Debate motions from 2021

A papal conclave is convened when the College of Cardinals needs to appoint the successor of The Pope. The College of Cardinals is appointed by the current Pope and usually consists of ordained bishops.

The late Chris Benoit was a former professional wrestler who worked for the WWE. During his career, Chris Benoit held 22 championships between the industry's top promotions and won the World Heavyweight Championship in the main event of Wrestlemania XX, the largest wrestling show at the time. In June 2007, Chris Benoit murdered his wife, his son, and himself. A medical report of Chris Benoit's brain revealed he had suffered from depression and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). It was suggested that these resulted from numerous concussions Chris Benoit had sustained by performing moves that the WWE permitted him to do. Since then, WWE has removed, censored, and banned all mentions of Chris Benoit from their networks and media.

Blaxploitation movies refer to groups of films that feature black actors in lead roles and center around African diasporas overcoming oppressive, antagonistic and generally white authority figures aided by lackeys selling out the community for their personal gain. The term "blaxploitation" was coined by parts of the community in the early 70s as criticism for the images of African Americans depicted in the genre, and the typically white filmmakers at the helm of production. Prominent films of this genre range from "Watermelon Man" and "Blacula" from the 1970s to more recent films like "Django Unchained" and "BlacKkKlansman" from the 2000s which involve messages of empowerment. The genre became less popular in the 80s after it received criticisms for its "unpolished nature" and controversial themes heavily involving drugs and violence but has since then made a more popular comeback.

For the purpose of this debate, the concept of Divine Gift is the concept wherein God bestows a believer with faith and or sense of religiosity. Non believers are seen as people who were simply not bestowed with this gift, rather than individuals who actively or passively strayed from faith.

The literal meaning of Jihad is struggle or effort. Muslims use the word Jihad to describe three different kinds of struggle namely a believer's internal struggle to live out the Muslim faith as well as possible, the struggle to live as a good Muslim society and the struggle to defend Islam, with force if necessary. The term has been more infamously and commonly associated with Islamist fundamentalists, to refer to the instances of violent resistance and militaristic pursuits to defend the faith.

The "tests of God" refers to the belief that hardships and difficulties in life only exist to test one's spiritual and emotional strength

"Convenient Morality" refers to rationalising your actions and justifying decisions to retroactively fit into your code of beliefs, i.e., an individual adapting their beliefs and morals to the actions as opposed to accepting that certain actions transgress your chosen set of morals.

Gulf States refer to Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Tigray is Ethiopia's northernmost region. Bordering Eritrea, it is home to most of the country's estimated 7 million ethnic Tigrayans. In November 2020, the regional government, controlled by the Tigray People's Liberation Front, launched a full-scale siege of a key Ethiopian military base. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered a federal offensive against the region, setting off a conflict which has killed thousands of people - many of whom allegedly died as a result of indiscriminate shelling of cities in Tigray by Ethiopian forces, and has seen nearly 60,000 people fleeing to Sudan.

Benjamin Netanyahu was ousted from office by a coalition of rivals earlier this year, ending his 12-year run in power. Israel's new prime minister, Naftali Bennett, was sworn in after a vote of confidence with the narrow margin of 60 votes to 59. Bennett, the far right leader of Yamina party, will be prime minister until September 2023 as part of a power-sharing deal. He will then hand power over to Yair Lapid, head of the centrist Yesh Atid party, for a further two years. The administration is a mix of politicians from the left (Labor), the centre (Lapid), hardline Jewish religious nationalists, and a small Arab Islamist party

Fantasia is a world where everyone is equally happy, but nobody can become more happy or sad during their lifetime. On Earth, people are much happier or much sadder than others, but have the ability to become more happy or sad during their lifetime

The world is in ruin and has long been corrupted. You are the single parent of a young child who would be the only cure for a virus threatening to infect mankind with a rabid disease. Your child must be killed in order for the cure to be extracted and save the human race. The procedure requires your consent.

The term "Common prosperity" was first mentioned in the 1950s by Mao Zedong, founding leader of what was then an impoverished country. It was not used as frequently under Deng Xiaoping, who shifted the focus to developing an economy that would allow "some people to get rich first." Xi Jin Ping made it a central part of his 2017 speech at the party congress to mark the start of his second term, and the messaging really took off in 2021. The slogan has since been adopted by state agencies and private companies as a way to signal their allegiance to this Communist Party priority. The push for common prosperity has encompassed policies ranging from curbing tax evasion and limits on the hours that tech sector employees can work to bans on for-profit tutoring in core school subjects and strict limits on the time minors can spend playing video games.

