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Billera Blog 5

Simone Billera May 4th, 2022 Blog Post #5 During our class discussion on the Todorov reading, one of the groups asked a thought-provoking question. Within the question, they proposed the potential similarities between the colonization of the Americas in 1492 to our world’s current pursuit of space exploration. After our class discussion, I concluded that the foundation of these two events are similar in nature, to an extent. Additionally, I deduced that such similarities highlight the hypocrisy that continues to seep through our world today, especially in the United States.  Space exploration is a well-respected sector of society. It can be said that those who work in the field are generally intelligent people from educated backgrounds. Each of these individuals has personal reasoning behind their contributions to space exploration, whether it be an earnest urge to benefit the whole of society or the simple but compelling desire for money and power. Whatever the reasoning might be,
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Ajao Blog Post 5

 Christine Ajao Professor Shirk  International Politics  4 May 2022  Todorov’s work titled “The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other”, analyzes the venture that Columbus took to the Americas and how he treated the Native Americans that resided there at the time.  The chapter “Columbus as Interpreter”, details that since the Native Americans had a different way of living and did not use the “resources” that they had, Columbus felt like he had a right to take them. As well as this, they believed their voyage and taking over America could be backed up by their religious beliefs. Although the chapter says “his faith is Christian, but we have the impression that, were it Muslim or Jewish, he would have not have acted differently; what matters is the force of the belief itself” (Todorov) assuming that Columbus just used religion as means for power rather than just true belief. This really interests me because I do believe that he used his religion as means of power to commit horrib
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Remi Blog Post 5

  Remi Adefioye Blog post 5 May 4, 2022 In the article, “Silences Voices in Global Health,” the author describes current movements which aim to improve the representation of the global south and ultimately tackle the power structure in global health. Additionally, the author believes that whilst improving inclusion in global health is required, to change the power structures in global health there needs to be a new and fair world order. After reading this article, I thought about the pandemic and its effect on developing countries. While some people have argued for a reform of the World Health Organization due to its inadequate response during the pandemic, I believe the first problem that needs to be addressed in global health is improving the health systems in developing countries. As we have seen during the pandemic, many developing countries have struggled. Unsurprisingly, NGOs and donors have been the primary providers of health services. Even though these organizations are provid
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Cote Blog 5

Brian Cote Professor Shirk POLS 170 4 May 2022 Blog 5 Looking back at the previous blog posts written over the semester, the one that notably aged poorly was Blog 1. It was mentioned in Blog 1 that Ukrainian allies should take the approach of threatening economic instability through sanctions (consistent with the liberal ideology) as a way of deterring the Russian Federation from invading Ukrainian territories, as simply the threat of an imminent economic collapse would scare a nation out of a conflict. I believed that this route was so effective and desirable that it would likely prevent conflict and therefore ensure no shots were ever fired. This was written mere days before Russia sent troops into Ukraine, thus making my argument appear unreliable and too optimistic. While I still believe that the economic sanctions placed on the Russian economy are still draining supporter’s faith in the Russian war effort, I admit I did not consider that Russia could still have its war while deali
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Cohen Blog 4

       I work for the Bucknell institute for public policy running a podcast where we discuss modern issues in politics and political news, usually we bring on a professor or other expert in the field of whatever we’re discussing. We did an episode at the beginning of this year that discussed buzzword in modern day politics and I think that when we talked about how the word “terrorism” is really more of a political one than anything else, I started drawing connetions between the two ideas. Within politics, certain language can often get skewed or molded to fit a certain meaning, or lose its meaning entirely. These words and phrases can have an extreme effect on the way people see and interpret issues in the general public. We call these words and phrases “buzzwords”. They are often used to call attention to an issue or gain a strong response, and in this sense, they can be very handy. This isn't something that has necessarily become more common, since buzzwords in politics have alw
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Billera Blog 4

Simone Billera April 20th, 2022 Blog Post #4 Last week, Professor Shirk split the class into groups and instructed us to define the term “terrorism.” Each response was slightly different from the next, a pattern which I found both intriguing and vexing. As I did a bit more research, I realized that this pattern is not unique to our classroom. The definition of terrorism is ambiguous when analyzing it on an international level. It can even be obscure domestically, as many U.S. states have passed individualized statutes on the matter. As the relevance of terrorism is only increasing due to its constantly rising presence in our contemporary world, I have started to wonder if its vague definition is healthy.  On April 12th, 2022, Frank Robert James opened fire in a New York City subway. Thankfully, no one was killed; however, 29 people were left injured, 10 of them with gunshot wounds. Initially, the shooting was not being investigated as an act of terror, but Frank Robert James now faces
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Ajao Blog Post 4

  Christine Ajao Professor Shirk POLS 170 20 April 2022  Can the State of our Environment be Political? And Should it? In Francis’s article “Cities, States, and Companies vow to stick to the Paris Agreement” he discusses how although Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris agreement, the US still plans to be a part of the decision to curb climate change. Other counties and organizations plan to stick to the Paris Agreement, where the goal is to lower greenhouse emissions. Trump says he did it to save US jobs and used the phrase “He said he was leaving the pact to help the people of Pittsburgh, not Paris, despite the fact that the Steel City has successfully shifted away from heavy manufacturing to a robust economy fueled by the tech, healthcare, and higher-learning sectors” (Francis). This statement clearly highlights political sentiments toward joining an agreement that would benefit the environment. The question is ‘Can the state of our Environment be Political? And S
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