Background I think we all know that Iran has some strange stuff going on inside it here’s a quick breakdown on Iran’s current state of well,, everything: Iran is currently in a state of sharia law. It is following a model of governance that allows for minimal distinction between religion and state. We know that this is inherently dangerous, especially given religion’s aversions to many things such as liberation of women, homosexuality, interracial marriage, etcetera etcetera. In Iran’s case, push came to shove over the issue of women
The Fight Today Since the summer in Iran, women have been taking action to oppose a certain dress standard: according to sharia laws enacted after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, all women were required to wear a headscarf along with ‘long, loose clothing’ when in public. Women who didn’t comply would be fined and jailed. With the rise of technology and social media allowing the import of foreign ideals, and amplifying the voices of these oppressed women, protests sparked in June. These protests came to a head on September 13th, when morality police were reported to have detained and violently beaten a 22-year old woman, Mahsa Amini for violating said dress code. Amini was taken to a hospital, where she died of injuries three days later
Impact While the police and authorities maintain the narrative that Amini died of a heart attack, eyewitnesses report that she was beaten practically to that, and Amini’s medical history showed no signs of past illness or anything of the like. What’s most likely is that she did, indeed, die due to the police’s attacks on her. However, whatever the true cause, the prevailing notion (on platforms like Twitter in particular) is that the police killed her. Naturally, this further stoked the already-raging flames of the protestor’s rage at socio-political restrictions in their country, the authorities’ denial of her death being their fault seemed to be their last straw. Women have taken to taking off their headscarves in front of police, and men rush to their aid when the police try to shoot them. A haircut movement has also taken off on social media, and clashes with Iranian police have become all the more frequent. While no decisive victory has been reached yet, Amini has become a rallying point for the people of Iran and, hopefully, a concrete victory can be reached soon
Further Reading Everything I jus covered is very very surface level, and is incredibly summarised so if yall wanna read a lil more in depth into Iran and Amini, there’s a few links in this linktree: https://linktr.ee/theglobalcontext
Have a great week ahead everyone!!
Hihi !! Hope you’re all having a good week cause oh my lawd the world is not LMAO anyways here’s our top news headlines for the week
Alright so without further ado, let’s talk about Liz Truss!
Introduction Liz Truss was Britain’s most recent Prime Minister, and gained power because of her staunch ‘unbending’ stance during elections. Britain’s been going through a lot of shit recently - between COVID, Brexit and economic crises, the Brits aren’t exactly very happy. Liz Truss promised them stability, in particular economically
Initial Presidency When she came to power in September this year, Britain was facing a massive crisis with regards to the cost of living. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and UK’s subsequent sanctions and such against Russia, Russia decreased the supply of natural gas to UK, and this drove up the cost of living by about 10.1%. Now, to us, this is just a number. But note that this 10.1% is an aggregate of the increase in consumer good prices, rent prices, water and energy prices, and hundreds of other expenses. Take it as each one of these increases by 10%. Suddenly, your overall increase in living cost looks a lot higher, right? This is the exact crisis the Brits were facing, and Truss’s proposed solution was to impose a two-year cap on the price per unit for domestic energy supplies (the Energy Price Guarantee). The government promised that this would cap average household energy bills at about 2.5k pounds an year, but it would cost the state up to 100 billion pounds. While I’m all for helping people stay,, well,, alive, even I’m a lil critical of this - in a time of already increasing prices, increasing the cost on taxpayers to help fund the Guarantee doesn’t seem like a very wise move. It’s a chicken and egg crisis, essentially: in the long run, this will drive down prices of living. But in the short term, it is incredibly unwise to rapidly ramp up the amount that taxpayers need to shell out
Disaster
The biggest blow came just a few weeks into her presidency. On 23 September 2022, ex-Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced a plan to significantly cut taxes on Truss’s orders. The plan outlined the abolition of the 45% top income tax rate, cutting the base income tax rate, cut corporate tax and cancelled planned rises in national insurance contributions. While this, in isolation, seems like it could help struggling citizens, understand that this is coming just weeks after Truss said that the state needs to shell out 100 billion pounds. Where exactly is the state supposed to get this kind of money when taxes are being cut? Naturally, this plan drew the ire of financial experts, and markets crashed and burned for the few days after this plan was announced. The value of the pound rapidly fell (not gonna explain how this happened cause its a lil long dm if you wanna know anyway). The Bank of England wasn’t informed of this plan (or mini-budget, as Kwarteng put it), and was forced to step in with measures to stabilise pensions to ensure the country did not financially collapse. So, with the economy in shambles, a furious public, and the Bank of England buying an all-time high number of bonds, Truss frantically tried to protect her presidency. She instructed Kwarteng to reverse the mini-budget on the 3rd of October, and then sacked him on the 14th. The lady who did not turn was suddenly making U-turns everywhere - even her Energy Price Guarantee was shortened from two years to six months by the new chancellor. So, amidst a tremendous amount of embarrassment, Truss resigned as PM on the 20th of October, after 45 disastrous days in power. As for who the new PM will be, the current toss up is between Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson, but as of now, it’s impossible to say who will take power
Lessons
The most important part of Truss’s downfall is what the rest of the world can take from it. There’s hundreds of articles on it across the web, and I’ll link a few later, but here’s my three most important lessons:
No one can escape economics
