Current World Issues

How to Manage North Korea https://foreignpolicy.com/podcasts/and-now-the-hard-part/how-to-manage-north-korea/ C This connected to my past experience in that my whole life really I have heard about the threat of North Korea.  One of the constants in my life is the danger hanging over my head, over all of our heads.   I look back to the cold war, I look back to a lot of history, and an interesting thing is that we learn to live with our lives threatened, hanging on the whims of a single man.  And we learn to live with it.   There are many things that we learn to live with, and a far-off danger of world domination.  It was also connected in my mind to Neville Chamberlain and his appeasement attempts.  The podcast talked about the fact that Trump's communication with N. Korea isn't producing any tangible effects, other than the taking down of anti-American posters which are still "in a storage closet".  So with Neville Chamberlain, we saw...

A Fateful Decision That Led to the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis https://foreignpolicy.com/podcasts/first-person/qassem-suleimani-airstrike-1979-iran-hostage-crisis/ First Person - Foreign Policy C This entire podcast connected with the Iran project that I did last term.  The general politics and partisan religious split made sense to me.  This was very similar to other times that America has overthrown the original government, messy, with unintended consequences, and motivated by finances.  This connected to the Taliban, to Nicaragua, and America's very own revolution.  E I hadn't realised the partisan nature of the US's involvement in the evacuation and accommodation of the Shah.  In hindsight, it should have been obvious, but I assumed that the US government was fully behind the shelter offered, but actually, the carter administration seemed to be very against the idea of sheltering the Shah, because it doesn't actually make any sense to shelter him f...

And Now the Hard Part How to Reverse the Global Drift Toward Authoritarianism https://foreignpolicy.com/podcasts/and-now-the-hard-part/ CONNECT:   How are the ideas and information presented connected to what you know and understand?  It connected to the idea that everyone needs an enemy.  I had always thought of authoritarianism, facism, nazism, and nationalism needing enemies, but here it was interesting how the way that the left sometimes refuses the idea of an "enemy" per se, which can allow the rise of opposition.  I saw it in last week, and I saw it in this week.  It also connects to something someone sent me which is that the difference between the far left and far right is with the far left, they'll hate you and maybe be violent toward you until you change your views, or stop attending right-wing rallies.  If the far right hates you, however, one can't stop being black, or gay, or muslim.   EXTEND:   What new ideas ex...

Podcast Intelligence Squared - Fighting Back Against Big Tech, with Rana Foroohar and Ros Urwin https://play.acast.com/s/intelligencesquared/df1a9cad-c5b3-49c9-93eb-ff8b8761623e How are the ideas and information presented CONNECTED to what you already knew? I knew that there was incredible danger and the loss of privacy, something that my dad and I talk about a lot (he majored in computer science), but this connected other ways that they provide a threat: through monopoly and manipulation.  I have always heard about the evils of corporations, but those who said that always seemed a little bit fringe, like naysayers.  Here is an actual in-depth analysis. What new ideas did you get that EXTENDED or pushed your thinking in new directions? I had never considered users as raw material and data as a resource, like oil or gas.  This extended me to apply, in my head, the standards I would put on those resources, to an extent on data companies.  Monopolies, govern...