I considered posting this in Comradeship but I figured it would fit here better.

I did say I would let everyone know how my presentation went so here I am to tell you all it did not go well, at least not to me.

I read out my slides and although my voice was still shake-y, I did project enough for people to hear me. I like to think some of my commentary was funny although I understand my tone was less so. I do wish people chuckled at least a little.

When I got to the imperialism slide I was looking forward to people maybe giggling at my dog and even asking about it, but that did not happen. When I did ask the class questions mid way through they did not engage. I asked the class if they knew what the school of the Americas was, no one put their hands up which was what I was hoping for, I then asked if anyone wanted to hazard a guess as to what it is, no one tried which was a bit embarrassing for me. It is their right not to answer but I thought it would be fun as a pivot into my next slide which was just a bunch of photos of the graduates (dictators and generals, plus the logo of a cartel).

The energy in the room was fucked. I felt like nobody was interested in what I had to say. Even the democratic socialist seemed out of it.

When I got to the activity part of the presentation, AKA the end, I put up a series of questions that the students could answer. I said they could answer whichever they wanted, but when nobody said anything I stated that I could just read the questions for them and they can raise their hands. When I read my first question: what are some skills that universities and its students can use for imperialist purposes? No one raised their hands so I was going to move on but the instructor (no PhD yet) told me to wait, so I did.

The DemSoc raised his hand and said “well, like you said, language classes.” I was surprised because he is one of the most “chatty” students in the class, and I figured that since he is a flavour of socialist he would be incredibly interested in this topic. I even talked about the School of the Americas and how all their human rights abuses were all done in the name of combating communism. Another student raised their hand and talked about the definition of imperialism I gave, highest stage of capitalism, and how that relates to the “clout” elite western universities have over those in the global south. I then engaged with them about how I read a source that was about how global south universities are at a disadvantage regarding “university rankings” and this is a form of cultural imperialism.

Another student raised his hand and said he would like to change my question, replacing “imperialist purposes” with something else I said in my “lecture” which was about how these spy classes “expand global understanding.” He stated that rather than imperialism, diverse universities create a, well, diverse environment with multiple perspectives which fosters a better understanding of others and how to get along. I didn’t necessarily have an issue with this, sort of, but stated that his version was quite optimistic while my lecture focused on how the version of “global understanding” being created was actually for securing interests in another nation for imperialist purposes like extracting resources to the detriment of the host nation. I really hope I didn’t come off as rude and I did apologize for how terrible I am at speaking.

The fourth, and last, student spoke up to answer the question: should universities accept funding from the defence industry? He said yes, because it’s money and it can help students defend the country and foster nationalism. My immediate thought was “huh?” Because throughout my presentation I was showing how the defence industry was not using universities for genuine defence purposes but for infiltrating others. I thought maybe I should’ve changed “defence industry” to “offensive industry” since that is how it acts. Mainly to western capitalists nations, not others. I didn’t say anything as a previous student said that he believed the opposite, that universities should not accept the funding.

He then talked about his experience at the university of Chicago and how he and other faculty opposed the defence department for getting involved in their research. From what I can remember the military was trying to give funding to the biology departments in multiple universities, but the funding was only to be given with restrictive purposes attached to military agendas. The university of Chicago pulled away from this agreement and so did other universities, to the point where the US government had to pivot and instead of the funding coming from the defence sector, it would instead come from the sciences.

My presentation came to an end after that and I was applauded but I sat down with a bad taste in my mouth. I thought my information was good and my topic was great too, yet I did not get the response I was looking for. I should lower my expectations…

I did end up asking my teacher about my presentation and if she would be willing to give me tips on improvements when grading it and she agreed while also praising me on how well I did. I wasn’t convinced initially because of how off everyone was and the fact that I was still cowardly, but she didn’t agree. She even brought out her notes to show that she thought I did well and was very kind in my interactions. I also asked if the photo of my dog was too much or inappropriate but she said it was fine but that I should just explain the joke outright. To me, even if they don't know who Lenin is, it’s still funny to see a dog’s head on a man’s body. I mentioned that the lack of interest may be due to cultural differences and she agreed, she also said that the topic may have flown over their heads, next time I will have to do a lot more hand holding.

All in all I am proud of myself, my slides and script were good, but I am disappointed in the lack of interest in imperialism…

April 11th 2025,

I do not believe I have ever written a post like this but please stick around as some wild stuff happened.

My first final of the day was my Canadian History one. This was hand written and was around 3 hours long, my hand was in a lot of pain. While I will not tell you exactly what the questions and topics were on the test as I believe that is illegal, or something, I will tell you some of the comments I made throughout. There was a topic about an economic theory, and while I was explaining what it was I mentioned in my answer (in parentheses) to read Das Kapital for a proper analysis of production and wages. Later on in the exam, during the essay, I mentioned Makenzie King’s affection towards Hitler and how the effected how he handled the war effort.

After that exam I had an hour before my polisci one and spent it studying with other students as I was invited to do so. It was fine for a bit but then things took a turn and I got uncomfortable. All the other students were very pro-Taiwan and essentially “cheered” on the DPP for not recognizing the 1992 consensus. One of the students said that, in a previous class, he had issues with the professor due to said professor “grading based on opinion.” I asked how and he said that he wrote a paper that claimed China was in a state of decline due to the birth rate and the professor didn’t agree, he then said “well I have the data.” So I asked him what data he used, he cited “a bunch” which included the WHO and “others.” I had to stop myself from saying “so only western sources?” I wish I was as strong as all of you, but I’m just not…

This same student also brought up how, when he was researching Taiwan, only 12 countries recognize it as independent. I asked “and you’re surprised by that?” He said not really but he was more shocked at which countries were on the list, like Haiti. He and the other students then praise Haiti for this and label it as “game recognizes game.” Which was annoying but I didn’t say anything. There were also comments made that “Communism killed millions” and that same guy as before said that he hated Mao but liked Deng because he was “smarter.”

Another student said that a planned economy was good, but then that guy made a ”🤨” face and replied “really?” The student backtracked and said that a planned economy was only good in the initial phases of development but not for industrialization, which the guy agreed with. This was hard to watch and frustrating but I was, again, too scared to say anything. It was like being met with a stereotype in real life. Also that guy is a big fan of Japan and is going there for his masters. I wish I could go overseas for mine but unless my rent and groceries are going to be paid for then I cannot do that.

After an hour we headed to our classroom and took the exam which was another 3 hours, my hand was already in pain and by the end of the day it could've well been put in a brace of some kind.

My results for both exams were A’s, and my GPA for the semester was a 4.0, so thats nice.

April 4th 2025,

Today is the last day of classes!

Canadian history was just a prep class for the final, going over the structure of the exam which was identification and an essay. The identification part was exactly like the midterm, he provides us with terms/events/concepts and we have to detail them regarding the whole/what/where/when/how. He is the type of professor that also does not require specifics, and if we forget a name or date we can just describes the person or the time period. The essay was new but he would give us a list of topics to choose from.

French Revolution was the only class left that had an actual lecture and this is mainly because this course does not have a final exam, it also did not have midterms, only quizzes. The “final” is a research paper. Anyway, the lecture began with the 1802 betrayal where France repeals the abolition of slavery and re-opens the slave trade. Saint-Domingue is not specifically mentioned in the decree but the re-opening, alongside finding out about Napoleon’s secret instructions regarding Toussaint, just confirmed the fears of black colonial subjects and sparked the most violent phase of independence. Saint-Domingue rebels against France again when Toussaint dies in prison (due to severe neglect). Yellow fever decimates the French forces and a racial war is waged against all sides in 1803. She softly mentions that maybe what happened to the white people in Haiti during this time was a genocide, some academics say it is but she doesn’t necessarily support that hypothesis (nor does she oppose it).

Now we get into Dessalines, I was worried he wouldn’t be mentioned which is a silly thought since you cannot talk about Haiti without talking about him. He was Toussaint’s successor although Toussaint distrusted him. He turns on French allies after they renege on abolition and he leads the black army to victory (there were atrocities on both sides and a lot of extermination rhetoric). The Haitian flag was created, it removes the white of the French flag and keeps the red and blue which represented unity of Haiti’s mixed-race and black populations. On January 1, 1804, Napoleon is thwarted by Dessaline’s forces and an independent Haiti is founded, the name comes from the Taino-Arawak. Although Haiti was able to get independence, its Caribbean neighbours were not so lucky. She then makes a comparison to Napoleon as Dessalines went from a victorious general to an emperor. Is this comparison fair?

After Haiti’s victory Napoleon gives up on a North American empire and just sells Louisiana. Because of this embarrassing loss, France demands “indemnity” from Haiti is exchange for recognition. In 1825, two decades of extortion, Haiti agrees to pay. More like forced to pay reparations to the loser, they had to borrow interest payments from French banks which pretty much amounts to ransom, Haiti is also unable to declare bankruptcy either. The liberty bond is considered the greatest heist in history ass Haiti was forced to borrow 30 million Francs from France Banks to make its first payment on a 150 million indemnity. This is just a cycle of debt bondage as Haiti’s “draconian” taxes were used to pay off interest instead of being invested in education, healthcare, and infrastructure in its first 150 years of independence. The Citadelle was built to protect the island from any future French invasions and it reflects the “precarity of existence” and the military origin of Haiti.