For the purpose of this debate you are a couple in their late 30s. You have always wanted to have children but have failed to conceive. You find out you can have a child who will be incredibly successful and happy in life due to your parenting; however upon reaching adulthood they would abandon you. This is the only child that you can have.

The CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) is a free trade agreement signed in 2018 between 11 countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. The treaty was originally envisioned by the US as an economic bloc to counterbalance China's growing power but the US pulled out in 2017. The CPTPP aims to create an integrated economic area by eliminating/reducing tariffs, liberalizing trade, opening each other's markets to foreign investment, etc. It has strict conditions for joining such as high liberalization requirements in service trade, high standards for intellectual property protections, high labor and environmental standards. Recently, both China and Taiwan have filed an application to join the CPTPP

Recently the AUKUS pact was announced between the US, the UK and Australia which will see the US and UK send strategic and technical teams to Australia to help the country procure nuclear-powered submarines. It also meant that the Australian government cancelled a multi-billion contract for non-nuclear submarines with a French manufacturer.

For the purposes of this debate, political moralism refers to the philosophy that moral standards (e.g. beliefs and virtues) should predominantly be used when judging political groups.

An ecosystem function is the capacity of natural processes and components to provide goods and services that satisfy human needs, either directly or indirectly (e.g., forests ,wetlands, coastlines etc.)

Rainbow capitalism is the targeted incorporation of the LGBTQ+ movement to capitalism, consumerism, and the market economy by corporations. Examples include, but are not limited to, LGBT-related products, designs, brands, and sponsorships

For the purpose of this debate, digital currencies refer to a virtual format of a fiat currency for a particular nation or region. It is an electronic record or digital token of the official currency and is issued and regulated by its monetary authority, e.g., Digital Yuan in China and Digital Rupee in India.

A collateralized loan obligation (CLO) is a single security backed by a pool of debt. Collateralized loan obligations (CLO) are often backed by corporate loans with low credit ratings or loans taken out by private equity firms to conduct leveraged buyouts.With a CLO, the investor receives scheduled debt payments from the underlying loans, assuming most of the risk in the event that borrowers default. In exchange for taking on the default risk, the investor is offered the potential for higher-than-average returns

A pension fund, also known as a superannuation fund in some countries, is any plan, fund, or scheme which provides retirement income. A public pension fund is one that is regulated under public sector law while a private pension fund is regulated under private sector law.

Carceral feminism is the advocacy for enhancing and increasing prison sentences that deal with feminist and gender issues. It is the belief that harsher and longer prison sentences will help work towards solving these issues

A hollowed state has a governance system where the state primarily and predominantly contracts all traditional public services and goods to third party organizations (e.g. corporations, non-profit organizations, NGOs, aid agencies, etc.). The government, both national and local, in a hollowed state develops the political agenda of their state and facilitates a network of participating third parties but has a reduced control and supervision over projects handled by third parties. These third parties bid for government projects and become accountable for the end-to-end management and completion of these projects.

The Makabayan Bloc is a coalition of leftist Philippine political parties in the House of Representatives of the Philippines. The political parties represent peasants, workers, women, teachers, youth, migrants, and indigenous peoples (e.g. Bayan Muna, ACT Teachers, Kabataan). They are also allied with militant civil society organizations like Anakbayan, Kilusang Mayo Uno, and Piston.

Predictive analytics is a branch of advanced analytics used to make predictions about unknown future events. Predictive analytics uses many techniques including data mining, statistical modeling, and machine learning to analyze current data to make predictions about the future. Participatory approach in development primarily involves the community or stakeholders in the discussions and decision making process of policies that affect them.

The "splintering of the internet" refers to the trend in which regulations and barriers that separate how different parts of the world use the internet are becoming more widely adopted. Examples of this include China's Great Firewall, Australia's unique media ownership regulations, the EU's General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), and Russia's Sovereign Internet Law.

Mark Zuckerberg recently announced their ambition to transform Facebook into a metaverse that seeks to actively replace social, workplace, and entertainment spaces. The metaverse uses augmented reality technology to create a virtual environment where users can be present with other users in digital spaces. These users are seemingly immersed in these spaces rather than just looking at them. No sole company can create and run a metaverse. Its success would rely on the cooperation and immutable record-keeping among Facebook and other companies.

The microfinance industry is the sub-sector of financial services uniquely designed to target small businesses and the poor. Common features of microfinance organizations include, but are not limited to, not requiring collateral, hedging risk with group liability, and charging higher interest rates to its users when compared to traditional banking services.

