The Question
What is NyQuil Chicken?
Talking Points
- Vladimir Putin ordered a partial mobilisation of the Russian army
- Queen Elizabeth II was laid to rest in Windsor Castle
- Tax fraud charges were levelled against the Trump Organization
- Adnan Syed was freed from prison ahead of a retrial
- Colombia is now the new front-line of deforestation
- Japan was battered by Super Typhoon Nanmadol
- The last living Khmer Rouge leader lost his genocide appeal
- Japan was forced to prop up the falling yen
- Australian rules football was rocked by racist abuse claims
- The James Webb Space Telescope took dazzling snaps of Neptune
Deep Dive
Protests erupted in Iran after a young woman died in the custody of the morality police. The enforcement of hijab laws has precipitated the wholesale incineration of headscarves across the country.
The death of Mahsa Amini
22-year-old Mahsa Amini departed the Iranian province of Kurdistan to visit family in the capital last week. She never made it home. In Tehran, she caught the eye of a gashte ershad ("guidance patrol") for contravening the laws around hijab use. What should have been a routine telling-off by roving disciplinarians descended into the realm of tragedy. Amini, who also went by Jina, died in a detention centre after just three days. The authorities claim the previously-healthy young woman suffered a heart attack during a reeducation class. Her family say that she was beaten to death.
An outpouring of anger has followed. Last weekend saw demonstrations in Tehran and regional capitals against the senseless death. It's been two decades since that world-class drama king and former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani uttered a warning that, "a strand of woman's hair emerging from under the hijab is a dagger drawn towards the heart of Islam". His statement wasn't the clarion call he intended it to be. In the years since, adherence to Iran's headscarf laws has been piecemeal and unenthusiastic. There have been plenty of daggers hanging from loose shawls. So much so that the gashte ershad, once a subject of division, has become the object of derision. It is often jokingly referred to as Iran's "fashion police".
Naturally, where Iranian protesters go, so too do the Basij. Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard personnel arrived on motorbikes in the hundreds to intimidate, beat, or simply mow down their countryfolk. But, as in 2019 (and 2017, and 2011...) the protesters have not been deterred by truncheon or boot. Amini's death has touched a nerve. Protests snowballed during the week and touched every part of the country; stretching well beyond the liberal neighbourhoods of Tehran. And everywhere, at the very centre, lit by burning police vans, are women . Headscarves are being lifted off by the thousands. Even in the religious conservative city of Mashhad women are burning their shawls. Access to the internet has been curtailed across the country in an effort to curb the spread of protest videos. It hasn't worked. 31 protestors have died so far . But the crowds keep returning.
Virtue and Vice
We could stop here and throw to New York, where world leaders have gathered for the United Nations General Assembly. But what would we glean? The regional broken record is threatening Tehran with military action over a nuclear bomb that doesn't exist. And US diplomats are grinning like cheshire cats over Iran's embarrassing upswing in dissent. The fact that journalists reflexively seek comment from American government officials — whose country is waging its own war on women's rights — is exhausting. Compromised intentions, contingent sympathy, it's all deeply cynical.
No, the answer for Iran lies a lot closer to home. It needs to get rid of the morality police. And there is inspiration nearby, just on the other side of the Persian Gulf...
Until a few years ago, Saudi public life was haunted by the superbly-named Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Like most ideological structures, the hai'a ('committee') lacked a porous, sympathetic membrane. It couldn't account for what most reasonably-minded people would call reality. Minuscule infractions invited disproportionate reactions. The most infamous example was the 2002 girls' school fire in Mecca. Hai'a brutes prevented the children from escaping into the street because they weren't wearing headscarves, and didn't have male guardians present. 15 girls died. The hai'a lost authority, and it was never regained. They were increasingly viewed as bullies with clubs, hiding behind the Qur'an. And in 2017, the once vaunted morality police was stripped of its powers, and reduced to a puritanical grumbler.
It can be done.
