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As of 2022, over 70% of the world’s countries have now abolished the death penalty, with Malaysia announcing plans to abolish it in June this year. Where does the rest of the world stand? What are the reasons why it still exists? Should it continue to do so? This article aims to provide an answer to these questions. Origins of Capital Punishment The origins of capital punishment can be traced back to almost every society across the world—dating beyond the beginning of recorded history. From being an integral part of tribal justice, to the codification and definition of capital punishment, it has been a hallmark of justice systems for many years now. That being said, even though the current widespread abolitionist movement is not that old, there have been brief periods in history that have involved abolitionist regimes. Current Situation As mentioned above, over 70% of the world’s countries have now abolished the death penalty. The image below succinctly describes and classifies countries based on their views surrounding capital punishment. Most parts of Europe have abolished the death penalty in all cases, while retentionist countries seem concentrated in Asia and North Africa. Why is the death penalty still prevalent? People that argue for the death penalty are collectively terms as retentionists. They believe that the death penalty helps in preventing future crimes and is an important aspect in upholding the state of law and order within a sovereign. Furthermore, people believe that it is the foremost way of ensuring the victim and their family receive justice and honor. Reasons for abolitioning capital punishment There are various reasons why the world is edging toward the abolishment of capital punishment. The strongest argument, and also the most objective, refers to research around capital punishment and crime deterrance. There is no conclusive or credible research that claims that there exists a relationship between crime deterrence and the institution of capital punishment. Furthermore, according to Amnesty International, the murder rate in Canada in 2003, 27 years after the death penalty was abolished, was 44% lower than in 1975, when it was still legal. Another objection lies in the argument against public support. Proponents of the death penalty claim that since publics support the institution of capital punishment, and since governments are agents for public opinion, capital punishment should remain institutionalised. According to the Pew Research Center, about 60% of the American public is in favour of the death penalty, ranging from being somewhat in favour, to strongly in favour. But public opinion is often morally wrong or ill-representative of marginalized and oppressed opinions. There existed a time where a majority of individuals were against universal adult suffrage, on grounds of race or sex, for example. Such a proposition now seems immoral and reprehensible—could the same be said for the death penalty? The research from the Pew Research Center also mentions that 78% of people believe there exists risk that an innocent person will be put to death, which is linked to another point against capital punishment: racial and other inequalities in capital punishment. In the United States for example, where white victims account for 50% of all murder victims, nearly 80% of all cases involving the death penalty are where the victim is white. There have also been reports of racial discrimination with respect to jury selection. In addition to representing aspects of systemic racism that are widely existent in society, they represent inequalities within the use of capital punishment—it is used more often to punish crimes against a certain race compared to a different one. These are all arguments based on objective, practical uses of the death penalty. While they should be enough to argue against the institution of capital punishment, I venture to argue against it on ideological grounds as well. What gives the state the authority and power to execute someone? The power of a sovereign stems from the people that are part of that society. In democratic societies, this idea exists in the form of free and fair elections—people that are part of society vote for their chosen candidate. Therefore, it is straightforward to assume the authority that the state has over the land it governs, as it is the elected (in democratic societies) or “chosen” (through negotiation or force, in non-democratic societies), representative of the people. This power extends into the power of incarceration. When individuals negatively affect societies, they can be punished for their actions using a fair and equal judicial process. The state would therefore have the power to “exclude” these individuals from society—they can be held in detention facilities/prison, have certain rights taken away (right to free movement, right to vote, etc.) and have limitations on their interactions with society. The state has authority to keep the individual from having a continued negative effect on society. In this situation, the individual is no longer a part of the society. While the state can use its power to keep the individual secluded from society, it is important to remember where the state’s power comes from—society, and where its power extends to—society. The state can keep an individual secluded from society but once secluded, does the state still have authority or power over the individual? Society does not need protection from someone incarcerated since they are already detained and restricted, and therefore not subject to the state’s power. Therefore the state has no jurisdiction over whether an incarcerated individual can be affected in any way. The state therefore does not have the jurisdiction or authority to use the death penalty. This article has analysed various research-based arguments against the death penalty, as well as demonstrated an ideological argument against the use of the death penalty, and the state’s authority for the same. It is important to note that even though the death penalty is in use in several places around the world, its use is dwindling and seems on track to be universally absent.

Once thought to be the next superpower economy, Japan is an extremely interesting case of a country that utilised its war economy to its advantage and is a textbook example of a successful export-led economy. Through the many phases the economy has been through, the central bank has been instrumental in dictating major aspects of the country’s profile and the lived experiences of ordinary people. A significant amount of information in the article has been taken from Werner’s ‘The Princes of the Yen’ a book I would highly recommend due to its questioning of the unaccountable nature of central banks around the world and the manufacturing of the bubble and the resulting crisis. Nevertheless, examining the Japanese Miracle and the following 3 Lost Decades provides us with timely insights, especially regarding the role of central banks and monetary institutions. Starting off by providing historical context for the post-war economy and the peak during the 1980s, I will examine the influence of institutions in shaping the nature of the country. Further, I shall examine the extent to which Japan and the UK are comparable and possible lessons to be had. Post-War Japan After the end of WW2, the Japanese government and the BoJ (Bank of Japan) effectively used State-Assisted Capitalism to achieve growth rates averaging 10% year-on-year. This was mainly through a policy called Window Guidance which essentially allowed the BoJ to control credit allocation to commercial banks and meant that they - on a quarterly basis - chose how much and to which industries loans were given to. This was particularly effective in terms of the egalitarian distribution of wealth increases and most regular Japanese people experienced raised living standards and high income growth. Calls for reform were relatively slow to actualise as can be seen by the 1986 10 Year Reform Plan proposed by Maekawa (the former central bank chief) which called for a shift from export-led growth to a deregulated and open market. Plans to deregulate the economy have been varied in success with there usually being the intention for reform but questionable consequences, especially with Hosokawa and Koizumi. More controversially, the Ministry of Finance had a lot of unofficial control over the BoJ and their priorities began to diverge. The reluctance of the Ministry of Finance to accept and push through reforms led to the creation of a bubble by the BoJ. Increasing the window guidance loan quotas led to a 240% increase in stock prices and 245% increase in land prices between 1985-89. More problematically, however, was the expansion of non-productive lending which, essentially, increased lending to certain industries where there was not an increasing demand. Further, since currency dealers mainly looked at measures involving trade surpluses, Japan’s currency did not devalue, allowing it to buy 75% of all US Treasury bonds issued in 1986. In terms of risk indicators, it is useful to look at the ratio of non-GDP based loans as a percentage of all loans. Non-GDP based loans are ones which are not used in the production of goods and services, and the ratio of this increased in the late 1980s. Following the crash, window guidance was abolished leading to investors and regular people not being lent money. Furthermore, the social impact is not to be understated as approximately 5 million people lost their job, in a culture where people are most likely to work with the same company for the majority of their working life. Suicides also became the leading cause of death in men aged 25-44, an indicator of the breakdown of the social fabric. What makes this ordeal even worse, is the fact that the crisis was not a result of mismanagement. Deliberate actions from a group of few executives in institutions manufactured the bubble and the crisis to ensure long-term structural changes. Facing a situation of low inflation and low growth rates, the BoJ chose to bail out the banking sector instead of increasing the money supply, much to the anger of politicians and the Ministry of Finance. Bailing banks out was similar to the post-war situation where assets plunged due to it being held in war bonds and destroyed industries, and eventually led to the BoJ creating new reserves. However, this created a moral hazard as banks who benefitted from unsustainable investments faced no consequence. The other option would have been to increase the money supply by printing more money to then buy certain goods which would help regular people. A widely suggested option was to buy parks to help with worker satisfaction and alleviate health issues, for example. By choosing to bail out the banks, the BoJ increased tensions with the Ministry of Finance and politicians. More recently, Shinzo Abe - who was elected in 2012 - and his new brand of ‘Abenomics’ were relatively popular through a three pronged approach: solving the problem of low inflation, decreased worker productivity and demographic issues caused by an ageing population. For years, Japan struggled to reinflate its economy, something Werner did not predict. Instead, he suggested that the BoJ would have easily been able to increase inflation levels through its control of credit allowances. Instead, target inflation was only met due to supply side issues and still remains lower than most developed economies. Nevertheless, the next few months might be crucial in predicting the future of the Japanese economy due to opportunities for wage growth. Inflation Along with fears concerning an ageing and declining population, a key measure is wage growth, which might also be the key to maintaining the level of inflation and to kickstart demand-led inflation. This might be likely as the Japanese Trade Union Confederation is asking for a 5% increase in wages for the spring negotiations, their highest demand since 1995. The BoJ is unlikely to reign in monetary policy measures until they have a better indication of what inflation levels will look like next