Category: MIL-OSI

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

In what has become a familiar, exhausting cycle, the rest of the world is left with the futile task of trying to dredge meaning from the wreckage left behind by US President Donald Trump.

As Trump departed the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, much was made of the content of his rambling, hour-long speech because the president had so escalated his rhetoric over Greenland.

Trump had said the United States would take the semi-autonomous Danish territory “whether they like it or not”. He had threatened direct tariffs on NATO allies that opposed him. Europe was considering reciprocal tariffs and had even gotten to the point of sending troops to Greenland as a demonstration of resolve.

NATO itself seemed on the verge of collapse.

While some analysis suggests a reprieve, there is no permanence to Trump’s statements. This president plays with lives, and the future of entire countries, with no care for the consequences.

‘Big, beautiful piece of ice’

Those who seek clarity in the chaos may have been relieved to hear the president make what may seem, on the face of it, a definitive statement of his position on Greenland:

I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.

That may well seem a clear statement of intent. But attempting to impose clarity by stripping sentences of their context risks dramatically misinterpreting that intent.

Even the sentences around this one hint that Trump has far from given up on acquiring that “big, beautiful piece of ice”.

In a speech riddled with inaccuracies, the president continued:

All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland. Where were we already had it as a trustee but respectfully returned it back to Denmark not long ago after we defeated the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians and others in World War Two. We gave it back to them. We were a powerful force then, but we are a much more powerful force now.

Never mind that Greenland was never the US’ to “give” or “take” back – this is a president who has long demonstrated himself impervious to fact checking.

Trump went on to describe, in detail, his plan to build new battleships for the US Navy. The implication is fairly straightforward. Trump’s United States may not have to use force, but it can if it wants to.

Be grateful, or else

In this same section of the speech, Trump fell back on a familiar theme – that the US bears all the burden of global security, with none of the benefits. As he put it,

We’ve never gotten anything except we pay for NATO.

(Never mind the hundreds of NATO troops who died fighting with the Americans in Afghanistan after September 11, the only time Article 5 of the NATO alliance has been invoked).

That Trumpian resentment was only fuelled, unsurprisingly, by a striking speech by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Carney’s excoriation of the Trump administration’s attacks on the world order was unlikely to be met with anything else from Trump.

Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way. They should be grateful also. But they’re not. I watched their prime minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful, they should be grateful to us. Canada, Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that Mark [Carney], the next time you make your statements.

The Trump administration is seeking “ownership” of the western hemisphere – that is, all of the continents of north and south America and surrounds. By implication, that leaves the other hemispheres to other great powers and strongmen, with whom Trump “has always had a very good relationship”.

This is the violent world Trump wants to create – a world divided into fiefdoms run by Mafia-style bosses paid simpering tributes by their weaker supplicants.

The rhetoric of white supremacy

Trump went to Europe to give a speech dripping with disdain for the people who live there. In contrast to those leaders with whom he has a “great relationship” (Putin, Xi, Kim Jong Un, et al), the Trump administration sees Europe and European leaders not just as weak, but as responsible for the demise of western civilisation – something only he can reverse.

After a racist rant directed at Somali immigrants, Trump claimed:

The explosion of prosperity and conclusion and progress that built the West did not come from our tax codes. It ultimately came from our very special culture. This is the precious inheritance that America and Europe have in common.

Trump’s talk of inheritance, of his pure European bloodlines, of the “mass import of foreign cultures” reveal, once again, the ideological drive behind his administration and its attempt to radically remake not just the US but the world.

While the president may have softened his rhetoric on Greenland specifically, this drive is a constant for the administration.

Live the truth

This is why Carney’s speech was so striking. It identified, in clear language, the truth of what the Trump administration is doing.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This fiction was useful. And American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.

So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

This bargain no longer works.

Trump may have temporarily “backed down” on Greenland, but as Carney put it, the “rupture in the world order” cannot be undone. But what comes next is not inevitable, and it does not have to be left up to Trump.

Carney’s speech is a clear indication that while the American president will not break his constant cycle of chaotic cruelty, the rest of the world may be attempting to step outside it.

There is meaning in that.

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

– ref. Trump sows ‘chaotic cruelty’ while Canadian PM Carney reminds the world it doesn’t have to play along – https://theconversation.com/trump-sows-chaotic-cruelty-while-canadian-pm-carney-reminds-the-world-it-doesnt-have-to-play-along-274099

COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone

Australia’s Labor government has successfully passed a “hate speech” bill that’s plainly aimed, at least in part, at suppressing pro-Palestine organizations as “hate groups”.

