Cultivating Perspicacity: Weekly World Reflections (January 16th, 2026)

Published on January 16, 2026 at 10:22 AM

Cultivating Perspicacity:

Weekly World Reflections

January 16th, 2026

By B.M. Scott

Editor’s note: This piece inaugurates a weekly “world events recollection” series for Cultivating Perspicacity.

Fractured Horizons

This week’s recollection runs from Tehran’s streets to Indiana courtrooms; from Arctic negotiations over Greenland to immigration rallies in Ottawa and Toronto - and finally to bay‑leaf rituals circulating through social media. The shared problem is not geography, but what happens when institutions that claim to safeguard life, order, or prosperity instead become engines of harm or exclusion.

Iran’s Revolt and the Politics of Life and Death

In Iran, sustained protests continue under conditions that now resemble a slow‑moving disaster. Human rights monitors estimate that more than two thousand people have been killed in the crackdown, making this wave of revolt deadlier than any period of mass unrest since the Islamic Republic’s founding. Official numbers remain vague and conservative, while accounts from medical staff and activists hint at far higher casualties hidden by internet shutdowns and systematic intimidation. Authorities have sped up prosecutions and signaled a readiness to use executions as a public warning. The U.S. government has responded by declaring that mass hangings could trigger “very strong” retaliation, drawing its red line at the spectacle of the gallows rather than at the broader continuum of state violence already underway. In Agamben’s terms, large segments of the population are being pushed into a “zone of exception,” where legal protections vanish but the coercive machinery of the state remains fully active.

Minneapolis as a Laboratory of Federal Force

In the United States, Minneapolis has become a testing ground for how aggressively federal power can operate inside municipal space. After an ICE officer killed Renee Good and Washington declined to open a civil‑rights investigation, protests intensified, targeting both the specific shooting and the wider architecture of immigration enforcement. The response has included sizable federal deployments, heavy crowd‑control tactics, and arrests that city leaders argue cross constitutional lines. The symbolic charge lies in the open clash between municipal and federal authorities, now fighting in courts and press conferences rather than behind closed doors. In Foucauldian language, this is a struggle over who gets to shape the “conduct of conduct” on the street—whose risk calculations define public safety, and which bodies are classified as manageable threats. When a city sues to restrain national agents on its own streets, the usual language of “law and order” gives way to a more basic contest over jurisdiction and legitimacy.

Greenland and the New Arctic Imagination

Far from Midwestern protest lines and Iranian squares, Greenland sits at the center of a different kind of dispute. Senior officials from the United States, Denmark, and Greenland met at the White House for high‑stakes talks on Washington’s push to secure decisive control over the island, framed by the Trump administration as essential to U.S. security in the Arctic. American officials speak in the language of missile‑defense arcs and strategic competition with Russia and China, treating Greenland not as a remote outpost but as a pivotal platform. Denmark has responded just as clearly that handing over control to the United States is unacceptable, even as NATO allies send troops and run exercises on the island to signal support for Danish sovereignty. The “state of exception” here is cartographic rather than carceral - viz., borders, radar fields, and flight paths are quietly renegotiated in the name of security, while local communities are folded into someone else’s strategic map.

Canada: Immigration, Protest, and Divergence from Washington

North of the U.S. border, Canada has been working through its own tensions around mobility and global alignment. On 10 January, hundreds of newcomers, international students, and immigration advocates gathered on Parliament Hill to protest the federal government’s new Immigration Levels Plan, which lowers permanent‑resident targets for 2026 and extends pauses on several economic and caregiver programs. Demonstrators argued that Canada is eroding its reputation as a welcoming destination and creating deeper precarity for people already living and working in the country.

The same weekend, Toronto saw clashes between a “Canada First” anti‑immigration rally at Nathan Phillips Square and anti‑hate counter‑protesters, demonstrating how migration has become a contested symbol of national identity. At the policy level, Ottawa has also chosen a notable divergence from Washington: the government plans to reduce tariffs on some Chinese electric vehicles in exchange for lower Chinese duties on Canadian canola, even as the United States maintains a harder trade line on Chinese EVs. The result is a Canada that is both tightening the doorway for new arrivals and experimenting with more flexible economic ties in a polarized trade environment.

Meanwhile, the Federal Court of Appeal is preparing to rule on the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act during the 2022 convoy‑style protests, a decision that will shape how far Ottawa can go in declaring domestic crises and suspending ordinary rules. Here again, questions of exception, legality, and public order are very much alive.

The UK: Fragile Growth and Political Recalibration

Across the Atlantic, the United Kingdom is trying to climb out of economic stagnation while navigating an increasingly fragmented political scene. New data show the UK economy grew by 0.3% in November—better than expected—thanks to a rebound in car production and a modest boost from the services sector. Sterling has strengthened slightly on the news, and economists expect some improvement in 2026 as the Bank of England continues to ease interest rates. Yet the underlying story remains uneasy. Government officials emphasize “turning the corner,” while critics describe growth as effectively flat and warn that high costs, underinvestment, and weak wage gains keep many households in a prolonged squeeze. As the Resolution Foundation has noted, Britain’s shift from a two‑party to a more fragmented multi‑party platform complicates efforts to build coherent long‑term economic policy, making the management of austerity, welfare, and public services a continuing site of contest.