year, which is significantly dependent on the spring negotiations. Kuroda (Current Governor of the BoJ), whose term also ends in April, has argued against hastily suspending the QQE narrative (Qualitative and Quantitative Easing) as Japan’s core inflation is expected to drop below its target of 2% by next year. The precedent for wage growth can possibly break the cycle of disinflation that has plagued Japan for the past decade. International scale A lot of the evidence in this article has been from Richard Werner’s ‘The Princes of the Yen’ where he postulates that the central banks in Japan and other countries have manufactured crises to change the economic structure of the country. This view has some credence, especially when considering the lack of accountability faced by those in charge of the bubble. Toshihiko Fukui was the Head of the Banking Departments at the Bank of Japan (1986-89) which was responsible for the window allocations and he later became the governor. Similarly to Mieno and Maekawa, all three have stated that they saw monetary policy as a way to change the economic structure of Japan through crises that they manufactured or exacerbated. These 3 individuals are some of the ‘Princes’ who have succeeded in their goals for the Ministry of Finance to be dissolved, the formation of an independent central bank and the desire for structural changes. The extent to which this level of top-down paradigm shifts can occur in different countries is questionable, however. It was only in 1997 when all economic policy initiatives came from politicians instead of Japanese bureaucrats lending itself to a very different political culture than in the UK or USA. Evidence of the obscurity of central banks all over the world should also be questioned. For example, even the evidence for an independent central bank (the primary evidence behind Maastricht) was based on a single study commissioned by the European Commission in 1992. This study has since been proven to have been manipulated to get the desired result that ‘proved’ that independent central banks lead to lower interest rates. Werner perhaps overestimated the power of these ‘Princes’, however, as can be seen by Japanese institutions struggling to cause inflation increases and the relative failure of economic policy in causing demand-side changes. However, he is extremely successful in demonstrating the influence of the BoJ and other institutions in shaping the economy and culture of Japan, especially when considering the manufacturing crises and institutional practices. In conclusion, this analysis goes to show the instrumental nature of central banks and the power and influence they hold. However, and more worryingly, their practices and decisions are shrouded in unaccountability and secrecy. Whilst it's convenient - and perhaps a bit histrionic - to paint a picture of a few people at the top controlling whole countries, it is undeniable that a lack of public knowledge and scrutiny allows for whole structures to change without our consent, or even awareness.

As the unipolar world collapses amidst a flurry of sanctions volleyed at each other by ‘opposing’ blocs of an increasingly multipolar world, the unanimously adopted UNSC resolution calling for the end of violence in Haiti and imposing sanctions on certain gang leaders was an example of an increasingly rare diplomatic event wherein members came together to act in the interest of the "greater good". While this resolution could aid in alleviating the crisis by limiting the resources available to Haitian gangs, the follow-up resolution that is currently being prepared by USA and Mexico which seeks to obtain UNSC approval to authorise a “non-UN international security assistance mission” to Haiti is less likely to succeed and could even be disastrous for Haitians. To understand why such drastic action is being considered, one first needs to understand the scale of the crisis in Haiti. Haiti has witnessed recurring spells of violent anti-government protests since 2018. In August 2022, the latest iteration of these protests broke out in response to fuel shortages, gang violence and rampant inflation. The protestors demand a better quality of life and the resignation of Ariel Henry, the acting President of Haiti. Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital and home to nearly 3 million of the nation’s 11.7 million citizens, has seen the worst of the aforementioned problems owing to the fact that gangs control over 60% of the city. When these gangs go head to head, residents of the localities where these conflicts occur are often killed or are forced to flee. In 2022 alone, two separate instances of gang-related conflict resulted in the deaths of over 450 Haitians. The gangs also consider kidnapping to be an important source of revenue which has resulted in around 755 kidnappings between January and September 2022. Human rights defenders in Haiti have observed that the police often deploys a strategy of non-interference when faced with inter-gang conflict and have argued that in addition to being outgunned by these gangs, the state shirks effective action because they are bonded by corruption. This corruption coupled with the general breakdown of the Haitian state owing to a succession of natural disasters and long-term socioeconomic crises has resulted in a situation where gangs are more powerful now than they ever were before. The G9 coalition of gangs led by Jimmy Cherizier has used this power to shut down the principal fuel terminal of Haiti, the Varreux fuel terminal, either directly via blockades or indirectly through turf wars near the terminal. These actions were responsible for the exacerbation of fuel shortages in the country which resulted in the suspension of transport facilities and difficulties in obtaining clean water. To compound this crisis, on October 2nd, Haitian officials declared that cholera had returned to the shores of Haiti. As the arrival of cholera coincided with Barbecue’s blockade which restricted the availability of potable water, it can be argued that the blockade is the reason why authorities have not been able to manage an epidemic that has already claimed 136 lives. Both domestic and external actors have played a role in bringing about the present state of affairs in Haiti. The previous paragraph details how criminal gangs (the first set of domestic actors) have contributed to the breakdown of security in Haiti. These gangs are linked to the political fabric of the country in multiple ways. One such way is the propaganda strategy employed by some gangs wherein they portray themselves to be the champions of the people in an effort to justify their criminality. For example, the resignation of the unpopular Ariel Henry was one of the main demands made by the G9 coalition of gangs when blockading the Varreux fuel terminal. Besides this link, the second set of domestic actors – the political elite – also finds themselves bonded to the first via the more traditional links of corruption. However, this link between the two sets of domestic actors is tenuous as is made visible when politicians find themselves on the receiving end of gang violence. Therefore, Haitian criminal gangs can be characterised as violent entities that often co-opt politics and politicians in an effort to advance their own self-interest. The political leadership of Haiti has exacerbated the crisis by clinging on to power even while lacking the legitimacy to do so in the eyes of the majority of Haitians. This illegitimacy is not limited to Henry’s government and includes that of his predecessor Jovenel Moise. Anti-government protests first broke out in 2018 in response to increases in fuel prices but they quickly mushroomed into larger anti-corruption protests when it was revealed that one of the reasons for the price hike was stolen state oil revenue. Moise’s legitimacy issues were compounded when he effectively dissolved Parliament and began to rule by decree in 2019. In 2021, he invited the ire of protestors when he argued that he had one more year of his presidential term remaining due to his late entry to office and would therefore not demit office until 2022. He was assassinated later that year by mercenaries. Henry, his replacement, was first selected to be the Prime Minister by Moise and then appointed as the President after Moise’s death. In other words, Henry has not been elected to his present office. One of his first actions was to fire the chief prosecutor investigating Moise’s assassination when he started looking into Henry’s possible role in the plot. Both Henry and Moise have remained in power largely due to the support they enjoy from the CORE group which is an alliance headed by the USA and includes France, Canada, UN and OAS representatives. This is the first set of external actors who bear responsibility for the crisis. USA has regularly intervened in Haitian politics in order to install ruling dispensations that are more pliable to American interests. Both Moise and Henry enjoyed US support because they have demonstrated themselves to be aligned to American interests with Moise snapping ties with Venezuela on Trump’s orders while Henry currently supports the CORE group proposal to send foreign troops to Haiti. The second set of external actors are multilateral bodies like the IMF and the UN that ignited the fire. The IMF called on Haiti to cut fuel subsidies in order to avail a loan required to ensure that Haiti met its debt repayment commitments. This external pressure contributed to Moise cutting fuel subsidies. The UN is cheerleading the next invasion of Haiti even when it has refused to take responsibility for bringing cholera to the shores of Haiti for the first time in a century through an epidemic that killed over 9000 people. Right now, there are 2 routes out of this crisis. The first is the strategy outlined in the US-Mexico UNSC resolution. Negotiations are currently underway among members of the CORE group to iron out any concerns that they may have about a possible intervention in Haiti. This strategy is premised on the belief that an intervention will bring short-term stability which can then be utilised to bring about lasting peace by stamping out the gangs, revamping economic policy and holding elections to shore up legitimacy. However, a glance at the failure of interventions in Haiti which were justified as efforts to restore stability should be enough to argue against this strategy. There is another option that is more broadly supported by Haitian society. The Montana Accord is the result of broad civil society discussions involving civic leaders, journalists, economists, entrepreneurs, and former political leaders. It envisions setting up a provisional government for a period of two years to bolster security so that free and fair elections involving a large section of Haitian society can be conducted. Most recent Haitian elections have been marred by low turnout due to insecurity which has added to the illegitimacy of many Haitian governments. Henry has refused to entertain this strategy highlighting the tenuous claim of there being no legitimate way to elect the interim heads of government. The US continues to maintain that Henry’s camp must be a part of any future solution even when he has limited legitimacy to occupy his present seat rather than fully supporting the Montana Accord. The only way out of this crisis that does not kick the can down the road is one that enjoys the support of Haitians. Haitians are viscerally opposed to foreign military interventions but would appreciate external support in ushering in a legitimate democratic government. Therefore, it is incumbent on the CORE group to place the Montana Accord front and centre of any non-interventionist policy to solve the Haitian crisis. Haiti has been the neo-colonial playground for Western countries ever since it managed to secure its independence through the first successful slave revolution in 1804. It is beyond time for the CORE group and its allies to let Haitians chart their own political future and stop interfering in the political processes of resource-rich Haiti in an effort to maintain their hegemony over the nation.

