed cases, how many infections do we think are actually in the community, including those that are unconfirmed?

Keeping track of this metric at different stages of the outbreak is important. When isolation requirements for close contacts relax, infections may increase, while fewer people will be eligible for testing.

Or, people may test positive on a self-administered RAT but not report it. Both of these lead to higher numbers of unconfirmed infections.

Why accurate numbers matter

The only way to accurately estimate the CAR is through an “infection prevalence survey”. An example is the UK’s Office of National Statistics (ONS) survey, one of the strongest aspects of the UK’s otherwise patchy COVID response.

This randomised survey tries to directly measure the fraction of people who are infected with COVID at any point in time. A well-designed survey makes sure to sample sufficient people in different demographic groups and with different infection risk factors.

Read more:
How accurate is your RAT? 3 scenarios show it’s about more than looking for lines

Modelling can estimate the number of infections in different populations, subject to different assumptions. But without an infection prevalence survey, or equivalent data, only confirmed cases can be directly observed.

Since confirmed cases are an unknown fraction of total infections, and this fraction changes over time, it’s important to be able to accurately estimate the underlying infection numbers to validate such modelling.

And since infection numbers are a leading indication for hospitalisations, they are valuable for planning adjustments to processes or policies, such as testing or isolation.

Case numbers a fraction of the whole

Without an infection prevalence survey it is necessary to fall back on less accurate measures of infection estimates.

For example, the fraction of people admitted to hospital who test positive for COVID is an unreliable estimate of infection prevalence because it is biased by a large number of factors that are difficult to control for.

Namely, people rarely turn up at hospital for random reasons. Many of the same factors that might drive hospital admissions, even for reasons not directly linked to COVID, are nonetheless related to COVID infection risk.

Read more:
How accurate is your RAT? 3 scenarios show it’s about more than looking for lines

As an example of infection prevalence data in action, in early January 2022, the UK recorded an average of around 200,000 daily confirmed cases. The ONS survey estimated just under 4 million people were infected at the time.

Details around the length of the survey period during which people might test positive can affect the exact value of the CAR. But the UK figures paint a picture of only a small fraction of infections being detected, even with RATs being provided frequently and free to every household.

With access to testing in Aotearoa being more limited than in the UK, we might expect our CAR to be even lower, and hence the number of reported cases is likely to significantly undercount true infections.

But without an infection prevalence survey, it’s difficult to tell exactly how much we are undercounting by.

Kylie Stewart from Te Matatini o te Horapa contributed to this article.

Dion O’Neale receives funding from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, as part of COVID Modelling Aotearoa, for providing modelling advice related to the COVID response in Aotearoa. He is the lead investigator of Te Matatini o te Horapa – a project funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand to look the equity impacts of COVID in Aotearoa.

– ref. NZ’s confirmed COVID case numbers are rising fast, but total infections are likely much higher – here’s why – https://theconversation.com/nzs-confirmed-covid-case-numbers-are-rising-fast-but-total-infections-are-likely-much-higher-heres-why-177901

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Juliette McIntyre, Lecturer in Law, University of South Australia

The world was treated to a grotesque spectacle this week. Russia, the current president of the UN Security Council, launched an invasion of Ukraine while the Security Council was holding an urgent meeting to try to resolve the crisis.

This has many people asking whether there is any point to international law – is it powerless to control the conduct of states?

Has Russia broken the law?

Yes. There is no question Russia has breached the rules of international law. Ukraine has a right to territorial integrity and political independence. Russian “recognition” of the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk does not change this, nor do any historical claims to Ukrainian territory on the part of Russia.

Russia has also committed an act of aggression against Ukraine. Aggression is an old concept in international law, predating the creation of the UN.

War has been outright illegal since the 1928 Kellogg-Briand pact. The charter establishing the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945 also declared the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression” to be crimes against peace.

Finally, Russia’s acts constitute a serious breach of the UN Charter, which states:

All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

Read more:
Ukraine invasion: should Russia lose its seat on the UN Security Council?

What can the UN Security Council do?

But what is the point of all this international law if Russia can still invade Ukraine? Where is the enforcement?

Article 24 of the UN Charter grants the Security Council primary responsibility for the “maintenance of international peace and security”. This includes taking collective measures to prevent and counter threats to peace and suppressing acts of aggression.

The UN was established specifically to prevent a global war between great powers from happening again. And since we haven’t seen this sort of event in the past 75 years, the UN has been largely successful at this primary goal.

But here’s the rub: the UN Security Council (and the UN Charter more generally) was established by the allied powers who “won” the second world war. In establishing the UN, these powers (China, France, the UK, the US and Russia as successor state to the USSR) were positioned functionally above the law.

They were made permanent members of the Security Council (known as the P5) and given veto power over UN action.

This was done expressly to prevent the UN from being able to take action against them and to allow them to act as a balance to each other’s ambitions. The system only works, however, when the P5 agree to abide by the rules.

This worked through the Cold War because no P5 state felt comfortable enough in its own power to act unilaterally and upset that balance. Once that uneasy balance of power fell apart with the collapse of the USSR, the willingness of the P5 members to act with restraint began to chip away.

In the 1990s, the US and UK used the Security Council to rubber stamp their expansive military activity. Later, when Russia and China felt confident enough to use their veto power (most prominently in the Iraq invasion in 2003), the US and UK simply acted unilaterally. The Security Council – by design – was powerless to prevent it.

The same scenario is playing out now, with Russia as the aggressor. The restraint of the P5 in their use of military action has been hanging by a thread for decades. We may have just seen it permanently snap.

Are there other responses under international law?

Russia’s ongoing transgression of the law is not the end of the story. There are other ways international law can be used to either defend Ukraine or punish Russia that go beyond economic sanctions.

One option is the invocation of Article 51 of the UN Charter, which gives states the right of individual and collective self-defence.

Ukraine can legally use force to defend itself from attack, and moreover, can request military assistance from other countries. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Kuwait issued a number of such requests to help it defend itself.

Questions have also been asked about whether Russia could be stripped of its permanent membership on the Security Council.

The simple answer is no. Arguments are now being made that Russia should not have inherited the USSR’s seat on the council. But all the states arising from the collapse of the USSR (including Ukraine) did agree to this in 1991.

As for the question of reforming the UN Charter to remove Russia, that is also functionally impossible.

While Article 108 of the UN Charter does allow for amendments, it requires all of the P5 to agree. So, in order to remove Russia from the Security Council, Russia would have to agree, and that’s never going to happen.

This, again, is by design, so the P5 would feel confident in their security when taking action to police the world. Unfortunately, peace can’t be enforced when your enforcer is the one breaching the peace.

Read more:
Ukraine invasion: should Russia lose its seat on the UN Security Council?

Can Putin be prosecuted for crimes?

There is also international criminal law. Putin has committed the crime of aggression by launching an illegal war, and any Russian war crimes on Ukrainian territory are within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

But Putin will not stand trial before the ICC for aggression, due to the court’s narrow jurisdiction. Uniquely, both the aggressor state and the victim of its actions must be parties to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the court. Ukraine is a party to the Rome Statute, Russia is not.

So, the ICC has no jurisdiction over Russian aggression without the Security Council referring Russia to the court as a non-party. And, of course, Russia can veto this action as a permanent member of the council.

While the ICC also has jurisdiction over war crimes, tying a president to the crimes of foot soldiers is complex and not something the court has ever succeeded in doing.

However, the ICC is not the only game in town. Any country in the world can prosecute grave war crimes, such as intentionally attacking civilians.

And countries can prosecute nationals of other states for aggression, if they have laws in place to do so. Germany, the Netherlands, Ukraine and even Russia all have such “universal jurisdiction” laws that apply to acts of aggression.

Similarly, the doctrine of command responsibility is also subject to universal jurisdiction. So, war crimes prosecutions need not stop with front-line soldiers.

However, the difficulty with universal jurisdiction is bringing suspects into custody. Heads of state, in particular, are generally immune from being prosecuted for crimes in foreign courts.

Not only that, for such prosecutions to happen, Russian political and military leaders would need to be removed from their posts, arrested and then extradited to face trial.

So, in the short run, will anyone be hauled before a court? No. In the long run? Maybe.

Meanwhile, the job of the international community is to gather evidence of crimes as they occur, and to support Ukraine’s right of self-defence. International law is there, states now must use it.

Douglas Guilfoyle receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Tamsin Phillipa Paige received funding from the Australian Department of Education in the form of an Endeavour Scholarship in relation to her research on the UN Security Council.

Juliette McIntyre 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. Is international law powerless against Russian aggression in Ukraine? No, but it’s complicated – https://theconversation.com/is-international-law-powerless-against-russian-aggression-in-ukraine-no-but-its-complicated-177905

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Harcourt, Industry Professor and Chief Economist, University of Technology Sydney

When Vladimir Putin became the first Russian leader to visit Australia – for the 2007 APEC summit in Sydney – I had a chance to ask him what he thought of Australia.

“I never think of Australia,” he replied.

Putin has probably not thought of Australia much since, apart from the fuss we made over Russian-backed rebels in Ukraine shooting down Malaysian Airlines MH17 in 2014, and his visit to Brisbane in 2014 for a G20 leaders summit.

Russia and Australia have limited economic ties. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will ripple through the global economy, reaching as far as Australia. Russia’s actions are already affecting things like petrol prices.

More significantly Putin’s belligerence could further destabilise our already fraught relationship with China, our most important trading partner.

So Australia certainly has reason to think about Putin’s actions now.

Russia’s crucial role in the global economy

Measured by gross domestic product, Russia is the world’s 11th biggest economy, just behind South Korea and in front of Brazil. Its 2020 GDP of US$1,646 billion wasn’t much bigger than Australia’s (in 13th spot, with US$1,610 billion).

But Russia matters to the global economy because, like Australia, it is a major global supplier of natural resources such as oil, gas, coal, metals and wheat.

Disruption of these supplies could happen through Western sanctions on Russia, or through Russia cutting off supplies – or both.

The intention in either scenario is to punish the other side. The effect on the global economy, already threatened by inflation and COVID-related supply side shocks, will be the same.

Read more:
What Russia’s war means for Australian petrol prices: $2.10 a litre

Expect international price rises

Russia is also a major global supplier of metals such as aluminium and palladium, a rare and expensive metal used in catalytic converters to reduce toxic exhaust emissions from cars and other vehicles.

