February 23

IB 20

We continued looking at the French-Indian War today and its effects. We also discussed the Iroquois Confederacy and connections between it and current forms of government in Canada and the United States. I have created a new page on the IB 20 wiki on the French-Indian War which you will have to work on as a class. You need to complete the causes, courses/practices, events and results for the French-Indian War. You can use the photocopied booklet from The United States and Its People as a source, or any other online sources to complete this chart. Please work collaboratively on the wiki (don't steal the lock!).

IB 30/35

We began looking at the Cold War today in class. I began by doing a general overview of the origins of the Cold War, and how the Cold War was fought. We then began looking at specific WWII conferences, where "the seeds of the Cold War were first planted". I hope that you can see how the disagreements and mistrust that emerged in the WWII conferences foreshadowed the disagreements that would emerge at the end of the war, namely: the future boundaries of Poland, the future of Germany, and the type of governmental systems that will be in place in Eastern Europe. Eventually, I will post the PowerPoint presentation on the wiki in the Cold War section. I will cover a couple of concepts tomorrow in class, particularly the partition of Germany into East Germany and West Germany, zones of occupation, and the Berlin blockade. I will try to give you some TOK group presentation time so that you can organize yourselves heading into the weekend. Here's a link to the "oreo cookie" video that I mentioned in class today when I was talking about military spending. Please keep in mind that this video was made in the United States during the Bush administration, so the numbers will be out of date a bit, but you get the idea. If memory serves me correctly the U.S. military budget is about $700 billion (2011 budget), so that represents even more oreo cookies. Many of you mentioned China's military spending, and I conceded that yes, increasingly China is spending more on its military than in the past, but last I checked China was reportedly spending about $91 billion on its military (now the second most in the world, so again, the video is out of date). Now you might begin to see why as I said in class a few days ago that when Eisenhower left office he warned the American public about the "military-industrial complex" (see below).