The following piece is in addition to the work of the Policy Analysts. It is part of a wider research project conducted by Drishti Patel and Vriddhi Khattar through the scheme of the URSS. This article covers the themes discussed on the poster and they hope to share their findings in a more accessible way- through the article below. Please do contact the individuals above if you have any further questions. Design has always been an interpretation of contemporary culture. With shifts in time and circumstances, design, especially worn design, has been a sophisticated indicator of the condition of society and whether or not they are flourishing economically. This is not only exemplified by changes in styles across time but by particular changes in the length and appearance of clothing too. For instance, the Hemline index rose and fell with stock prices. However, in the twentieth century, this indicator of the economic welfare of a state had a different trend where the length of the skirt was shorter in good economic times whilst it was longer in times of hardship, like after the Wall Street Crash in 1929. Somewhat on the flip side, in countries like Japan, fashion has forced society to change and accept other values. Here, a fashion aesthetic called Yami Kawaii (literally translating to sick-cute) emerged in a society where mental health was considered taboo. Through the utilisation of the pre-existing ‘cutesy’ aesthetic, Yami kawaii seeked to normalise mental health struggles by incorporating dark characters and quotes like ‘I want to die’ or ‘Give me love’ with pastel colours and chibi drawings, making society in Japan more comfortable with such struggles and thereby making it easier to access help. Ultimately, it can be reasonably deduced that fashion has not only been influenced by society but has also served as a tool to influence society. Our study involved a comparison of two very different societies: the UK and the UAE. Whilst individuals in the UK are typically more expressive in the way they dress, individuals in the UAE are not only bound by the climate of the region but also the socio-political climate, which disproportionately affects women. Thus, we used this opportunity to do a comparative analysis of women, looking at factors like age, economic status and profession, to see how these factors affected their individual expression. Whilst having the exact same brackets for many of the factors was difficult, we tried to have individuals who had fairly similar backgrounds, ages and stages in their careers to try and make it as accurate as possible. We first conducted questionnaires (mostly consisting of Likert scales), in order to gather baseline results, which then helped us gather information on the themes that we could streamline and also gather participants, after asking them for consent for further information. We ended up with two interviewees from each country: One middle-aged woman working in Education and another student in her early 20s entering the workforce. Through the semi-structured interviews, we were able to ask further questions on the answers they had provided and the results of the overall research but also go into much more detail on some of the key details they brought up during our conversations. In the UK, when the participants were asked what influenced their styles the most, both participants expressed the impact social media and trends have on their aesthetics. In the UAE, while the younger participant expressed similar influences from social media and characters on TV shows, the older participant mentioned that she is influenced most by the practicality of what she wears. Alongside being true to her personal style, the participant expressed that she needs to adapt it to the specific dress code restrictions (especially in institutions of education) in the UAE. At the same time, when asked if they felt constrained by any external factors within society like gender norms or social class, participants in the UK mentioned that there was an equal expectation for both men and women to dress a certain way while the participants in the UAE felt as though more was expected from them than from men, especially in terms of how they presented. It is interesting to note that while the UAE, can be argued as being much safer for women than the UK, women in the UAE are not permitted to dress in revealing clothing or have their underwear shown in any way in public places like malls and public parks, which are typically seen as more family-friendly. However, no such legal restrictions are applicable to women in the UK. While this was the case for all of the emirates in the UAE earlier, Dubai, owing to a popular tourist destination for influencers, recently legalised crossdressing and eased overall dress code restrictions. In this way, it is reasonable to deduce that not only did people adapt to restrictions in the UAE, the UAE also adjusted its restrictions to account for growing influencer fashion and culture. All participants were also asked how they thought their style had evolved over time and the only commonality lay between both the older participants who mentioned how their style evolved as they grew older and felt they were free from the shackles of societal judgment. Both participants expressed how they started incorporating patterns and brighter colours into their stylistic preferences in their professional spaces to be more expressive, whereas these weren’t as easily accepted in the earlier days of their careers. Now that they were well situated, these women had more autonomy over what they wore in their workplace. Fashion is an interesting tool that not only influences culture but is also heavily influenced by it since it not only promotes diversity through preferences but interestingly also promotes solidarity through trends (like Yami kawaii and cutting of hair in solidarity with Iranian women). Through this study, it can be discerned that despite differences in location, careers had a significantly larger impact on fashion than cultural differences, which is clearly exemplified by the similarity in the outlook on fashion in the older participants. Simultaneously, while the culture of the location had an impact on restrictions and constraints on fashion, it is very likely that since older participants have been accustomed to it for a longer period of time, there is a convergence of practicality and local fashion trends. Hence we can deduce that practicality and expression were what ultimately led to similar fashion outlooks for all participants, irrespective of location.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has become a new socially-constructed monstrosity for Republican lawmakers and people unwilling to recognise America’s racist history, and how this impacts present-day politics. In recent years, individual U.S. states have gone to lengths to legislate bans on the teaching of CRT, restricting the discussion of racism, white privilege, oppression and unconscious bias. These constraints also extend to discussions on gender identity and sexual orientation. This article aims to explore the challenges of formally integrating CRT in American schools, and will argue that racism alongside xenophobia and homophobia will continue to be embedded in the American political landscape the longer CRT is not a part of the American school curriculum. To understand why CRT has become a news flash in American politics and brought culture wars into American classrooms, it is important to understand what the theory constitutes, and what it doesn’t. Those opposed to CRT as a concept are wary that the framework rebukes all white individuals to be conceptualised as oppressive, whilst categorising all people of colour to be oppressed. Such anxieties have been incited across school boards and state legislatures, from Florida to Tennessee to prohibit the teaching on racism in the classroom. However, the fundamental issues with these narratives display how CRT’s importance is hideously dismissed as a theoretical framework. CRT does not affix racism to white people as individuals or groupings of people. In short, CRT asserts that American social institutions (examples being the healthcare system, education system and criminal justice system) are embedded with racism, present in regulations and legislation that results in a disparity in outcomes by race. Although, many Americans are unable to divorce their individual character as an American from the system of governance structures, with people embodying themselves in the system. As a result, they perceive the labelling of social institutions being racist as targeted at them. There are two key challenges of integrating Critical Race Theory in American schools: the approach of Republican-controlled state legislatures and parental concerns on the teaching of CRT. Classroom discussions on race hasn’t been debated as extensively in the US 2022 midterm campaigns, given conservatives have achieved their goal of eliminating conversations on racism from the classroom. CRT has become a disputed and misconstrued issue in education following a campaign of deliberate misinformation by conservatives. Strategists belonging to this ideology have persuaded millions of Americans, together with parents of school-aged kids, that CRT was widely taught around the US. However, no evidence stands to confirm these convictions. As of October 2022, Education Week data shows elected officials in forty-two states have proposed legislation that widely aims to prohibit the teaching of topics on racial and social justice in public school curriculums. Bills likewise have passed in seventeen of those states. In addition, many school boards have implemented local bans, with books on race banned in multiple districts. The approach of the Republican-led state legislature entails implementing legislation that forbids school-level teachers from teaching lessons that mention race/racism or gender and sexism. This has had a jarring impact on what educators are able to and willing to discuss across American classrooms, casting a veil for those uncomfortable about the true history of the state of race relations in the US. Ironically, the implication of creating laws that outlaw CRT speaks to validating the point that racism is embedded in the fabric of American governance. Furthermore, the scale of efforts to ban CRT in the United States are widespread. Several states have achieved this through passing legislation, including Texas, South Carolina, Arizona, North Dakota and Idaho. In addition, state actors in Montana and South Dakota have condemned teaching concepts linked with CRT. In the last year, state school boards in Florida, Georgia, Utah and Alabama established new guidelines prohibiting discussions associated with CRT. Until these restrictions on teaching the truth are removed, American democracy will be increasingly prone to the intensification of racial tensions, inequalities and acts of violence. Consequently, at