Palladium has other important uses too, including in hydrogen fuel technology. Russia accounts for about 40% of global supply.

Sanctions banning Russian imports will naturally reduce global supply and increase the prices of these resources, as well as the products made from them.

How much of an inflationary effect this causes will depend on how much other suppliers increase their output, or whether Russia can increase sales to other buyers not participating in sanctions. China, for example, has ended all restrictions on wheat imports from Russia

Putin has built strong ties with Saudi Arabia, Iran and other oil-producing and non-democratic states as a bulwark against the West. So replacing Russian supplies and enforcing sanctions effectively won’t be easy.

Europe’s vulnerability

The European Union is particularly vulnerable to supply shocks, due to its heavy reliance on energy imports, with 41% of the natural gas and 27% of the crude oil it consumes coming from Russia.

For Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse, about 34% of oil imports and 35% of its gas imports come from Russia. This makes the German government’s decision to halt the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline being laid in the Baltic Sea between Russia and Germany a gutsy call.

Given the central role of German manufacturing to European supply chains, disruptions to its energy supply will have major global economic implications.

The biggest risks for Australia

In the very short term, there may be some upsides for Australian exporters, such as wheat farmers.

Russia is the world’s biggest wheat exporter and Ukraine, long known as Europe’s bread basket, is the fifth (Australia is sixth).

The likely disruption to these supplies can be expected to increase the world wheat price, as happened in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea.

Australia is also a major natural gas exporter. However, because it exports that gas by ship (as liquefied natural gas) rather than through pipelines, there are constraints on it increasing exports in the near term.

So some Australian exporters who compete with Russian suppliers should benefit from higher prices in the short run. But these benefits will soon be overrun by the adverse impact of global economic disruption.

The biggest risk to Australia, though, is if China decides to follow Russia’s lead.

We saw at the Beijing Winter Olympics the warming of what has historically been a frosty Sino-Russian relationship. Putin and Xi Jinping have much in common.

If Xi sees the West being divided and weak over Ukraine, as it was over Afghanistan, then he may make matters tougher for Taiwan. This would jeopardise Australia’s trade with China.

What else can be done?

All the signs are that Putin is prepared to ride out sanctions, gambling that he has enough reserves to tough them out or enough friends to undermine their effectiveness.

What else can be done?

Read more:
What can the West do to help Ukraine? It can start by countering Putin’s information strategy

One option is a strong economic strengthening of Ukraine through trade and infrastructure measures. This could include the European Union granting Ukraine preferential trade and investment deals, and the Western allies assuring it favourable supply of natural resources.

Russia may like to intimidate, but it doesn’t have the economic strength of a united opposition, including the US, European and Asia-Pacific nations.

There may not be an immediate military solution, nor a neat diplomatic fix. But the economic dimensions to the crisis may be more in favour of Ukraine than first meets the eye.

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

– ref. How Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will ripple through the global economy and affect Australia – https://theconversation.com/how-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-will-ripple-through-the-global-economy-and-affect-australia-177829

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By William Partlett, Associate Professor, The University of Melbourne

With an all-out war on Ukraine underway, a key question has emerged: what can the West do to help Ukraine?

Sanctions and limited military aid will help. Another key strategy, however, is crucial: to counter Russian president Vladimir Putin’s justifications for the war.

Rebutting Putin’s information strategy will weaken his position in what is likely to be a long, drawn-out conflict.

To do that, we first need to understand what his information strategy is.

Read more:
Ukraine invasion: what the west needs to do now – expert view

Putin’s information strategy

In a nearly hour-long speech to the Russian people released on February 21, Putin put forward his case for invasion. This speech has been described by observers as “angry” and “rambling” but it was highly scripted.

In fact, it included two key arguments, which we can expect to see constantly reappearing in Russian messaging in the coming weeks and months.

One is focused primarily on the Russian population. The other has both a domestic and international audience in mind.

The domestic pitch: Russia as victim of Ukrainian neo-Nazis

The first part of Putin’s argument outlined a one-sided narrative of Ukrainian history aimed squarely at appealing to the emotions of a domestic audience by showing Russia’s supposed victimisation at the hands of Ukraine.

The narrative begins with a fantastical version of history claiming Ukraine was “entirely created by Russia, or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, communist Russia”.

It then turned to the idea that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine “never had stable traditions of real statehood”.

Ukraine’s “pro-West civilisational choice”, Putin argued, then inevitably led to a series of catastrophes: endemic corruption, a “West-supported” neo-Nazi takeover of power in 2014, and systematic discrimination against Russian speakers (including a planned genocide).

He concludes by claiming Ukraine might soon have weapons of mass destruction (including nuclear weapons).

How to counter this narrative?

This one-sided, neo-imperial interpretation of history is a fantasy that has great emotional appeal to a former mid-level KGB officer like Putin, who experienced at first hand the humiliating end of an empire in 1991 and now sits in the Kremlin.

Putin gets to feel like an agent of history, rebuilding Russia from the terrible humiliation of the 1990s.

But what about 140 million Russian citizens? How does avenging this historical fantasy help them cope with rising prices, a tanking economy, and growing corruption in their country? What future does Putin’s war of vengeance actually offer to coming generations?

Alexey Navalny, the jailed opposition leader, put this well.

He likened Putin’s arguments to your drunk grandfather’s rant at a family gathering – except, this time, your grandfather “holds power in a country with nuclear weapons”.

Russia has all the tools, Navalny argued, for strong economic and cultural development “in the 21st century from oil to educated citizens”. But these are being thrown away on the basis of “war, dirt, lies, and the palace with the golden eagles in Gelendzhik” (a reference to Putin’s alleged palace that features in a notorious YouTube video).

The broader pitch: Russia as victim of the West

The second part of Putin’s speech included geopolitical arguments about the reckless expansion of NATO and the United States into Russia’s sphere of influence.

This included evocative language of a “US-built maritime operations centre in Ochakov”, and dire warnings that it will only take seven to eight minutes for US ballistic missiles to reach Moscow from Kharkiv in Ukraine.

He concluded by arguing the US will always want to dismember and weaken Russia because “they just do not need a big and independent country like Russia around”.

This kind of argument is aimed at both domestic and international audiences. In fact, much of this language could be aimed at Beijing, which sees the US in much the same way.

It also has been a popular discussion in the Western media and academia. Even prominent US academics such as John Mearsheimer have made a version of this argument for years. These academic arguments don’t go as far as Putin’s, and certainly the US would like to contain Russia’s power, but such arguments can be misinterpreted as justifying a war in Ukraine.

Countering these arguments requires making a clear distinction between explanation and justification.

An explanation is an argument about why something causes a particular response; it ignores whether the response is good or bad. By contrast, a justification is a claim about why a particular response is the correct one. The West must counter Putin’s justification and show why it was the wrong choice.

In the Ukrainian context, it means being clear that although NATO’s eastward expansion might explain why Putin ordered a full-scale war, it does not justify it.

In fact, a war on Ukraine is the wrong response to NATO expansion because it is likely to encourage the expansion of NATO toward Russia’s borders.

We are already seeing this with growing support for NATO membership in Finland.

Countering Putin’s information strategy

Countering Putin’s information strategy therefore involves making two key arguments.

First, it means pointing out this is not a Russian war on Ukraine. It is war of choice entirely attributable to an increasingly detached clique of leaders led by Putin, who have little interest in solving the everyday problems of millions of Russians.

The protests in many cities across Russia – exceedingly brave in the knowing reality of police brutality – suggest many Russians believe this already.

Second, a successful counter to Putin’s information strategy shows a full-scale invasion of Ukraine will only worsen Russia’s security situation. This war of choice will only isolate Russia from allies and encourage the further expansion of NATO onto its borders.

Read more:
Putin is on a personal mission to rewrite Cold War history, making the risks in Ukraine far graver

William Partlett 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 can the West do to help Ukraine? It can start by countering Putin’s information strategy – https://theconversation.com/what-can-the-west-do-to-help-ukraine-it-can-start-by-countering-putins-information-strategy-177912

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Change Governance Dr Lain Dare discuss the week in politics.

They talk about the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, the immense uncertainty this has created, and the west’s response with rounds of sanctions.

They also canvass the government’s announcement a RAAF plane was targeted with a laser attack by a Chinese naval vessel that was sailing through Australia’s exclusive economic zone.

Meanwhile at home, as the election approaches, Anthony Albanese is on a charm offensive, featuring in an Australian Women’s Weekly interview with his partner, Jodie Haydon.

Michelle Grattan 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. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on a week that shook the world – https://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-a-week-that-shook-the-world-177908

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arosha Weerakoon, Lecturer, General Dentist & PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland

Most of us brush our teeth on autopilot. So let’s stop and ask: are you doing it properly? For a full two minutes? Do you use the correct type of brush and toothpaste?

Did you know you’re supposed to spit, not rinse after brushing?

And brushing soon after eating acidic foods, like citrus, can damage your teeth?

Here, I answer five questions commonly asked at the dentist.

1. Am I brushing correctly?

For starters, make sure you’re brushing both teeth and gums at least twice a day.

Brushing removes dental plaque, the grey-white bacterial mass that sticks to the tooth and gum surface.

If left undisturbed for at least a day, plaque bacteria multiply and begin to mature.

Mature plaque forms an architecturally complex mass with its own sewerage system.

Plaque feeds on the food we eat, particularly carbohydrates (sweet and savoury) to reinforce and build a complex structure that releases acids and gassy, smelly by-products (plaque sewage).

Mature plaque on your teeth and gum surfaces can lead to cavities (holes in our teeth) and gum disease.

Cavities form in our teeth when the mineral in our enamel and eventually, dentine, dissolves to neutralise plaque acids. Over time, the tooth softens and caves in.

Every time you brush, you stop plaque bacteria from feeding on your food, multiplying and maturing. Mature plaque mixed with mineral in your saliva forms calculus or tartar.

Calculus can only be removed completely by a dentist or hygienist using special tools.

Not brushing before bed is especially risky; saliva flow reduces and food stuck between your teeth ferments, creating a perfect petri dish for plaque growth. This is where flossing or using tapered interdental cleaners can help.

Make sure you clean the teeth at the back of your mouth, and don’t rush. The Australian Dental Association recommends brushing for two minutes morning and night.
Watch this video for some handy tips on how to brush your teeth.