For the purposes of this debate, stimulus and relief packages pertain to direct cash transfers to beneficiaries, deferment of loan repayment requirements, and other government covered expenditures unique to the pandemic (e.g testing kits, tax credit to companies granting sick leaves to employees, etc). Quantitative easing is a monetary policy wherein the central bank purchases long-term securities to lower interest rates in the short to medium term.

The Commonwealth of Nations, commonly referred to simply as the Commonwealth, is a political association composed of former British colonies (e.g. Canada, Malaysia, India, Kenya). Its origins were to recognize these countries as members of the British empire, but it has transitioned to an organization meant to promote justice & human rights, democracy, and economic opportunities for members.

The Filipino concept of hiya manifests into two interrelated definitions: (1) the hiya that is suffered as shame or embarrassment and (2) the hiya that is an active and sacrificial self-control of one's individual wants for the sake of other people.

A pro-rata model of compensation divides the total pool of revenue the platform earns to artists and their respective companies on the basis of their share of all listeners' plays. Under this model, even if you personally do not listen to popular artists, your money is still going to them. A user-centric model of compensation detects what genres and types of artists a specific user listens to, and distributes money generated from them based only on this. This means that money from a person who listens predominantly to hiphop will go towards hiphop artists, and not necessarily to the most popular artists with the largest share of streams at the moment.

Ride or die is a colloquial expression of extreme loyalty to someone. It is a slang derived from the phrase "ride till the end or die trying." It pertains to a kind relationship where you stand by each other through any problem. Another definition is when one is willing to do anything for someone they love or highly appreciate in their life. This includes romantic, friendly, and familial relationships.

Care bots are an emerging breed of robotics catered to the specialized care of the elderly and individuals who face cognitive or social decline. These robots perform the work done by human caregivers including setting medicine reminders, guiding individuals to the bathroom, and contacting loved ones in the case of an emergency.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a policy approach under which producers are required to be responsible for the treatment and disposal of their post-consumer products both financially and physically.

The campaign for fossil fuel divestment refers to environmental movements asking institutions, corporations, and investors to move their money out of oil, coal, and gas companies for both moral and financial reason

College admissions coaching can refer to private coaches and CET (College Entrance Tests) review centers. Private coaches are employed by families and offer personalized advice to help the students in selecting and applying for colleges. They can also help guide in students' decision-making on extracurricular activities to join, curriculum/subjects to take, and college essay topics, among others. CET review centers also offer scholarship slots to deserving students for the review classes.

Expositional storytelling is a method used in fiction, where the author explicitly states and portrays the meaning behind plot events and character motivations without leaving too much room for interpretation. By contrast, interpretative storytelling is when the author decides to show or write events or characters by codifying them behind a symbol or leaving them ambiguous to how the audience may interpret them.

In the Octopus Game, players participate in a series of games in pursuit of winning a massive pool of money, that would make them and all their descendants financially independent. If they lose a game, they die.

False consciousness refers a way of thinking that prevents a person from perceiving the true nature of their social or economic situation.

The Indian Premier League (IPL) is a professional Twenty20 cricket league, contested by ten teams based out of ten Indian cities. The league was founded by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in 2007. It is usually held between March and May of every year. A team can acquire players through any of the three ways: the annual player auction, trading players with other teams during the trading windows, and signing replacements for unavailable players. Players sign up for the auction and also set their base price, and are bought by the franchise that bids the highest for them. Recently there has been a trend of more players within India opting to play in the IPL than in the international circuit, which is typically how most international players gather experience for tournaments such as the World Cup or Champions' Trophy.

Common shared resources are resources everyone has equal access to, for example, roads. Overconsumption of shared common resources often has negative outcomes, for example – taking numerous flights in a given period, using a car everyday, overgrazing on common fields.

The Sims is a life-simulation video game where you control all the activities of a virtual character. There now exists a technology that allows real humans to opt into this game as characters. For the duration of the game, these "Human-Sims" will be under the control of another person. Once the game ends, the Human-Sims will have no memory of this experience. They will also be financially rewarded.

There is a technology that allows people to create digital sentient clones of themselves. These clones can perform your daily chores (assignments, office work, etc). The clone will be stored in an egg-shaped device, and will have a mind of its own. A corporation mass produces this technology aimed at the working class to make it easily available for them.

Liberation theology was a late 20th-century Roman Catholic movement arising in Latin America. The Liberationists said the church should act to bring about social change, and should ally itself with the working class to do so. Some radical priests became involved in politics and trade unions; others even aligned themselves with violent revolutionary movements.

