Ch 24 pg. 747-755

         The world’s environment and the globalization of environmentalism have led to a challenging global modernity on cultural or spiritual grounds, burgeoning environmental movements.  There were three other factors that affected the human impact on earth’s ecological systems.  One was the mathematical explosion, ability of humankind to tap the energy potential of fossil fuels, and economic growth.  These three factors were the foundations for the immense environmental transformations of the twentieth century.  When humans remade the environment, it also increased the population of cattle, pigs, chickens, rats, and dandelions.  The most critical and intractable environmental transformation was global warming.  Although there is high debate about global warming existing all the signs are there.  With melting glaciers, rising sea levels, thawing permafrost, extreme hurricanes, species extinctions, and other ecological threats is hard evidence proving global warming exists.  Environmentalists started up in the nineteenth century as Romantic poets.  The “wilderness idea” aimed to preserve untouched areas from human disruption.  It was not until the second half of the twentieth century did environmentalist achieve worldwide awareness and acceptance.
          In Europe, the Club of Rome warned of resource exhaustion and the collapse of industrial society in the face of unrelenting economic growth.  Other places throughout Europe warned their countries of the disasters that would follow if global pollution continued.  The less fortunate are the least sympathetic to this epidemic because they were concerned about food security, health, and basic survival than with the rights of nature or wilderness protection.  Western environmentalists often called on individuals to change their values by turning away from materialism toward an appreciation of the intricate and fragile web of life that sustains us.  I believe global warming is a serious topic that should not be taken lightly no matter where a person stands on the social scale.  Everyone contributes to the world’s pollution and it’s important to care for the world that we all live on.  I feel people forget that we are merely guests and need to learn how to be more respectful to the host.

Ch 24 pg. 740- 747

          Religion is, again, an on going factor that continues to influence the world.   In the most recent century religion has played a more powerful role than expected.  Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam had long functioned as transregional cultures, spreading further then any initially thought they would.  In more current times, religious pluralism characterized the world's societies.  Fundamentalism is one response to how traditions in new areas has been modernized.  Fundamentalism is a term derived from the United States, where religious conservatives in the early twentieth century were outraged by critical and "scientific" approaches to the Bible.  Throughout the entire world today, it is impossible for someone to start a new religion that would appear threatening to another.  Fundamentalism represented a religious response, characterized by one scholar as "embattled forms of spirituality...experienced as a cosmic war between forces of good and evil." In the beginning they wanted to separate themselves from the secular world in their own churches and schools.

          The most prominent of the fundamentalism that emerged in the late twentieth century was Islam.  Unfortunately, the image of Islam has been permanently engraved into America's mind with the image of Osama bin Laden and the destruction of the World Trade Center.  By the mid-1990s, bin Laden had found a safe haven in Taliban ruled Afghanistan, from which he and other leaders of al-Qaeda planned their now infamous attack on the World Trade Center and other various targets.  Even though this horrible event took place, there has been an effort in the Muslim community to create a new religious and political order on the teaching of Islam.  By the 1970s, political independence had given rise to major states in Egypt, Iran, Algeria, and other places.  These places sought after the Western and secular policies of nationalism, socialism, and economic development.  This was the context in which the idea of a new Islam alternative to Western models of modernity began to take shape.  That effort to return to Islamic principles was labeled "jihad," an ancient and evocative religious term that refers to struggle or striving to please God.  

Ch 24 pg 723-734

Global interaction and the Transformation of the world Economy took place in the second half of the twentieth century.  After WWI and the Great Depression international trade, investment, and labor migration dropped sharply as major states turned inward.  Technology also contributed to the acceleration of economic globalization with shipping and air services dramatically lowering transportation costs.  Also having powerful international lending agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund imposed such free-market and pro-business conditions sent the globe in a positive direction until some places weren’t able to pay off their loans.  After WW11 occurred the nation made a point to not let the economy fall like it once had and instead strived for reglobalization.  World trade was a main contributor to keeping the economy a float.