This debt is still an issue to this day and she shows us a Haitian bumper sticker that demands restitution for the debt. In 2003 Haiti was the first country to demand reparations; France rejects this but acknowledges the “moral” debt but not “material.” This rejection was supported by the USA, which makes sense because if it supported France paying reparations that would mean the US would also have to ope their own can of worms. In spring 2022 the New Yorks Times did a piece on “Haiti’s lost Billions.” Taubira Law, brought in 2001, had France formally acknowledge the slave trade as a crime against humanity. The law requires slavery as a topic in the school curriculum and established Slavery Remembrance Day.

Although my work placement was completed, the course itself was not and I had to do a presentation on my time a the agency I was assigned to and what the projects we had to do were. I cannot detail much of what I said I did make some mild, minor, jokes poking fun at my lack of public speaking skills. When I was finished a student told me I needed to give myself more credit considering at the beginning of the semester I absolutely refused to even answer a question, now I am doing a presentation.

My professor tried to courage others to ask my questions so I wasn’t let off the hook but nobody did, so I jokingly said “I think they’re letting me off the hook.” When I went to sit down my professor did ask me what challenges I would face if I was conducting an oral history of the town I researched. I said my main problem would be the lack of sources since most of the people involved are dead, and I also do not want to get jumped (the people of that town tried really hard to bury their communist past). After everyone was done with their presentations my professor asked me if I would be willing to send him my project write up as he was very interested in it.

So that’s the end of classes for semester 6 but I have one more post left as some weird stuff happened the day of my final exams. Yes, I had two finals back to back.

April 2nd 2025,

Canadian History was our last discussion, the sources were about the Meech Lake Accord. When I handed in my write up I apologized to my professor as I still found it impossible to do a one page summary, mine tend to be at least 2. One of the sources was over 70 pages long, I didn’t know how to keep the summary short enough to fit within a single page alongside summaries of the other sources. Yes, all sources read have to be summarized to fit one page together. Hope that makes sense. I am sure you can tell from the way that I write that keeping my assignments short is not something I am good at, I am a certified yapper.

For French Revolution we took a break from Haiti to learn about Napoleon as he was a problem for Haiti. So first we began with the “Bloodless Coup” of the 18th Brumaire which kickstarts the Napoleonic era. Sieyès is the mastermind behind the coup to take over the Directory, and he needed Napoleon to be his sword as he had many military victories in Italy. The coup creates a 3-consul executive (like Ancient Rome) before Napoleon takes over as first consul, to consul for life, to Emperor. he was appealing in that he promised to complete the revolution and preserve the legacies of the liberal phase. Napoleon crowns himself Emperor of the French, which my professor called paradoxical as it combines the old title with a new relationship towards subjects.

Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Corsica in 1769, a year after France took the island over as it was originally Italian. In his youth Napoleon resented France as a colonial power and dreamed of Corsican independence. But then he joined the military and was put on the up and up. She then showed us David’s painting “Napoleon Crossing the Alps” because it demonstrates “Napoleonic self-image” due to the victories taken in the Italian campaign, the painting is also an example of political myth-making (cult of personality).When Napoleon crowns himself an Josephine, he does so in front of the pope. He also claims he does not want to be descended from anyone, creating his own genealogy from “classical, Merovingian dynasty,” Charlemagne, and revolutionary symbols.

Napoleon was also portrayed as an Enlightened explorer. He went to Egypt as an Enlightenment project and “civilizing mission.” The Rosetta Stone was also found too. During his visit Napoleon visited plague victims in Jaffa, which showed his “fearlessness” and commitment to science. This glosses over the French fleet losses and Napoleon’s decision to abandon his troops to rush home for the coup.

Next was the Civil code which had equality before the law, freedom of speech, and religious tolerance. While it did protect rights, there were paradoxes: the government controlled the press but also said the free press was a good ally? Which is confusing. The code also replaced feudal regimes with a common civil law: civil equality before the law, “rule of law.” This was so influential that it is still the basis of many legal system to this day. It also established a national system of universal, secular education (for males).

Napoleon was also a pragmatist because he was willing to compromise revolutionary principles as a means to an end. He also gave nonpartisan pardons to most royalists and Jacobins as a way to co-opt potential enemies. Peace was made with Rome with the Concordat treaty which restores freedom of worship and state funding, this was all under the condition that the revolutionary lad settlement would remain untouched. Negotiations with England happened which resulted din a truce, aka the Peace of Amiens, which collapses in a year but did secure Napoleon’s reputation as a diplomat when it was still active. This is all well and good but Napoleon did violate revolutionary principles, his most notorious offence being his attempt to re-enslave Haiti.

We ended the lecture by looking at Napoleon’s letter to Toussaint, which instructed him to support the French expedition to “restore order.” The letter seemed nice so Toussaint trusted him, but in 1802 he was betrayed as France repeals the abolition of slavery throughout the empire and re-opens the slave trade. There was also Napoleon’s secret instruction that dictated the capture of Toussaint and the intent to restore slavery in Haiti. You see, if Napoleon didn’t try to bring back slavery I probably would not have as negative a view of him as I do. He is a very interesting figure but this part of his legacy is a huge stain that cannot be ignored. It’s just so so bad, especially the treatment of Toussaint when he is kidnapped, the man was neglected to death, but this will be detailed more in the next lecture.

There is nothing to say about Political Science as it was a preparation lecture to help us with the final. He gave us all the topics that would be covered and what specifically to study. The final is kind of brutal in that we had to write one short essay and three long essays. He also did not allow us to choose which essay topics to focus on and whichever was provided on the final would be a surprise, so we had to study A LOT. Which should not be a surprise for university but this class was a doozy.

By the way, my second midterm for this Polisci class? I got 94%

March 31st 2025,

Canadian History class was cancelled again so we had video lectures. A lot of it was pretty boring, in that I do not think it is relevant to write about here so I will try my best to only write the interesting bits. The first video lectures began with the Polar Sea incident where, soon after the Shamrock Summit, the US dispatched the Polar Sea from Greenland to Alaska without Canadian permission because the US straight up believed they did not need it. The Canadian public was obviously pissed at this disrespect but Mulroney was hesitant to do anything about it and was able to sweep it under the rug due to issues with the Free Trade Agreement, which was seen as more important than Arctic Sovereignty. Trudeau wanted to reduce reliance on the USA and pivot towards Europe, Japan, and South America. In the 1980s, Canada and the US had torturous negotiations over free trade, Reisman was the Canadian negotiator and Murphy was the American.

These negotiations were torturous because the Americans were impossible to talk to as they wanted to essentially exhaust the Canadians into accepting an unfair deal, Murphy wanted to “run out the string” because congress did not want the negotiations to end. This lasted 18 MONTHS! Instead of conceding to a bad deal, Reisman was instructed to walk away, he even called the US unserious which is hilarious. This strategy worked by showing the US in a bad light on the international stage, how could other countries expect a good deal if the US couldn’t even make one with its neighbour? So in 1987 a good agreement was made; US markets would be open to Canadian goods while the US couldn’t even show off that negotiating with them is possible and should be done.

When Mulroney wins in 1988 he immediately passes the Free Trade Treaty, but this was not a public victory as majority of the population voted for parties that were anti-Free Trade. Mulroney, a conservative, was opposite to John A. MacDonald as he saw the US as the best part of North America. That is so embarrassing for a sovereign nation’s leader to think. But is Canada truly sovereign? Don’t ask my Polisci professors. Mexico would join in on negotiations and NAFTA would be finalized in 1992. Funnily enough, NAFTA may have contributed to the loss of Bush to Clinton in 1992 and the Canadian Conservatives to the Liberals in 1993. Do you have any opinions on NAFTA, I remember it being incredibly hyped up in my Social Studies classes when I was growing up.

The last lectures were about the Meech Lake Accord and Charlottetown Accord. This was a lot, but the main goal of both was to bring Quebec into the constitution. The failure of these two accords was Mulroney’s biggest regret. The Meech Lake Accord wass never passed because Elijah Harper of Manitoba held up the vote, allowing it to expire, because the Accord failed to mention anything regarding Indigenous people. It did see Quebec as a distinct Society, but what about the Indigenous? Elijah Harper has been brought up quite a bit recently due to the rise in Alberta separatism. Meech Lake was done without public discussion but Charlottetown was, although this still wasn’t enough to get it to pass as the people were not willing to accept any new constitutional structure. My question is, how educated was the Canadian public on the constitution? How educated are current day Canadians? Probably not much considering there are actual university classes (I have seen them when enrolling in courses) all about studying it.

French Revolution started with the Bois Caiman Ceremony, which happened mid-August of 1791, and kickstarted the Haitian revolution when a group of slaves met in secret to make sacrifice and pray for liberation. This is where voodoo is developed. Boukman Dutty, a former slave and voodoo priest, makes a prayer where he states that the God of whites asks for crimes while theirs desires blessings. France sends troops to “restore order” and planter’s property rights. Britain and Spain jump at the opportunity to take Haiti for themselves, trying to win over rebel slaves. There was a 40 day burning of the Capital.

Toussaint-Louverture (spelling?) was a political genius, Enlightenment man, a skilled general, and saw himself as French. He was a former slave that adopted the last name which meant “the way forward” or “the opening.” He was the most active and indefatigable man, with great sobriety, never reposing. He had influence over the masses that borderline lead to fanaticism in his “subordinates.” Some French thinkers had criticized slavery as incompatible with natural rights, they were morally against it but the National Assembly was torn between the principle and pragmatic concerns (losing profits, alienating planters lobbies). After three years of war, the French government (under Robespierre) emancipates the slaves through empire, being the first of its peers to end slavery. Britain did not ban the trade until 1807, colonial slavery didn’t end until 1833, and the US did not abolish slavery until 1865.