Free speech advocates are sounding the alarm about the new laws, saying their extremely vague wording, lack of procedural fairness and low thresholds for implementation mean groups can now be banned if they make people feel unsafe or upset without ever actually posing any physical harm to anyone.

For me the most illuminating insight into what these laws are actually designed to do came up in an ABC interview with Attorney-General Michelle Rowland on Tuesday.

Over and over again throughout the interview Rowland was asked by ABC’s David Speers to clarify whether the new laws could see activist groups banned for criticising Israel and opposing its genocidal atrocities in a way that causes Jewish Australians to feel upset feelings, and she refused to rule out the possibility every single time.

Australia’s hate speech law            Video: ABC 7.30

“Let’s just go to what it means in practice: would a group be banned if it accuses Israel of genocide or apartheid, and as a result, Jewish Australians do feel intimidated?” Speers asked.

Rowland didn’t say no, instead saying “there are a number of other factors that would need to be satisfied there” and saying that agencies like the AFP and ASIO would need to make assessments of the situation.

“Okay, just coming back to the practical example though, if a group is suggesting that Israel is guilty of genocide, what other measures or factors would need to be met before they can be banned?” Speers asked.

“Under the provisions that are now before the Parliament, there would also need to be able to demonstrate that there are for example, some aspects of state laws that deal with racial vilification that have been met as well,” Rowland responded, again leaving the possibility wide open.

Australia’s frightening new ‘hate speech’ law         Video reading by Tim Foley

(It should here be noted that Greens justice spokesperson David Shoebridge has pointed out that “state laws that deal with racial vilification” can include “tests like ‘ridicule’ and ‘contempt’,” meaning people could wind up spending years in prison for associating with groups that were essentially banned for upsetting someone’s feelings.)

The only reason the Attorney General wouldn’t rule out the criminalisation of dissent and criticism of foreign countries and heads of state is if that’s exactly what Labor intends to cover here. pic.twitter.com/rV3e8TRB0l

— David Shoebridge (@DavidShoebridge) January 20, 2026

“Just to be clear, if a group is saying Israel is engaged in genocide, or they’re saying that Israel should no longer exist, that is not enough for that group to be banned?” asked Speers.

“Well, again, that would depend on the other evidence that is gathered, David, so I would be reluctant to be naming and ruling in and ruling out specific kinds of conduct that you are describing here,” Rowland replied.

All this waffling can be safely interpreted as a yes. Rowland is saying yes.

Speers pushed this question three different times from three different angles because it’s the most immediate and obvious concern about these new laws, and instead of reassuring the public that they can’t be used to target pro-Palestine groups and aren’t intended for that purpose, the nation’s Attorney General confirmed that it was indeed possible.

So that’s it then. Under the new laws we can expect to see the Israel lobby crying about Jewish Australians feeling threatened and unsafe by every pro-Palestine group under the sun, and then from there all it takes is the thumbs-up from ASIO to put the group on the banned list and cage anyone who continues associating with it for up to 15 years.

The bill that ended up making it through Parliament is actually a narrowed down version of an even scarier bill that was scrapped by Labor due to lack of support which went after individuals as well as groups.

The earlier version contained “racial vilification” components which could have been used to target any individual who voices criticisms of Israel or Zionism – so it doesn’t look like I’ll be doing any prison time for my writing any time soon. The new version moved its crosshairs to groups with the obvious intent to disrupt pro-Palestine organising in Australia.

And we’re already seeing the Israel lobby pushing to resurrect the laws targeting individuals. A new ABC article titled “Jewish leaders call for vilification offence to be revisited as Coalition splits over watered-down hate laws” cites Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler and Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim arguing that the new laws don’t go far enough.

So we can expect the Australian Israel lobby to both (A) push to get pro-Palestine groups classified as “hate groups” under the new laws and (B) keep pushing to make it illegal for individuals to criticize Israel in the form of new “racial vilification” laws.

They’ll keep trying over and over again, from government to government to government, until they get their way.

This comes after Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council executive manager Joel Burnie publicly stated that he wants to ban pro-Palestine protests and criticism of Israel throughout the nation, and as prosecutors drag an Australian woman to court for an antisemitic hate crime because she accidentally butt-dialed a Jewish nutritionist and left a blank voicemail.