2. How do I look after my gums and prevent bad breath?

Bad breath can be caused by gum disease.

After two to three weeks of poor brushing, the mature plaque causes the gums to swell, redden and bleed easily.

This is because the gum’s blood vessels leak immune fighting cells to try and destroy the plaque.

But the plaque’s defence system repels the attack. Everything your body throws at it bounces off and starts to break down the bone that holds your teeth in your head.

This process is known as advanced gum disease or periodontal disease. It happens slowly and painlessly. As the gums recede, teeth appear elongated.

Untreated, your teeth may become painful, loosen and even fall out.

This is why it’s important to have a regular dental check-up and to brush and floss frequently.

3. What kind of toothbrush should I use?

The Australian Dental Association recommends using a toothbrush with a small head and soft bristles.

Some of us are magnificent manual tooth brushers, but many would benefit by using an electric toothbrush.

Why? The same reason we ditched the broom for a vacuum cleaner.

It’s faster, efficient and does a better job – as long as you hover over the surfaces you need to clean. Aim for teeth as well as gums.

Electric toothbrushes come with various features to suit different budgets and needs.

For instance, some have an in-built warning signal to prevent you from brushing so hard you abrade (wear away) your teeth and gums.

4. When should I delay brushing?

Generally, wait at least 30 minutes after vomiting or consuming acidic foods and beverages.

If in doubt, check the food label as there are many different acids in our diet.

Acids soften the enamel and dentine like soaking dirty saucepans in the sink.

And if we don’t give our saliva enough time to mop up the acids, the softened tooth surface scratches away when we brush.

5. What kind of toothpaste should I use?

Keep it simple. Select a toothpaste that contains fluoride.

Fluoride fills and reinforces the microscopic gaps in our teeth to create an acid-resistant barrier.

It also forms a non-stick surface to prevent plaque from attaching and maturing.

Do spit and not rinse at the end; avoiding spitting and rinsing means you get a fluoride treatment each time you brush.

What about whitening toothpastes? Whitening toothpastes can have strong abrasives that wear the tooth surface to cause sensitivity.

Most stain particles in our natural teeth hide in microscopic gaps in enamel.

The most efficient and least destructive way of removing these stains is by using peroxide-based whitening products.

Talk to your dentist about options and be wary of home remedies or gimmicks. And remember, whitening will not change the colour of dentures, crowns, veneers or fillings.

Arosha Weerakoon is a self-employed dentist in private practice. She has received funding from Colgate to conduct research on how collagen and mineral characteristics in teeth change as we age. She is a member of the Australian Dental Association and a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons.

– ref. How to brush your teeth properly, according to a dentist – https://theconversation.com/how-to-brush-your-teeth-properly-according-to-a-dentist-177219

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Suzanne Wilkinson, Professor of Construction Management, Massey University

The pandemic has had a considerable impact on all businesses, but New Zealand’s construction sector appears particularly hard hit and is struggling to cope. Firms have failed, prices have gone up, and labour and materials are in short supply.

In the past few weeks alone, one construction company has gone under and building projects have ground to a halt due to shortages of Gib board.

These kinds of problems should not surprise anyone. Material and labour shortages, companies failing, red tape and poor quality outcomes for companies and consumers are not new for the sector.

The big question is why such shocks and stresses create problems for the New Zealand construction industry so regularly. More immediately, how can the sector deliver reliably on the significant building and infrastructure projects in the current pipeline?

A potted history of crises

A few key examples tell the tale. In 2002 there was the leaky building crisis, with predictions of a serious downturn and the “potential for a major systemic breakdown across the industry”.

In 2012, the building sector again faced a “bleak year”, in part due to delays in the Canterbury rebuild and low volumes of work elsewhere.

Read more:
The pandemic exposes NZ’s supply chain vulnerability – be ready for more inflation in the year ahead

Forecasts in early 2013 of boom times ahead as the Christchurch rebuild finally appeared to take off were followed by cost increases, skills shortages and increasing defects.

By 2015, there were reports of more than 60 construction-related Christchurch companies in liquidation that year, owing creditors an estimated NZ$40 million.

Planning for resilience

Even in unremarkable times, the industry tends to be slow to innovate and has poor productivity. Firms win tenders with prices so low they often cannot make any profit. The industry does not spend enough on research and development, and it reacts rather than plans.

What is needed is the development of a resilient construction sector that’s able to cope with adverse events, recover well and continue to operate effectively.

We began researching organisational and construction sector resilience in the early 2000s. Since then, we have worked on a number of government projects in New Zealand and overseas, helping to develop infrastructure network, organisation and sector resilience.

Read more:
Rebuilding post-eruption Tonga: 4 key lessons from Fiji after the devastation of Cyclone Winston

Our past research tells us organisations are likely to be more resilient when they have leadership and a culture that actively plans and allows for constant change.

A resilient organisational culture is one where staff are engaged in resolving problems and are given time and training to develop innovative thinking. Resilient companies learn from the past and use those lessons to focus on what matters.

They also maintain effective relationships with other relevant organisations. They understand their position in the construction supply chain, including who they depend on and who depends on them. A resilient supply chain makes the industry less fragmented and more connected.

Moving to a new model

Our research leads us to believe that developing closer-to-home resourcing – not relying on so many imported skills and materials – would create greater resilience and a more sustainable industry.

And there are current initiatives making a difference. Educational programs focusing on training and career development are an excellent step towards creating workforce resilience. Similarly, a construction sector accord is creating partnerships between government and industry to achieve (among other things) a co-ordinated voice on industry reforms.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission are both involved in improving the sector’s climate change planning, skills and productivity, and risk management.

Read more:
Unless we improve the law, history shows rushing shovel-ready projects comes with real risk

Our research aims to build on such developments by helping organisations in the construction sector understand their own resilience and to plan accordingly.

In particular, a five-year grant from MBIE’s Endeavour Fund will allow us to develop the CanConstructNZ project to help manage industry capacity and better understand how to manage shocks and stresses.

The hope is that all such initiatives will contribute to a more resilient construction sector that can deliver the multiple projects within the national pipeline forecasts.

With a more co-ordinated approach to planning and the ability to withstand shocks and setbacks, it’s hoped the industry can avoid the problems that have dogged it – and the country – for too long.

Suzanne Wilkinson receives funding from Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment under the Endeavour Research Programme, CanConstructNZ.

Monty Sutrisna receives funding from MBIE Endeavour.

Regan Potangaroa receives funding from the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment under the Endeavour Research Program, CanConstructNZ.

Rod Cameron receives funding from Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment under the Endeavour Research Programme, CanConstructNZ

– ref. Shortages, price increases, delays and company collapses: why NZ needs a more resilient construction industry – https://theconversation.com/shortages-price-increases-delays-and-company-collapses-why-nz-needs-a-more-resilient-construction-industry-177052

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Mercer, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, Curtin University

Review: The Smallest Stage, by Kim Crotty for Perth Festival

A small, white rectangle taped onto the wide, open expanse of the Studio Underground playing space is a literal representation of one of the small stages evoked by the play’s title. But The Smallest Stage goes way beyond the literal to recreate its primary focus: the space between a parent telling a child a story.

Ostensibly a one-man show, actor Ben Mortley actually shares the stage with a cast of 20 others: ten children with one parent each.

These volunteers, experiencing the performance for the first time, receive their instructions (unheard by the rest of the audience) via headphones that direct their entrances and exits from the front row and stage choreography. They move props, play multiple roles and recreate key moments referenced in the storytelling.

Mortley plays the character of West Australian writer and co-creator of this production, Kim Crotty, who was sentenced to two years in Dartmoor prison in the UK for growing cannabis, separating him from his partner and two sons.

In this autobiographical retelling, Mortley moves seamlessly between present day Crotty as narrator, Crotty in the past dealing with the reality of his situation and the characters he meets along the way.

With the white rectangle now serving as his prison cell, Crotty realises the fleeting phone calls and visits with his children are only deepening the trauma of his absence. This drives him to do what most parents do to settle their children: tell stories.

And so Crotty becomes both writer and illustrator, as he desperately seeks to maintain his connection with his family.

Stories as lifebuoys

Running the gamut of children’s storytelling genres, Crotty’s stories include gross-out humour featuring unforgettable characters like Snot Man and Tissue Monster, what he calls “alternate superheroes” and old-fashioned morality tales.

All in all he wrote and illustrated 47 stories for his sons.

Although some of them could work as children’s books or theatre in their own right, The Smallest Stage is about more than the stories themselves. It is about a father rising above his current circumstances to create new worlds to inhabit with his sons, seeking to gain a sense of control in fictional worlds that might eventually transfer to the real world.

Crotty’s stories are lifebuoys cast by a drowning man. By adding the story behind them, The Smallest Stage casts a much wider net

Even with children in the audience, The Smallest Stage doesn’t avoid serious themes. The ugly remnants of family violence, incarceration and misogyny are faced squarely. The vestiges of what we inherit from our parents and what we pass on plays out in the storytelling. Reckoning with what Crotty describes as his own “father-shaped hole”, the work tracks his journey to be a better father than the one he had.

The simple paper of the original storytelling is very much in evidence. The work brilliantly stages the transformative capacity of storytelling via live drawing segueing into animation, projection, puppetry and a pop-up book simply lit by a hand-held torch. One extended animated story of Ghost Girl Elise is beautifully realised.

But while the stories draw us in on their own merits, the focus remains on how the stories bridge the gap between the father and his sons.

Everyone has a story

This focus is also present in the presence of the audio-guided participant children and parents. Witnessing this layer of the performance illuminates the work’s premise: everyone has a story.

It also extends and expands the specificities of Crotty’s story. The choreography that accompanies the moment when Crotty is reunited with his sons when he is finally released and deported back to Australia creates a simple but emotional release. There is no acting required here.

Crotty’s decision to not hide the truth of his mistakes and failings from his children is one challenge most parents would understand. The Smallest Stage shows by finding “the words to name the ache” Crotty creates a pathway towards a more open, honest and loving relationship with his sons, ultimately forming a lifetime habit of love and storytelling.

Mortley’s performance is an emotional slow burn. While the work itself is expertly crafted to accommodate all the variables at play, Mortley remains at the mercy of chance created by the presence of the other participants. Retaining and calibrating the emotional arc of the work, while remaining open to the variability of their input, he is the heart and soul of The Smallest Stage’s aches and joys.