present in some states, educators possess unchecked power in teaching children about race and sexuality. Parental concerns on the teaching of CRT in American schools have arisen from parents worrying about their children learning ideas in school that they are unable to help address themselves. The campaign to eradicate CRT has succeeded predominantly because white parents and state-level lawmakers were convinced of the notion that white school-aged children were being manipulated into feeling guilty about being white. There is no credible proof or evidence to back up this belief. The key consequence derived from the challenge of integrating CRT in US schools is blatantly racist, sexist and homophobic books are clogging the abyss left by bans on CRT. Those on the right advocating for these bans are really pressing an argument against reckoning with the ills of racism in American history. Black, Brown, Indigenous and LGBT+ students constitute the majority of students in the American public school system, and face erasure and suffering at the hands of cruel politicians that preach practising and encouraging extreme masculinity and whiteness. The challenge of successfully implementing CRT in schools due to these bans undermines confidence in the public school system as a public good provision, whilst upholding support for privatisation and choice in schooling. The US Supreme Court’s Espinoza v. Montana ruling in 2020 has only problematised things further. School tax dollars are able to provide funding to religious private and charter schools, and their viewpoints on racism and queer rights. This has come to show that everyday racism and xenophobia has returned to American schools. If America really cares about the advancement of its democracy, the full truth must be taught, and public schools shouldn’t be utilised as a battleground for the Republican party’s culture wars.

Editorial by Ruoshan Zhang Originating from the Chinese company, Bytedance, Tiktok had gained rising popularity worldwide after merging with a dance-based platform Music.ly. Centered around video sharing, the app contains fundamentally different designs compared to other social media platforms that results in unique impacts on the receiving audience. Bhandari and Bimo [1]proposed that the interaction seen on Tiktok is not between users and their social network, but rather between users and what is known as a “self -algorithmic version of the self”. Opening the app leads users to a personalized stream of videos. Because of this innovative algorithm, the attention that Tiktok has received is unprecedented. Statistics [2] revealed that it was the most downloaded app in 2021 and reached one billion users by the end of the year, outbeating historically popular media apps such as instagram and snapchat. [3]Further records showed that an average person from Generation Z opens the app at least 19 times per day, and that each spends on average 90 minutes. Because of the immeasurable extent to which Tiktok is integrated throughout every corner of people’s lives, its impacts on cognitive and sociocultural behavior should be carefully considered. This article provides a psychosocial analysis into the impacts that Tiktok has on the wide scope of culture, including examinations on its positive impacts on the perpetuation of culture, and negative impacts on cultural lag and sociocultural issues such as appropriation. Proponents of the argument posit [4] that Tiktok allows for the perpetuation of a culture by serving itself as an accessible platform that enables the micro strengthening of enculturation to macro level of culture consolidation. Enculturation [5]is the process by which one comes to attain norms of a culture through observational learning and interactions with gatekeepers. Because enculturation requires exposure to all aspects of a culture, an individual is engaged in shaping schematic processes throughout childhood and extends into adulthood. However, tiktok may effectively accelerate enculturation by proliferation of the multidimensional aspects within a culture. Taking music as an example, one way that tiktok has inherently emphasized its growth is through the background music feature. A report [6]suggested that 63.8% of the popular songs found on Spotify charts are due to the “organic posting by the artist and other users on Tiktok rather than influencer campaigns or paid aids.” Data from the MRC research [7] further suggested that “75% of TikTok users say they discover new artists through TikTok.” The easy accessibility and high permeability of the platform allows emerging artists or small business owners to leave a major impact simply by associating the appropriate music with a specific brand or skit. A greater impact on culture is Tiktok’s effective socio-technological contribution on cultural activism. Cervin and Marín-LIadó [8](2022) defined a new form of activism particularly associated with Tiktok known as “playful activism”. Their multimodal analysis on a sample of widely viewed #freepalestine TikTok suggested that Young Palestinians used this network to construct their opinions on politics through playful performance. More importantly, this type of social activism has allowed them to spread political messages among the youth audience much more than original advertisement campaigns. As a result, those who were previously uninterested or had no previous knowledge were actively engaging and participating, creating a humanitarian and solidarity network for the betterment of palestinian culture. In the scope of future orientation, Tiktok serves as a contributing factor in increasing cultural lag. Cultural lag is a theoretical phenomenon describing when advancements in material culture progresses faster than non-material culture. Because of the entertaining focus, users on tiktok tend to utilize the app as a tool to gain relaxation and stress-relieve. A study [9] revealed that entertainment gratification and affect was the primary driver behind all passive, participatory and contributory consumption behaviors on Tiktok. Specifically, data reported [10]that the second most viewed content category is “Dance” with 150.3 billion hashtag views, with approximately 60% [11]of its viewers being teenagers and young adults. It appears that for individual content variation, the majority of users focus on surface level elements (dance, TV show recommendations, make up etc.) for the purpose of entertainment. As much as this has a mediating effect on stress and mental health issues in general, it drives attention away from societal issues or historically-inherited beliefs. In simple language, more cognitive importance is placed on the breadth of surface culture than the depth of deep culture. Another study [12]supported this relationship by suggesting that those who choose to quit Douyin (Chinese Tiktok) are mostly motivated by the fear of addiction and the perception of deemed low-quality content, providing evidence for the idea that tiktok content exposes users to surface level elements. Those who use Tiktok to stay updated to current social affairs may claim the concept of cultural lag as untrue. However, its relevance in cultural lag is highlighted in the fact that cultural progress involves understanding the core of cultural values, beliefs and future establishments rather than merely understanding what they consist of. Tiktok, being a 15-30 seconds video sharing app, allows the audience to understand WHAT is important, but not WHY. Examples include the #ice bucket challenge and #BlacklivesMatter challenge. The former involved the platform raising enough awareness on what the challenge involves, but insufficient knowledge on why challengers were pouring freezing cold water. The latter proliferated up-to-date clips about the context, but exerted media availability heuristics due to the short nature of its 15 second videos. Availability heuristics effect[13]is when people form immediate evaluations based on what information is available in front of them. In both cases, The lack of in-depth understanding of the social and historical contexts of the affairs may lead to slacktivism [14]whereby people access the information via clicking on a hashtag that takes the user to the categorized feed of content. Slacktivism places a greater emphasis on the participation in raising awareness and voicing out than concrete attempts to establish policies or solutions to these societal problems, potentially hindering the functionality to organizational change. A more notable consequence of Tiktok with regard to cultural lag is that it has created a material - dominating culture that has led to sociocultural issues. Whilst the tiktok algorithm effectively promotes surface culture in the form of music, food, fashion and cosmetics, its contribution to the heightened incentives of influencer culture potentially introduces cultural appropriation. A national analysis [15]identified the existence of an “influencer culture” whereby individual users exert commercial or non-commercial influence across the internet community. Bhandari, A., & Bimo, S. (2022) [16] further explained the formation of influencer culture using the “self-representation” theory in relevance to Tiktok. Originally, anyone’s social representation is created based on diverse cultural elements ranging from food to the sharing of experience and emotions. Whereas the tiktok self-algorithm redefines self- representation based on predetermined categorical schema for the purpose of data gathering. Hearn (2010) [17]theorized that this far-reaching form of control leads Tiktok users to be exploited for the ever-evolving forms of profit within a wider capitalist- driven economy infrastructure. Within this scope, users must follow a “datalogical turn” wherein the production of content must fit the capitalistic and societal desires to be on the collection and vast amounts of consumer data. The focus on exploiting marketing opportunities potentially leads to the oversight of sensitivity and lack of appreciation for community diversity. This was reflected in a cultural appropriation incident in 2020. Carli D’Amelio, known as the CEO of the Renegade dance, [18]has paved her wealth and fame upon sponsorships and media opportunities derived from the unprecedented attention on the dance. By the age of 15, she became arguably the most influential Tiktok user. Nevertheless, at the heart of the issue is the unrevealed fact that the dance was originally created by a dark-skinned dancer named Jalaiah Harmon. The dance was initially uploaded on Funimate before it was moved onto Tiktok where D’Amelio discovered and made the dance her own. To receive the credit she deserved, Harmon raised her voice regarding the ownership of the choreography but was ignored and even humiliated by the mass media. With this incident being one example amongst many,[19] the algorithm has been backlashed as “whitewashed” with its tendency to promote white creator idiosyncracies to achieve marketing success. Arguably, it heightens the incentives to separate power division between cultures, with white users more likely to exploit cultural elements of the ethnic minorities. In conclusion, tiktok has a positive impact on culture to the extent that they foster multidimensional aspects of surface culture, strengthening cultural growth within respective areas of music, branding, style and food. This collectively translates into macro levels of cultural engagement as a gateway to the betterment of deep culture. In the sociocultural scope, tiktok inspired the formation of a new, efficient and influencing form of playful activism, using surface culture elements to raise awareness on societal issues. This combined type of advertisement has reportedly raised important awareness among the youth generation, who are the future stakeholders of culture. However, whilst the self-algorithm has its benefits on both the evolution of surface and deep culture, it also draws a problem of a cultural lag in the way that surface culture (branding, dance, music) is currently progressing faster than that of the deep culture (religion, societal and family values etc.) due to the exploitative nature of the self-generating algorithm, providing marketing opportunities for the capitalist-driven infrastructure. The oversight of deep culture further fuels underlying issues with regard to ownership and equity as long-existing concepts of cultural appropriation. Although, regardless of the positive and negative impacts, the algorithm generating network has definitely led the generation to an era of self-exploratory and identifiable virtual world.

