This semester we learned a lot of different things that happened and are happening right now. We even know how to locate most of the world’s countries now. I’m going to explain the major things we learned about in CWI in this final blog.There are a lot of economic and political systems in the world. The first one is direct democracy. It’s where people have complete control of the government. That means there’s no congress or senate, just the people. I know it sounds great but it can be very challenging, and can become dangerous. There’s no one to make sure that everything is going right, and it would eventually go bad. No countries in the world have this sort of system today. The next is representative democracy. This is where the people elect representatives to make laws for them. If you don’t like who has the job you will vote for someone else the next time. We are a representative democracy and Canada is another example. Now we have communism theory. It was invented by Carl Marks in a book that he wrote. It says that the poor people will rise up and overthrow the rich people. This will then create a no class society were every one is equal. This means that we could go to school and then go to a restaurant and then a movie and it would all be free. This wouldn’t work because eventually people would get lazy and then it would turn into chaos, because no one wants to do anything because they can just get it for free. Communism practice is what really happens. A group has complete control over businesses and people. Really it’s just the government controls people and pretty much anything. There are only five countries left that have this sort of government. They are China, North Korea, Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba. Dictatorship is where one person has complete control. Some examples of this are Adolph Hitler of Germany, and a communist dictator is Fidel Castro. Constitutional monarchy and Absolute monarchy are kind of close. Constitutional monarchy is where a country has a king or queen, but they do not have very much power. It is limited by a constitution. The prime minister is their head figure. European countries are great examples. Great Britain has Queen Elizabeth, but she has almost no power. Absolute monarchy is where a king or queen has complete power like almost all of Europe use to be in the medieval era. So the only difference is how much power the king or queen has. Now we have our economic systems. Socialism is where the government controls some of businesses. China is a good example for this. Capitalism is where people own and run businesses themselves. Laissez faire is often with this term because it means let the people do as they choose. Almost every country is a mixed economy. The USA is a great example. Some businesses are owned by people, some by the government like school.The next subject is about the differences between the two major political parties in the United States. They are democrat and republican. Democrats are usually liberal which means they like progressive political reform. They also like an active government, and don’t mind raising taxes for the benefit of the economy, they say. Republicans usually think that people should be more independent and not rely on the government so much so they believe in laissez faire. They also are more conservative and like lower taxes. We had a discussion on this during the year when we split up into democrats and republicans and discussed their views on different subjects. A few of them were abortion, gay rights, flag burning, minimum wage, death penalty, prayer in school, military spending, gun control, and natural environmental laws. Their views on these are as follows.Democrats / RepublicansAbortion- believe mothers should have a choice/ believe in life at conceptionGay rights- think that they should love who they want/ think that marriage is between a man and womanFlag burning- believe that it is freedom of speech/ believe it’s unpatrioticMinimum wage- think that raising it would be better for workers/ think that it will hurt businesses if it’s raisedDeath penalty- think second chances are better / believe that you should pay for the crimes you didPrayer in school- believe in separation of state and church/ believe it’s part of our Christian heritageMilitary spending- think we should lower military and higher veterans benefits/ think we should raise military spending and lower veterans benefitsGun control- believe in stricter and more laws/ believe it is a personal defense oppose itNatural environmental laws- they love and protect the environment/ think that too strict of laws will hurt the economyThese are some of the things that they disagree on. Not all democrats and republicans think the exact same way. Some believe differently on a few of the subjects just like we do. Like I think that the environment is very important, like the democrats, but I think that abortion is wrong, like the republicans, so everyone is different.Global warming is another subject that we talked about this semester. There is a lot of disagreement on global warming. Many believe that we cause it because of the rising CO2 levels and the pollution in the air, but many also think we don’t because of the facts about the little ice age and the medieval warming period. Part of global warming is because there are so many CO2 emissions that are clouding up the atmosphere. That it then traps the heat inside and that raises the temperature. Some effects would be the melting ice caps. There was a “hockey stick” so the called it, that showed that over 900 years the temperature of the Northern Hemisphere stayed the same. Then it showed that in the 20th century it shot up apparently because of human activity. When other scientists took a look at it they found it to be false, because of the little ice age and the medieval warming period. Both of these happened before any human activity could have affected anything. Another statistic is that when CO2 emissions first started to rise sharply the general temperature of the world when down. Global warming still hasn’t been proven either way yet, so many people still disagree. Personally, I believe that we aren’t causing the warming and that it is just a stage that we are going through. I do think that people should research it more before they believe it or not. I thought it was because of us until I read the Senator James Inhofe speech.Now let’s move on to overpopulation. To start out with the definition of overpopulation is not just the huge number of people in the world it's the impact that each person has on the world. As we discover more things, our way of life