Mortley, director Matt Edgerton and designer Zoë Atkinson worked with Crotty to co-create this world premiere performance. As theatre makers, they followed Crotty’s principle of using everything at their disposal to create.

A superb collaborative effort, The Smallest Stage is a real triumph of form emerging from content, a powerful example of the originality that can emerge from a group of artists given time, money and support to work towards one purpose.

It also reminds us of theatre’s communal roots and its capacity to activate and uplift an audience.

The Smallest Stage is at Perth Festival until February 27.

Leah Mercer 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 Smallest Stage is an intricately crafted play for families about incarceration – and the power of stories – https://theconversation.com/the-smallest-stage-is-an-intricately-crafted-play-for-families-about-incarceration-and-the-power-of-stories-176802

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lawrence English, Adjunct Research Fellow, Griffith University

Vision is often regarded as first among the human senses, as our eyes are the way most of us come to know the world. However, vision has its limits.

Even now, as you use your eyes to read this, other senses are in operation that open up a greater appreciation of the world. Perhaps the most powerful of these is listening – audition.

Sound carries cues about the world we might otherwise miss. And with the development of new technologies and the work of dedicated scientists and artists, we can today listen to what was previously unimaginable, from the inner workings of plants to catastrophes in distant galaxies.

Songs Of The Living by Lawrence English

In my own work, currently exhibited at the Museum of Brisbane, I have made field recordings of environments and creatures around the world. These works take their place alongside an ever-growing collection of recordings revealing the unheard sounds of our world.

The limits of the ear

Humans can only hear a limited range of sounds: those with frequencies between about 20 hertz (low sounds like thunder) and 20 kilohertz (very high sounds like some species of bats). Other sounds exist outside the scope of our auditory capacities.

“Infrasonic” sounds such as the rumble of earthquakes have frequencies too low for us to perceive, although other animals can detect them. There are “ultrasonic” sounds too, with frequencies above the threshold of human hearing.

Read more:
Listening to the ocean reveals a hidden world – and how we might save it

Strictly speaking, a sound is a vibration in air. But we can also think of other kinds of vibrations, such as electromagnetic waves, as having the potential to be registered as sounds.

With the right kind of technological translation tools, you can hear the electromagnetic sounds emitted by devices like the one on which you are reading this right now.

Why should we listen?

Listening is a different way of knowing the world that expands our understanding. Sound travels around corners and through walls, from places that are out of sight.

Our ears are a gateway to a deeper sensing of the world. Take bird calls, for example.

For most, even those of us living in densely populated urban centres, dawn’s arrival is trumpeted by a chorus of bird calls. These voices, that seemingly splay out in all directions suggest acts of territorial dominance, of the seeking and discovery of food and other fundamental activities of animal species. A variation of the chorus occurs again, as the sun vanishes over the horizon.

These daily occurrences are so commonplace as to not draw themselves to attention. But on closer examination, we are discovering they reveal much about habitat health, seasonality and other environmental markers.

Listening longer, listening deeper, listening wider

Today we are listening to more of the world, and beyond, than ever before, with the growth of disciplines such as bio-acoustics, radio telescopy, and more philosophical fields such as sound studies.

The proliferation of technologies such as hydrophones (underwater microphones) and electromagnetic receivers has also increased the reach of our ears.

It’s this combination of intellectual, scientific and artistic curiosity, matched with technological developments and availability that have resulted in the capture of some incredible sound events that exist well beyond the visual plane.

Just a quarter of a century ago it seemed like science fiction that we might be able to capture the sound of two black holes colliding in space – but scientists did it in 2015.

These discoveries and others like them have fostered new research programs that aim to undertake the deepest and most concentrated galactic listening to date.

As above, so below

We have made many discoveries closer to home, too.

We have known for a long time that the underwater world is rich in sounds, but it has been underrepresented in dedicated research. This trend is changing, with numerous studies highlighting the rich acoustic diversity of rivers, oceans and reefs.

On land, the Australian researcher Monica Gagliano has explored plant audition. She demonstrated how plants can use sound to find water – so next time your plumbing is blocked by a plant’s roots, keep in mind they have been listening to the water flowing through the pipes.

Equally profound are the studies of bioelectrical sounds emitted by plants carried out by artists such as the Irish “sound ecologist” Michael Prime. For several decades, Prime has catalogued various bioelectric emissions from plants. At times they resemble unsettled but rhythmic avant-garde music.

Field recording

This curiosity for listening into places and those that inhabit them, has also spawned a zone of creative sound practice called field recording. A field recordist is a listener who is primarily focused on capturing the sonic aspects of environments that captivate them.

Once a marginal part of the sound arts canon, field recording has come to be regarded as a critical field of creative engagement. This year artists such as Philip Samartzis have been memorialised in a series of Australian Antarctic postage stamps.

Read more:
The sounds around us: an introduction to field recording

Even if you don’t want to make your own field recordings, you might be interested in listening to the sound walks of Canadian artist Hildegard Westerkamp, or experiencing the situational listening of Japanese artist Akio Suzuki’s Oto Date project.

These works, like my own Site Listening at the Museum Of Brisbane, recognise that the more we listen into the world around us, the more we realise we are yet to hear its true resonances.

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

– ref. Listening to everything: how sound reveals an unseen world – https://theconversation.com/listening-to-everything-how-sound-reveals-an-unseen-world-177806

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jon Piccini, Lecturer in History, Australian Catholic University

The Reds are back. Scott Morrison’s Liberal-National government has recently launched an offensive of “red-baiting”, a practice long thought consigned to the history books, in preparation for an anticipated May 2022 election.

Last November, Defence Minister Peter Dutton hounded Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong, charging her with “not standing up for [Australian] values” in comments on the China-Taiwan dispute.

This week, News Corp has targeted Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese after the Chinese Global Times offered him some backhanded compliments. A video also emerged of Albanese speaking Mandarin at an economic summit, and he was found to have participated in a forum for Tribune, newspaper of the defunct Communist Party of Australia. (This interview, it should be noted, was 31 years ago.)

Such claims have long plagued the progressive side of politics. Since the first news of the Bolshevik victory in the 1917 Russian Revolution reached our shores, fears of Australia following Vladimir Lenin’s lead have been used and abused by conservative politicians for electoral gain.

But, how successful have these “moral panics” been? And do they still pass muster with today’s electorate?

Read more:
‘National security’ once meant more than just conjuring up threats beyond our borders

A canker that must be cut out of our national life

The Communist Party of Australia was founded in October 1920 by a mix of Marxists, anarchists, feminists and trade unionists. Inspired by events in Russia, where the working class had seized power, they wanted world revolution. But, following Lenin’s theories, they also saw parliamentary representation as a way to politicise the working class.

Aside from Fred Paterson, an Oxford-educated communist lawyer who represented the seat of Bowen in the Queensland Parliament from 1944 to 1950, the party’s threat was not at the ballot box. Instead, the Australian Labor Party faced accusations of insufficient loyalty, or being knowing dupes of Moscow.

In 1925, when the Labor Party had only a few hundred members, the prime minister, Stanley Bruce, first used the communist bogey to electoral effect. A wave of industrial unrest was blamed on the work of “a few extremists” in the trade unions, and “political labor”, Bruce argued, was “afraid of the strength and power of those who control those organisations”. He declared:

“[T]he only manner in which citizens of Australia can declare their attitude is at the poll. […] the canker of these men advocating Communistic doctrines must be cut out of our national life”.

Bruce, a staunch defender of White Australia, used the communists’ internationalism against Labor. Communist officials in the recently founded Australian Council of Trade Unions had affiliated it to the Soviet-aligned Pan Pacific Trade Union, which included organisations in China and Japan.

The pro-Bruce Daily Telegraph presented this as evidence the Labor Party, by extension, was soft on immigration restriction. The mud stuck and Labor lost six seats in the 1925 election.

The Labor Party did not take these attacks lying down. The New South Wales branch had banned “dual membership” in 1924. But such actions proved insufficient. Historians credit this “leftist bogey” with keeping Labor out of government – bar a brief spell during the Great Depression – until 1940.

An alien and destructive pest

The 1940s were the heyday of Australian Communism. A wave of popular enthusiasm for the Soviet Union’s wartime accomplishments saw the party grow from 4,000 members in 1941 to over 20,000 three years later. Communists gained control of trade unions representing over half of Australian workers, and formed an alliance with the wartime Labor government of John Curtin.

A directive from Moscow that communists should launch an industrial offensive quickly made this wartime relationship an electoral liability for Labor. In 1946, at the helm of the recently formed Liberal Party, Robert Menzies blamed everything from fuel shortages to housewives’ difficulties finding essential items and trade relations with Malaya on

“the Government’s supine surrender to a minority of Communists and agitators”.

While Curtin’s successor, Ben Chifley, used wartime clout to win that contest, the 1949 election occurred only two months after Mao’s communists proclaimed the People’s Republic of China. This mixture of the “yellow peril” with communism, along with major disruption caused by a communist strike in the coal industry, delivered Menzies a handsome win. The Liberals received a 5% swing and a stunning 48 seats. He declared communism “an alien and destructive pest” and promised: “If elected, we shall outlaw it.”

Communist ranks were decimated in these years, but with the support of Labor leader H.V. Evatt, the Communist Party was able to narrowly defeat Menzies’ attempt to ban it. This result owed more to fears of what such a ban might mean for democracy than the electorate’s support for communist ideals.

Where do you draw the line?

This was seen as collusion by by some in Evatt’s own ranks. Labor had established trade union “industrial groups” to undermine communist control in the late 1940s and these hosted a right-wing, Catholic opposition. Headed by B.A. Santamaria, this opposition used revelations at the Royal Commmission on Espionage, sparked by the defection of Soviet diplomat Vladimir Petrov, as ammunition to split the Labor Party.

Originally called the Labor Party (Anti-Communist), the Democratic Labor Party’s raison d’etre was red-baiting, and it kept Labor out of office for a decade and a half.

Conservatives found one tool particularly useful in these years: stoking fears of national liberation movements in Asia, presented as an extension of the communist menace. A prominent Liberal party campaign poster from the 1966 election pictured arrows menacingly pointing through South-East Asia towards Australia, asking voters: “Where do you draw the line against Communist aggression?”

In the late 1960s, however, the local communist party had broken with the Soviet Union, and the Cold War entered a period of detente. Labor Opposition Leader Gough Whitlam visited China in 1971, and Liberal Prime Minister William McMahon’s anti-communist fulminations fell flat when US President Richard Nixon announced similar plans only weeks later.

