Final Days of Political Science

Tuesday was my last day of Political Science, the final is next week. I didn’t write a post about day 10, and I have no real excuse except that I forgot and was doing a statistics assignment (that’s my worst class but I’m surprisingly doing better than I expected!). So I’ll write about both Day 10 and Day 11.

Day 10 was about international relations; bilateral, multilateral, non-state actors (IGOs, terrorist groups, etc.), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), social movements, all that good stuff. My professor asked the class about any current events related to international relations and one guy said Putin’s arrest. My professor than proceeded to explain that Putin, at this moment in time, has to be very careful about where he travels as going to an “unsafe” country could get him detained. He then states that or tries like China and North Korea are safe for Putin as they are not part of the ICC. We then did a small pivot to discussions about Canada’s ties to the monarchy, he believes Canada should get rid of the monarchy all together which I agree with. A few students were a bit opposed to it as they believe the monarchy doesn’t do anything so there is no point in going through the effort of leaving. Which seems to be a somewhat common sentiment among Canadians, we are a complacent bunch unfortunately. But whenever they visit we pay a hefty sum which is stupid, as my professor has said “we’ve outgrown the monarchy” I think its about time we became our on thing. But whatever, we then moved on to Realism vs Liberalism:

Realists • Wold is Anarchical • States pursue their own self interests • “America First” sentiment • Zero-sum-game • Human nature is inherently evil • Pessimistic view • Maximize power

Liberals • Believe in norms, rules, international laws • Pursue common interests among states

He then stated that Putin is a realist invading another country, while Liberals promote peace and a gentle bunch. When he asked what the students felt was more accurate in describing the world students believed that a mixture of realism and liberalism is needed. Trudeau is more focused on global affairs an does not pursue Canadian interests. He does not prioritize Canada. He looks out for China’s interests… Trudeau did not take advantage of Germany’s need for natural gas which would’ve done great things for Canadians (I guess???), he’s big on climate change apparently. These are my professor’s words, not mine. Trudeau, to me, has only done surface level changes to combat the climate crisis. He does not attack the main contributors. Anyway, next we talked about diplomacy and diplomacy, which is actually something I’m interested in looking into. We went over these terms:

•	High commission - compound in commonwealth
•	Embassy - compound in non-commonwealth nations
•	Consulates - promote trade and culture
•	Papal Nuncio
•	Diplomatic immunity - persona grata

According to my professor and other students Kim Jung-Un poisoned his brother and will suffer no consequences due to diplomatic immunity. A Libyan diplomat shot and killed a police woman, and a Russian diplomat killed a Canadian in a drunk driving incident. I haven’t looked into these cases yet so if you know anything more let me know! We then learned about thee diplomatic bag and how its protected from inspection. A Nigerian diplomat used this to his advantage by putting a corrupt politician in the bag (obviously unconscious) to bring him back to Nigeria to be tried for his crimes (I think that’s what happened).

More terms we went over:

•	Agrément
•	Communique
•	Démarche

He then talked about China promoting peace in Ukraine, which was the one nice thing I’ve ever heard my professor say about China. He used it as an example of cooperation between states. Did anyone know that diplomats also act as spies and do espionage?! I was shocked to hear this. Moving on, here are the forms of diplomacy we learned:

•	Bilateral diplomacy
•	Multilateral diplomacy
•	Secret diplomacy
•	Open diplomacy
•	Summit diplomacy
•	Paradiplomacy 

This is the juicy part; my professor finally brought up the WEF, stating that they are globalists - NGO - with the aim to “solve global problems”. DAVOS, progressives love it, while right-wingers hate it believing that it is a conspiracy for elites. Which is weird because wouldn’t the right be considered part of the elites? Anyway, the UN supposedly supports peace and cooperation but I think they’re doing a pretty shit job at it. He then mentioned Putin vetoing Ukraine condemnation from the UN. When we were talking about the security council it led to a discussion about states that want to be a permanent member: Brazil, Japan, Germany, and India. When asked which country would veto any of these from becoming permanent we all agreed that China would veto Japan, which is understandable because I don’t believe they’ve apologized for any of the crimes committed against the Chinese, let alone very other nation that suffered. One guy said that China would veto India with no real reason as to why they would. Aren’t they in BRICS together? Why would China veto India? It doesn’t really matter but at the end of class my professor said he believes there is too much bureaucracy in the UN, that’s why they haven’t made progress in many areas.

Now on to Tuesday’s class, Day 11, the final frontier. There wasn’t as long of a lecture since it was our last day but we did go over Global Politics and watched a video. So we started off with the terms Global South and Global North, and what the differences between them are. The Global South is “under developed” and this under development has led to theories as to why that is:

•	Modernization Theory - Global South countries are too traditional and therefore modernization is difficult for them. Moving on to a Liberal democracy and industrialization is much too big a feet right now. This theory is obviously incredibly wester-centric and, in my opinion, xenophobic as shit.