So things are already ugly, and they’re getting worse.

It’s so creepy knowing I share a country with people who want to destroy my right to normal political speech. It would never occur to me to try to kill Zionists’ right to free speech, but they very openly want to kill mine.

They want to permanently silence me and anyone like me. I find that profoundly disturbing.

Israel supporters are horrible people. And I hope my saying that hurts their feelings.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

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

The federal Coalition is dead, with Nationals leader David Littleproud on Thursday morning declaring it “untenable” after Liberal leader Sussan Ley stared down the Liberals’ minor partner.

This followed all Nationals frontbenchers resigning from the shadow ministry on Wednesday night, in protest at Ley’s retaliation against three Nationals senators, Bridget McKenzie, Ross Cadell and Susan McDonald, breaking shadow cabinet solidarity.

“We can not be part of a shadow ministry under Sussan Ley”, Littleproud told a news conference early Thursday.

“No one in our ministry could work in a Sussan Ley ministry.”

This leaves the Liberals alone as the opposition, with the Nationals as a crossbench party with no role in the official opposition.

Littleproud said the parties would be “two different armies” going forward for “the time being”.

The crisis dramatically increases the threat to Ley’s leadership, which was already unstable and not expected to last. Although Littleproud would not acknowledge it, the Nationals are encouraging a change in the Liberal leadership.

Most immediately, Ley will have to reshuffle her frontbench with Liberal members only.

Littleproud said the “sovereign position of the National party had been disrespected” and the three senators had been “courageous”.

“We were not going to stand by and have three of our senators be made scapegoats. We were going to stand with them because they did the right thing.”

The senators voted against the government’s hate crimes legislation, which passed with Liberal support. Their action was in accord with the Nationals’ decision to oppose the legislation. The Nationals disagreed in particular with the bill’s provision to enable the banning of hate-spruiking organisations. The party argued it was too wide and would endanger free speech.

Ley insisted there had been a shadow cabinet decision to obtain changes to the bill and then support it. Littleproud said a final decision on the legislation had not been made by the shadow cabinet or the joint parties.

Littleproud accused Ley of mismanaging the situation.

He stressed he had warned Ley of the consequences if she accepted the three senators’ resignations.

He spoke to her again early Thursday morning before announcing the decision. She held to her position.

This is the second break in the Coalition since the election.

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. Nationals break Coalition, declaring it ‘untenable’ and blaming Ley – https://theconversation.com/nationals-break-coalition-declaring-it-untenable-and-blaming-ley-274025

By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk

The signing of a new agreement on New Caledonia’s political and financial future has triggered a fresh wave of reactions from across the French territory’s political chessboard.

The Elysée-Oudinot agreement was signed on Monday, January 19, in the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron as well as most of New Caledonia’s politicians.

But the pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), the largest component of the pro-independence movement, had chosen not to travel to Paris.

The new deal, signed by parties represented at New Caledonia’s Congress (its local parliament), including members of the moderate pro-independence PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party) and UPM (Union Progressiste en Mélanésie), who have split from FLNKS, all signed the agreement.

PALIKA and UPM are formed into a Parliamentary caucus called “UNI” (Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance).

The Elysée-Oudinot text was described as being a “complement” bearing “clarifications” to a previous agreement project, signed in July 2025 in the small city of Bougival, west of Paris.

The FLNKS, even though it initially signed the Bougival text, rejected it in bloc a few days after returning to New Caledonia.

As French President Macron called all politicians back to the table to refine the July 2025 talks, FLNKS announced it would not travel to Paris, saying the project which would serve as the basis for further talks did not meet their short-term goals of full sovereignty.

They said the Bougival text and all related documents were in substance “lures” of independence and that they regarded the French state as being responsible for a “rupture of dialogue”.

As the Bougival initial text, its Elysée-Oudinot complement maintains the notion of creating a “state of New Caledonia”, its correlated “nationality” and introduces a new set of commitments from France, including a package to re-launch the local economy, severely damaged as a result of the riots that broke out in May 2024.

The new text also mentions granting more powers to each of New Caledonia’s three provinces (North, South and the Loyalty Islands group), including in terms of revenue collection by way of taxes.

This, the FLNKS protested, could erode the powers of New Caledonian provinces and reinforce economic and social inequalities between them.

Reacting to the signing in Paris in their absence, the FLNKS, in a media release on Wednesday, condemned and rejected the new text “unequivocally”.