In 1983, prime ministerial aspirant Bob Hawke memorably saw off Malcolm Fraser’s suggestion voters should hide their money under the bed in the event of a Labor win by declaring:

You can’t keep your money under the bed – that’s where the commies are!

What had once been a tragedy for Labor seemed now only farce.

McCarthyism, 21st-century style

The hiatus of red-baiting as an effective tactic in the 1980s – arguably replaced by fears of refugees and terrorists – begs the question: why is it back today?

The rise of China from Cold War isolation to global superpower is one answer. Another can be found in the weaponising of far-right language about “cultural Marxism” from the United States.

Read more:
Is ‘cultural Marxism’ really taking over universities? I crunched some numbers to find out

But will it be effective? A 2007 campaign to tar Julia Gillard as a communist failed to keep Labor out of office, and it is unclear who the market for this rhetoric is today.

Australians under 40 have no living memory of the Cold War and are more open to socialist ideas after the Global Financial Crisis.

Furthermore: there is no dangerous “fifth column” on which to hang fears. The Communist Party of Australia wound up in 1991. And Chinese-Australians – whom government members have targeted in a McCarthyist fashion over imagined Communist Party links – tend to skew conservative.

Lastly, given there is no notable difference between Labor and Liberal on foreign policy towards China, the chances of mud sticking seem limited. We can only hope that 2022 – almost a century after its first usage – marks the end of red-baiting in Australian politics.

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

– ref. Still under the bed? Red-baiting’s long history in Australian politics – and why it’s unlikely to succeed now – https://theconversation.com/still-under-the-bed-red-baitings-long-history-in-australian-politics-and-why-its-unlikely-to-succeed-now-177543

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giacomo Lichtner, Associate Professor of History, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

During the anti-lockdown protests at parliament last year, I was told about a 15-year-old who stopped to ask someone why they were crying. The person replied they were Jewish and had been upset by Nazi imagery used by some protesters, including swastikas chalked on the ground.

Water bottle in hand, they set about washing these off, until a well-dressed, middle-aged woman threatened to kill them and parliamentary security ushered them away.

The local Jewish community sounded a warning about the “grotesque and deeply hurtful” appropriation of the Holocaust by protesters that, as the situation in Wellington suggests, went unheeded.

The current occupation of parliament grounds has also seen disturbing references to Nazism and the Holocaust. These have been variously deployed to call for the execution of journalists and politicians, invoke the Nuremberg Code and compare vaccine mandates to the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

Not only do such comparisons rest on false equivalences, absurd leaps of logic and historical anachronism, they are also tactics that tap into long histories of exploitation of the Holocaust for political ends.

A history of appropriation

Twenty years ago, American historian Peter Novick surveyed the causes (left and right) that since the 1970s had sought legitimacy and impact by comparing themselves to the Holocaust. These included:

• anti-abortionists and pro-choice activists

• campaigners against the death penalty

• the National Rifle Association

• Christian conservatives

• LGBTQ activists during the AIDS epidemic

• and even an Oklahoma congressman who took the TV mini-series Holocaust to be a warning of “the dangers of big government”.

Read more:
In ‘freedom convoy’ and other vaccine protests, slogans cross the political aisle

Since then, the trend has grown and the list become even more diverse. Social media and the active dissemination of conspiracy theories have made it global. Holocaust references were used to condemn both Donald Trump’s immigration laws and Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

Comparisons to Nazi genocidal policies have also cropped up wherever assisted dying legislation has been debated, with opponents claiming such policies would be akin to Nazi “euthanasia”.

As well as being inaccurate, that argument also perpetuates the criminal Nazi deception that hid racist mass murder under the euphemism of “euthanasia”.

First they came for …

In this charged context, anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller’s oft-cited quote about apathy in the face of threat – “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out…” – has emerged as a favourite meme.

Niemöller had initially welcomed Hitler’s rise to power but was later incarcerated in Dachau in 1937. Visiting the camp after the war, he was struck by a sign reading: “Here in the years 1933-1945, 238,756 people were cremated.”

While his wife was shocked by the number of victims, Niemöller was horrified by the dates: where had he been between 1933 and 1937? From that experience came the famous lines lamenting German conformism and indifference that had allowed Hitler’s rise.

Read more:
The Wellington protest is testing police independence and public tolerance – are there lessons from Canada’s crackdown?

Niemöller never wrote them down as a poem, but would open his speeches with them, amending the groups of victims depending on his audience (as indeed do the many memorials where his words are now engraved).

The deliberate universality and adaptability of Niemöller’s words have now been hijacked by any number of protest groups, only sometimes in intended jest: “First they came for the wealthy…”, “First they came for the YouTubers…”.

Now, inevitably, the US alt-right’s “First they came for the unvaccinated…” reverberates around anti-vax conference venues and the online forums of “freedom convoys”, alongside imagery featuring yellow stars and striped pyjamas.

These threaten to become the rallying cries of those with no experience of genuine dictatorships, lack of freedom or persecution, yet who share forums with neo-Nazis and anti-Semites – including in New Zealand.

False equivalence

Reading ourselves and our times into history is a reasonably common phenomenon and easily done. After all, what was the Nazi party in its early days other than a tiny minority of disgruntled and disaffected “ordinary” people, coalesced around economic grievances and a general sense of moral and cultural malaise?

And while some historical analogies might be wrong, they’re not always harmful. But to compare vaccine mandates to Nazism is both inaccurate and harmful. As is comparing the New Zealand government’s health response to South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Not only do such comparisons equate fundamentally different policies, they wilfully ignore the fact those historical persecutions discriminated against people for who they were, not for what they believed or how they chose to behave.

Read more:
The occupation of NZ’s parliament grounds is a tactical challenge for police, but mass arrests are not an option

Media and other commentators sometimes play down exploitation of the Holocaust or Nazism, either to starve it of publicity or because it can seem less serious or threatening than other more overt forms of intimidation.

But we should also guard against complacency. Since the 2019 Christchurch terror attack, New Zealand has known firsthand that racist and intolerant discourse can lead to deadly violence.

Despite evidence of violent rhetoric and behaviour in Wellington, some have sought to reassure that most protesters were “ordinary Kiwis”.

Just what constitutes an “ordinary” Kiwi is open to speculation. But I’d prefer to think they’re like the compassionate teenager who took out a water bottle to help remove swastikas, not the protesters who tolerate or ignore them.

Giacomo Lichtner is a former Board member of The Holocaust Centre of New Zealand.

– ref. The NZ anti-vax movement’s exploitation of Holocaust imagery is part of a long and sorry history – https://theconversation.com/the-nz-anti-vax-movements-exploitation-of-holocaust-imagery-is-part-of-a-long-and-sorry-history-177710

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hamish McCallum, Director, Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security, Griffith University

About two years into the pandemic, we’re still trying to find where and how it all started. Only last week, we heard bats in Laos may hold a clue about the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID.

Our interest in viral origins, especially pandemic viruses, is understandable. But we need to remember one key lesson from history. It can take years to pin down their animal source.

Here’s why it’s important to keep trying and – in the case of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 – why it’s too soon to expect miracles.

Read more:
I was the Australian doctor on the WHO’s COVID-19 mission to China. Here’s what we found about the origins of the coronavirus

We can learn from the past

Emerging infectious diseases like COVID are becoming an increasing problem. Most are zoonotic. In other words, they originate in non-human animals, mainly wildlife.

However, identifying these animal sources and how the viruses entered human populations is difficult. This is a major problem.

If we can identify sources and routes of spillover, then we should be better able to understand the processes driving emergence of new diseases. This means we could better predict when and where spillover is likely to occur in the future.

Understanding the underlying processes would also help us devise strategies to either reduce the risk of wildlife diseases transferring to humans, or to nip spillover in the bud before an epidemic or pandemic occurs.

Read more:
How do viruses mutate and jump species? And why are ‘spillovers’ becoming more common?

This is all very hard, but predictably so

In the case of SARS-CoV-2, some people say scientists’ inability so far to identify the source wildlife population and to definitely say how the virus entered human populations suggests the virus originated in a laboratory. Yet the lab origin theory has been thoroughly debunked.

However, this delay in finding definitive answers is not unusual. For many recently emerged human viruses, the wildlife source (the natural reservoir) took years to identify, or is still rather unclear.

For example, Ebola has caused devastating outbreaks of deadly haemorrhagic disease in Africa since the 1970s.

Most scientists think bats are the reservoir. Yet no one has yet successfully isolated Ebola virus from a wild bat, despite lots of circumstantial evidence.

How about bats and COVID?

The closest known animal virus to SARS-CoV-2 occurs in a species of horseshoe bat found throughout China and Southeast Asia. That virus is called RaTG13.

Although RaTG13 and SARS-CoV-2 are 96.1% similar in their genetic code overall, this does not necessarily mean the human SARS-CoV-2 came directly from those bats.

In the same way, while chimpanzees are the closest living relatives of humans, we definitely did not descend from chimpanzees, nor did chimpanzees descend from us.

Genetic similarity between two species tells us they are connected in a “family tree” to a common ancestor. The extent of that similarity gives some information about how long it was since the two species arose from that ancestor.

For SARS-CoV-2 and the bat coronavirus RaTG13, this separation likely occurred some decades ago.

Viral family trees have ‘tangles’

To make things more complex, some viruses can also acquire genetic changes via recombination. This occurs when two different virus strains or species infect the same cell. They can swap bits of genetic code with each other, producing a “mosaic” virus. This means the “family tree” becomes more like a tangle of brushwood.

So, rather than looking for a single coronavirus as the ancestor of SARS-CoV-2, we need to look at a whole range of related viruses that might co-occur in nature.

More evidence for this came just last week, in a paper published in the prestigious journal Nature.

It found previously unknown bat viruses in Laos that are not quite as closely related to SARS-CoV-2 as RaTG13 overall. But some of these bat viruses from Laos are more closely related to SARS-CoV-2 than RaTG13 at the particular region that allows the virus to bind to human cells.

This means SARS-CoV-2 likely arose from mixing of different bat coronaviruses in natural bat populations. This is likely how SARS-CoV-2 acquired the genetic sequence that allows it to bind to human cells and infect humans.

Read more:
Why it will soon be too late to find out where the COVID-19 virus originated

What about pangolins?