There are three different forms of capital movement.  The first is foreign direct investment. This is when one country will open up a business or factory in a country other then his or her country.  The second is the short-term movement of capital.  This is when investors buy foreign stocks then sell them quickly.  The third is the personal funds of individuals like credit cards.  Currently there are millions or people who travel the world to find jobs because the country they live in is outsourcing their companies which forces the average citizen to venture out to find a job.  These flows of migrating laborers often represent a major source of income and provide inexpensive source of labor for their adopted countries.  For corporations to be outsourcing their labor workers and taking advantage or their determination and will to work is a depressing.  America is the main culprit for abusing their power to build where they please resulting in their ability to pretty much run the world.  Even though, ironically enough America is the one suffering from the biggest debt.

Ch23

The twentieth century witnessed the demise of many empires such as the Austrian, Ottoman empires, and the Russian empires following the collapse of World War I.  After World War II, the German, Japan, African, and Asian empires ended.  Though, Africa and Asian movements for independence shared with the ideal of national self-determination.  Belief in national self-determination gained a global following in the twentieth century.  The idea that only legitimate government is self-government was not so widespread at the beginning of the century.  At the international level, the world wars had weakened Europe, while discrediting any sense of European moral superiority.  Both the United States and the Soviet Union generally opposed the older European colonial empires.  All of this soon contributed to the global illegitimacy that was encouraging to Africans and Asians seeking political independence.  The early twentieth century in Asia and the mid-twentieth century in Africa, a second or third generation of Western-educated elites had risen throughout the colonial world.  Many groups such as veterans of war, young partially educated people, those with no jobs, small-scale traders; all have reason to believe that independence held great promise.  It was now possible to imagine retaining profitable economic interests in Asia and Africa without the expense and bother of formal colonial government.

            The British never assimilated into Indian society because their acute sense of racial and cultural distinctiveness kept them apart.  In India, cultural identities were primarily local and infinitely varied, rooted in differences of family, caste, village, language, region, tribe, and religious practice.  The most important political expression of an all-Indian identity took shape in the Indian National Congress (INC).  Initially, the INC did not seek to overthrow British rule because they hoped to gain greater inclusion within the political, military, and business life of British India.  During the first two decades of the twentieth century the INC remained largely an elite organization.  Ghandi and the INC or Congress Party leadership had to contend with a wide range of movements.  Though after intense disagreement the two finally agreed to partition as the British declared their intention to leave India after World War II.

The freedom struggle in South Africa took a different direction than it had in India.  This is incredibly different from how independence was won in Africa.  In Africa the rule was delayed until 1994, while India, lacking any such community, had achieved independence almost a half century earlier.  The South Africa situation was the overwhelming prominence of race, expressed most clearly in the policy that wanted to separate blacks from whites.  The Black Consciousness movement was at the center of an explosion of protest in 1976 in a sprawling, segregated, impoverished black neighborhood called Soweto.  It was race, ethnicity, and ideology that generate dissension and sometimes violence that divided South Africa, rather than religion in India.  

Ch 22 pg 675-689

            As a result of American and British desires to create democratic societies while Soviets insisted control over Eastern Europe, rival military alliances formed known as NATO and the Warsaw Pact.  The disagreements between Eastern and Western Europe become known as the Iron Curtain that had high tension but no shooting war occurred.  According to American authorities a communist victory meant that communist would spread further across Asia and beyond because they feared nothing considering the Soviets and Chinese were partners.  The third major military conflict of the cold war happened in Afghanistan where a Marxist party had taken power.  Though, fearing the overthrow of a new communist state, Soviets forces finally withdrew from the area.  Then not too long after America attempted to enter Cuba but the Soviets already had control over it.  So, in an attempt to keep the Americans out they threatened to fire missiles but the J.F.K maybe a compromise.  He promised not to invade Cuba if the Soviets promised to remove their missiles out of Cuba.