Editorial by Will Kingston-Cox This article was written by Will Kingston-Cox on the murder of Takeoff, a well-known artist. Kingston-Cox provides us with a tribute piece for the blog whilst highlighting a wider issue that should be discussed on a larger platform- the culture of hip-hop and its links to gun violence in the US. He begins with a tribute to the artist and then dives deeper into the discussion of the culture and the issues that the music community promotes. In the early hours of Tuesday 1 November 2022, Kirshnik Khari Ball – better known as Takeoff – was fatally shot outside a bowling alley in Houston, Texas. As one-third of the hugely successful and influential group Migos, alongside his uncle Quavo and cousin Offset, Takeoff was not only a pioneer in the Atlanta rap scene, but the wider American hip-hop community. His untimely, tragic death has devastated his family, peers, and fans (for which I am one), as well as sending shockwaves across the American nation. It also demonstrates the real obligation on the community itself, as opposed to US policymakers, to tackle the scourge of gun violence that pervades American hip-hop. Before I elaborate into the recent history and politics of gun violence in relation to American rap music, it is only just that I pay tribute to Takeoff. Born in Lawrenceville, Georgia in 1994 (around 30 miles northeast of Atlanta), Takeoff was raised with his uncle Quavo (only three years his senior) by Quavo’s mother. Both Quavo and Takeoff began honing their musical style from a young age, with Takeoff being quoted as “put[ting] the most early hours into the craft of rapping”, inspired by the likes of Tupac and Biggie – poignantly, both died from gun violence in 1996 and 1997, respectively. In 2013, Migos released Versace, their first mainstream hit, which was voted by Billboard among the 100 songs that defined the decade. The single would go on to become one of the most influential tracks in recent hip-hop music history, with the “Migos flow” - rapid triplets interspersed with trademark adlibs – becoming a defining feature of modern rap music. The Migos reached international stardom with their 2016 hit single ‘Bad and Boujee’, featuring Lil Uzi Vert, kickstarting an enriched, prosperous career. The rap trio subsequently released the critically acclaimed trilogy of Culture albums, with various hits such as ‘MotorSport’, ‘Stir Fry’ and ‘Walk It Talk It’, cementing the Migos's status as ‘rap royalty’. As a solo artist, Takeoff had two significant releases: his 2018 solo album The Last Rocket which debuted at number four in the US, and his latest release Only Built for Infinity Links with Quavo, published less than a month before Takeoff’s death. All of Takeoff’s musical projects exuded real talent and flair. It is indisputable that Takeoff was a gifted young man. It is a tragedy that such an accomplished artist was taken in such a violently arbitrary manner. For many, Takeoff was regarded as the most talented of the Migos, the most lyrical. Years of chart domination and worldwide fame, notwithstanding the production of legendary music which will continue to influence America’s hip-hop scene for years to come, has now come to a regrettable end. It is fair to say Takeoff, and the Migos, deserved a much better ending. Sadly, Takeoff’s killing is shocking but unsurprising. 2022 has been a catastrophic year for hip-hop and gun violence, in trend with recent years. Senselessness has too often caused misery. In February, Snootie Wild, best known for his hit-single ‘Yayo’, was shot and killed in Houston. On 27 July, JayDaYoungan, a pioneer in the ‘mumble rap’ genre, was murdered in Bogalusa, Louisiana, just days after his 24th birthday. The latest hip-hop tragedy this year, prior to Takeoff’s killing, was the shooting of PnB Rock in Los Angeles back in September. 2022’s murderous streak only compounds a litany of gun violence that has plagued the hip-hop community, losing major figures such as Young Dolph, King Von, and Pop Smoke in 2020, and XXXTentacion and Nipsey Hussle in 2018 and 2019, respectively. The one common denominator? Talented, young African American musicians losing their lives unnecessarily to pernicious gun violence. Journalist Justin Tinsley surmised the crisis facing hip-hop succinctly: “If hip-hop is to survive, then the art must do so. And if the art is to survive, then artists have to live. Tragically, this won’t be the last article about a young rapper whose life was cut short too soon”. So how does the American hip-hop community, then, tackle this miserable affliction of gun violence and the premature deaths of its pioneers? Unfortunately, the answer is not so clear-cut. Gun violence, and the glamorization of such, is entrenched within the culture, lyrics, and audience of American hip-hop since its inception back in the 1990s. Whilst many artists claim the ‘glamorization’ is merely a reflection of the lives they lead or have led, the normalization of gun violence in hip-hop music, as it becomes one of America’s most popular genres, roots the problem societally. However, scholars, such as A.D. Carson, have raised warnings of ‘vilifying’ rappers as “sources of the crisis of violence in America” and not blaming their music “that reflects it”. In this view, it is not rap music that has created the scourge of gun violence, but rather that rap music and its lyrics are a byproduct of the current gun situation in the US. Either way, the way in which hip-hop and gun violence has become intrinsically linked compounds the problem facing the community in tackling gun violence against its own. Moreover, police and investigators, since the emergence of hip-hop and rap culture, face an “anti-snitch culture”, similar to that of the Mafia’s Omertà. It was only in 2020 did Quavo appear on a posthumous track by Pop Smoke entitled ‘Snitching’, “which decried ‘rats’ and talking to the police”. The problem is therefore rooted within the culture and the community, to its own detriment. Furthermore, the influence of social media plays a central role in the spiraling violence seen within the hip-hop community. Artists seek to ‘flex’ - to show off their wealth, status, weaponry – to the “detriment of their safety.” Whilst some are only too happy to see their peers become successful, with overt ‘flexing’ comes jealousy and anger. Often, this is the jealousy and anger of strangers which can have fatal consequences. In February 2020, a day before the armed robbery that took his life, Pop Smoke and his friend Michael Durodola posted a series of images on social media of the Airbnb they were renting – that of Real Housewives star Teddi Mellenchamp. In the social media posts, both the location of where Pop Smoke was staying and the luxurious items in his possession – cash and jewellery – were made public. Such information fell into the hands of Pop Smoke’s killers, with the intent of robbing the artist. Now, this is not to say ‘flexing’ warrants gun violence, but the inducement of jealousy, covetousness, and anger that such public displays of wealth can conjure within the African American community provides a causal link between current attitudes within the hip-hop community and the prevalence of gun violence. So how does America’s hip-hop community tackle the scourge of gun violence which plagues itself from within? Houston police chief Troy Finner’s approach is one that I would consider the only effective option. When addressing a press conference on the death of Takeoff, Finner urged the hip-hop community that “we got to police ourselves...and we all need to stand together and make sure nobody tears down that industry.” Finner’s call for sensibility and calm within the community is wise. Takeoff’s life was lost to a disagreement over a game of dice; a disagreement that did not, in any shape or form, require guns to be fired indiscriminately. If left for US federal agencies, such as the FBI, to enforce a ‘crackdown’ on gun crime, it is reasonable to assume a high degree of racial profiling in attempting to reduce gun crime. Whilst “black and brown Americans are disproportionately harmed by the direct and indirect consequences of gun violence”, federal attempts to combat such gun violence will, in turn, have the paradoxical effect of worsening the problem. The potential to perpetuate the prison-industrial complex and exacerbate the disproportionate population of African American men in the US prison system is great. Thus, we must make the point that those within the rap scene have agency themselves. Only when the glamorization of gun violence, the necessity to ‘flex’, and the unwillingness to cooperate with authorities to tackle the scourge of gun violence within both the African American and hip-hop communities, becomes consigned to the history books can this murderous, lamentable era come to an end. It is my sincere hope that if any good is to come from the tragic death of Takeoff, it will be the awakening of many hip-hop artists, and their fans, to the notion that life does not have to be like this, and that it is themselves who can change it. Future generations are watching; this cannot be the precedent. For more information on the prevention of gun violence, please visit: www.rocket-foundation.org This is a foundation that has been set up in Takeoff's memory to prevent gun violence. Thank you.