FLNKS President Christian Téin, in the release, said the new agreement endorses a “passage en force” (forceful passage) and is “incompatible” with the way the FLNKS envisages Kanaky’s “decolonisation path”, including in the way it is defined under the United Nations decolonisation process.

It also criticises a document signed “without the Indigenous people” of New Caledonia.

The pro-independence party also expressed its disapproval of what it calls a “pseudo-accord”.

“We will use every political tool available to us to re-alert, again and again the public”, FLNKS politburo member Gilbert Tyuienon told public broadcaster Nouvelle-Calédonie La Première at the weekend.

French Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou had reiterated, even after the signing in Paris, that the door remained open to FLNKS.

In reaction to the signing, other parties have also expressed their respective points of view.

“Why didn’t they come [to Paris] to defend their positions, since they were invited?” Southern Province President (pro-France) Sonia Backès wrote on social networks.

“Does UNI not represent the Kanak people too?” she added.

French Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou said this new set of agreements reflected a “shared will to look at the future together”.

“Now the territory can walk on its two legs”.

Some of the pro-France parties, who want New Caledonia to remain a part of France, have however acknowledged that even though the new documents were signed, the road ahead remained rocky in terms of its implementation in the French Parliament, through a local referendum and related constitutional amendments.

‘We’ve done the easiest part’ — Metzdorf
New Caledonia’s MP at the French National Assembly, Nicolas Metzdorf said a huge challenge still remained ahead.

“We’ve done the easiest, the hardest part remains . . .  This is to obtain the [French] Parliament’s support, both Houses, to enact the accords in the French Constitution.”

Following a very tight schedule in the coming weeks, the texts will be submitted to the vote of both Parliament Houses, first separately, then in a joint chamber format (the Congress, for constitutional amendment purposes).

Then the text is also to be submitted to New Caledonia’s population for approval through a referendum-like “consultation”.

In a way of foretaste of what promises to be heated debates in coming weeks, with a backdrop of strong divisions in the French Parliament, Moutchou and far-left MP Bastien Lachaud (La France Insoumise, LFI) waged a war of words on Tuesday in the National Assembly.

Responding to Lachaud’s accusations which echoed those from FLNKS, Moutchou denounced the “passage en force” claim and the absence of “consensus”.

“FLNKS was never excluded from anything. It was invited, it was approached, it was awaited, just like the other ones. It chose not to turn up,” Moutchou said.

“The politics of empty chair was never conducive to a compromise,” she said as Assembly Speaker Yaël Braun-Pivet had to call the LFI caucus back to order.

Strong financial component
Some of the financial aspects of the deals include a five-year “reconstruction” plan for New Caledonia, for a total of 2.2 billion euros (NZ$4 billion), presented to New Caledonia’s politicians by French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu.

This chapter also comes with revisiting previous French loans for more than 1 billion euros, which New Caledonia found almost impossible to repay (with an indebtedness rate of 360 percent).

The loans, under the agreement’s financial chapter, would be renegotiated, re-scheduled and possibly converted into non-refundable grants.

Meanwhile a two-year repayment holiday (2026-2027) would be applied, while a far-reaching reform programme is expected to be pursued.

“What people really expected was [economic] prospects. This is the main part of this accord, the economic refoundation,” commented Vaimu’a Muliava, from Wallis-based Eveil Océanien party after the Paris talks.

The new financial arrangements would also provide a much-needed lifebuoy to critically threatened mechanisms in New Caledonia, such as its retirement scheme or the power supply company.

More injections for the nickel industry
Another 200 million euros is also earmarked to bail out several nickel mining companies facing critical hardships.

This includes assistance aimed at supporting business and employment for French historical Société le Nickel (SLN), Prony Resources and NMC (Nickel Mining Company, which has ties to Korea’s POSCO).

The French government has also pledged to follow-up on a request to New Caledonia’s nickel mining and refining declared a “strategic” sector by the European Union.

“The agreement’s economic chapter was as necessary as the political one,” said New Caledonia’s President Alcide Ponga after the signing.

Another cash injection was directed to this year’s budget for New Caledonia, which benefits from a direct cash injection of 58 million euros.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zena Assaad, Senior Lecturer, School of Engineering, Australian National University

The United States is set to become “the world’s undisputed [artificial intelligence-enabled] fighting force”.