Pangolins are scaly mammals considered a delicacy in parts of Asia and are severely endangered by the wildlife trade. There has been a lot of discussion about the possibility pangolins may have been a bridge species that enabled the transfer of this coronavirus from bats to humans.

These ideas arose because we know some highly pathogenic (disease causing) emerging viruses in humans do indeed have a bridge host. Bats infect them and they, in turn, pass the virus to humans.

For example, we work on Hendra virus in Australia, where horses act as a bridge host. Flying foxes (a type of bat) infect horses, which in turn, infect humans.

Similarly, MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) is caused by a coronavirus of bats which has passed to camels and then on to humans.

With the new coronaviruses detected in bats in Laos, our understanding of the role of pangolins has changed. It appears both pangolins and humans are infected by coronaviruses derived from bats, but the human virus did not come via pangolins.

How did a coronavirus get from bats in caves to humans in Wuhan?

This critical question remains a mystery. People go into the caves where these horseshoe bats live, often to collect guano (bat faeces) for fertiliser. But the nearest bat caves are some distance from Wuhan.

No bats were sold in the Wuhan wet market that many of the earliest cases were linked to.

However, Wuhan is a major city and transport hub. So an infected person who had been in those caves may well have passed through Wuhan, and visited the wet markets.

SARS-CoV-2 is now known to infect a wide range of other mammals. So it is also possible a bat or a human may have infected another mammal, which then passed through the Wuhan wet market.

Read more:
New preliminary evidence suggests coronavirus jumped from animals to humans multiple times

What do we still want to know?

Lessons learnt from other viruses meant that early on in the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, we had a solid basis for hypothesising the virus had links to bats and quite possibly arose through a bridging host in the wildlife market.

We still have unanswered questions about the path the virus took from bats to humans. But the more we continue to look in bat populations, the more we find these pieces of SARS-CoV-2 genetic code already exist in nature.

As with other emerging viruses, if we keep looking, we may eventually find all the missing pieces we need to close the case on where SARS-CoV-2 came from. If we’re smart, we’ll use this information to take action to prevent the next pandemic.

Hamish McCallum receives funding from ARC, and the US agencies NSF, NIH and DARPA.

Alison Peel receives funding from ARC, and the US agencies NSF and DARPA.

– ref. We want to know where COVID came from. But it’s too soon to expect miracles – https://theconversation.com/we-want-to-know-where-covid-came-from-but-its-too-soon-to-expect-miracles-172155

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Lowe, Emeritus Professor, School of Science, Griffith University

I first heard the standard joke about fusion as an undergraduate physics student in the 1960s: Fusion power is fifty years away – and probably always will be.

More than fifty years later, we still don’t have fusion. That’s because of the huge experimental challenges in recreating a miniature sun on earth.

Still, real progress is being made. This month, UK fusion researchers managed to double previous records of producing energy. Last year, American scientists came close to ignition, the tantalising moment where fusion puts more energy out than it needs to start the reaction. And small, fast-moving fusion startups are making progress using different techniques.

A limitless, clean source of baseload power might be within reach – without the nuclear waste of traditional fission nuclear plants. That’s good, right?

Not quite. While we’re closer than ever to making commercial fusion viable, this new power source simply won’t get here in time to do the heavy lifting of decarbonisation.

We are racing the clock to limit damage from climate change. Luckily, we already have the technologies we need to decarbonise.

How much progress is being made on fusion?

Five seconds. That’s how long the UK’s Joint European Torus was able to sustain a fusion reaction, producing enough energy to run a typical Australian household for about three days. That’s a small fraction of the energy needed to make the fusion reaction happen, which used two 500 megawatt flywheels. That amount of power would meet the peak needs of 100,000 average Australian households. So we are still a long way from getting a net energy benefit from fusion.

On a technical front, achievements like this are incredible. Nuclear fusion is the process that powers stars like the sun, and we are working to harness this for our own use.

Read more:
Nuclear fusion: how excited should we be?

At very high temperatures, light atoms such as hydrogen can combine to produce another element such as helium, releasing enormous quantities of energy in the process.

In the sun, these fusion reactions take place at temperatures about 10 million degrees. We can’t do it at that temperature, because we don’t have access to the enormous gravitational pressure at the centre of the sun.

To achieve fusion on earth, we need to go hotter. Much hotter. Experiments like the one in the UK are able to superheat a body of gas called a plasma to inconceivable temperatures, reaching as high as 150 million℃. The plasma has to be confined by incredibly strong magnetic fields and heated by powerful lasers.

This temperature is far hotter than anywhere else in our solar system – even the centre of the sun.

While the recent progress represents a major step forward, sober reflection suggests the dream of limitless clean energy from hydrogen is still a long way off.

On the megaproject front, the next step is the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) being built in southern France. Far too big for any one country, this is a joint effort by countries including USA, Russia, China, the UK and EU member countries.

The project is enormous, with a vessel ten times the size of the UK reactor and around 5,000 technical experts, scientists and engineers working on it. Famously, the project’s largest magnet is strong enough to lift an aircraft carrier.

Even this enormous project is only expected to produce slightly more power than it uses – around 500 megawatts. The first experiments are expected by 2025.

To me, this illustrates how far away commercial fusion really is.

Fusion won’t get here in time

It will take decades yet to go from these promising experiments to a proven technology powering modern society. That means it simply will not get here in time to make a real contribution to slowing and reversing climate change.

To have a decent chance of keeping climate change below 2℃, we have to get to net zero emissions worldwide in under 30 years.

Read more:
Nuclear fusion breakthrough: what do new results mean for the future of ‘infinite’ energy?

We can’t wait. We have to decarbonise energy supply and energy use as quickly as possible.

Many countries are already moving at speed. The UK is planning to get to zero-emissions electricity within 12 years. States like South Australia and New South Wales should get there around the same time. The International Energy Agency predicts renewables will become the largest source of electricity generation worldwide by 2025.

The shift away from baseload

Even if fusion arrives, it would face major challenges due to the cost of the plants and the changing nature of the grid.

In the second half of the twentieth century, power stations became larger to achieve economies of scale. That worked, until recently. Only ten years ago, large coal-fired or nuclear power stations produced cheaper electricity than solar farms or wind turbines.

This picture has changed dramatically. In 2020, global average prices of power from new large wind turbines was 4.1 cents per kilowatt-hour, while solar farms were even cheaper at 3.7 c/kWh. The average for new coal? 11.2 c/kWh.

Ever more favourable economics drove a massive investment in renewables in 2020: 127 gigawatts of new solar, 111 of new wind and 20 of hydro-power. By contrast, only 3GW of net nuclear power came online, while coal-fired power actually dropped.

As a result, we’re seeing a global shift away from old models of baseload power, where power is generated in large power stations and transported to us by the grid.

These shifts are driven by cost. The price of electricity from renewables is now falling below the running costs of old coal-fired or nuclear power stations. Coal power requires digging the stuff up, transporting it, and burning it. Renewables get their power source delivered free of charge.

The idea of fusion power is alluring. There’s a real appeal in the idea we could replace large coal and gas stations with one large clean fusion power plant. That, after all, is the selling point of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor: to produce baseload power.

But will we need it? The pattern of power supply is changing. The massive take-up of solar power by households means we have now permanently shifted from the old model of large power stations to one where supply is distributed around the network.

It will be a technological marvel if we are finally able to build fusion plants in the second half of this century. It’s just that they won’t be in time.

Luckily for us, we don’t need fusion. We already have what we need.

Ian Lowe received funding in the 1980s from the National Energy Research, Development and Demonstration Council for a study of Australia’s future energy needs. He is a former President of the Australian Conservation Foundation.

– ref. Limitless power arriving too late: why fusion won’t help us decarbonise – https://theconversation.com/limitless-power-arriving-too-late-why-fusion-wont-help-us-decarbonise-176974

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard F. Heller, Emeritus Professor, University of Newcastle

Universities face many threats to their future. The traditional universities have become over-managed business enterprises, which may not reflect societal, national or global educational needs. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many of these issues into focus.

In a new book, I propose a model that responds to the broad range of challenges universities face. I call this model the distributed university – that is, a university that distributes education online to where it is needed.

Read more:
Amid global crisis, how can universities be regenerated to serve the common good?

In more than 50 years as an academic in Australia and the UK, I have seen the potential for a pivot to online learning that, through distributed learning, could solve many of the problems the higher education sector faces.

I have been involved in online master’s-level programs to build public health capacity in both high-income and low-to-middle-income countries. Face-to-face teaching designed for the International Clinical Epidemiology Network was augmented by distance learning – first paper-based, followed by online. I established the University of Manchester’s first fully online master’s program.

More recently, I founded and co-ordinated the global, fully online, volunteer-led People’s Open Access Education Initiative (Peoples-uni).

Read more:
COVID has changed students’ needs and expectations. How do universities respond?

What are the problems facing universities?

The pressures on universities are both external and internal.

Externally, universities need to be responsive to the ways people access information today (and will tomorrow). They also need to ensure environmental sustainability. And amid global inequalities in access to higher education, our universities are overly dependent on income from overseas students.

Internal developments pose multiple threats too. Universities have downgraded teaching, with academics not rewarded for educational excellence as opposed to research. They have adopted a competitive business model, rather than a collaborative model of education, and intrusive managerial oversight instead of placing trust in academics. And they work in centralised ivory towers rather than engaging with local communities and industries.

Read more:
Amid global crisis, how can universities be regenerated to serve the common good?

The distributed university responds to these problems by:

• reducing global inequalities in access
• emphasising local relevance
• reducing impacts on the environment
• building trust in place of managerialism
• collaborating rather than competing.

How does the distributed university work?

The distributed university I describe in my book (free to read and download) sets up higher education to adapt to the changes in how we work and learn today.

Online learning, which must be fit for purpose, is central to this as it allows for structural change. Smaller local hubs can largely replace central large campuses, reducing the large carbon footprint created by students and staff travelling to campus. These hubs may be physical or virtual.

The distributed university offers education mainly online rather than in lecture halls. Local or regional hubs engage with local communities, industries and other education providers. They encourage practice-based active learning, which can be a hybrid of online and face-to-face.

Each of the hubs can be replicated over geography (including internationally) and over time. Learning needs will change over time as careers and interests develop. Central administration is much smaller, but ensures the courses being offered meet societal needs.