It is no secret that the fast fashion industry is rooted in the exploitation of the Global South, in order to satisfy the material greed of the Global North. With employees forced to work inhumane hours, in dangerous conditions, for an unlivable wage, the human cost for those in the nations creating the clothes is abundantly clear. The global structure through which fast fashion operates, is reliant upon the majority of demand coming from the Global North, whilst the bulk of production is carried out in the Global South. These are nations under desperate financial strain that has been historically caused by the Global North’s exploitation of their resources, raw materials and peoples. Now, as fast fashion powerhouses, like H&M, Primark, and the Boohoo franchise, seek to mass produce clothing for the lowest possible prices, they capitalise upon the vulnerable position of the Global South. Yet the horrific ramifications of fast fashion are not limited to the humanitarian cost. The nations producing the garments also bear the brunt of the industry’s environmental destruction, despite it being fuelled by the mass materialistic consumption of the Global North. The fast fashion industry creates advertising that pressures consumers to repeatedly invest in their pieces, but with the current influence of social media, this encouragement to partake in mass consumption has skyrocketed. ‘Aesthetic’ trends seen on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok change so rapidly that those engaging with this content must make a constant stream of purchases in order to keep up. And these fast fashion brands entice the customer to do just that, offering deals on already extremely cheap clothing, and in the case of Pretty Little Thing, even going as far as to run 99% off sales. These clothes are designed to be discarded. Operating through this business model, fast fashion companies rake in profit as consumers become hooked on the latest trend, quickly discarding their previous purchases. In recent years, Shein has dominated the global fast fashion market, now reportedly producing up to 10,000 new products every day. With tops from just $3 (US) and shoes starting at $5, before even considering items on sale, Shein’s prices are lowered to such an extent that the customer is encouraged to justify buying clothing for a single wear. Because the exploitation, both human and environmental, is concentrated in the Global South, customers can fund this business model without concerning themselves with its detrimental effects. One narrative that is consistently perpetuated to absolve consumer guilt is what I shall call the ‘charity shop solution’. The Global North upholds the narrative that quickly discarding fast fashion is not an issue, provided one donates it to a charity shop. Yet this line of logic is entirely flawed. The garments are so cheaply made that they cannot withstand long-term wear. The commonly used cheap materials, like polyester, can take more than 200 years to decompose, but the garments themselves will not only rapidly go out of demand when trends change, but will also cease being wearable as they become damaged or fall apart, long before their materials could decompose. An estimated 10-30% of clothes donated to charity shops are resold within the same country, then a small percentage are recycled or downcycled. This leaves more than half of all donated clothes unaccounted for. Rather than take responsibility for the masses of textile waste created by consumer greed, countries in the Global North export the unwanted clothes to less wealthy nations. Disgracefully, a saviour narrative is put forward here, as these wealthy nations depict their dumping of material waste as ‘donating’ clothes. In reality, these poorly-made clothes end up in landfill, polluting the land of the very same people who were exploited to create them. A Greenpeace investigation in Kenya, one of the major recipients of unwanted garments, uncovered that “nearly half of the clothes are unusable and have no market value: their quality is too poor, or they are broken or soiled and are nothing more than textile waste.” The consequences of textile waste caused by Global North greed are thus forcibly shouldered onto the Global South, despite these nations typically having little to no infrastructure to handle this problem. Without the facilities to manage the waste, clothes end up being burnt, releasing toxic fumes, or overflowing into the natural landscape, including into bodies of water. The textile industry is responsible for approximately 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions, as well as approximately 20% of global freshwater pollution. This is primarily the result of the combination of the aforementioned dumped textile waste and the pollution created in this process of producing the clothes, both factors which have devastating impacts on the Global South, but remain out of sight and thus out of mind to the Global North consumers. The process of producing fast fashion clothing and shoes is rife with toxic chemicals. The process of dying garments is particularly harmful, as toxic chemicals including lead and mercury are used, which can then contaminate water and soil. These water sources can be used for washing or even drinking, leading to the risk of chemical poisoning, whilst the soil is often agricultural land desperately needed to produce food. Furthermore, wildlife in these waters can be killed by the toxic chemicals released through the production of fast fashion. Not only does fast fashion contaminate bodies of water, but the garment production process also uses staggering amounts of water: we require nearly 3,000 litres of water to produce just one cotton t-shirt. And the effects of this demand are being felt already: the Aral Sea, which sits between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, was once the fourth biggest lake in the world. Now it has dried up, as a consequence of mass cotton farming for the hungry demand of the fashion industry. This exploitation of resources in the Global South has echoes of Empire, and its history of stealing other nations’ natural resources for its own material benefit. Fast fashion’s exploitation of the people and the environment in these Global South nations is clearly evidenced. Yet there is a distinct lack of legislation in place to combat the problem. In the past 30 years, the UK has proposed just 5 strategies and 19 policies to tackle fast fashion. Only 32% of these policies relate to direct action, as opposed to simply ‘raising awareness’, and only 5% went as far as to contain budgeting for implementation, reflecting that the vast majority of these meagre few policy proposals were merely performative. To put this into perspective, research undertaken by Cambridge University in 2021 found 689 Government policies to tackle obesity in the UK. It remains abundantly clear that the UK Government has no intention of taking accountability for the nation’s role in enabling the fast fashion industry. When considered alongside the dismal display of UK policies on fast fashion, EU policy is vastly superior. Earlier this year, EU commissioner, Frans Timmermans stated: “We want sustainable products to become the norm on the European market”, as the EU announced that fast fashion companies will be held accountable for the quality of their clothing, toxic chemicals released and the waste that the industry produces. This year, it became the first region in the world to formally identify the correlation between fast fashion and increased fossil fuel emissions. The body has announced plans for a ‘Extended Producer Responsibility’ scheme, to be implemented across all EU nations. Provisional plans outline that fast fashion brands will be required to pay a ‘waste fee’ for every item sold, with the fee amount being dependent on how ecological the item is deemed. The EU has called for an end to fast fashion by 2030, demanded company transparency on the amount of unsold stock sent to landfill, and promoted a vision for a circular economy for fashion. Yet, whilst the EU’s progress far exceeds Britain’s embarrassing absence of action, the reality is that nobody is doing enough. The ambition and targets of the EU are refreshing to see, but they are still missing two crucial elements. Firstly, the proposals fail to properly acknowledge the disproportionate impacts of fast fashion’s environmental destruction of the Global South, which is reflective of the Global North’s resistance to face accountability for its role as the driving force of this disaster. Secondly, there remains a lack of explanation for how the EU will reach the goals it sets out, leaving us to wonder the extent to which this legislation may be performative. It is imperative that the Global North looks beyond its own greedy, selfish motives and moves rapidly to clear up its own mess, rather than continuing to push it out of sight and out of mind, by forcing the problem onto those already exploited by the industry.

