america – The Orbital

The legality debate on abortion; a new age of misogyny

22Nov

By Ilayda KaplankiranNo Comments

News

The legality debate on abortion; a new age of misogyny

Following on from the enforcement of the Senate Bill 8, on 1st September, women across the nation have been standing up and fighting for their reproductive freedom. A Texas statute that completely dismisses a woman’s fundamental right to decide on matters concerning her body, eliminates the option of terminating a pregnancy that is over six weeks. In many ways then, the Texas law is enacting a near-total ban on abortion, since most women don’t even know that they are pregnant during this timeframe. While it arguably bans abortions after the detection of a foetal heartbeat, medical experts have denounced this term as inaccurate; at six weeks of gestation there is neither a foetus nor a heartbeat. As a result of this widely accepted reform, there have been growing concerns and dangers r...

22Nov

By Beth McCowenNo Comments

Features, News

An Update on the Kyle Rittenhouse Case

In August 2020, Black Lives Matter protests began after Wisconsin police shot Jacob Blake, a black man, seven times in the back. On the third night of the protests Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old from Illinois, shot at three men using a semi-automatic rifle. Two of them were killed, and the third was left seriously injured. Clearly, this act of murder was motivated by white-supremacy and vigilantism, again highlighting the racism problem in America, which so many continue to deny the existence of. Rittenhouse claimed that his intention was to protect property. Whilst patrolling the area, he was pursued by a group of protestors and shot one of them. Following this, he is further followed and identified as ‘the shooter’. He then fires bullets at three people who approached him. During...

26Feb

By Helena KeebleNo Comments

Culture & Literature, Literature

Rushdie and ‘the Joker’

On 23 October, the London Literature Festival at the Southbank Centre hosted the novelist Salman Rushdie in conversation with Erica Wagner on his thirteenth novel, The Golden House. Rushdie is a British Indian novelist, well known for his 1981 novel, Midnight’s Children, which won both the Man Booker Prize during its year of publication. Wagner opened the conversation, pondering on the character, ‘the Joker’ in The Golden House, asking why Rushdie didn’t call him Donald Trump. Rushdie wittily responded, ‘I didn’t want the name of the 45thpresident to be in my book. I thought it would pollute it in some way, and so I thought, in a deck of playing cards there’s only two cards that are unusual to play. One of them is the Trump, and the other is the Joker’, to which the audience broke into ...

2Jan

By Amal AbdiNo Comments

Opinion

Anger in the Supreme Court

For as long as feminism has been around, the angry feminist has been a stereotype used to dismiss the claims of women. Calling a woman angry is the best way to ignore what she is saying, after all, who would listen to a screaming woman who cannot control her emotions. In the Supreme Court hearing last month, Brett Kavanaugh revealed himself to be an angry man. Throughout American history white men’s rage has been seen as righteous. An angry man is a hero, he is a revolutionist, maybe he is an American Founding Father, a symbol of patriotism to be loved and his angry fetishized. But why is it that every women who is enraged is immediately dismissed? In 1991, Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court by George H.W. Bush. After his nomination, Anita Hill, a law professor who had p...

28Jul

By Michele TheilNo Comments

Science & Technology

Running On Autopilot

Driverless cars are taking the world by storm. Self-driving or driverless cars take different forms, with the most famous likely being Uber previously trialling driverless vehicles in cities like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Tempe, Arizona. Self-driving cars are being developed by companies all over the world, including Tesla, Uber, GM, Google’s Waymo and more. But with more and more accidents involving driverless cars, and even a recent death, can these technologically advanced vehicles really be trusted on the roads? According to the World Health Organization, over 1.25 million people died from “road traffic crashes” while an estimated 20 - 50 million more people are injured non-fatally. A 2008 study conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Adminstration in the US estimated that...

1Dec

By No Comments

Opinion

A Trumped America

Sahar Mahmood writes about the future of America after the shocking US election results. On the 9th of November the world saw the United States of America elect Donald Trump their 45th president. With a campaign marred with statements of bigotry, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism and hatred, Trump made his way comfortably to the White House. But what does an America with Trump as president actually look like? Trump has promised amongst many things to deport immigrants and build a wall between Mexico and the United states. The first 100 days in office are extremely significant for any president to cement the public’s faith in their ability to deliver on the promises they have made. So here’s what Trump has vowed to do in his first 100 days in office. Immigration has been a k...