Worldlywise
Election watch
Italians will vote in an election on Sunday, and it's looking like a cakewalk for Giorgia Meloni's far-right Fratelli d'Italia. The 'Brothers of Italy', already several points ahead of their nearest rival, are in coalition with Matteo Salvini's Lega. The right-wing coalition is already on its victory lap (see above). And who's that familiar creature in the middle, frozen in a rictus? Correct, Silvio Berlusconi is once again back in the corridors of power. Meloni served as a junior minister in Silvio's final government and now her old boss is returning the favour by adding a little populist nostalgia to the ticket. In 2018, FdI took 4.4% of the vote. Tomorrow, they might take 25%.
The good fortunes of Giuseppe Conte's Movimento 5 Stelle have reversed since 2018 — support is down 60%. And yet, somehow, it is Italy's centre-left Partito Democratico that has flopped the hardest. PD still polls above 20% but is on the cusp of becoming culturally irrelevant . They still play Bella Ciao at rallies, but the vim has fizzled. The parties have declined because none have had the answers to Italy's recurring woes over the past decade.
The political genealogy of FdI is worrying: it's the grandchild of the original fascists. But much has been made of Meloni sanding down the rough edges . Still, there are plenty of people in Italy today who don't think Mussolini did all that much wrong. Moreover, as Meloni plays the ball into the centre, the right wing has opened up for pro-Putin, Eurosceptic Matteo Salvini to score the protest vote. No doubt he'll be after the top job within a year. For now, we spectate as Italy's first female leader gets set to tackle soaring inflation and an imminent recession .
Next week: Brazil.
After the storm
Hurricane Fiona has certainly taken its time in the Caribbean. Last weekend, it clipped Guadeloupe and Montserrat on its way out of the Atlantic. After a small detour, the storm made a beeline for the west coast of Puerto Rico. It arrived as a Category 1 hurricane. 135kmh winds are not nearly the worst the island has seen, but the swirling dark skies brought a torrent. Then, the hurricane jagged over to the Dominican Republic, dragging a 3m swell beneath it. From there, it strengthened into a Category 4 storm and rudely brushed by the well-heeled set in Turks and Caicos, en route to Bermuda.
But let's go back to Puerto Rico. Swamped by the waves, and blasted by the rain, this unincorporated US territory (a fancy placeholder for "colony") is once again in dire straits . A million Puerto Ricans are without power, a week after the lines snapped and the poles were uprooted. Water supplies are unreliable , and once again the island is being hydrated via airlifted bottled water. Try to picture it. Your home has pivoted to a grotesque angle, and disappeared half into a sink hole. The water is out. It's dark, night after night. Everything is suffused with the stench of mud. The island is re-living the trauma of destruction a scant few years after Hurricane Maria turned it inside out.
President Joe Biden has declared Fiona a major disaster . That will hopefully free the hand of responding agencies, allowing the army to flow in, and the money. Right now, Puerto Rico can't afford to clear debris from roads and sodden villages, let alone rebuild its infrastructure. The cycle of disaster, debt, and reliance continues.
The Best Of Times
An unalloyed victory
As far as underdog stories go, this one is right up there. This week, an Australian Federal Court judge sided with Indigenous Tiwi Islanders in their effort to stop a fossil fuel giant drilling in their ancestral homewaters. The $4.7bn Barossa gas project — an initiative favoured by both major political parties — was thwarted because the company, Santos, failed to consult with the traditional owners of the Tiwi Island. The environmental risks posed by enormous gas platforms do not need to be rehashed.
This is a welcome development for a country where the lucre of resource extraction has overridden the concerns of traditional owners and environmentalists.
Cough up
On Thursday, The Global Fund raised a total of US$14.25bn for an ambitious endeavour to end AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria . While the fundraising fell short of its eye-watering $18bn target, we should note that this is the largest sum ever raised for a global health body, and there are still several major donors (the UK, Italy) to make their pledges. Now spend it wisely.