On the 13th September, 22 year old Mahsa Amini was arrested by Iran’s Morality police for supposedly wearing her headscarf inappropriately. After three days of torture and brutal beatings, Amini died in custody. She was murdered by the Iranian government and their perceived impunity for violently oppressing Kurdish peoples. Her death has added ferocity to protestors in Iran demanding liberation from the oppressive Islamic Regime. The Morality Police in Iran are responsible for monitoring Iranian citizen's attire. They are imbued with the power to arrest any person they feel is dressed inappropriately, whether that be that their hijab has fallen down, or that their clothes are considered too tight. Held in police stations overnight, the detainee is expected to declare commitment to changing the way they dress. In Iran, women are required by law to wear a hijab, as is also the case in Afghanistan but nowhere else in the world. This law has nothing to do with instating Islam as the state religion in these regions. Instead, these laws violate human rights and sanction the oppression and silencing of women living in Iran and Afghanistan. The President of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, sat at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this year. He has not faced repercussions for committing crimes against humanity. Following the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, the land was divided into four Nation States: Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Kurdish people living across all regions have since faced marginalisation, exclusion, oppression, and suppression, being denied political recognition, forbidden from speaking the Kurdish language, and left internally displaced in regions across the Middle East. Western states have known of the oppression of Kurdish people and have chosen either to ignore it or in some cases be complicit in it. In 1953, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, was overthrown following Western intervention. His crime was that he tried to nationalise Iran’s oil supplies. With assistance from Great Britain and the United States, monarchy was reinstated in Iran and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi ruled Imperial Iran until 1980. During his rule, the Shah used a CIA-trained institution to spy on Iranian people, torturing and killing people who expressed opposition to the capitalist system and to his rule. Under the Shah, Iran was a strong ally to the West in the Cold War. The West has an extensive history of breaching laws of democracy and staging interventions in reaction to perceived threats to the capitalist system. In 1956, Britain and France (unsuccessfully) attempted to overthrow President Nasser of Egypt after announcing his plans to nationalise the Suez Canal. In 1966, the first prime minister and president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown, having survived six assassination attempts, in consequence to inspiring and encouraging independence movements throughout the African continent. Wearing hijab became compulsory for all Iranian women in 1983 following the idea of hijab law introduced during the 1979 Islamic revolution. Since the inception of this law, Iranian women and men have fought tirelessly to end the violence and oppression of women in Iran. Following the murder of Jina Amini, protests have become global. In Iran, there have been reports of over twenty-thousand protestors being arrested and over four hundred murdered at the hands of the brutal Islamic Republic regime. The slogan “Women, Life, Freedom” has been adopted the Kurdish language, first used by Kurdish women’s liberation groups in Istanbul in 2006. It is being chanted so women are seen, so Iranian people are seen, and so Kurdish people are seen. But with visibility, liberation must follow. Clothing is a personal choice. Religion is a personal choice. Now, it is required of the international community to stand for human rights and stand for the rights of women, the right to life, and the right to freedom.

Widely lauded as the most significant opportunity for global collaboration to tackle the climate crisis, the COP Climate Summit is an annual series of meetings that reviews progress towards the overarching goal of limiting the impacts of climate change. Yet, despite 27 COP summits having now been held, the wealthiest nations continue to emit unsustainable levels of fossil fuels and far exceed their share of ecological resources. This begs the question: what is COP really achieving? COP has a long history of overpromising and under-delivering. The 21st COP saw the signing of the historic Paris Agreement, which set out a primary target to “limit global warming to well below 2, preferable to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels”. Yet, despite the agreement being signed by all but four governments, the current course of action is wildly off target. The big emitters appear prepared to discuss tackling the climate crisis, but remain unwilling to put action behind their words. COP enables a selective global narrative on climate change, as the voices of the biggest emitters are amplified over those who are the most heavily impacted by environmental destruction. COP27 is being sponsored by Coca-Cola, a brand which is fundamentally reliant upon fossil fuels to create their products. In 2019, the company admitted to using 3 million tonnes of plastic packaging in a year, and since then it has only increased its usage of ‘virgin’ plastic by 3.5%. Rather than funnelling its funding into researching renewable alternatives, it is spending vast amounts of money to associate the company name with climate endeavours, giving the illusion of support without any of the work to change Coca-Cola’s devastating environmental impact. Coca-Cola has a “long history of lobbying to delay and derail regulations that would prevent pollution, keeping us addicted to disposable plastic”, as identified by previous COP delegate Georgia Elliott-Smith, who openly criticised the sponsorship deal. The greenwashing and performative activism exhibited by Coca-Cola sets an example that reassures the biggest polluters that they can continue down their path of destruction of the planet for capital gain. In this light, it becomes unequivocally apparent that COP is not just enabling, but actively promoting greenwashing. The summit’s Coca-Cola sponsorship is unfortunately just the beginning of COP’s platforming and enabling major emitters. An investigation by Global Witness uncovered that at least 636 fossil lobbyists have been granted access to COP27, before even considering the number in closely related fields. This is an increase of more than 100 from COP26. By giving platform to these vast numbers of representatives who are heavily invested in delaying and reducing climate action, COP27 is drowning out those voicing the reality of our planet’s precarious position. Globally recognised climate activist Greta Thunberg refused to attend this year’s summit, after calling it an opportunity for “people in power… to [use] greenwashing, lying and cheating.” Thunberg is also among the many activists who have highlighted the irony of holding the summit in Egypt, a country notorious for violating human rights. Indeed, many prominent environmental and human rights researchers and activists have been unable to attend because they have been barred from Egypt due to their work. In a nation which is silencing challengers of its government, it cannot be surprising that the scientists and those being the most affected by the climate crisis are not being given a voice when their message does not align with the interests of those in power. The countries that are the biggest emitters are dominating discussion at COP27, but this trend is not new. Behind the show of flashy smiles put on by a sea of overwhelmingly white, male leaders, lies the reality of the exclusion of activists from nations that face some of the most severe ramifications of the climate crisis. The people who suffer the consequences of Western greed are poorly represented at COP, as their experiences would force world leaders to take accountability that they have demonstrated they are unwilling to take. Jennifer Olachi Unchendu, one of many Nigerian people struggling to access COP, told The Guardian: “voices like mine who advocate for climate justice, loss and damage finance may be seen as threats”. Many African activists like Unchendu, who are from some of the countries which have been the most devastated by the climate crisis reported struggling to gain access to COP, despite the continent being vastly disproportionately impacted, with hundreds of deaths due to floods and landslides, and approximately 37 million people facing starvation as a consequence of droughts. COP27 was dubbed ‘the African COP’, yet just a month before it commenced, just over 20% of grassroots activists received approval, whilst others reported being told there were no spaces left. Only a small minority of this percentage anticipate sourcing the funding to travel to Egypt. This apparent lack of space is in spite of the more than 600 attendance approvals made for fossil fuel lobbyists. COP27 is being held in a country which represses its citizens rights to freedom of expression and association, being sponsored by a company described as the “world’s top polluter”, and platforming the some of the biggest emitting nations and companies in the world. It would be fallacious to assert that this summit will yield significant progress in tackling the climate crisis when it is protecting the interests of those benefiting from the destruction of the planet.