The Federal Reserve and the Limits of Expert Autonomy

Back in Washington, another struggle is playing out around the Federal Reserve. The Supreme Court is preparing to hear a case centered on the Trump administration’s attempt to remove Governor Lisa Cook over disputed mortgage‑fraud allegations, a move that would test how far a president can go in reshaping the central bank by sidelining resistant policymakers. Simultaneously, Fed Chair Jerome Powell faces a criminal probe tied to a multibillion‑dollar headquarters renovation and accusations of misleading Congress, which many former economic officials read as a direct challenge to the norm of central‑bank independence. If these efforts succeed, monetary policy could drift more tightly into the orbit of short‑term executive priorities at a moment when inflation, housing costs, and financial instability have already eroded trust in economic institutions. The larger question is whether “expert” bodies can retain any meaningful autonomy under intensifying political pressure.

Indiana CPS: When “Care” Becomes a Vector of Risk

Indiana’s Department of Child Services (DCS) offers a sharp state‑level case study in how a protective apparatus can generate predictable harm. Class‑action litigation on behalf of foster youth alleges systemic failures in basic safety, stability, and permanency—children placed in homes with known risks, shuffled through multiple placements, and institutionalized because therapeutic foster options are scarce. The numbers echo these claims. In 2017, nearly 45% of family case managers carried caseloads above Indiana’s own statutory standards, and the state’s rate of children in out‑of‑home care was more than twice the U.S. average. Turnover hovered around 30%, and federal reviewers found Indiana “not substantially conforming” on all seven-core child welfare outcomes, including protection from maltreatment and stability of placements. In Arthur Kleinman’s terms, this is a machine for producing “social suffering” - viz., a pattern of distress and damage that flows less from individual malice than from how the system is built. Treating Indiana as a case study shows how large theoretical questions about biopolitics and structural violence crystallize in specific case files, staffing ratios, and hearing transcripts, where the language of “best interests of the child” coexists with routinized neglect.

Caseloads, Lawsuits, and the Archive of Harm

For over a decade, front‑line workers and advocates have turned to litigation as a last‑resort accountability mechanism. A 2015 suit by DCS case managers asserted that chronic understaffing made legal caseload caps impossible to meet, effectively normalizing statutory violation. More recent class actions catalog familiar structural failure - viz. too few caseworkers, frequent placement disruptions, delayed or inadequate medical and mental‑health care, and slow progress toward permanency. Individual cases put faces and names to these patterns. One Indianapolis family won a $1.375 million settlement after alleging that DCS wrongfully removed their children and violated their constitutional rights. Another suit, brought by the paternal relatives of a girl who died while known to the system, accuses the agency of negligence in failing to act on warning signs. Court documents become an unintended archive of harm, preserving detailed narratives of how institutional routines fail particular children.

DMHA and Behavioral Health: Oversight by Subtraction

Indiana’s mental‑health infrastructure shows parallel fractures in a different key. State law requires a Mental Health Ombudsman to advocate for people in psychiatric and addiction facilities, but that post has been vacant since mid‑2022. Investigations reveal that complaints cannot be submitted online, records are slow to release, and families often have no clear independent channel for challenging overmedication, unsafe conditions, or abuse.

Advocates at Indiana Disability Rights describe the missing ombudsman as a “big gap” in oversight, since the office is meant to provide neutral investigation and sustained pressure on both facilities and the Division of Mental Health and Addiction (DMHA). In practice, leaving the role empty means facilities are largely overseen by the same ecosystem that funds and contracts with them, a design that structurally favors institutional continuity over patient protection. Power operates here through subtraction - not by overt repression, but by quietly removing the one official charged with listening to those inside.

An Algorithmic Ritual: Bay Leaves, Numbers, and Hope

Alongside these heavy structures, a smaller story has traveled quickly through digital space - namely, a “tej patta” ritual centered on the timestamp 1/01/26 at 1:11. Participants write a wish or intention on a bay leaf and focus at the appointed moment before burning or releasing it, blending folk herb symbolism, repeating‑number lore, and contemporary manifestation culture into an easily shareable act.

Its spread says something about the emotional weather in which all these other events occur. When formal institutions feel distant or hostile, micro‑rituals that promise even a sliver of agency become compelling. From one angle, this is classic “everyday religion” - viz., people improvising small practices to negotiate vulnerability and uncertainty beneath the threshold of official doctrine. From another, it is a quiet response to biopolitical management, an attempt to regain at least narrative control over one’s own future.

Closing Reflections

Seen together, these scenes form a shared illustration of contested futures. Iran’s streets show the lethal edge of state power. Minneapolis highlights the strain between national force and local authority. Greenland becomes a frozen stage for competing security agendas. Canada wrestles with who belongs and on what terms, even as it charts a slightly different economic path from Washington. The UK balances a fragile return to growth against a political order still in flux. The Federal Reserve illustrates how tenuous expert autonomy can be under executive pressure. Indiana stands out as a granular case of structural harm, where child welfare and mental‑health systems repeatedly fail the people, they are designed to protect. Viral rituals like the tej patta practice adds a quiet counterpoint, offering individuals a way to reclaim some sense of agency inside systems they do not control.