The Worst Of Times
Stranded
Locals were left devastated when two whale pods were stranded on Tasmania's west coast in the space of a week. On Monday, a 'bachelor pod' of 14 juvenile sperm whales was discovered dashed on the rocks at King Island. Just a few days later, another huge pod of 230 long-finned pilot whales was found beached at Macquarie Harbour. The odds of survival for a stranded whale are very low — just 30 of the whales were refloated. This is the site of Australia's worst whale stranding event — more than 400 pilot whales were exposed ashore in 2020. The best theory holds that the long, shallow beach distorts the whales powerful echolocation clicks; the noisy confusion essentially blinds the pod.
The battle of Leicester
Late last month, India defeated Pakistan in the T20 Asia Cup cricket tournament in Dubai. The victory sparked a small fracas in Leicester, a city with a large population with roots on the subcontinent. Leicester is no stranger to a bit of rough and tumble. But disinformation spread on social media afterwards, alleging that there was an incidence of sectarian violence directed at a Muslim by a group of Hindus. Over the next several weeks tensions soared and demonstrations turned violent. Last weekend, groups of Hindu ultranationalists streamed through the streets of the city yelling "Jai Shri Ram", a religious chant that has been borrowed by Hindu lynch mobs in India. Is Britain finally paying the price for the brutal partition it wrought on the subcontinent?
Highlights
The Image
This is a developer console screenshot of the long-awaited Grand Theft Auto VI from Take Two Interactive's Rockstar Games. 90 videos from the unreleased game, all work-in-progress files, were leaked by a hacker on Sunday. The fact that the intruder gained access to the project source code means a full re-write may be the only option: a guaranteed 2+ year delay. Photo supplied by... the hacker, we guess.
The Quote
"What trend are you most excited about in tech or anywhere in the world?"
"An ongoing rise in subscription models for journalism, because I do think that, for all the reasons I've talked about before, a pure advertising model can lead you down a very tempting path of clickbait headlines, because it gets more page views. Whereas, if people are going to pay you, you have to think about what it is that makes them love you enough to pay for it. I would hope that we see more success in magazines and newspapers being able to actually get people to pay [for] them."
– Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales gives Reason Magazine an answer that we wholly endorse.
The Numbers
75 basis points
- Faced with stubbornly-high inflation Fed boss Jerome Powell has pulled the only real lever he's got: raising interest rates aggressively . The decision will push most consumer loans into the 3-3.25% territory; the highest since 2008. It casts doubt over whether they'll outperform the median of their 'dot point' plan going forward.
20,000,000,000,000,000 ants
- There are 20 quadrillion ants on Earth. That's 2.5 million for every human alive today. We're not sure what you should do with this faintly menacing fact.
The Headlines
"English football has the commercialism of US sports without their egalitarianism" — The Guardian . This will stick in the craw of a few Poms.
"Strong religious beliefs lead to more satisfying sex lives " — The Telegraph . Your third is an all-powerful deity.
The Special Mention
This week's award is given blindly and desperately to appease whichever angry god keeps shaking Mexico on the same date . On September 19 the west coast was shaken by a 7.6 magnitude earthquake. Tremors were felt in the capital where survivors held vigil on the fifth anniversary of the earthquake which killed 369. For those with longer memories it was also the 37th anniversary of the 1985 disaster that claimed 9,000 lives. There is, borrowing the technical language of theology, "something going on there".
The Best Long Reads
- Foreign Affairs receives an embarrassing report card
- The Walrus searches in vain for a place to live
- The Atlantic touches the insanity of American gun deaths
The Answer...
Pretty simple really: it's a commonly eaten meat braised in night-time cold and flu syrup . American TikTokers (the last meaningful market segment on the planet) discovered old videos and shared them with horror and no small measure of curiosity. The FDA begged people not to mix poultry and cough medicine. But this is America: land of the free. Let 'em cook!