This article is an expression of our solidarity with the university staff on the UCU strike in the UK on the 24th, 25th and 30th of November 2022. It provides all the information you need about the strikes and how you can show your support to UCU members. Last month, members of the trade union, University and College Union (UCU), voted a resounding ‘yes’ to take industrial action against 1) pay and working conditions and 2) pension cuts. Over 70,000 university staff across 150 universities will be striking on the following days, making it the biggest strike in history to hit UK universities: · Thursday 24th November · Friday 25th November · Wednesday 30th November In addition, from 23rd November, staff will begin industrial action, including working to rule, refusing to make up work lost due to strike action, and refusing to cover for absent colleagues. It is estimated that these strikes will impact 2.5 million students. However, all of this disruption could be mitigated if employers act fast and meet the UCU’s demands – we are speaking to you, Stuart Croft. Not only has the Vice Chancellor attempted to villanise the staff going on strike, but created a false narrative around the reasons for the strike, making it seem as if it is a selfish motive. Let’s try to remember the following very crucial words, the NUS Vice President of HE, Chloe Fields said: “staff teaching conditions are students' learning conditions”. The UCU has Four key demands: 1. A pay rise to manage the cost-of-living crisis Last year, the UK University sector made a record £41.1 billion. These profits have not been reflected in the wage rises of university employees. In fact, pay rises granted to the staff at universities have yet to rise above the inflation rate. In some cases, they have failed even to meet inflation rises, which is essentially receiving a pay cut. Moreover, Warwick University itself has outrageous pay inequalities, with a gender pay gap of 20% and a racial pay gap of around 13% across its staff members! If Universities have money to channel into vanity projects (think, FAB), they have money to pay a decent wage to their workers. Remember, the Vice Chancellor, Stuart Croft, has chosen not to raise the wages of Warwick staff members. 2. An end to insecure contracts One third of academic staff are on a temporary contract. Working precariously has devastating implications for mental and physical health, and makes it hard for the employee to make long-term financial and family plans. The fact that these contracts keep the staff on their toes, always looking for other opportunities due to the nature of the work that they do. It means that students don’t have the security of academics either. This affects every individual’s learning experience too. Hence, the strikes are not only for the betterment of the employees of the university but for a better learning experience for us, the students, too. 3. A manageable workload The workload expected of academics is almost impossible, with reports of university academics being pushed to breaking point. There has developed an implicit expectation that university staff members will react immediately to student demands. In addition, the emphasis on admin and statistics requires academics to complete masses of paperwork alongside their other work commitments. Effectively this plays out as academics doing unpaid work. In fact, a recent study has shown that academics on average spent the equivalent of two days a week doing unpaid work! 4. A reversal of pension cuts Earlier this year, University UK and USS announced a 35% cut on the pensions of university workers. This cut is completely unjustified and unnecessary, and will have severe implications to the quality of life for staff members when they retire. Ultimately, the UCU members are simply demanding for university staff to be treated with dignity. By doing-so, they face a lot of barriers. Strikers always get bad press. During these strikes, academics will likely face lambaste for “wasting students’ money”, “letting their students down”, and “jeopardizing students’ degrees”. However, strikers are never to blame for the repercussions of them not working. If employers treated their with respect, strikes would not need to happen. If your lecturer is on strike, Stuart Croft put them there. There are also structural barriers that limit the effectiveness of industrial action and strike action. Perversely, Warwick’s campus has been purposefully designed to prohibit strike and industrial actions. Established in 1965, much of Warwick’s campus was built when the UK was experiencing high waves of strikes and industrial action across many sectors, including universities. Warwick’s architectural layout makes it impossible for the entrance to the university to be blocked. However, there are ways you can help the UCU members to win their demands. You can: - Email Warwick’s Vice Chancellor, Stuart Croft and let him know you stand in solidarity with UCU members. His email is: S.Croft@warwick.ac.uk and if you want a template email, you can use the one linked here: template email - Email staff members to let them know you support them in striking, and also to check how they are feeling. Remember, academics love what they do, so giving up their work for a day will be really hard for them! - Join staff members on the picket-line (on Thursday 24th from 8.30 AM and Friday 25th from 10 AM, the picket line will be by Varsity Pub or University Interchange; on Wednesday 30th, the picket line will be in Central London) - Boycott Warwick outlets – The money made from Warwick’s outlets - its cafes, Rootes Grocery store, the Dirty Duck Pub, etc. - clearly is not reflected in the staff member's wages. Instead, it gets reinvested into Warwick’s and Stuart Croft’s vanity projects. So until the UCU demands are met, let’s boycott Warwick outlets! Warwick ThinkTank Society supports all university staff going on strike and we encourage everyone to engage in conversations around this issue. This article was written by Caitlin Hoyland and Drishti Patel

Tech companies have, in the recent past, come out to show support for tackling the dooming climate crisis. For example, shortly before the COP26 UN summit in Glasgow last year, giants including Apple and Microsoft pledged to reach a carbon-neutral supply chain and carbon negative by 2030, respectively. Private players are essential to achieving the broader sustainability goals as they bridge gaps that governments cannot deliver on themselves. However, their ongoing partner contracts with significant oil and gas producers, like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Suncor, raise doubts over the credibility of such commitments, and their combined power usage of more than 45 terawatt-hours a year from their data centers poses a deep-seated issue. In other words, action is necessary. The amount offset is not an accurate measurement but a small part of the equation. Scope 3 GHG emissions indicate the real impact of these firms as they take into account all indirect emissions, including employee commuting, waste management, and use of purchased capital goods, which collectively constitute a significant contributor to a company’s carbon footprint. GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) forms approximately 2 to 3 per cent of the global Scope 3 GHG emissions, and Amazon leads with over 45 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2e). Companies often grapple with reducing such emissions due to their immeasurability, which is worrying on a large scale. Can Big Tech be trusted? For years, firms mastered manipulation and treated their audience’s attention as a scarce commodity. Therefore, it is not hard to believe that our decisions are greatly affected by the tech we use. Shifting gears can be challenging, and this is not unknown to corporations but used to their advantage. The Big 5 tends to command unprecedented levels of dominance, making up to 18 per cent, in value, of the S&P 500 by market capitalization. Such figures indicate a cycle that we cannot fix unless pledges are followed through with consistent progress. This invokes the fundamental question, how much truth is there to these “carbon offset” and “net-zero” claims? Research by NewClimate Institution and Carbon Market Watch evaluated 25 major companies across different sectors and geographies to assess their transparency and integrity rating. On average, the most prominent firms planned to reduce absolute carbon emissions by only 40 per cent, not 100 per cent, as mentioned in their pledges. Shockingly, none of the companies scored a high integrity rating, with even Apple and Sony in the moderate range. Lead author of the study, Thomas Day, also said, “We set out to uncover as many replicable good practices as possible, but we were frankly surprised and disappointed at the overall integrity of the companies’ claims.” Carbon offsets are, therefore, simply a license to pollute, with companies buying carbon credits from organizations that plan to minimize such effects through clean energy and other sustainable practices. Carbon contracts are not always under standardized rates or made with ethical parties. Quite often, the companies themselves tend to forgo the occurrence of any moral hazard. Therefore, we must not consider promises of this nature at face value without climate disclosure. The 2022 UN report also recognized these false pledges, emphasizing regulatory action. Secretary-General António Guterres, at the recent Egypt COP27 summit, vowed that there would be “Zero tolerance for net zero greenwashing.” This is proof enough that more light needs to be shed on the issue of accountability concerning the climate crisis, which can be destructive if not dealt with sooner. Climate tech, emerging as a maturing asset class, has seen a strong investment surge since last year. This investment class currently stands at a staggering $73.86 billion. Globally, 160 climate tech unicorns have come to the fore, with companies valued at over $1 billion. PwC’s State of Climate Tech 2022 report echoed the same trend, suggesting that over $50 billion was injected as VC funding this year. While this is a step forward in the right direction, the funding falls short of the $1 trillion required to curb climate change. To collectively reach the 1.5-degree celsius target set by world leaders at COP26, businesses need to curb their net Scopes 1, 2, and 3 emissions. As opposed to just the net zero targets, entities can establish trust by setting defined guidelines using the Science Based Targets initiative. COP27 builds on the ambitious targets of the Glasgow summit to check for accountability, and SBTi metrics can aid in striking that balance between optimism and reality. There is a dire need for integrating sustainable tech through greater climate financing by governments and private institutions. Along with these measures, we can utilize the substantial power of Big tech for accelerated change. Climate crisis, as we know it, is a result of such institutions and their actions, and only by making structural changes can we reach our climate goals.