That decision was not done because of altruism, it was a mixture of the principle and cynical calculation. They wanted to honour the universality of the DRMC and were pressured to conceded by rebel slaves’ demands in order to prevent a worse outcome: like falling into British rule or royalist hands. After the Terror, there was a purge of suspected terrorists: the Paris Jacobin club was shut down and there were show trials for a handful of Robespierre loyalist. Napoleon was briefly imprisoned for writing pro-Jacobin pamphlets but this did not amount to much. The Thermidorian Convention tolerates, but reins in, White Terror like with the Jeanesse dorée who were elegantly dressed young men who attacked the sans-culottes. The tasks of the Thermidorian was to write a new constitution that protects against “anarchy” but maintains the revolution’s gains against royalists/despots.

The Directory was tasked with ending the revolution and restoring stability as politics veered between threats: full on counter revolution waged by royalists, populist radicalism (the poor were seen as violent and not ready for political rights), and an overpowered executive. The Directory was gridlocked, there was a lot of corruption and inflation PLUS the collapse of the currency all led to growing inequality. Because of that some of the poor (especially women) lost faith in the revolution and returned to the safety net of Catholicism. Others, like Babeuf, would call for a radical social revolution.

This next lecture for Political Science is the last one of the semester and it is about a topic my professor was excited for: hallyu, aka the Korean Wave. First he defined some terms very briefly: neoliberalism is when there is a small government that does not intervene in the market; developmentalism has stronf government intervention; hallyu is a combination of both. Hallyu actually begins in France and proceeds to spread to the rest of the west. He then went over the history of pop culture, which starts with Pop Art in 1956, created by Richard Hamilton. This was a form of art that could be commercialized and expanded to film and other cultural industries. It combines art and consumerism.

The “Pop” in pop-culture means to suddenly appear, it is spontaneous and has mass acceptance. This pop phenomenon also sees the emergence of fandom and public participation (first time I have ever heard the word “fandom” be uttered in class). He then talks about the aesthetic inclusion and hybridity in pop-culture. Two examples given were of techno west German music mixed with US and Kung Fu movies; the other example is anti-war films existing while war movies are propped up by the US government.

Hallyu 1.0 happened from 1997-2007. This initial wave was mostly about music, like Rough Guide, and k-drama but they were all regional successes. So they did not make it out of Asia. Hallyu 1.0 showed off the ability of SK producers adapting western products for an eastern audience, since modernization was equated with the west. Hallyu 2.0 has been happening since 2008 and is a global phenomenon that integrates many cultural elements from Korea and others (specifically Black American culture). There are so many fandoms related to Korean pop-culture, some are so big that they affect politics like with BTS fans messing with Trump’s convention. Capitalism is a key element in Hallyu so my professor went on to define “cultural capitalism,” which is the aestheticization of capitalism and the marketing of differences (diversity over homogeneity). Hallyu is a form of soft power, he also used the term “sweet power” due to the popularity of romance k-dramas.

March 28th 2025,

We are reaching the end of the semester!

My Canadian class was canceled so there were video lectures again. A lot of it had to do with referendums, I will try to make this interesting but don’t hold your breath, feel free to skip through. In 1980 the Parti Quebecois (nationalist party in Quebec) announced a sovereignty association referendum, Quebec was to be recognized as politically independent but economically association with the rest of Canada would be negotiated. Trudeau wanted to move forward with the charter that gave language rights and widening guarantees, but Quebec wanted to discuss the division of powers first and then everything else could come after. Ryan, a liberal and Quebec nationalist, wanted decentralized powers but needed the charismatic Trudeau on his side. Trudeau proposed New Federalism but did not clarify what this even meant.

The 1981 Federal provincial Conference, some provinces were wavering in their resolve against the Federal strategy paper which argued that if the premiers were bad then the Prime Minister could move forward with whatever. This was a challenge to regionalism, and while New Brunswick and Ontario approved, the “Gang of Eight” did not. But like I said, members of the gang were wavering in standing against this. Lévesque of Quebec wanted the negotiations to fail but Trudeau was able to turn the other seven members against Lévesque. Quebec saw this as a huge betrayal and it would be called the “night of the long knives.” I don’t know what else to tell you regarding that name choice. Anyway, Trudeau’s legacy was recapped but none of his issues with Indigenous people was brought up. At all.

The last of the video lectures was about the Shamrock Summit of 1985, where Ronald Reagan was invited to Quebec City for St. Patrick’s day. Apparently this was a huge embarrassment as the new Prime Minister, Mulroney, did a lot of stupid shit in public like awkwardly singing karaoke. During this time Mulroney discussed some important issues with Reagan: the environment and defense. Acid rain was a huge concern for Canadians and if the US wanted to continue with this relationship the there needed to be some give regarding factory pollution, so a task force was created and it found great success. Apparently Mulroney had to be very careful when explaining the concept of acid rain and its distribution to Reagan as he was clueless to this and could take offence to be blamed for environmental destruction.

There were also concerns over the DEW (Defense Early Warning) Line on the tip of the north, systems put in place for NORAD needed refurbishing. Mulroney wanted Canada to be a good ally for the US. The Strategic Defense Initiative was fought up, where Reagan upped the stales during the Cold War by introducing “Star Wars,” which was a way to shoot down incoming weapons, this would be done from space. Mulroney was cautious as Canadians did not like this plan at all. In the end Star Wars did not work and Mulroney kept Canada as an ally without having to share the costs of SDI.

Now we can get into Haiti for real. Saint-Domingue was the “jewel” of the French Empire as it produced lucrative goods like coffee, sugar, and rum. Demographically it consisted of 40,000 white residents which were separated into different categories: grand Blancs (large planters), colonial administrators, merchants, and petite blancs (poor whites). There were also 28,000 Free People Of Colour, which included mixed-race “mulattos” and “affranchi”/freed black people like Toussaint-L’Ouverture. Many mixed-race residents wanted equal social and political rights with whites but not an end to enslavement of black people that were below them (racialized hierarchy, some Free People of Colour owned slaves). The largest demographic was, of course, black slaves who made up 500,000 of the population. Around 100,000 were domestic slaves while the rest were field slaves who were often worked to death.

1790, was i a milestone for liberty or maximum level exploitation? Well, there were actually more slaves imported into Saint-Domingue from 1785-1790, than to North America and the British Caribbean combined. The largest number of slaves shipped in a single year were done so underneath the French flag. A total of 54,403 slaves, 161 voyages, were taken in 1790 by the French. We shod us a website that visualized the amount of ships that were carrying slaves in every year. Each ship was colour-coded to show which country they were from and during those years stated before, most of the dots were blue (French). She then covered the slave economy, where it was. more “lucrative” to work a slave to death than to allow them to reproduce because they would get “replacements” from Africa. All of this would lead to a rebellion because people had already known freedom before being kidnapped and due to the fact that they were going to die anyway, why not die trying.

We ended the lecture with the “Le Code Noir,” which is what governed the colonies. It dictated that l slaves must be instructed in Catholicism, Lavern was passed down through the mother, slaves had no rights (beaten and killed with impunity, but owners were “encouraged” to take care of the old and sick), and they were banned from holding property or learning to read. She gave us an ate from the Governor of Martinique who states that “the safety of whites demands that we keep the (slur) in the most profound ignorance.”

I had no more work placement classes as our supervisor wanted us to have time to finish up our school assignments and he did not have much else to tell us regarding the agency.

March 26th 2025,

Class started with my professor talking about democracy, this did not have anything to so with the lecture material and more so him making conversation before getting into it. He asked the class which countries did not have democracy and these were the exact answers the students gave: the DPRK, China, and Russia. I wanted to end it all right then and there, how predictable do you have to be? It was like I was unfounded by a bunch of robots programmed on propaganda, they always give the same answers. My professor then brought up how Namibia is newly democratic, and 98% of the voting age population participated in the first election while our turnout is incredibly low. I have no opinions on Namibia regarding this (as a Marxist I obviously support their liberation from oppressive orcas, especially since they faced genocide from the Germans and colonialism).

He then talked about elections and politics, how his most important issue is “the future” of where the country is going and what it is going to look like. He then reminisced about how our politicians back in the day used to get along with each other. MPs used to fight on the political stage but would still be buds separate from that. He wants people to converse about politics again rather than argue. Maybe I am too young and fiery for this but I don’t believe I can make nice with reactionaries. I will try not to have a blow up argument, and I have done well with that so far since my yelling match with my Zionist great aunt (the last “fight” I had was with my aunty who went on a transphobic rant unprovoked, if you want details just let me know, but I did not lose my temper). Maybe I am being dramatic, which seems like a genetic trait honestly, but this conversation did not land well with me.

The lecture started with the Official Languages Act which dictated that people could receive government services in both French and English. This was a strategic move to deal with the Quebec issue. Trudeau focuses on the entire country, to have Francophones everywhere see Canada as their home and to take away the “spokesperson” role away from Quebec. In 1971 Trudeau and the premiers discuss the constitution, first they had the Victoria Charter which had a constitutionally entrenched Bill of Rights. This BoR guaranteed civil liberties, linguistics rights, and etc. The Victoria Charter also provided an amendment for dealing with constitutional issues by giving Quebec veto power, all regions that held 25% of the population would also receive the veto which means Ontario, the Prairies, and the Maritimes. Modifications to the divisions of power would be made as well, increasing provincial social policy power. This Charter was rejected by Quebec.