Parler is an American alt-tech microblogging and social networking service. Parler has a significant user base of Donald Trump supporters, conservatives, conspiracy theorists, and right-wing individuals. Posts on the service often contain far-right content, and conspiracy theories such as QAnon. Journalists have described Parler as an alternative to Twitter, and users include those banned from mainstream social networks or opposing their moderation policies

The CFA franc encompassed 14 West and Central African nations, including Niger, Cameroon, Mali and Côte d'Ivoire. The currency was pegged at a fixed rate against the euro, and compelled participating African countries to deposit 50% of their foreign exchange reserves with the French treasury. This in turn guaranteed payments into euros even if the CFA member state could not meet import payments. While an important source of financial stability, the CFA franc has long been politically sensitive owing to the power it exerts over countries which have now been independent from France for over half a century, and has recently come to an end as of July 2020.

Vaccine nationalism is a phenomena where individual nation states secure doses of vaccines for their own citizens or residents and prioritise the local markets before making the vaccine available to global markets. This is done via pre-purchase agreements between a government and a vaccine manufacturer.

Andaman and Nicobar islands(ANI) are Island territories of Republic of India situated in Bay of Bengal. The armed forces of India has a moderate presence in the archipelago with few naval and airforce bases. Since 1980 there have been calls by civil society members and members of armed forces to increase military presence in the archipelago to deter Chinese naval presence near the Indian territorial waters. This policy includes strategies like increasing the number of ports, airports, missile batteries and increased cooperation with US, Australian and Japanese Navies to create a submerged sonar system which runs from the northernmost to southernmost island which may potentially detect presence of Chinese submarines etc

The Afterlife is divided into The Good Place and The Bad Place. You go to the Good Place if you have a positive point total of actions. Currently your actions on Earth are afforded points, where every act has different point creditation. All morally good acts have positive points (saving a life, donating to charities, sacrificing your share for someone else), whereas your points get cut due to any negative actions (lying, cheating, stealing). Currently, if your motivations are corrupt, self serving, you don't get points for otherwise seemingly positive actions.

MSP means minimum support price which is an agricultural product price, set by the Government to purchase directly from the farmer.

WORLD A: Familial Care Labour (Household chores, planning, setting up of homes, etc.) is seen as a service job just like any other, hence the government pays for performer of these services in the household. (For this debate, we assume a fixed person or group of persons is responsible for this care labour, and it is assumed that is their only service job, and these individuals are not employed elsewhere.). WORLD B: Familiar Care Labour is seen as an act personal to families and outside the realm of service. In this case, all individuals of a household partake in care labour. Individuals hence are not paid for familial care labour, and everyone is assumed to have jobs externally.

Legal realism is the view that jurisprudence should primarily rely on empirical evidence. It shifts the attention from written law codes and legal systems to a social relations based approach. Legal realism moves away philosophical inquiries into the nature and meaning of the law that are separate and distinct from the law as it is actually practiced. For example, when a court is asked to decide whether a harmful business activity is a common-law NUISANCE, the judge must ascertain whether the particular activity is reasonable. The judge does not base this determination on a precise determination of the written law and its principle. Instead, the judge balances the competing economic and social interests of the parties, and rules in favor of the litigant with the most persuasive case based on evidence.

Stoicism is a school of virtue ethics, asserting that the practice of virtue is both necessary and sufficient to achieve happiness. Stoics also upheld indifference to wealth, and external stimuli, however also recognized that individuals could prefer to pursue the same only when it helped them live more virtuous lives.

the strong mother trope shows mothers as self reliant in the face of difficulty and who make great personal sacrifices for their children. Media frequently associates this with single mothers or mothers who have emigrated from their country of origin

On June 1st, China instated the Three Child Policy, allowing families to have up to three children, after previously replacing the One Child Policy with the Two Child Policy.

https://youtu.be/gNi_6U5Pm_o?t=56 context pic screenshot of this headline

AI processes datasets of human facial and verbal cues and uses it to develop an algorithm so that they automatically mimic what we perceive as appropriate emotional responses.

Context 1'Shubhamastu', a Kolkata-based collective led by four priestesses, has been presiding over Hindu ceremonies of weddings, memorial services, housewarming rituals, among others, for over a decade now. These women have created simplified versions of Vedic ('from the Vedas') rituals and chants, and by subverting or doing away with some patriarchal rituals, they hope to elbow their way into what has been a male dominated space. Context 2 The group has however, been criticised for not having a single non-Brahmin (Brahmins are the highest-ranked caste in the Hindu caste system) priestess and for not stepping outside the universe of the Vedas. The rituals conducted by these priestess include the chanting of Sanskrit hymns and the performance of Rabindranath Tagore's vast repertoire of songs. note: the Vedas are a collection of four books that together form the corpus of Hindu literature. The Vedas have been criticised by stalwarts of the anti-caste movement like B.R Ambedkar for consolidating the superiority of the caste system.