At least that’s the view of the country’s Department of War, which earlier this month released a new strategy to accelerate the deployment of AI for military purposes.

The “AI Acceleration Strategy” sets an unambiguous objective of setting up the US military as the frontrunner in AI warfighting. But all of the hype in the strategy ignores the realities and limitations of AI capabilities.

It can be thought of as a kind of “AI peacocking” – loud public signalling of AI adoption and leadership, which clouds the reality of unreliable systems.

What does the US AI strategy entail?

Several militaries around the world, including China and Israel, are incorporating AI into their work. But the AI-first mantra of the US Department of War’s new strategy sets it apart.

The strategy seeks to make the US military more lethal and efficient. It suggests AI is the one way to achieve this goal.

The department will encourage experimentation with AI models. It will also eliminate what it calls “bureaucratic barriers” to implement AI across the military, support investment in AI infrastructure and pursue a set of major AI-powered military projects.

One of these projects seeks to use AI to turn intelligence “into weapons in hours not years”. This is concerning, given how this kind of approach has been used elsewhere.

For example, there are ongoing reports about the increased civilian death toll in Gaza resulting from the Israeli military’s use of AI-enabled decision support systems, which essentially turn intelligence into weaponised targeting information at an unprecedented speed and scale. Further accelerating this pipeline risks unnecessary escalation of civilian harm.

Another major project seeks to put American AI models – presumably ones intended to be used in military contexts – “directly in the hands of our three million civilian and military personnel, at all classification levels”.

It is not made clear why three million civilian Americans need access to military AI systems. Nor what the impacts would be of widely disseminating military capabilities across a civilian population.

The narrative vs the reality

In July 2025, an MIT study found 95% of organisations received a zero return on investment in generative AI.

The main reason was technical limitations of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Copilot. For example, most can’t retain feedback, adapt to new contexts or improve over time.

This study was focused on generative AI in business contexts. But the findings apply more broadly. They point to the shortcomings of AI, which are too often hidden by the marketing hype surrounding the technology.

AI is an umbrella term. It’s used to encompass a spectrum of capabilities – from large language models to computer vision models. These are technologically different tools with different uses and purposes.

Despite varying significantly in their applications, capabilities and success rates, most AI applications have been bundled together to form a globally successful marketing agenda.

This is reminiscent of the dotcom bubble from the early 2000s, which treated marketing as a valid business model.

This approach now seems to have bled into how the US wants to posture itself in the current geopolitical climate.

A guide to ‘AI peacocking’

The Department of War’s AI-first strategy reads more like a guide to “AI peacocking” than a legitimate strategy to implement technology.

AI is posited as the solution to every problem – including those which do not exist. The marketing behind AI has created a fabricated fear of falling behind. The Department of War’s new AI strategy feeds off of that fear by alluding to a technically advanced military strategy.

However, the reality is these technology capabilities fall short of their claimed effectiveness. And, in military settings, these limitations can have devastating consequences, including increased civilian death tolls.

The US is leaning heavily into a marketing-led business model to implement AI across its military without technical rigour and integrity.

This approach will likely expose a vulnerable vacuum across the Department of War when these brittle systems fail – and likely in moments of crisis when deployed in military settings.

Zena Assaad 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 United States’ new military strategy is a case of ‘AI peacocking’ – https://theconversation.com/the-united-states-new-military-strategy-is-a-case-of-ai-peacocking-273803

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maxime Aubert, Professor of Archaeological Science, Griffith University

When we think of the world’s oldest art, Europe usually comes to mind, with famous cave paintings in France and Spain often seen as evidence this was the birthplace of symbolic human culture. But new evidence from Indonesia dramatically reshapes this picture.

Our research, published today in the journal Nature, reveals people living in what is now eastern Indonesia were producing rock art significantly earlier than previously demonstrated.

These artists were not only among the world’s first image-makers, they were also likely part of the population that would eventually give rise to the ancestors of Indigenous Australians and Papuans.

A hand stencil from deep time

The discovery comes from limestone caves on the island of Sulawesi. Here, faint red hand stencils, created by blowing pigment over a hand pressed against the rock, are visible on cave walls beneath layers of mineral deposits.

By analysing very small amounts of uranium in the mineral layers, we could work out when those layers formed. Because the minerals formed on top of the paintings, they tell us the youngest possible age of the art underneath.

In some cases, when paintings were made on top of mineral layers, these can also show the oldest possible age of the images.