In the 70s economic problems were more important than constitutional matters as some parts of Canada were not benefiting from economic policies. Newfoundland had a per capita income of 51%. So the government came up with the Growth Pull Concept, which is when economic growth begins in certain places and then grows outwards to encapsulate others. The way it was explained implied that there would be deliberate promotion of economic growth in lower areas so development would hopefully expand. The issue was from 1969-72, 80% of money. Went to Eastern Canada while the other provinces were still hurting. OPEC also had ripple effects as there was disagreements between Alberta (ew) and the feds. Because of these disagreements Trudeau tries to appease the West. By 1972 Trudeau-Mania has diluted. The WEOC reshaped the economic policy to give a fairer distribution of income, western diversification comes out of it. The result is that the West is alienated from Ottawa, resentment grows and boils over in 1979 where Joe Clark won as the youngest PM at the time. So now the Liberals los their win streak.

French Revolution class continued from last time with talking about women and ends by introducing Haiti. The Rolands were a Girondin power couple until they were purged by the Jacobins. Marie-Jeanne de Roland (Madame de Roland) was a revolutionary salonnière and advisor/speechwriter for her husband, Jean-Marie Roland who was minster of the interior. They were pt to death, a sentence handed down by the revolutionary tribunal. In her memoir Marie writes about how saddened she is that the Republic she supported is killing her.

Next we moved on to the Jacobins cracking down on women’s political clubs. The Terror went after women’s revolutionary societies and club, this was an attack on all “public women” and was done for the sake of stability. Women must return to the private sphere where they “naturally” belong. She then showed us three quotes, one from Fabre d’Eglantine, Amar, and Chaumette. So was the revolution good for women? It depends on which women being talked about, at what point in the revolution, and how one defines progress. There were social and cultural gains such as the right to divorce, equal inheritance rights, and the end to censorship (women writers are more explicitly common and now have cultural sway). There was also political marginalization as women were denied suffrage and “escitable” women were seen as a threat to the revolution. Does this make sense? Not to me, but that was the thought process.

We ended class by introducing Haiti’s “birth pangs.” There were certain aspects that were unique to the Haitian revolution, it had a lave rebellion (the largest successful one) and a civil war, which was waged between rival factions of mixed race and black people with a different view on what Post-revolution politics/economy would look like. The revolution spiralled into an anti-colonial war of independence thanks to Napoleon. The revolution used “humans rights” and “rights of man” talk to help legitimize their grievances, as was used by Toussaint L’Ouverture where he talks about undertaking vengeance, wanting liberty and equality for the Public Good.

Now we can get to Political Science which was about the DPRK’s nuclear problem, or rather their nukes and the West’s problem with that. Before the lecture started my professor states that if the Ukraine war ends then the next issue will be the DPRK’s nukes. He also went over the 3 explanations for behaviour: rational choice, sociological, and institutional/structural. The lecture began with introducing the nuclear powers, there are only 5 recognized: China, Russia, France, UK, and USA. The unofficial nuclear powers are India, Pakistan, Israel, and the DPRK. The DPRK has around 32-60 warheads and is the only country doing nuclear tests since the new millennia started. Possession of nukes requires supply and demand and there are four strategies to acquiring nukes: hedging, which is developing nuclear capabilities without real commitment; sprinting, which is to develop nukes quickly in response to a security threat; hiding, to secretly. Pursue nukes while denying intention publicly; sheltered pursuits, to develop nukes under the protection and support from a superpower.

Next we looked at the concept of national identity and why people get the DPRK so wrong (linked to Bruce Cummings). One of the reasons is due to the lack of interconnections between the DPRK’s domestic and foreign policy, the other reason is because of the limits of deterrence: rational choice dictates that rational actors calculate actions independently while deterrence means nukes are used to deter war, its to secure a balance of power, but the DPRK is considered a rogue state. Nukes and national identity are closely linked. Domestic and international perception can influence leader’s policy decision-making, regarding nukes it shows pride and legitimacy, among other things. Nukes are more than military, they symbolize autonomy and independence. In the DPRK these weapons combines Juche ideology and the state with leadership (often with a personality cult). At the end of the lecture he talks about Trumps statement in 2016/2017 where he recognized (unofficially) the DPRK as a nuclear power. I do not know what Trump meant by that, if he was playing the long on, but to me it just came across as clumsy wording. As in anyone who has nukes is a “nuclear power.” But maybe he did mean it in the Political Science way!

March 24th 2025,

Canadian History was cancelled for today but I did have online lectures that are relevant. The first video lecture was about Pierre Trudeau. He was described as an intellect, journalist, and law professor. The liberals needed a Quebec leader and Trudeau was the best candidate for the job. When he was justice minister, Trudeau took homosexuality out of the criminal code, claiming the state had no business being in people’s bedrooms, and provided access to abortion. He would win leadership by 51% and this win could be attributed to TV as he was good at bing in front of a camera. He was popular with a small group of journalists and Canadians wanted their own version of JFK, I guess Trudeau was that. He didn’t kiss babies, he kissed their mothers and slid down banisters. Trudeau-mania was rampant and helped him get to the top of the leadership list. As leader he calls an election in 1968 which boost support for the Liberals and overwhelms the Conservatives. He also attacked the NDP for their “two nation approach” and challenged Quebec’s international interests.

During the St, Jean Baptiste day Parade students throw stones and bottles while Trudeau stands at the podium cursing out the separatists. Trudeau was very anti-Quebec nationalism. Because of this display English Canada likes him, so he wins the 1968 election by a landslide. His stance on Quebec was that it was different but not constitutionally. Quebec also did not speak for all French Canadians as there are Francophones living in other parts of the country. He prioritized French Canadians over Quebecois. Trudeau was seen as someone who put Quebec in its place, which is in Canada. This is a harsh statement, to put it mildly.

The next video was about the FLQ crisis which happened in 1970. The FLQ were the Front For the Liberation of Quebec and they would kidnap a British diplomat named Cross and a Quebec cabinet minister named Laporte. Cross was kidnapped first and the FLQs demands for release were to end all police searches, publish their manifesto, rehire Lapalme employees, liberate political prisoners, denounce the informer who led police to capture an FLQ cell, $500,000 in gold, and safe passage out of the country to Cuba. There were around 1000 raids conducted by police, but early on the FLQ were not seen as that big of a deal. When Laporte was kidnapped the military was sent in. This was also when the War Measures Act was passed by Trudeau. Soldiers were deployed, the press was censored, civil liberties suspended,and 500 people were arrested (62 indicted). Cross was released but Laporte would be murdered, his body found in the trunk of a Taxi. The captors were granted safe passage to Cuba. We were then shown that famous video of when Trudeau was confronted by the press over this situation. To me it seemed like he did not want to give the FLQ attention and brushed off the journalists’ concerns about the WMA as they saw “men with guns” as scary. This showed the paradox of how the libertarian (my professor’s words, not mine) Trudeau could launch massive repression, yet the public agreed with this decision anyone, the highest support came from Quebec.

The last video was about the Summit Series of 1972. Maybe stick around for this because it has to do with the USSR. During this time the Soviet Union was impressed with Trudeau’s rhetoric as they perceived it as making Canada more independent from the US. Because of this Trudeau was invited to Moscow. They believed they could find common ground with Trudeau due to the dangers of US influence and having a shared northern experience, although they knew Trudeau was still a bourgeoisie politician he was still better than other NATO leaders. Kosygin was then invited to Ottawa where he and Trudeau conceived of a Hockey game to strengthen relations as sports were used for that. This would also help with Canadian national unity if they won.

So this summit consisted of eight games, four in Canada and four in the USSR. It also allowed professional NHL players to participate, which never happens in international sports I guess, and would be a chance for the USSR to show that Communism was good, and the Canadians saw it as a way for the heroic capitalists to defeat the evil Commies. I am not joking. These games seemed like a nightmare because, when they went to Moscow, players went crazy. One of the Canadians knew one of the Soviets had a weak ankle so he would deliberately smack the hell out of him to take him out of the game. The Soviets employed “psychological warfare” (his words not mine) on the Canadians by harassing them at night in their hotel rooms. Huge brawls broke out, but in the end Paul Henderson would score the winning goal (the goal heard around the world is what my professor said), it was a narrow win at 4-3, I believe. The reason why we were even lectured on this is because my professor had a previous student who talked about how sports games could be very political and used this summit series as his example, I guess he wrote a paper on it too. I can only hope that my paper on fascism in Canada educates him just as much.

In French Revolution class we started by answering the question “was the revolution good for women?” First of all, this is just a bad research question because we don’t know what “good” means in this context and there are women who were affected differently. Women in France did not get the vote until after WWII, but during the revolution women exercised a lot of influence at key junctures across the political spectrum like the women’s march on Versailles. Sans-Culottes Women, like their male counterparts, supported the Terror and some would even cheer the loudest at the foot of the guillotine, these women were called Les Tricoteuses (bloodthirsty knitters). Working women were also the group that drew attention to food shortages during the revolution and would call for a “social republic” (welfare state).

We then learned about some feminist figures, the first was Olympe de Gouges who is described as a proto-feminist since the term did not exist back then. She was also an abolitionist and the self-educated daughter of a butcher. Gouges authored the Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Citizens, which reflected what was said in the DRMC to demand equal rights for women based on reason. She revered Rousseau’s notion of a social contract but she obviously rejected his gender politics which limited women to the private sphere. She proposed her own social contract that would exist between an equal husband and wife.