In Haiti, the Church offered to help broker discussions between the opposition and government for transitional elections after the dissolution of the goverment during unrest over contested extensions of terms in office.

The Nicaraguan government has engaged in sweeping arrests of opposition leaders and the Organisation of American States is currently considering revoking its membership. The Vatican embassy has been engaged over the past year in trying to influence the governance of Ortega to promote political stability, as President Ortega and his wife are devout Catholics.

A Rembrandt held at the University of Pretoria was recently found to be a forgery. The painting had been owned by 14 different buyers and described as "surely authentic" in a volume of Dutch paintings of the 17th century.

Hungary's parliament last week outlawed the portrayal of content featuring gay or transgender people. Similarly, the Hays Code in 1930s India outlawed the portrayal of LGBTQ characters except as villains.

Mali fell under French colonial rule in 1893, up until 1960 where after active resistance it had its first President as an independent country. Last month, Mali's transitional president and prime minister were arrested by members of Mali's military, hours after a cabinet reshuffle which left out two supporters of the junta who had seized power in September. West Africa's ECOWAS bloc has called for the immediate release of President Bah N'Daw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane and urged its transitional government "to resume its course and conclude within the established timeframe."

This month, Facebook bought Big Box VR and Unit 2 games. It already owned Beat Games, Sanzaru Games, and Ready at Dawn, as well as the Oculus platform. All are VR games.

Guilt society and shame society are terminology for different categories of culture. In a guilt society, behaviour is guided by the internal self-reinforcement of the feeling of guilt for certain proscribed behaviours. This type of culture also emphasises individual conscience, faith, and values. A person in this type of culture may ask, "Do I feel my behaviour fair or unfair?" In a shame society, behaviour is guided by the inculcation of external shame (and the complementary threat of ostracism by the society). Shame cultures are typically based on the concepts of pride and honour, appearances are what count. A person in this type of culture may ask "How would people perceive me if I do X?"

Immediate democracy is a system wherein voters have the ability change their vote at any given time, thus changing the composition of the parliament on a daily basis based on politicians' actions and public support

Recent studies suggest that a person living with HIV who is able to achieve an undetectable viral load status cannot transmit the virus to others through sexual contact. An undetectable viral load status can be maintained by taking antiretroviral drugs regularly.

the "born this way" narrative suggests that an individual's sexual orientation and gender identity is something they are born with, thus rendering it innate and unchangeable. For decades, this perspective has been the rallying cry of the LGBTQ+ movement in order to advance political change and cultural acceptance.

Lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWs) are a special class of weapon systems that use sensor suites and computer algorithms to independently identify a target and employ an onboard weapon system to engage and destroy the target without manual human control of the system. LAWs may operate in the air, on land, on water, under water, or in space

Embedded journalism refers to the practice of placing journalists within and under the protection of one side's military during an armed conflict.

There is a red button that if pressed, would end all of humankind. If it is not pressed, life will go on as it is for everyone.

A credit rating agency (CRA) evaluates and assesses an individual's or a company's creditworthiness. That is, these agencies consider a debtor's income and credit lines to analyse the debtor's ability to repay the debt or if there is any credit risk associated.

Currently, the only standard that the IOC follows in stripping medalists of their awards is if their actions compromise the integrity of competition. Examples include, but are not limited to, the use of banned drugs and violating amateurism rules. Klete Keller, a 5-time olympic medalist was charged with violating federal law for joining the riot on the US Capitol last January. There have been calls to have his medals stripped.

Micro-finance refers to longterm loans with little or low interest provided to individuals who seek to start a business.

Nationalise house refers to the government taking ownership and control of residential property, managing allocation, pricing, and more.

Smart drugs refer to drugs that improve the cognitive function of individuals, such as memory, creativity

Primary elections, often abbrev. to primaries, are a process by which voters can indicate their preference for their party's candidate, in an upcoming general election, local election, or by-election

Resource mining is the process of extracting useful materials from the earth. Some examples of substances that are mined include coal, gold, or iron ore.

Poptimism is the belief that pop music is as worthy of professional analysis and interest as other genres of music (jazz, rock, classical) that have historically received such attention. Over the past two decades, music criticism has trended increasingly towards an embrace of poptimism. Examples of the prominence of poptimism include Rolling Stone (a historically rock focused magazine) naming Red by Taylor Swift the fourth best album of the entire 2010s.