One hand stencil was dated to at least 67,800 years ago, making it the oldest securely dated cave art ever found anywhere in the world.

This is at least 15,000 years older than the rock art we had previously dated in this region, and more than 30,000 years older than the oldest cave art found in France. It shows humans were making cave art images much earlier than we once believed.

This hand stencil is also special because it belongs to a style only found in Sulawesi. The tips of the fingers were carefully reshaped to make them look pointed, as though they were animal claws.

Altering images of human hands in this manner may have had a symbolic meaning, possibly connected to this ancient society’s understanding of human-animal relations.

In earlier research in Sulawesi, we found images of human figures with bird heads and other animal features, dated to at least 48,000 years ago. Together, these discoveries suggest that early peoples in this region had complex ideas about humans, animals and identity far back in time.

Not a one-off moment of creativity

The dating shows these caves were used for painting over an extraordinarily long period. Paintings were produced repeatedly, continuing until around the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago – the peak of the most recent ice age.

After a long gap, the caves were painted again by Indonesia’s first farmers, the Austronesian-speaking peoples, who arrived in the region about 4,000 years ago and added new imagery over the much older ice age paintings.

This long sequence shows that symbolic expression was not a brief or isolated innovation. Instead, it was a durable cultural tradition maintained by generations of people living in Wallacea, the island zone separating mainland Asia from Australia and New Guinea.

What this tells us about the first Australians

The implications go well beyond art history.

Archaeological and genetic evidence suggests modern humans reached the ancient continent of Sahul, the combined landmass of Australia and New Guinea, by around 65,000 to 60,000 years ago.

Getting there required deliberate ocean crossings, representing the earliest known long-distance sea voyages undertaken by our species.

Researchers have proposed two main migration routes into Sahul. A northern route would have taken people from mainland Southeast Asia through Borneo and Sulawesi, before crossing onward to Papua and Australia. A southern route would have passed through Sumatra and Java, then across the Lesser Sunda Islands, including Timor, before reaching north-western Australia.

Until now, there has been a major gap in archaeological evidence along these pathways. The newly dated rock art from Sulawesi lies directly along the northern route, providing the oldest direct evidence of modern humans in this key migration corridor into Sahul.

In other words, the people who made these hand stencils in the caves of Sulawesi were very likely part of the population that would later cross the sea and become the ancestors of Indigenous Australians.

Rethinking where culture began

The findings add to a growing body of evidence showing that early human creativity did not emerge in a single place, nor was it confined to ice age Europe.

Instead, symbolic behaviour, including art, storytelling, and the marking of place and identity, was already well established in Southeast Asia as humans spread across the world.

This suggests that the first populations to reach Australia carried with them long-standing cultural traditions, including sophisticated forms of symbolic expression whose deeper roots most probably lie in Africa.

The discovery raises an obvious question. If such ancient art exists in Sulawesi, how much more remains to be found?

Large parts of Indonesia and neighbouring islands remain archaeologically unexplored. If our results are any guide, evidence for equally ancient, or even older, cultural traditions may still be waiting on cave walls across the region.

As we continue to search, one thing is already clear. The story of human creativity is far older, richer and more geographically diverse than we once imagined.

---

The research on early rock art in Sulawesi has been featured in a documentary film, Sulawesi l’île des premières images produced by ARTE and released in Europe today.

Maxime Aubert receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Google Arts & Culture and The National Geographic Society.

Adam Brumm receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Adhi Oktaviana receives funding from The National Geographic Society.

Renaud Joannes-Boyau receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Humanity’s oldest known cave art has been discovered in Sulawesi – https://theconversation.com/humanitys-oldest-known-cave-art-has-been-discovered-in-sulawesi-273364

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin Trenberth, Distinguished Scholar, NCAR; Affiliate Faculty, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

For many people this summer – especially those across Northland Auckland and Coromandel – showery days and bursts of heavy rain have become all too familiar.

This week, fresh downpours on already saturated ground have again triggered flood warnings and road closures across the upper North Island. These are individual weather events, but they are unfolding against unusually warm seas that load the atmosphere with extra moisture and energy.

Understanding ocean heat – and how it shapes rainfall, storms and marine heatwaves – is central to explaining what we experience on land.

Looking beyond the surface

For decades, scientists have recognised sea surface temperatures as a key influence on weather and climate. Warmer surfaces mean more evaporation, altered winds and shifting storm tracks.