•	Dependence Theory - Developed by those in the Global South that describes capitalism as the reason why the South is the way it is. Capitalism promotes development in the North and underdevelopment in the South. Colonialism and Imperialism have decimated the South and makes them dependant in the North.

My fellow students claimed that the underdevelopment in the Global South is due to a combination of factors, and to that I say BULLSHIT. One theory is rooted in white supremacy and the other is about historical facts. How is it a combination? If you want to blame traditional culture maybe think about why certain “traditional” leaders make the decisions they do. Anyway, we then moved on to certain measures taken by the international community to help develop “third world” countries:

•	Basic Needs Approach by the World Bank - Effort to reduce poverty in third world countries. It didn’t work.

•	Neo-Liberalism (gross) by the IMF - Promote deregulation, free-markets, privatization, remove government subsidies, and something about Washington Consensus. This also didn’t work.

•	Neo-Statist by I don’t know (I didn’t write it down in my notes) - Strong developmental state, market is controlled by the state, similar to how South Korea and Japan run things. Hyper-capitalist nightmare.

•	State Capitalism (China) - Heavy state involvement, state intervention and direct control. Communism with Chinese characteristics, as my professor says. A girl in my class piped up claiming that China is a dictatorship, my professor then “corrected” her by calling China an authoritarian regime. According to my professor a guy who ran Alibaba criticized the CPC and the government cracked down on him hard. I don’t know anything about this situation but I’m going to assume they had a good reason for it.

•	Human Development by the UN - Fairly self explanatory, it focuses on promoting the human being.

•	Sustainable Development - we didn’t go too much not this one but it seems simple. I’ll be reading the textbook so its fine.

We finished our final lecture there, my professor ended the class with a video about global politics called Commanding Heights: Battle for the World Economy (2002). We watched the episode titled “The Battle of Ideas” which began with. Discussing the differences between Hayek and Keynes. I’m just going to write down my notes verbatim because I don’t think I can remember all of the little details from the video:

•	WW1 people were dissolutioned. Socialism and Communism Promised fixes. Then the Russian Revolution happened. Sought to destroy capitalism, as she should ~slay~. The part about the revolution seemed like it was fear-mongering due to the music and language used.
•	Communists winning hearts and minds.
•	Hayek claims he was a “mild-socialist” press X to doubt.
•	Ludwig Von Mises, fucking libertarian. Hated Soviets.
•	Video claims Von Mises was right about the Soviets.
•	New economic policy by Lenin. They zoomed in on Lenin’s face with scary music.
•	Joseph Stalin central planning.
•	Communism forging ahead, Capitalism seemed doomed.
•	This video is a heard watch, just very annoying and boring…
•	Hyperinflation led to Hitler.
•	Roaring 20s -> Market Collapse -> Shitty 30s. (In reference to the market collapse) how the fuck does that happen? Why did the bubble burst?
•	American breadlines - why do reactionaries claim Socialism causes breadlines?
•	Keynes invented macro-economics.
•	FDR New Deal - regulating capitalism. Set prices, plane routes, etc.
•	Keynes and US government had to be okay with a little bit of inflation..
•	Keynesianism became government policy.
•	Economy bounced back during war time.
•	Keynes “what worked in war will work in peace” or something like that.
•	Hayek “The Road to Serfdom”. Asshole.
•	Video claims Keynes was right. Compares Stalin to Hitler, how dare you?!
•	Keynes died and was raised to sainthood. 
•	The Winston Churchill statue looks stupid. Churchill was a dick.
•	Labour Party won against Churchill. Clement Attlee landslide victory. Mixed economy, rebuilt from bottom up.
•	Welfare state.
•	Lenin and Stalin defeated fascism! I added a bunch of love hearts.
•	Cold War…..
•	Hayek fucking sucks, believed planned economy was an affront to “freedom”, what the fuck does he mean by that?
•	“Iron Curtain” “Russian Threat” wow……
•	My eyes hurt from rolling.
•	Hayek claims socialists had the courage to be idealistic, seems patronizing.
•	Claims Russians occupied East Germany waiting for the rest of Europe to fall in their lap.” Why do they talk like this? Bunch of fear-mongering schmucks…

Can you guess which comments were my own and which were from the video? I think it’s obvious. But that concludes my Introductory Political Science class. Now I continue on in the next semester in the fall, I’m taking the spring and summer off because I’m going to be very busy.

After class I booked an “appointment” with my professor as I needed him to translate the notes he left for me on my research paper since I couldn’t read his handwriting. But I’ll write about that ordeal in another post. It was actually really nice and I hop I get more classes with him. My next Political Science class I might have a different instructor, currently there is only “Staff” listed as who will be teaching….