For a project oriented toward cultivating perspicacity, the task is less to sprint after every headline than to recognize the patterns that run through them - e.g. biopolitics, states of exception, social suffering, and everyday ritual as overlapping ways of organizing life, death, and possibility. The same questions keep returning - viz. who holds power, who is visible to that power, and where ordinary people can still find room to move through law, through local resistance, or through small acts of spiritual improvisation.

Questions for Reflection

- Where in these stories do formal institutions most clearly fail at the tasks they claim—protection, stability, security, or growth—and what patterns connect those failures across countries?

- How does the idea of a “state of exception” help you interpret Iran’s crackdown, Ottawa’s Emergencies Act debate, and U.S. Arctic ambitions—and where does that concept no longer fit?

- In what specific ways do child‑welfare and mental‑health systems exemplify “social suffering,” and how does viewing the harm as structural rather than accidental alter the remedies you consider possible?

- What forms of resistance or agency appear across these cases—legal action, protest, policy divergence, ritual—and how do their strengths and limitations differ in practice?

- If these events are read not as isolated crises but as expressions of a shared struggle over who governs life, risk, and futurity, how might that reshape your own intellectual, spiritual, or political practice?

Further reading list & Works Consulted

Agamben, Giorgio. State of Exception. Translated by Kevin Attell, University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Foucault, Michel. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. Edited by Michel Senellart,

translated by Graham Burchell, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Kleinman, Arthur, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock, editors. Social Suffering.

University of California Press, 1997.

Mbembe, Achille. Necropolitics. Translated by Steven Corcoran,

Duke University Press, 2019.

“Caseload Reduction for Family Case Managers (HB1006).”

Indiana Department of Child Services, 2018, in.gov.

“DCS Accused of Failure to Protect Children in Foster Care in Class Action Lawsuit.”

WFYI, 17 Aug. 2023, www.wfyi.org. Accessed 16 Jan. 2026.

“DCS Has Failed Children It Was Supposed to Protect, This Lawsuit Shows Why.”

American Enterprise Institute, 2 Nov. 2023, www.aei.org. Accessed 16 Jan. 2026.

“Indiana Lacks Mental Health Oversight Office Despite Law Requiring It.”

WRTV, 18 May 2025, www.wrtv.com. Accessed 16 Jan. 2026.

“After Years of Abuse Allegations, Options Behavioral Health Is Shutting Down.”

WFYI, 10 Sept. 2025, www.wfyi.org. Accessed 16 Jan. 2026.

“Joint Statement on the Situation in Iran.” Global Affairs Canada, 9

Jan. 2026, www.international.gc.ca. Accessed 16 Jan. 2026.

“Iran Protests: Live Updates.” CNN, 13

Jan. 2026, www.cnn.com. Accessed 16 Jan. 2026.

“Iran Signals Fast Trials and Executions for Protesters.” NPR,

14 Jan. 2026, www.npr.org. Accessed 16 Jan. 2026.

“Minneapolis ICE Protests and Federal Response: Live Coverage.”

CNN, Jan. 2026, www.cnn.com. Accessed 16 Jan. 2026.

“Five Takeaways from Crunch White House Talks on Greenland’s Future.”

CNBC, 15 Jan. 2026, www.cnbc.com. Accessed 16 Jan. 2026.

“Trump Says Anything Less Than U.S. Control of Greenland Is ‘Unacceptable’ Ahead of Crunch Talks.”

CNBC, 14 Jan. 2026, www.cnbc.com. Accessed 16 Jan. 2026.

“Protesters Converge on Parliament Hill over Canada’s Lower Immigration Targets.”

VisaHQ News, 9 Jan. 2026, www.visahq.com. Accessed 16 Jan. 2026.

“The ‘Canada First’ Rally and Counter‑Protest in Toronto.” Immigration News Canada,

11 Jan. 2026, www.immigrationnewscanada.ca. Accessed 16 Jan. 2026.

“Canada Breaks With U.S. to Slash Tariffs on Some Chinese Electric Vehicles.”

The New York Times, 16 Jan. 2026, www.nytimes.com. Accessed 16 Jan. 2026.

“Appeal Court to Rule on Federal Use of Emergencies Act in Response to 2022 Protests.”

Nanaimo News Now, 15 Jan. 2026, nanaimonewsnow.com. Accessed 16 Jan. 2026.

“UK Economy Grew by 0.3% in November, Beating Forecasts.”

BBC News, 15 Jan. 2026, www.bbc.com. Accessed 16 Jan. 2026.

“UK Economy Posts 0.3% Growth in November, Beating Estimates.” CNBC, 15 Jan. 2026, www.cnbc.com.

Accessed 16 Jan. 2026.

“A Major Development in Trump’s Fed Feud Is Set to Happen Next Week in the Supreme Court.”

CNBC, 13 Jan. 2026, www.cnbc.com. Accessed 16 Jan. 2026.

“United States and Canada Overview: January 2026.” ACLED, acleddata.com.