From 1793 onwards, as the Terror is developing, there is backlash against the public woman as she is unnatural. The highest profile target of this ire is Marie-Antoinette. She was the quintessential counter-revolutionary: she was foreign, lived in luxury, was seen as promiscuous and a bad mother. During her trial she was not tried for counter-revolutionary treason like Louis, which she was most defiantly guilty of, but she was tried for “sexually corrupting” her own son. There was no evidence for this. Pamphlet pornography also made an appearance during the trial to showcase how much of a sexual deviant she was. These pamphlets did not tell the truth but that didn’t really matter.

The last woman that was talked about today was Charlotte Corday, also known as the “friend of the people.” She assassinated the journalist Marat as she blamed his bloodthirsty rhetoric for the purges. In a letter she called Marat as “a wild beast who was about to devour France with Fire of Civil War.” Before the revolutionary tribunal, she excused the murder as killing one man to save 100,000. My professor then brought up how in 2023 the French government blocked the sale of Corday’s 1793 defence of her actions. In truly of 1793 she was executed and this left a weird legacy as she would either be portrayed as a virtuous martyr or a hysterical enemy of the people. Gouges’ words were used here to highlight the tragic irony: “women have the right to mount the scaffold: they must likewise have the right to mount the rostrum.”

Political Science was not my favourite lecture, this has nothing to do with my professor and more so the topic which was about aging society in Japan. The WHO divides society into groups: 65 and over being 7% of the population means the society is aging; 14% means the society is aged; 21% is a super aged society. Japan is the world’s first super aged society. This means that the elderly are also overrepresented in politics. This is due to the fact that voter turnout of older people is higher than the young and the rural vote counts 2, 3, or even 6 times more than the urban vote. Theres hereditary things going on too, which I didn’t really understand. I think it is similar to the idea of the revolving door of politics. I am skipping a bit of my notes to get to more interesting bits, that being the Dankai generation. This is the generation born between 1947-49 and make up around 6% of the current population. These people are anti-American, anti-war, anti-nuclear, pro-Chinese (3rd wave movement), pro-Korea (guilt and sympathy over colonization), anti-alliance (no friendship with the US), and anti-imperialism. So all in all they are relatively progressive and are common good oriented. Class went on fora bit more but nothing worth writing here about.

March 21st 2025,

We are closely reaching the end of the semester, just two more weeks and its all over. Look forward to the last few posts as things get weird. Let’s get into today.

For Canadian history we start with Pearson’s government, he takes office in 1963 but has issues with Quebec. If you recall from before, Diefenbaker and JFK did not get along, my professor claimed that this was also an age thing as JFK was young and attractive while Dief was not, but unlike Dief Pearson and JFK did get along but Lyndon B. Johnson would be a problem. My professor then showed us the differences between LBJ and Pearson with photos from a visit. Pearson was invited to LBJ’s ranch and proceeded to wear a suit while LBJ looked more like a cowboy, this event apparently set the tone for their relationship going forward. It seems clothing can be political. As a diplomat, Pearson gives a speech on Vietnam, advocating for diplomacy over bombs, this would cause LBJ to physically assault Pearson. My professor called LBJ a bully when it came to the Vietnam war. This horrible relationship would affect Pearson’s dealings with domestic issues.

During this time Quebec was going through its Quiet Revolution. Quebec was modernizing and moving away from traditionalism after Duplessis’ death. This was a period of intense change with large scale rejection of past values, secularism was preferred and traditionalism was replaced with more liberal values. There was a decrease in young marriages and birth rates. Politically the Union Nationale was defeated and Jean Lesage became premier, with Leveque as the minister of Natural Resources. Electric companies were nationalized (would become hydro Quebec) which created the exporting of energy to the US and inspired French Canadian enterprises. The Quebec pension plan was also created and Caisse de depot is powerful as well.

He brought up this phrase “Maitres Chez Nous” which means “Masters in our own home” and was a phrase the Liberals ran with. Before, French Canadians made way less compared o their Anglo counterparts. Quebec saw education reform as well, giving the government control over it rather than the Catholic Church. This new education system placed emphasis on STEM and commercial disciplines, although the humanities were still present. Now skilled professionals can compete. Unfortunately, this was seen as a problem for Pearson as he was scared of Quebec nationalism. Because he does not trust his own judgement on Quebec, Pearson gets the 3 wisemen in to deal with it. These were Pelletier, Trudeau, and Marchand.

In 1967 there was a big world even called EXPO 67, aka the Word Exhibition or World’s Fair. This event was important as it was during Canada’s 100 year birthday and it was the host nation. Pearson was skeptical of hosting as he feared disaster, but in the end the Expo village as a success. It was an international success until Charles de Gaulle arrives. So this guy was the president of France and was a big problem because, at the time, France was egging on Quebec nationalism, shunning Canadian representatives and treating Quebec as its own state, apparently France was even funding separatists. When Governor General Vanier died France sent a 3rd rank diplomat to the funeral, a disrespectful move I guess, and Vanier’s wife would summon the French Ambassador and gave them a message: “1940.”

When de Gaulle arrives Canada is at its breaking point. De Gaulle accepts his invitation from Quebec and lads by ship to get to Montreal right away. When there he gives a speech. We watched it and the gist of it was: “Vive Montreal, Vive Quebec, Vive French Canadians, and Vive France.” It was said that all hell broke loose, but in the video all the happened was loud cheering. This speech pissed Pearson off as he was offended that Canada would e compared to Nazi Germany, Canadians did not need liberation. French ministers question de Gaulle’s sanity, freaking out over his improper behaviour towards an ally, while French Canadians believed Anglos were overreacting. I agree.

Next is French Revolution which details the Thermidorian coup and the death of Robespierre. In late July of 1794, a sickly Robespierre overplays his hand and makes a, what she calls “very creepy,” speech stating: “I conclude that there exists a conspiracy against public liberty; that it draws its strength from a minimal coalition which is plotting in the very heart of the Convention...” Terror comes to a stop the next day with the 9 Thermidor coup d’état (27 July 1794). Paranoia spreads as people are scared of who will be targeted next, deputies stand against Robespierre. The coup ends with the arrest of Robespierre in the CPS boardroom after he attempts suicide. She then shows us a painting of Robespierre dying on a table.

The Thermidorian reaction ended the reign of Terror but now the problem lies in whether the revolution will also come to an end. She then goes over the rights that emerged during the liberal and radical phase of the revolution: citizenship for French Jews, voting rights extended to all men except the unemployed/servants, and emancipation of slaves. Notice how there is no women’s emancipation. This then led to discussing backlash against public women, which I have already talked about regarding the Salonnière, who Rousseau called “political prostitutes.” My professor then showed us the cover of Rousseau’s Emile and how weird it is. While most philosophes were not great when it came to women, Condorcet was an outlier. He was one of the few big-name thinkers who was alive during the revolution and applied the idea of natural rights towards women. He blamed women’s lack of education, rather than themselves, as the reason why they were incapable for full citizenship. So if you give them the education that boys are afforded then they will show how good of citizens they are. This was a fringe opinion at the time but it did kickstarted debates. He also really loved his wife and saw her as his equal.

As always, there is no Polisci on Friday so I left to go to my work placement. Today was a special day as I had to present my draft for my sign. Just as a vague recap the topic I chose to highlight on my sign was about a communist town that was elected. Everyone else went before me and I was nervous. Finally I had to present, while everyone else gave some sort of narrative before reading off their proposed writing, I did not have anything because my topic was not local. It’s in the same province but not the same town. So while everyone else could actually go to their location and take some photos, I could not. Plus they all had buildings while mine was an event so that made things harder for me. So I just gave them that little disclaimer and went right into my words. I wish I could share it but I do not think I can until my project gets approved, if it ever does.

When I was finished reading everyone was very impressed, and I was shocked! My supervisor just said it was perfect and he had no notes for me. I was readying myself for a critique and what to improve but there was nothing. He said it was perfect because it began with background information that spurred on the event itself (a very big strike that unfortunately ended in failure), used a personal account that grounded the event (i referenced an older woman that was foreign, this showed worker solidarity that transcended ethnic divides), used funny and interesting examples of what the town did to help its citizens and target the rich, and properly transitioned into the conclusion where I talked about why the event is important to the town and province as a whole.

I then went over my proposed location for the sign and the images I think could work. I expressed my difficulties in finding the photos but chose some and gave the sources of where they came from. The location was also difficult since my project is not based on a single building or small location, it included the entire town, so during my research I found historical tours of the town and used their tour map to figure out a symbolic spot for my sign. I took a screenshot of the Google street view location and showed my supervisor and fellow students where exactly that spot is on the tour map. I chose a location that is near the entrance of the town and at the start of the tour, this would give a great introduction to how revolutionary this town once was and gives context to the historic sights that can be seen. They all enjoyed my presentation and I was really happy that it went so well. After that we all went home.

March 19th 2025,

For Canadian History we had to rewind time a bit back to 1945. There was a conference called to discuss the oncoming peacetime economy because everyone was scared of another depression. The Green Book proposed comprehensive national programs to help during economic downturn. Provinces would get grants from the treasury to make up for any lost revenue of them pulling out of the provincial income tax. Have-not provinces were in favour of this, Tommy Douglas was disappointed due to the per capita basis of the new programs rather than them being fiscally based. Duplessis of Quebec was concerned over autonomy. In the end talks collapse. Throughout the 60s a bunch of legislation was passed, here’s a list of them as thats how they were spoken about in class: old age security and old age assistance (1951), hospital insurance and diagnostic (1957), Canadian Pension Plan (1965), Medicare (1966), Guaranteed income supplement (1966), and Canada Assistance Act (1966). It was emphasized that this was not some great socialist design, but it was a way to try and take the stigma away from relief.