In my opinion, Truss’s biggest failure was believing that she could escape financial gravity. While you can defy it for a while, all leaders are fundamentally slaves to market forces. Truss, however, believed that the markets, the Bank of England and the Treasury could all be defied as long as there existed a leader with the balls to do it. This isn’t just her belief: since Brexit, the conservative party seems to have deluded themselves that a leader with enough guts can defy experts in economics. Truss’s downfall was a painful wake up call that a leader and their policies cannot exist in a theoretical, platonic realm; they must tally to market pressures and market capabilities. The simple fact was, the British economy was not in any way ready for Truss’s reforms
Populism needs to be stopped
While I didn’t discuss it earlier, Truss’s election strategy stank of populism. She found a problem of importance to the people, and sold them empty promises that she could solve them. Despite Rishi Sunak’s warnings against her unfunded tax cuts, the public supported her, mostly out of desperation. The world must ensure that they cannot reach this point. A country should not be in such dire straits that a misinformed leader can take advantage of them to gain power. When disaster strikes, populism thrives. And disaster seems to be written in the stars for the British
Democracy’s time of reckoning is now
For a long time, UK has stood as democracy’s shining pillar of excellence in the West, along with America. However, with America sliding further and further away from democracy with political polarisation and whatever the fuck went down with Roe v Wade, UK seemed to be a lonely outpost of democracy. In truth, however, democracy has been slowly crumbling to dust in Britain ever since Brexit. Britain’s biggest fight is against the populists, and it is a fight that they are losing. Of course, you could argue that democracy is maybe not the way to go, and that there are better alternatives out there. But (and I know I’m gonna draw flak for this), democracy, while shitty, is still the best alternative out of the sea of political shit
Further Reading
That’s all for this week yalls! This was q long, so take a while to digest it. Here’s the linktree for this week’s articles: https://linktr.ee/theglobalcontext. Have a great week ahead cömrades :DD
Hi everyone ! I realise it’s Friday haha anyway for those taking Os congrats on finishing them! For my friends going to VJC I hope you’re all excited for the talk later :D. Anyway, let’s take a look at last week’s top news headlines:
This week, I want to talk a little about the US Midterm elections. As with all things about US politics, it’s gonna be confusing and not entirely sensible, but bear with me as we break it down together :D
Introduction and Stakes Before we start, I think its important to talk a lil about what exactly midterms are. Living here, midterms are basically a non-concept for us cause we jus have our GEs every four years. In the US, however, every two years, they have midterms, during which many positions in the House and Senate are contested between the democrats and republicans (if yall have no idea what im talking about dm for a quick crash course on US politics!!). Given the crazy year the US has had (between Roe v Wade, Uvalde and Taiwan, I can’t even begin to imagine the hell that’s about to break loose) and with Trump threatening a comeback in 2024, the stakes of this election are pretty high. Particularly, the outcome of Congress seats will determine both the course of the next two years and the outcome of the 2024 elections
Control of Congress Let’s talk about control of House first. The House is one part of US Congress, with the other being the Senate. Control of the House functions somewhat similar to our system of MPs here in SG - each member represents their state, and there are 435 members in total to represent the 50 states. If yall remember, back in 2020, the Democrats only won the House by 4 seats. So, if the Republicans take at least 5 seats, they’ll take the House, and therefore half of Congress. As of Wednesday, 53 house races are considered incredibly close. A few familiar faces have appeared again - DeSantis and Abbott are still in power (sadly). A few new and strikingly Trump-like faces have also proved to be a bigger struggle for the Democrats than they had expected, such Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and former football star Herschel Walker in Georgia. Even historically blue states such as Nevada and Arizona are facing a tight contest vis-a-vis their democratic-held seats. As of the time I’m writing this, the total numbers stand at 211 Republicans and 198 Democrats elected into House, with the Senate race standing at an incredibly tight 48/49 split to the Republicans
Election Hopes and Strategies Naturally, we can’t talk about an election of any sort without talking about election strategies. The Republicans are practicing a fair bit of gerrymandering - new state lines were drawn in both Texas and Florida, two of the biggest Republican-held constituencies, granting the Republicans at least another 3 seats in House. Besides this, the Republicans are counting on Biden’s low popularity (40% approval rating, as studied by Ipsos) as their win factor in the midterms. On the other side, Biden’s democrats had their own gerrymandering attempts struck down in New York, and are counting on the fallout from the Roe v Wade decision to help them gain some degree of popularity. Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan is also supposed to help attract younger voters, although whether this is working is a lil up in the air
Conclusion Naturally, with the midterms in progress, no one really knows what’s about to happen. As I’m writing this, we’re still waiting on votes to come in from Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Alaska (although Alaska has two Republicans running against each other so it’s not like it matters). Right now, the GOP holds 48 Senate seats, and the Dems hold 46. If the Republicans gain one more seat, and the Democrats gain two (which, looking at leads, seems likely) we’ll return to status quo with a Senate split right down the middle. Naturally, this whole election process is a bit wonky, and allows for quite a lot of bureaucratic bullshit to interfere, but oh well. I’ll continue to update y’all as more events unfold
Further Reading As always, I’ll put up further reading links on the linktree (https://linktr.ee/theglobalcontext) cause I’ve really covered super little like omg yall there is so much shit going on I havent even talked about the economy and Trump yet LMAO but yeah anyway until next week have a great week everyone !!