But surface temperatures are only the skin of a deeper system. What ultimately governs how those sea surface temperatures persist and evolve is the ocean heat content stored through the upper layers of the ocean.

A clearer global picture of that deeper heat began to emerge in the early 2000s with the deployment of profiling floats measuring temperature and salinity down to 2,000 metres worldwide.

Those observations made it possible to extend ocean analyses back to 1958; before then, measurements were too sparse to provide a global view.

While sea surface temperatures remain vital for day-to-day weather, ocean heat content provides the foundation for understanding climate variability and change. It determines how long warm surface conditions last and how they interact with the atmosphere above.

Recent analysis by an international team, in which I was involved, show ocean heat content in 2025 reached record levels, rising about 23 zettajoules above that of 2024’s. That increase is equivalent to more than 200 times the world’s annual electricity use, or the energy to heat 28 billion Olympic pools from 20C to 100C.

Ocean heat content represents the vertically integrated heat of the oceans, and because other forms of ocean energy are small, it makes up the main energy reservoir of the sea.

The ocean’s huge heat capacity and mobility mean it has become the primary sink for excess heat from rising greenhouse gases. More than 90% of Earth’s energy imbalance now ends up in the ocean.

For that reason, ocean heat content is the single best indicator of global warming, closely followed by global sea-level rise.

This is not a passive process. Heat entering the ocean raises sea surface temperatures, which in turn influence exchanges of heat and moisture with the atmosphere and change weather systems. Because the ocean is stably stratified, mixing heat downward takes time.

Warming of the top 500 metres was evident globally in the late 1970s; heat in the 500–1,000 metre layer became clear in the early 1990s, the 1,000–1,500 metre layer in the late 1990s, and the 1,500–2,000 metre layer around 2004. Globally, it takes about 25 years for surface heat to penetrate to 2,000 metres.

Ocean heat content does not occur uniformly everywhere. Marine heatwaves develop, evolve and move around, contributing to impacts on local weather and marine ecosystems. Heat is moved via evaporation, condensation, rainfall and runoff.

As records are broken year after year, the need to observe and assess ocean heat content has become urgent.

What happens in the ocean, matters on land

It is not just record high OHC and rising sea level that matter, but the rapidly increasing extremes of weather and climate they bring.

Extra heat over land increases drying and the risk of drought and wildfires, while greater evaporation loads the atmosphere with more water vapour. That moisture is caught up in weather systems, leading to stronger storms – especially tropical cyclones and atmospheric rivers, such as one that has soaked New Zealand in recent days.

The same ocean warmth that fuels these storms also creates marine heatwaves at the surface.

In the ocean surrounding New Zealand and beyond, these marine heatwaves are typically influenced by the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. This Pacific climate cycle alternates between El Niño, La Niña and “neutral” phases, strongly shaping New Zealand’s winds, temperatures and rainfall from year to year.

During 2025, a weak La Niña, combined with record high sea surface temperatures around and east of New Zealand, has helped sustain the recent unsettled pattern. Such warm seas make atmospheric rivers and moisture-laden systems more likely to reach Aotearoa, as seen in early 2023 with the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods and Cyclone Gabrielle.

For these reasons, continued observations – gathering, processing and quality control – are essential, tested against physical constraints of mass, energy, water and sea level.

Looking further ahead, the oceans matter not only for heat but also for water. Typically, about 40% of sea-level rise comes from the expansion of warming seawater; most of the rest is from melting glaciers and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

Sea levels are also influenced by where rain falls. During El Niño, more rain tends to fall over the Pacific Ocean, often accompanied by dry spells or drought on land. During La Niña, more rain falls on land – as seen across parts of Southeast Asia in 2025 – and water stored temporarily in lakes and soils can slightly reduce the amount returning to the ocean.

A striking example occurred in Australia in 2025, when heavy rains from May through to late in the year refilled Lake Eyre, transforming the desert saltpan into a vast inland sea. Such episodes temporarily take water out of the oceans and dampen sea-level rise.

Monitoring sea-level rise through satellite altimetry is therefore an essential complement to tracking ocean heat content. Tracking both heat and water is crucial to understanding variability and long-term trends.

Kevin Trenberth 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. NZ is again being soaked this summer – record ocean heat helps explain it – https://theconversation.com/nz-is-again-being-soaked-this-summer-record-ocean-heat-helps-explain-it-274013