Then he talked about Tommy Douglas, if you know who he is let me know what you think. In 1947 Saskatchewan, the hospital insurance act was passed. It was compulsory and popular but expensive. BC would jump on board under W. A. C Bennett, who championed it at the national level to relive pressure on the province. Liberal Ottawa drags its feet until 1957 because a guy named Frost (Ontario premier) gets on board. Actually 9 out of 10 premiers pushed for national healthcare. A guy named Paul Martin threatened to leave the cabinet if the Liberals did not get behind , so the Hospital insurance and diagnostics services act (or whatever) was passed. This meant costs between the provinces and federal government would be shared 50-50. Hospital care is covered (not for mental health facilities, long-term nursing homes, or tuberculosis sanatoriums) and would be available to all citizens, but there were still regional disparities since there were more doctors in Ontario, BC, and Alberta (income was higher); the dental gaps were even bigger. Private insurance would cover pharmacies, mental health, etc.

In 1961 Diefenbaker stablished the royal commission on health services; in 1962 Saskatchewan pushes through Medicare, but when they did a bunch of doctors went on strike! In 1966 Pearson passes the act, there are disputes over costs but that doesn’t matter because it became law in 1968. Physicians wanted to keep fees and work in their own offices rather than in a medical service unit. I do not know. How to feel about this, my mediate knee jerk reaction was anger, but maybe they had good reasons for being against free healthcare? Maybe I just grew up with nationalized healthcare so I cannot fathom going without it and what the benefits are. Anyway, in 1970 all provinces sign on to cost sharing regarding healthcare. The 1979-80 time period is interesting as Joe Clark, the new PM, appoints Emmett Hall to report on the state of the health system. This was prompted due to fear over universality being in jeopardy because of doctor’s billing and hospital fees. In July 1980 the report was submitted to Trudeau Senior and it found that Canadians wanted universal healthcare to stay and user fees should be phased out as well as extra billing. The minister of health and welfare moves to bing in the Canadian Health Act, where the provinces get full payment as long as they get rid of extra billing, doctors would still work around this anyway. How? I do not know.

French Revolution class started with the new calendar. The main goal was to make time-keeping a public utility and to be as rational as possible. So time was measured the same way the metric system is used, in increments of 10 and 100. So the revolutionary clock was 10 hours a day, 100 minutes per hour. You can imagine that this did not land well with workers. We were then shown a clip from the movie Danton (1983), a Polish movie that was made during the “solidarity movement” era when the USSR was declining. It is very pro-Danton, someone who had a lot of issues according to my professor. Anyway, we were shown this because she was talking about how there were power struggles in the spring of 1794 between Robespierre and Danton.

The Great Terror (June-July 1794) was when Paris prisons were emptied of remaining suspects around the time Robespierre was planing his Festival of the Supreme Being. The verdict for these suspects was either acquittal or death, accused were denied the right to defence. The irony here (as she states) is that the supposed grounds for Terror (foreign and domestic threats) were already under control at this time, so when will the terrors state return to constitutional rule? Anyway, Festivals were used to reinforce the re-making of time and space,such ass with the Supreme being one mentioned. This festival was called Robespierre’s cult of civic virtue, it was to supplant Christianity and inculcate civic virtue. Because the Thermidorian thing is going to be discussed in our next class she told us that Lenin lived in perpetual fear of a Russian version. My thought was, he was right to feel that way considering he was nearly killed! But whatever. Let’s go to my next class.

For political science we focused on protests from Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang. So Hu Jintao was considered a relatively weak general secretary, Deng’s sudden journey sought to renovate the Chinese Political Economy. Zemin privatized state owned enterprises and state owed apartments, encouraging market activities. This had a negative effect on society and the people. Jintao tries to reduce accelerating marketization by introducing the new socialist countryside. This reduced the gap between the rural and urban spheres. The agriculture tax was abolished and healthcare was brought in. 1989 stability saw the outsourcing of surveillance systems; stronger courts and rule of law; growing trust in the courts, independence of court is limited if they challenge the party state. Growing trust meant people use the courts to wage demands, and the court can make decisions against party members (but not Xi Jinping). This also reduced the dictators dilemma.

When talking about the hegemony of the party-state my professor said that Marxists stated capitalism would collapse, but this did not happen so they were embarrassed and tried to figure out why, thus Gramsci came up with hegemony. Now we moved on to rightful resistance and looked at multiple protests. The first was a labour protest of SOE workers. Their grievances were about lost livelihood and desperation because privatization expelled workers and closed factories, meaning no pensions. First there were petitions and then it got disruptive, to the point where managers were kidnapped. Then we talked about Migrant worker protests which were against hukou “apartheid” (I put that in quotations, when hukou is mentioned in class it is legitimately referred to as a form of apartheid). Workers demanded unpaid/delayed wages and overtime alongside rights-based demands and strikes. Economic rights were granted and Chinese authority make arbitration more difficult. Peasants had an anti-tax protest during the reform era and the 90s. More revenue was going to the central government and thus the local governments would tax the peasants. Resistance would lead the abolition of the agriculture tax, which was apparently 2000 years old.

We ended the class with the middle class protests and the maybe emergence of state-society relations. The middle class protests failed to become a true social movement. The protesters consisted of property owners, similar to NIMBYs, and the protesters consisted themselves were value-driven. They had very well written pamphlets which showed off their knowledge and connections, aka Cultural Capital. Environmental protests were placed under his umbrella of “middle class protests”, these focused on green area protection, parks, and gentrification; peasants focused on brown issues like pollution. The state responds by placing responsibility on local governments. The state regulates society by rule by law, now protests are seen as routine (there were waves during Covid but they failed to reach the national level). Are protests shaping a new state-society relationship? Maybe, but it probably wont change the state. Will they face extreme repression from the state? Probably not. He ended the class by telling us to keep balance and be critical of western views on China.

March 17th 2025,

Today’s Canadian History lecture was kind of boring so I will try to blast through it. We began with the 1963 election where Pearson, the Liberal leader, won a minority government. This immediately pivots into the Gordon Commission, which was covered last time, which investigates foreign investment. Its major concern is over the US. The commission is named after Walter Gordon, who is the finance minister and was described ass being a nationalist. He came up with a budget that would give ownership to Canadians and also bring in a Take over Tax. This tax purports to give a 30% takeover of Canadian firms, which pisses off stock brokers. I know, riveting stuff. The president of the Montreal Stock Exchange declares that financial capitals hate Canada. So the business community hates the new proposed budget and Gordon. So Gordon is pretty much forced o withdraw the takeover tax and his credibility tanks.

If you know anything about Canadian politics then you will know there is a LOT of regional tension. This is present now and very present back then as well. Thus Pearson had to address this problem and his solution was through economics. This would be done thigh cooperative federalism, which means more social security to people but requires provincial approval and as such was a big issue in Ontario and Quebec. The Government also introduces a pension plan that is tied to thee rising cost of living, but Quebec is hostile to this and wanted to do their own pension (reminds me of the current Alberta Government wanting the same thing). The Canadian pension plan and Quebec one would be the same except Quebec invests its own money. Medicare was also introduced, providing universal coverage for necessary procedures.

In 1965 Pearson got another minority government and was not seen as a great leader. People were troubles by Dief holding onto the west while Pearson was losing support in Quebec, this was because of the Quiet Revolution. This was about the secularization of Quebec and was a social revolution after the death of a guy named Duplessis, he was a super conservative and had support from the fascists! There were also scandals that happened in 1964, they all had to do with Quebec members of the cabinet. They aren’t as crazy as you’d think but were a big deal at the time. One of the scandals had to do with a Montreal crime boss named Rivard and how his case was handled poorly.

Apparently the public at the time didn’t care, like me, but Dief was a good campaigner and ran with them, switching opinion polls. Because of the rise of television in politics Pearson was unable to adapt. He was also the PM that brought in the new flag which was incredibly controversial at the time, to the point that he was booed to hell when he revealed it. Many veterans fought under the old Union Jack Canadian flag, so having that changed felt like a jab. But Pearson, a diplomat, argued that the old flag was confusing to others who were oppressed by the British, the Union Jack symbolized subjugation and thus they projected their grievances onto Canadians. His example was Egyptians being distrustful of Canadians due to the flag.

Let’s move on to French Revolution class. We began by talking about the sans-culottes who were popular allies of the Jacobins and supporters of Terror. Enemies of liberty were former nobles and relatives who have not manifested attachment to the revolution. A student piped up and related this to the DPRK, parroting the belief that in North Korea entire families of dissidents are punished. Anyone who lacked a “certificate of patriotism” was also an enemy, then it was stated that the certificate of patriotism was done in China and Russia.

I do not know how true this is but I also don’t really care that much. I know in the USSR they’d give you commemorative pins if you did something cool, I am aware that the French certificate is most likely VERY different but I do not know what other comparison is being made here. Finally, emigres are also labeled as enemies, even if they returned in good faith. The guillotine was talked about as it was abused during the Terror, but not much was really said. Besides the guillotine, other forms of death were employed like drowning and shootings.

