POLS 170 BLOG GROUP 0403

Real World Value of Risk versus Prof. Shirk's Modified Risk      Last year, my friends and I played a lot of board games online because of COVID-19. One of these games was Risk. I had never played Risk before, though I did know what it was, and I remember that after playing for the first time, I didn't really like it all that much. World domination seemed like a strange goal to me and almost too simple. Everyone goes around, rolls the dice, fortifies, attacks, conquers and repeats. There doesn’t seem to be much substance to the game. However, I think that the modified version we played in class was much more interesting and had quite a few skills to teach.       The most beneficial change between regular Risk and Professor Shirk’s modified version (which I will refer to as PS Risk from here on) was the objectives of the game. With regular Risk, the objective of each opponent is world domination. There is nothing of substance here. Oh okay, so you want ...

  Blog Post #5: How to define terrorism? I became more interested in the process behind classifying certain events as acts of ‘terrorism’ after our class lecture in which we compared complex and controversial scenarios. I read an article written by Daniel Byman of the Brookings Institute in which he provides his own definition of terrorism and applies it to scenarios similar to what we discussed in class. I agree with certain tenets of Byman’s definition of terrorism but disagree with his analysis concerning if states can commit such actions.   In my view, terrorism must involve violence or the threat of physical harm subjected upon non-violent actors. When designating something as an act of terrorism, I agree with Byman that a high level of violence should be the determining factor. Acts such as marches and stone throwing may be violent but would not constitute terrorism in my definition. Secondly, I argue that terrorism is inherently motivated by politics and is alm...

  Healthcare and International Law The interdependence and indivisibility of economic, social, and cultural rights, as well as civil and political rights, have been widely recognized since the conclusion of the Cold War (Yamin). The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated a variety of structural inequalities within our healthcare system, as well as demonstrating “the gap” between developed and developing countries through resource allocation, research and development, and beliefs regarding the vaccine. However, through morality and equity dilemmas, we have found ourselves facing the question: who is responsible for healthcare? Is it the government, state, nation, or individual who should provide this right? Or is it a combination? Health policy decisions have been thrust into the realms of both domestic and international law, each of which has its own set of concerns, but for the sake of this piece, I'll concentrate on international law.  The United States is the “ only industrializ...

  With the COVID-19 pandemic still dominating the world, a recent class discussion about cosmopolitanism made me think about the pandemic and the unfair treatment that developing countries with a lack of medical infrastructure are having to deal with compared to first world countries. As human beings of the world, first world countries have the moral obligation to be providing vaccines, adequate testing, and other treatments for COVID-19 to countries that do not have the ability to obtain these things, yet for some reason, we are not doing it.  At this stage in the pandemic, every American citizen who is older than five years old can receive their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, and anyone twelve years of age can receive a booster shot if they please. Due to ignorance, we believe that this is normal, but many other countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, have less than ten percent of their population vaccinated. This is not because the people of these countries do...