            During this time, many lived in fear of the deadly weapons that each country carried and threatened to use if one place stepped out of line.  This possibility, according to Strayer, is a primary reason why no shooting war of any kind occurred between the two superpowers, the United States and the Communist World.  There are two big failures that the Communist party faced.  The first is how the Soviet economy expressed no signs of improvement compared to the more advanced capitalist countries.  The second is was moral.  The horrors of Stalin’s Terror and the gulag approaching genocide in communist Cambodia tore apart communist claims to moral superiority over capitalism.

Chapter 22 pg. 659-667

Karl Marx is the man who influenced the political and philosophical teachings modern communism.  Communism was at its prime in the 1970s where about one-third of the world’s population lived under communist rule.  This was commonly found in the Soviet Union and in China but it also made its way over to Eastern Europe.  There were different interpretations of communism but they shared the common ideology derived from European Marxism.  This influenced the lower classes and a worldwide socialist federation to bond together to form an international revolutionary movement.  The Russian Revolution served as a catalyst for others to revolt while providing them with aid and advice.  Soon, a Treaty of Friendship between the Soviet Union and China in 1950 joined the two communist giants in an alliance that caused many in the West to view communism as a unified international movement aimed at their destruction.

The Russian Revolution is like an echo of French Revolution because the people wanted their freedom and to treated as equals.  The beneficiaries of the French Revolution, the middle class, suffered due to rise of communism.  At an attempt to put an end to the threatening communistic ways, America created the Marshall Plan in attempts to be friendly with the USSR but they quickly caught on to the Americans and the plan failed.  Stalin, head of the USSR, acted to install fully communist governments, loyal to himself, in Poland, East Germany, Czech, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria.  Many years following the likes of the Russians, the Chinese experienced an on-going battle with communism that took decades to achieve.  The Chinese imperial system had collapsed under the pressure of foreign imperialism.  This took much longer to achieve because in Russia they have been studying and following Karl Marx for years while China had only recently discovered it making it difficult to gain as many followers as Russia did.

Chapter 21

In chapter 21, I learned about the collapse and recovery of Europe.  During the First World War, the balance of power was expressed in two rival alliances, the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy and the Triple Entente of Russia, France, and Britain.  The outbreak of the war is considered an accident because no one predicted the archduke’s assassination would have occurred.  Schools, mass media, and military service had convinced millions of ordinary Europeans that their national identities were profoundly and personally meaningful.  Not only was their public pressure but an industrial militarism contributing to the war.  Each place had substantial standing armies and, expect for Britain, relied on temporary military service to help them.  New military technology contributed to the staggering casualties of the war, including some 10 million deaths.  At the beginning it was thought to be movements and attacks but instead it became “trench warfare.”  These battles would last for months which resulted in over a million deaths.  Vast propaganda campaigns sought to arouse citizens by depicting a cruel and inhuman enemy who killed innocent children and violated women.  So, the First War brought the attention of how much power the United States has because they were a big part of the Defeat of Germany.

Since the World War One represented the political collapse of Europe, the Great Depression that followed suggested that its economic system was to fail as well.  During the Great Depression created a ripple effect of negative events on the country.  First people lost their jobs, with no jobs people soon lost their homes, and then they would starve because they had zero money.  Vacant factories, soup kitchens, bread lines, shantytowns, and beggars came to symbolize the human reality of this economic disaster.  Then shortly after World War One, the Nazi party under Hitler’s leadership proclaimed a message of intense German nationalism cast in terms of racial superiority.  Hitler’s hatred towards Jews as an alien presence, passionate opposition to communism, a determination to rescue Germany from the humiliating requirements of the Treaty of Versailles all lead to the country’s obsession with control.  Then the Second World War started between both Asia and Europe because they sought to fundamentally alter the international arrangements that had emerged from World War One.  The Second World War was the most destructive because they had an estimated 60 million deaths which is six times the deaths in World War One.  A good portion of that number were civilians caught in the cross fire and about 6 million were Jews that perished in a technologically sophisticated genocide (concentration camps).  Russians, Poles, and other Slavs; Gypsies, or the Roma; mentally or physically handicapped people; homosexuals; communists; and Jehovah’s witnesses also perished while Germany attempted to reach racial purification.