We ended the class by talking about the Levée en Masse and the Cultural Revolution. The Levée en masse was the first ever mass conscript “army of citizens.” This was done after initial losses faced in the revolutionary wars. The influx of patriotic oldies turned the course of the war and favoured the French. Military service was enshrined as a key civic responsibility and a source of civic virtue. This also saw the invention of the citizen-soldier and total war (zero sum battle of ideologies, citizens are fair game). The cultural revolution was done by politicizing daily life. This was done through the wearing of cockades (tri-colour), the Phrygian cap (I noticed that they are the same hats the Smurfs wear), the La Marseillaise song, and the re-ordering of time itself (year 1 is September 2 1792). That last one didn’t work out.

For political science I had my second midterm! This time I did not skip any of the fill in the blank answers and just gave it my best shot, I even went. Far as to explaining my thought process for half marks just in case. You will find out soon how well I did on that.

March 14th 2025,

Thankfully this post should be quite short.

For Canadian History we had our discussion. Because many in the class did not show up, my professor had us get into small groups to discuss the readings on Diefenbaker. I absolutely refused to do this, one of the reasons why is because the group I would’ve joined got too big. There was around six people and I was not going to add to that, I also do not like these kinds of activities so I just stayed in my chair and did my own thing. My professor did ask if I was going to join, I said no, he then put his hands in a praying motion and begged me to “please” do it but I still refused. Was it a dick move? Sure, but at the time I was just not ready to do this and I also do not feel comfortable with some of my classmates. Will I ever like my fellow students, no. Some? Yes, but probably not most and I need to get over myself, but what’s done is done.

French Revolution class gets into the republic and Robespierre! So both the flight to Varennes and the wars led to the creation of the first French Republic. Between August and September 1792 this happened. The republic was modelled on a fraternal bond between equal citizens, replacing the patriarchal hierarchy of the King over his subjects. This was based off the US and classical republics. The Jacobins would take control of the National Assembly by pushing their rials. They claim to embody Rousseau’s general will, any dissent was treated as treason. Neo-classical art would celebrate Rousseauian civic virtue, republicanism, and the separate spheres (public v. private). In January of 1793 the phrase “Vive la France” would be made after Louis XVI was guillotined.

Now we can get into the “incorruptible” Robespierre. He was the head of the Committee of Public Safety (CPS) and suspended the new 1793 democratic constitution “until peace,” this was done to deal with the national emergency. Thus the CPS rules by decree. My professor claimed that this move was ironic because Robespierre critiqued Sieyés’ citizen distinction (active v. passive), but now due t pressure from current events he switches his tune and is willing to suspend a truly democratic constitution outright. The Jacobins h a two-pronged approach to saving the republic: inculcate virtue in the citizenry and employing Terror. Civic virtue was inspire by the Greek and Roman republics, as in patriotic self sacrifice. They attempted to instil this civic virtue via cultural programs, conscription, patriotic oaths, and other things. They wanted to make passive citizens into active ones by “revolutionizing” daily life.

The Terror was used against enemies of the revolution. She then proceeded to show us a few quotes from Robespierre himself:

“I’d the mainspring of poplar government in peace time is virtue, amid revolution it is at the same time both virtue and terror: virtue without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is nothing but prompt, severe, inflexible justice…”

“Without, all the tyrant encircle you; within, all the friends of tyranny conspire… the first maxim of your policy ought to be to lead the people by reason and the people’s enemies by terror.”

The Terror was initially for the protection of the state during emergencies but would later be weaponized by the weak against authorities.

That’s where the lecture ended. I will say I have a bit of a weird perspective on Robespierre. I cannot bring myself to hate him. I really can’t, and I believe it is because everyone at my school consistently compares him to the Bolsheviks. Without fail they are always referenced to each other so I get oddly defensive when people attack him. And I do mean “attack” and not just critique. I know he wasn’t perfect and he had his issues, which will be detailed in a later lecture, but I still cannot hate him like the rest of my classmates. During these lecture the amount of times that some of the students would constantly pipe up with jokes and whatnot was just… a lot. Does this make any sense at all?

Anyway, after class I went to my work placement which we learned about designating historical sites and how to date buildings based on their features (like style of windowsills and whatnot). There is a lot that goes into this but I cannot say much as it is very specific, so I will just end the post now.

March 12th 2025,

Because Dief the Chief is allergic to decision making, the Cons got a minority government in 1962. It only lasted 9 months. There was a lack of defence policy, they cancelled Avro arrow production and brought US planes instead, the aerospace industry was decimated so a bunch of Canadian scientists moved to the US, and the arrow was designed to intercept Soviet bombers but since that wasn’t a threat anymore there was no point in the arrow. Bowmark missiles were adopted but this was bad timing due to the need for a nuclear payload, so now the issue of nuclear power has entered Canadian politics. This also intertwined with Diefenbaker’s anti-US sentiment while also being fondly with Eisenhower. But now Kennedy is the president and Dief hated him, which is hilarious to think about. I guess Kennedy wrote a memo of some kind that made it back to Dief which stated “what we want from Ottawa trip” and that was an issue since it reflected attitudes of American superiority.

With Kennedy comes the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. My professor said that the Soviets made a stupid decision by putting missiles in Cuba, he failed to mention that this was a retaliatory move because of the US putting weapons in Turkey. Ottawa was split on this issue, NORAD’s second command wants soldiers on alert but Dief say it should go to cabinet first. Green, External Affairs guy, says that going on alert will escalate the situation and does not want people to freak out over the Soviets. Dief wants to take the issue to the UN but doesn’t. Harkness, National Defence guy, puts the forces on alert anyway without permission, so it was done on the down low (Fuck Harkness, he’s an asshole). The Bowmark missiles are now ready to go but there is still no payload.

Dief finally agrees to going on alert but this was more of a formality since it was already happening. In the end the Soviets pull out and crisis was averted. Dief would make a comment in the House of Commons regarding nukes and the US would “correct” this statement, thus showing US overstep into Canadian affairs. In 1963 the polls favour the Liberals, Canadians (for some reason) wanted to be good allies of the US (gross, look where that got us). Dief campaigns around the country and turns things around, resulting in a minority Liberal government. Although Dief was a sore loser, but would stay on as Con leader until he dies in 1979 at 83 years old.

I think the only thing I liked about Dief was his anti-American attitudes, although that didn’t get us far because he capitulated to them anyway which is incredibly annoying. If you haven’t noticed already, but a lot of Canadian politics is linked to the US and UK and we get pulled between the two a lot, unfortunately many of our politicians throughout history have blundered these relations and made us far too reliant. Being so metaphorically attached to the US has messed with autonomy too much yet our current politicians continue to make this mistake, pivoting closer rather than away. Canadian citizens are also weird because I cannot tell whether they realize the US is the problem or still blame China for some reason. Sometimes I feel like this country is more sinophobic than the US, but of course it is not a contest. Let’s move on to French Revolution.

Now we are getting into the radicalization phase of the revolution, AKA ROBESPIERRE! Any fans? No? That’s fine, I have feelings about him that I cannot articulate but I will try when the time comes. Anyway, first we went over the reasons as to why radicalization happened: the King’s flight to Varrennes was the beginning. This is where the royal family attempted to escape and join the counter revolution, but this escape was thwarted by logistical errors and the postmaster. Louis was recognized due to his profile being plastered on French currency. This was a close call, what if the family succeeded? There is a book about it that my professor lowkey gushed about, it is called When the King Took Flight by Timothy Tackett. Have any of you read it? If so, is it any good?

Moving on, this escape attempt resulted in the overnight collapse of legitimacy and this people felt incredibly betrayed. The second factor into radicalizing the revolution was the wars. Within France there was guerrilla war with counter-revolutionaries, this consisted of priests, peasants, nobles, and monarchists in coalition. Across Europe France was at war with Austria and Prussia, and would after take on Britain, Spain, and Russia (those campaigns did not end well). In the colonies slaves rise up in Saint-Domingue, which was the largest and only successful slave revolt in history (starts in 1791). We do go into the Haitian revolution, but that is at the end of class, so if you’re looking forward to that then you’re going to have to wait a bit.

Lastly we have Political science where we go into the developmental state of postwar Taiwan. I am going to try my best to make this interesting to read. First he went over the “features of postwar economic miracle.” First was land reform, where Taiwan eliminated its landlord classes, this was the basis for taking up industrialization and constituted capital accumulation in agriculture. Next was industrial upgrading where the state indirectly intervenes in the market, there was also mention of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). These SMEs were 98% of businesses and had 77% of them workforce. The developmental state of Taiwan shifted from ISI (import substitution industrialization) to EOI (export oriented industrialization). The “state” would also pick winning firms and sectors which would give them “state” investment.

The US intentionally promotes industrialization in Asian to combat Communism. There was rapid growth with relative equity and the KMT were the one who initiated the Democratic transition, why? Because they thought that they could keep power due to economic development. In the 70s and 80s, development in the non-West was in crisis (the oil issues), then that became a debt crisis too. This is when he went over the world system theory which states that there is a centre and a periphery. States in the periphery cannot join the developed centre and are exploited and forever developing. He claimed that the rise of South Korea and Taiwan disproved this theory. My conclusion was that aren’t Taiwan and SK vassals of the US? More so SK than Taiwan, but still. Also, is this not just another way of doing Marxist analysis? Do we really think that SK would’ve been what it is now without the US? I am not saying it would’ve been poor by any means, they’d probably be allies with China honestly. Anyway i am rambling about nothing. Let’s keep it moving.