Intrusive managerialism is replaced by trust in academics – made easier by this structure. It is not generally recognised that online education is much more transparent than face-to-face. All materials, student contact and student-tutor interactions are captured, allowing for unobtrusive quality assurance.

Social interaction between students and between academics is offered partly in the hubs but mainly online. This reflects the way we communicate and learn in today’s world.

Read more:
Beyond Zoom, Teams and video lectures — what do university students really want from online learning?

IT support for education and research is vital. It will allow us to respond to future developments in communications and to the changes and challenges of the fourth industrial revolution.

The distributed university will be light on the environment. Although online education is IT-heavy and has its own carbon footprint, it’s much smaller – even more so when powered by renewables – than the face-to-face version with buildings and travel. It will thus show leadership in achieving environmental sustainability.

This model’s local and regional hubs will also encourage regional development.

Our recent research paper highlights the environmental benefits of online education. A group of 128 master’s degree students (mainly from Africa) studied online rather than travel to live and study in the UK. They saved nearly a million kilograms of carbon emissions.

Read more:
Why universities are starting to re-evaluate their academics’ travel

Three new programs

COVID has exposed the over-reliance on overseas student fees. This revenue has largely been diverted to support research. The government’s recent international education strategy makes no mention of the role Australia can play in reducing global inequalities in access to education.

Read more:
Australia’s strategy to revive international education is right to aim for more diversity

In addition to the benefits described above, a pivot to online education opens up other opportunities. I describe three potential programs: a global online program, a tertiary version of the International Baccalaureate and a “PlanE for Education”.

A global online program can create low-cost learning for overseas students. This will help meet current educational needs while providing a bridge to future mutually beneficial partnerships with emerging economies. Research must be properly funded, and not rely on the diversion of income from overseas students paying high fees.

To help reduce the destructive emphasis on competition between universities, a higher education version of the International Baccalaureate used in schools might be created. This would involve global collaboration between universities, which would reduce competition and standardise quality.

Continuing the collaboration theme is a proposal to create “PlanE for Education”. This would be similar to initiatives such as PlanS that require publicly funded research to be published in open access journals or platforms. At least some of the educational resources generated in universities using public money would be made freely available under PlanE.

Read more:
Making Australian research free for everyone to read sounds ideal. But the Chief Scientist’s open-access plan isn’t risk-free

We live in a digital and distributed world. Universities should too. The notion of a distributed university may help the higher education sector survive, prosper and be sustainable.

Richard F. Heller 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. Higher education must reinvent itself to meet the needs of the world today. Enter the distributed university – https://theconversation.com/higher-education-must-reinvent-itself-to-meet-the-needs-of-the-world-today-enter-the-distributed-university-175927

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW Sydney

A curious feature of the Australian tax system is “bracket creep”. Taxpayers whose income climbs by no more than prices (inflation) get no increase in their living standards. Instead, they see more and more of their income pushed into their highest tax brackets, or to even higher tax brackets.

It means the government’s income from income tax keeps climbing, even if there are no more people paying it and the value of what they earn hasn’t climbed.

Here’s how it works. The first A$18,200 are tax-free, the rest up to $45,000 are taxed at 19 cents in the dollar, the rest up to $120,000 at 32.5 cents in the dollar, the rest up to $120,000 at 37 cents in the dollar, and anything in excess of $180,000 is taxed at 45 cents in the dollar.

Australia’s income tax scale

What each extra dollar of income is taxed at, excluding Medicare levy and offsets

It means that as someone’s income climbs from, say, $80,000 to $90,000, a greater proportion of it is taxed at 32.5% and a lower proportion of it is either taxed less or untaxed.

This happens even if rising prices mean what that person can buy hasn’t changed – or at the moment, with prices climbing faster than wages, means their buying power has shrunk.

Bracket creep is increased tax by stealth

It’s why every few years the government trumpets a tax cut, which in reality is often no more than giving back some of the proceeds of bracket creep.

It could all be ended if the thresholds at which each tax rate cut in were indexed to inflation, climbing each year in line with price increases.

Read more:
The budget’s dirty secret is the tax hikes you’re not meant to know about

Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser briefly introduced tax indexation in 1976 but abandoned it partially in 1979 and fully in 1982, finding himself not thanked for it.

This week in the Australian Financial Review, economics professor Steven Hamilton made a persuasive case for indexation based on “starving the beast.”

As he put it, indexing brackets to inflation at this year’s budget

may be the Liberals’ last chance this decade to put some brakes on the relentless creep of the state and the sapping of hard work and entrepreneurship, having spent a decade enabling it

This argument has a degree of truth to it, for sure. An ever-expanding government is bound to become lazier and spend money less efficiently than a government that is income constrained.

And it certainly doesn’t suggest that there is no role for government, as is suggested by US anti-tax campaigners such Grover Norquist:

I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub

But there is also a progressive case for indexation.

The progressive case for indexation

If governments had go to voters and ask for a tax increase to fund additional spending (for any given budget surplus or deficit) then the link between tax and spending decisions would become clear.

If voters wanted more services, such as better hospitals or a better national disability insurance scheme, they would have to vote for higher taxes.

Bracket creep means the link is effectively hidden from them, as it shrouds the funding of spending.

Read more:
A simpler tax system should spark joy. Sadly, this one doesn’t

It sounds like a subtle shift, but it would be a significant one. Instead of the debate being about “we can get what we want without increasing taxes”, it would become “tax is worthwhile because unless we increase it we won’t get what we want”.

Progressives ought to support the shift. The bottom line is that whatever your politics, there’s a strong case for indexing tax thresholds to inflation.

It would make our tax and our political system more honest, ensuring politicians actually acted in our interests.

Richard Holden is President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

– ref. Vital Signs: stealth tax rises are eating into your income – but we know the solution – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-stealth-tax-rises-are-eating-into-your-income-but-we-know-the-solution-177630

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meg Elkins, Senior Lecturer with School of Economics, Finance and Marketing and Behavioural Business Lab Member, RMIT University

Two of Netflix’s top trending series, Inventing Anna and The Tinder Swindler retell the true stories of convicted con artists, who fleeced their victims through the well-established ruse of presenting as members of high society.

Inventing Anna is a fictionalised version of the case of Anna Sorokin/Delvey, who fooled the New York social set into believing she was a German heiress. The original story was reported on for a viral article in The Cut back in 2018. Tinder Swindler recounts the true story of Simon Leviev (Shimon Hayut), who conned $10 million from women on Tinder pretending to be the son of an Israeli diamond trader.

Our current viewing fascination with con artists includes documentaries such as the enthralling case of Elizabeth Holmes and her company Theranos, a multi-billion dollar tech company and a massive fraud.

This prevalence of the scam narratives begs the question: why do fraudsters fascinate us? The answers lies in the way we see ourselves and how we view the gullibility of others who have fallen prey to these con artists.

Watching a scam artist at work

We tend to think of ourselves as good decision makers. Human brains have evolved a “cheating detecting module”, allowing us to establish cooperation with strangers. Bottom line – we assume we would see the red flags.

Watching a scam artist at work fills us with a mix of surprise at their audacity –and glee and relief that it didn’t happen to us.

But it is the methods scam artists use to con people that are the same reason we are so fascinated by them. The truth is con artists make systematic use of every rule in a veritable playbook of exploiting our human psychological foibles.

Here is how they use the rules to bypass our cheat detectors?.

Decision making is cheap and cheerful

According to psychologists, we make around 35,000 decisions a day, and each comes with an unmanageable complexity in countless options and their possible consequences.

Given our limited brainpower we automatically resort to mental shortcuts known as heuristics to make good (rather than perfect) decisions. Think of these as the software of our minds, standard operating procedures we use for all of our mundane and repetitive decisions. Examples of a heuristics we use in everyday life would be the decision of how to get to work, or what to have for breakfast, or how we evaluate people when we first meet them.

Despite their advantages in everyday decision making, heuristics sometimes get it horribly wrong.

Con artists exploit these systematically by understanding how people make good and not great decisions. Psychologist Robert Cialdini, author of Influence, the definitive manual of persuasion tricks explains the most common ones tricksters exploit.

One is the social proof heuristic – the con artist’s success and connections are meant to demonstrate that others believe them and their lies too. Here the shortcut to decision making is that we tend to rely on the decisions others make.

People discount the improbable

One reason we fail to detect con artists is that they are, thankfully, relatively rare, which is what makes characters like Anna Delvey and Elizabeth Holmes so fascinating. Psychologists have found that people underrate the probability of rare events. Our brains evolved economically, equipped to deal with the most important and common threats – this leaves us vulnerable to rare decision problems.

A matrix experiment on honesty, by behavioural economist Dan Ariely, revealed how much people cheat if they think no one is watching. Ariely’s experiment had participants self report correct answers, and then shred the answers. What he didn’t tell participants, is he had rigged the shredder to preserve their responses. Out of 40,000 participants, 70% lied a little – 20 people out of the 40,000 lied to the maximum amount.

What this tells us is lying a little is common, but the big cheats are rare.

People think good things come in three (or four or five)

When we meet people who present as super wealthy or super attractive, we tend to use shortcuts to attribute a whole series of positive characteristics to them.

We form impressions of one another exceptionally rapidly, perhaps as quickly as under one second after exposure to another individual.

Con artists exploit the fact seeing only one observable “good” quality in a person is enough for a favourable general impression.

We call this the halo effect, it is a confirmation bias first described by American psychologist Edward Thorndike in 1920. The halo effect explains how when we ascribe one positive attribute to someone, we inadvertently add other positive traits to our overall impression of them. So if someone is rich then we tend to believe they might also be honest, hardworking and fair.

Fame means power

Con artists often carefully curate an illusion of being famous and well connected – which Anna Delvey did with flair. We are also programmed to respond to the social status of others.

It tickles our ego if a person of perceived status engages with us – the desire for a positive self image stops us from questioning their real status of intent.

It can’t happen to me

Unfortunately there is a final bias that makes us lower our guard: overconfidence. We like to think that we are not so gullible. The average person thinks they are above average when it comes to resisting persuasion and decision making.