changes. We are getting healthier and healthier so not as many people die as soon as they use too. By that I mean that we are finding more antidotes to sicknesses so people don’t die from them. On top of that we are having so many babies. Part of the reason why is because in some countries in Africa, women are second to men. Women don’t have control over their own lives. If men want babies, that’s what they are going to get because they think you should have as many babies as God sends. Also, they want boys. They keep having babies until they have boys. In 8000 abortions over there, only one was a boy. Another reason is that women aren’t informed enough. They don’t know how to stop from getting pregnant. So, many are trying to educate them. An interesting fact is that when more babies die, the population goes up. It’s because they think that they have to have a whole bunch of babies to make sure that enough of them live and that there are enough to take care of them in their old age.Globalization is my next subject. Globalization is the world coming together in one big playing field. There are three different types in different time periods of globalization. They are countries globalizing, companies globalizing and then finally individuals globalizing. It’s just the world getting flatter. Some major flatteners were when Netscape went public and when the Berlin wall fell. Offshoring is an example to show the world flattening. Like a factory in Michigan can close down, and one in China opens. It’s the same factory, just in China because workers and materials are much cheaper over there. Everyone has a chance for a job that you want. Say you and someone from China both have the same intelligence level. They aren’t going to hirer you, because the other person will do it for less money. Globalization is making it harder for students like me. China and India have more honor students than we have students. How scary it that? I mean think about it. If the world keeps globalizing like this a teacher in Japan could be teaching a class in Florida in no time. A lot of people aren’t ready for what’s coming, and that’s scary because they can be replaced just like that.Some other major topics that we talked about were Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Darfur, Rwanda, and Somalia. We talked about our war with Iraq in 1990. The main reason we went to war with Iraq in 1990 was to push Iraq out of Kuwait. Iraq had apparently gone into Kuwait, invading it with troops and tanks and was then trying to threaten Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia was our ally and a major oil supplier for us so we needed them. Other reasons we justified going into Iraq was the fact that they had biological and chemical weapons, and that they had a nuclear weapon program. Another reason was that Saddam Hussein was abusing his people, and going against all human rights.We invaded Afghanistan because of 9-11. 9-11 was when four planes were hijacked and went to four designated places like the pentagon and the Twin Towers to kill people. There were 2,993 people who died because of it. Al-Qaeda terrorists did it. Al-Qaeda is a terrorist group founded by Osama bin Laden in the 1980's. They were supported by the Taliban which was an Islamic group who controlled Afghanistan.Recently there have been some problems with Iran and nuclear power. At first they just lied and said that they didn’t have any nuclear plants, but then they admitted it. They said that they are using it for energy purposes. They have also fired two test missiles, and tried to do a five day military exercise. We are trying to come up with was to take away some of the ingredients for nuclear weapons.It Darfur, Sudan there is a war going on that the UN doesn’t consider a genocide. It started in February of 2003. It started because the government was accused of favoring the Arabs over the black people. The government is in a horrible state trying to hide mass graves and keep journalists out of the country so that no one knows what’s going on. They also have been underestimating the death toll. So far it is 2,759,858 people, including civilians, soldiers, displaced people, peacekeepers, and everyone else as well. The Janjaweed is the major rebal group who is killing everyone. The Sudanese government secretly supports them. The Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the Justice and Equality Movement people are on the other side trying to recruit non-Arab muslims from other ethnic groups.In Rwanda was a genocide in 1994. It was a genocide that killed between 800,000 and 1,000,000 people. It all happened in 100 days. There are two groups called the Tutsi and the Hutu. When the Europeans found them they considered the Tutsi to have European descendents so they thought they were better and treated them better. When they left they left the Hutu in charge. So there had always been some tension between them. Then some Hutu rebels shot their presidents plane down because he was trying to make a peace agreement with the Tutsis. They then blamed it on the Tutsis so that everyone would hate them. This then started the destruction of lives. We had UN troops there, but when ten died they pulled out.We also talked about how Somalia is a failed state. A failed state is where a country’s government is very frail or useless that it has almost no control over much of its territory. We read two articles about this. The first is about what causes a failed state. The need for natural resources can make you struggle, but those with many natural resources can cause destruction over power for these items too. Also, the lack of a good leader can do it or just having a bad country beside you can cause trouble. In Somalia’s case it was because their president was overthrown and was killed. They are now an anarchy in complete chaos. The other article was about this boy who has to take care of his family, because his dad is hurt. He is a fisherman and his only other choice is to join this rebel militia, but then he might die and then how is he going to take care of his family.This is a lot of what I learned this semester, along with many other facts and stories. Many of them were eye openers about things that were happening that I had no clue about. In some of them, like Rwanda, I am very disappointed in the United States and many other countries as well for our lack of reaction. I think that they with help us make better decisions in the future. I just feel bad for all of the people who had to die because of them. Overall I’m glad I took the class it was a great learning experience.
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