However, the evidence suggests most people are at risk of falling for others – irrespective of intelligence and education. Psychiatrist Stephen Greenspan, author of the book Annals of Gullibility: Why We Are Duped and How to Avoid It, also fell for Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

The one saving grace is that our interest in con artists shows our ability to learn from others’ experiences. Here the internet and Netflix are playing their part to warn us. Con artists, we are on to you.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. We’re obsessed with shows about con artists like Inventing Anna: the fascination lies in how easily these people can dupe us – https://theconversation.com/were-obsessed-with-shows-about-con-artists-like-inventing-anna-the-fascination-lies-in-how-easily-these-people-can-dupe-us-177535

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

As Russia’s attack on Ukraine unfolds dramatically, Australia is in the choir stalls, not centre stage, when it comes to the West’s response. But Scott Morrison is determined its voice be loud.

His denunciation of the Russian “thugs” and “bullies” has been cast in the most forceful language. After announcing sanctions on Wednesday, he assured Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal that Australia, working with its partners, was prepared to do more.

Wednesday’s Australian sanctions were in line with those of the United States and United Kingdom. Just a day later, with Russia’s invasion, they were quickly expanded to include more individuals and entities. A further concerted step-up will come.

In term of effect, anything Australia does means a lot less to the Russians than similar sanctions imposed by the bigger players (not that those are deterring President Putin). As Morrison noted, our trade with Russia is small.

Morrison, incidentally, was careful about local blowback. For Australian businesses, the government said there would be more than a month’s breathing space before the measures affecting them come in.

What Morrison described as this “brutal invasion” will have seismic international ramifications, including in economic terms, although notably no countries are willing to put troops on the ground to defend Ukraine.

Given the timing, these events could be important in Australia’s domestic politics.
The Ukraine crisis feeds directly into Morrison’s push to make national security a central feature of the campaign for the May election.

One is tempted to revert to 2001, when the election victory of John Howard, who’d been seriously struggling politically, came off the back of the terrorist attacks in the US and the Tampa’s load of asylum seekers.

That comparison is limited, however. 9/11 had a more immediate impact on Australians, not least because Australian forces were part of the ensuing war in Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, the Ukraine crisis will continue to escalate, and what happens there will feature heavily in the news in the weeks ahead. Morrison will keep it prominent in the national conversation.

A crisis gives the PM a potent new focus. As Paul Kelly observes in his just-published book Morrison’s Mission: How a beginner reshaped Australian foreign policy, “Morrison’s character is that of a compulsive political activist. He is always on the move, talking, travelling, doing.”

Labor is leading comfortably in the polls, but for Anthony Albanese the Ukraine crisis presents, at the very least, a political challenge.

This is not a matter of a wedge – no one can suggest any lack of bipartisanship over Ukraine. Labor was immediately and solidly behind the initial sanctions, and Albanese will ensure it will continue in step with the government. But such a major conflict, even one far removed and in which we are not directly involved, changes the domestic atmosphere and plays to the status quo.

It also limits the attention on the issues on which Labor wants to focus, such as the increasing cost of living and stagnant wages (although rising oil prices will impose further pressure on high petrol prices).

Assuming there is not a new COVID variant, the foreign crisis may help to put a full stop under “pandemic politics”, making it harder for Labor to get public attention back on the government’s failures on issues such as aged care.

Read more:
How Russia’s recognition of breakaway parts of Ukraine breached international law – and set the stage for invasion

Simon Welsh of the RedBridge Group, a Labor-aligned consultancy firm, says its focus group research has been finding people have a general sense of tension increasing in the world. So far, however, that still sits behind their concern with the domestic bread and butter issues.

But, as of now, we are in a dynamic, rapidly changing situation.

Morrison is trying to bring China – on which he is attempting to wedge Labor – into the Ukraine story.

“China, of course, is watching this very carefully,” Morrison said on Thursday. “And that’s why I’ve been at pains to say that China needs to take as strong a position as other countries in the world and in denouncing what Russia is doing.”

But research, both qualitative and quantitative, is suggesting Morrison may be at risk of overplaying his hand with the China card.

Welsh says the focus group work indicates it is a two-edged sword. “China is a nuanced discussion,” he says. It’s not hard to stoke anti-China feeling. “But people also say you need a good relationship – for jobs, business.”

A similar picture comes through in the Essential poll published this week. Some 61% agreed with the proposition that “Australia’s relationship with China is a complex relationship to be managed”. This compared to 26% who thought “Australia’s relationship with China is a threat to be confronted”.

When people were asked which party they would “most trust to build a relationship with China in Australia’s best interests”, 37% said Labor, 28% said the Coalition and 34% were unsure.

Albanese knows he must make himself better known to voters and has counted on doing this in the approach to the election. Now he finds himself pursuing his charm offensive in the fog of a conflict that is distant but dominant.

Earlier this month we had the Meet the Morrisons program courtesy of Nine’s 60 Minutes. This week we have “At home with Anthony Albanese and partner Jodie” in the Australian Women’s Weekly.

The soft article was the formal introduction to the public of Jodie Haydon. It canvassed Albanese’s (oft-repeated) childhood story as well as Jodie’s, their meeting (a coming together of two Rabbitoh supporters), and her reaction when early last year he was badly hurt in a car accident. (“As I jumped in the ambulance and saw Anthony, I knew then the depth of my feelings towards him.”)

Jenny Morrison will be on the campaign trail; it remains to be seen what Jodie’s role might be.

As he attends to marketing his human side, Albanese is working hard on selling himself to business, including a speech to business figures this week, and an Australian Financial Review Magazine profile in which he declares: “I’m comfortable in the boardrooms as well as the pub.”

To those who argued Labor risked leaving its run too late, Albanese has retorted it’s the “fourth quarter” that counts. But, as we’re now seeing, the fourth quarter can be much complicated by the unexpected.

Michelle Grattan 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. Grattan on Friday: Faraway conflict feeds into Morrison’s national security pitch – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-faraway-conflict-feeds-into-morrisons-national-security-pitch-177833

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mamoun Alazab, Associate Professor, Charles Darwin University

As Ukrainian cities come under air attack from Russian forces, the country has also suffered the latest blows in an ongoing campaign of cyber attacks. Several of Ukraine’s bank and government department websites crashed on Wednesday, the BBC reports.

The incident follows a similar attack just over a week ago, in which some 70 Ukrainian government websites crashed. Ukraine and the United States squarely blamed Russia.

With a full-scale invasion now evident, Ukraine can expect to contend soon with more cyber attacks. These have the potential to cripple infrastructure, affecting water, electricity and telecommunication services – further debilitating Ukraine as it attempts to contend with Russian military aggression.

A critical part of Russia’s operations

Cyber attacks fall under the traditional attack categories of sabotage, espionage and subversion.

They can be carried out more rapidly than standard weapon attacks, and largely remove barriers of time and distance. Launching them is relatively cheap and simple, but defending against them is increasingly costly and difficult.

After Russia’s withdrawal from Georgia in 2008, President Vladimir Putin led an effort to modernise the Russian military and incorporate cyber strategies. State-sanctioned cyber attacks have since been at the forefront of Russia’s warfare strategy.

The Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) typically orchestrates these attacks. They often involve using customised malware (malicious software) to target the hardware and software underpinning a target nation’s systems and infrastructure.

Among the latest attacks on Ukraine was a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

According to Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, several Ukrainian government and banking websites went offline as a result. DDoS attacks use bots to flood an online service, overwhelming it until it crashes, preventing access for legitimate users.

A destructive “data-wiping” software has also been found circulating on hundreds of computers in Ukraine, according to reports, with suspicion falling on Russia.

On February 15, Ukraine’s cyber police said citizens were receiving fake text messages claiming ATMs had gone offline (although this wasn’t confirmed). Many citizens scrambled to withdraw money, which caused panic and uncertainty.

Ongoing onslaught

In December 2015, the GRU targeted Ukraine’s industrial control systems networks with destructive malware. This caused power outages in the western Ivano-Frankivsk region. About 700,000 homes were left without power for about six hours.

Read more:
Cyberattack on Ukraine grid: here’s how it worked and perhaps why it was done

This happened again in December 2016. Russia developed a custom malware called CrashOverride to target Ukraine’s power grid. An estimated one-fifth of Kiev’s total power capacity was cut for about an hour.

More recently, US officials charged six Russian GRU officers in 2020 for deploying the NotPetya ransomware. This ransomware affected computer networks worldwide, targeting hospitals and medical facilities in the United States, and costing more than US$1 billion in losses.

NotPetya was also used against Ukrainian government ministries, banks and energy companies, among other victims. The US Department of Justice called it “some of the world’s most destructive malware to date”.

Another Russia-sponsored attack that began as early as January 2021 targeted Microsoft Exchange servers. The attack provided hackers access to email accounts and associated networks all over the world, including in Ukraine, the US and Australia.

International cyber aid

Ukraine faces serious risks right now. A major cyber attack could disrupt essential services and further undermine national security and sovereignty.

The support of cyber infrastructure has been recognised as an important aspect of international aid. Six European Union countries (Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Estonia, Romania and Croatia) are sending cyber security experts to help Ukraine deal with these threats.

Australia has also committed to providing cyber security assistance to the Ukrainian government, through a bilateral Cyber Policy Dialogue. This will allow for exchanges of cyber threat perceptions, policies and strategies. Australia has also said it will provide cyber security training for Ukrainian officials.

The international implications of the Russia-Ukraine situation have been noted. Last week New Zealand’s National Cyber Security Centre released a General Security Advisory encouraging organisations to prepare for cyber attacks as a flow-on effect of the crisis.

The advisory provides a list of resources for protection and strongly recommends that organisations assess their security preparedness against potential threats.

The Australian Cyber Security Centre has since issued similar warnings.

Evading responsibility

Historically, Russia has managed to evade much of the responsibility for cyber attacks. In conventional warfare, attribution is usually straightforward. But in cyberspace it is very complex, and can be time-consuming and costly.

It’s easy for a country to deny its involvement in a cyber attack (both Russia and China routinely do so). The Russian embassy in Canberra has also denied involvement in the latest attacks against Ukraine.

One reason plausible deniability can usually be maintained is because cyber attacks can be launched from an unwitting host. For example, a victim’s compromised device (called a “zombie” device) can be used to continue a chain of attacks.

So while the operation may be run by the perpetrator’s command and control servers, tracing it back to them becomes difficult.

Mamoun Alazab 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. Russia is using an onslaught of cyber attacks to undermine Ukraine’s defence capabilities – https://theconversation.com/russia-is-using-an-onslaught-of-cyber-attacks-to-undermine-ukraines-defence-capabilities-177638