He then defined comparative advantage: if country A invests in high tech and gives up agriculture, but B does not, they both benefit from free market trade. Neoclassical theorists believe that comparative advantage can only be done by the free market, but Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan also disapproved this as they showed state intervention can work. In both Taiwan and SK there is embedded autonomy, which is a term that we were beat over the head with. It’s when the state is embedded in and autonomous from society. Taiwan has now developed into a place that is mainly all about the tech industry, but its economy has diversified and is also affected by China die to migrant workers and security. The end of class was hen spent going over what our second midterm would be, short answer and two essays. One of the essays could be about the Songbun system of NK but I avoided that like the plague, I hate when my exams force me to perpetuate false information just for a grade. I had to do this for a quiz in my genocide class of semester 3, one of the questions asked what the USSR did since it had no colonies like the West and the answer was “treated its republics like colonies.” How annoying. Is that even true? Because the education I have got on the USSR has been pretty much NOTHING.

Anyway class ended and I went home, no office hours to report on.

March 10th 2025,

When my Canadian History class started my professor asked us if Mark Carney was an illegitimate leader. The guy next to me with the anti-communist google background, put his hand up in agreement. Most people did not raise their hands. My professor asked this because many people, specifically conservatives, claimed he was illegitimate. But we have a Westminster style system which makes him the PM just fine, because our system votes for the party not the PM. The guy next to me said he agreed it’s that, which just seems ass backwards but whatever. Anyway, one of the Canadian premiers became leader of a province the same way Carney did, the previous leader stepped down and she automatically became the premier after an inner party election, the province as a whole did not choose her. When a provincial election came she did win, which sucks because she is genuinely evil, but whatever. The point is that if Carney is illegitimate then so is that one premier. I do not like Carney, but I am happy the Nazi Lady lost. Although Carney is the godfather to her children so… nothing changes I guess.

So anyway we are continuing from the whole Newfoundland fiasco. Nothing much happened so we pivoted to the 1957 election where Diefenbaker won, he really tapped into anti-American sentiment that was brewing. He was also just a very good campaigner apparently. This was also the first televised election. He won a minority government, the Liberals could have formed a coalition but Laurent was old and retired so that didn’t happen. The Cons decreased taxes and increased housing loans. In 1958 the new Liberal leader was Pearson, who was a diplomat more than a politician. In that election Dief the Chief still won,, but this time a majority. They won because Quebec voted conservative which was new. This is probably because Dief promised the government would be “returned to the people.”

NORAD was also talked about, as in Dief signed the US deal without consulting the cabinet nor the department of external affairs, so he was essentially conned. My professor said that Dief probably thought he was signing something related to NATO. NORAD was explained as integrating North American air defences under US command, and is only good if Ottawa and Washington are on the same page. Canadian and US politicians do not always see eye to eye. Eisenhower was the president during this time and was , according to my professor, experienced in dealing with difficult personalities. Dief had an easy temperament to deal with so there were good relations. Diefenbaker wanted to favour the British, he tried to do so with tariffs but this was illegal under GATT.

Moving on to French Revolution, we went over the quiz from before, and if you recall (unless I forgot to mention it) but I really thought this one was going to be my mulligan, but turns out I got 14.5 out of 15! What the hell?! She gave me full marks even though I forgot the name of a guy, I guess my description of him and what he represented was good enough for her. Anyway, the lecture started with talking about the emancipation of France’s Jewish population, this was a good and “bad” thing. By that I mean the gained individual rights and equal status but also lost some corporate prerogatives as religious minorities. I do not know if this is that big of a loss to be honest. Military reforms were also made as the army was now meritocratic, patriots replace noble officers. Initially there was a commitment to defensive wars only, but that sort of fell apart fairly quickly. Robespierre believed that mercenaries sucked and that France should spread the light of liberty through example, not at gun point.

The justice system was reformed too. They banned torture and believed in rehabilitation rather than punishment. They considered abolishing the death penalty but kept it for the most extreme offences, it was also technically made “more humane” and egalitarian through the guillotine. The constitution of 1791 replaced absolutism with a constitutional monarchy and brought in the separation of powers which was inspired by Montesquieu and the US. The Mainstream/Voltairean Enlightenment vision was suffrage for property owners, empower the educated bourgeoisie, and bring gradual reform in the system to bring it in line with Enlightenment values. Because of fearing another Bastille situation, the constitution distinguished between “active citizens” (literate property owners, political and civil rights) and “passive citizens” (no vote, only civil rights — most workers, women, minors). The revolution seemed over at this point but it was far from it.

For Polisci it was a continuation of the Taiwan unit, we were introduced to it during the online lectures but nothing super relevant to this… blog? Anyway, apparently Taiwan was a quasi-Leninist one part state before the lifting of martial law. Access to national politics by islanders was blocked or very limited. Party membership in the KMT was around 20% of the population in the 80s. There was initial displacement and things like names and locations were changed to Chinese. Just a brief intermission from me, there was little reference to any Indigenous population of Taiwan, if you have info on this I would appreciate it. Party politics changed to a one party dominant system when Democratic transition was happening. National identity had to shift as well, unification vs independence.

Religious movements mobilized the native Taiwan population, there were environmental movements as well that were Taiwan central. Although the ethnic makeup between the mainland and Taiwan is the same, there is lots of hostility towards the mainland. The DPP would weaponize this animosity. Soldiers, bureaucrats, and the rich move to Taiwan and proceed to dominate. Identity was built through an us vs them mentality. Party structure was also based on this. Post-martial law the DPP is recognized, and they are active in democratization while the KMT is reluctant. Democracy in Taiwan was a top-down procedure. In the 1990s the National Assembly election opened up to natives and democracy starts, it was completed in 2000. National identity really affects elections was those who see themselves as Taiwanese will vote for Pan-Green, while those who seek unification will vote for pan-Blue. In the 80s most saw themselves as Chinese but now this has shifted to the opposite.

There was more party talk that I will skip. Pan-Blue is KMT, and the Pan-Green are the DPP. Surprisingly, to me, the KMT seek peaceful unification with China through negotiations. What does this mean? Do they want to be chill with the PRC or do they want a take over? Anyway, under Ma Ying-Jeou there were physical conflicts in parliament and ideological problems. Another intermission, wasn’t there a recent incident where a guy in parliament tried to physically take a bill and bolt from the building to prevent it from being signed? Does anyone remember this? Was it Taiwan or somewhere else? Sorry, this just reminded me of that. Under this guy, the KMT moves to the right of identity and de-Taiwanese, while the DPP remains moderate. There was brief mention of the Sunflower movement which I guess preached peace with the mainland. The DPP proceeds to dominate electoral results, but third parties have a big impact on the most recent elections. He then showed a chart of a previous election and the most recent, the KMT nearly won because third parties gained more support while the DPP lost a bit, but they still won. Party ideology is centred on identity building.

Then class ended and I went home.

March 7th 2025,

Back to our regularly scheduled program. Sorry it took so long to get this out, the semester was a nightmare.

Canadian history continues after the online lectures as my professor as sick (March 3rd). Those lectures were about conscription and diplomacy in the 1930s. SO I will actually give a very brief overview of what was said. Do not get your hopes up, I think I talked more in depth about Mackenzie King’s affection for Hitler in my paper than my professor did in any of the lectures he gave.

So Canada went the appeasement route at first and was isolationist, having been traumatized from WWI. Canada blamed Europe for the war and was pissed they paid such a big price for a war that wasn’t theirs. While King was a monarchist, which is weird considering Liberals were more pro-US historically, but he decided to pull away from London to appeal to the French-Canadians. The only conflicts he’d get involved with are the big ones. During these lectures my professor gets a bit… he likes to narrate like it’s a story if that makes sense. So when he got. To this next section he says “in the early 1930s liberal capitalism was under attack” and massive unemployment brought Hitler to power. The invasion of Manchuria was mentioned as it was the first threat to collective security and showed the League of Nations would do nothing. The Canadian representative to the LoN acknowledged China as the victim BUT said Japan had “legitimate” interest in the region and even questioned China’s legitimacy in the league. He was not supposed to praise Japan but did anyway, the Canadian government did not clarify their position due to the Japanese consulate in Ottawa expressing gratitude, which is fucked.

When Abyssinia was invaded the permanent representative to the LoN (different guy) wanted a full embargo on Italy, King was pissed about this because Quebec really liked Fascist Italy due to the trains running on time and the fact that the fascists were chill with the Pope. The invasion of Czechoslovakia was mentioned but nothing about King’s stance on it. When I was writing my paper, in the book Canada in the world there are many entries from King’s diaries where he expresses explicit support in Hitler and sees him as a positive force in Europe. He actually wanted Germany to invade Russia to restore order, it was really bad. It was less appeasement and more encouragement, but that is not mentioned in the lecture. The rest of the lecture was about King struggling to implement conscription.

So the March 7th lecture was not as interesting. The Cold War follows and this era was considered a diplomatic revolution. Canada aligns with the US and the UK was unable to pay back its debt. Then he talked about this weird system called “land lease” and how money would just circulate. We all know what the Marshall Plan is where 12 billion dollars was used to rebuild Western Europe. He did not mention how this was also a PR scheme by the US to establish dominance in the region. Then there was the oil boom in Alberta, 1948. US flooded into the market and Alberta shifts its economy from agriculture to oil (I wonder what could’ve been if Alberta never had oil, would it have still turned politically fucked? Or would it be slightly more progressive?). Because of this the Canadian government becomes concerned over foreign investment and create the Gordon Commission. This was looking at US branch plants and how although workers were Canadian, the managers were American. There were also balance payment problems and how 80% of investment in Canada came from the US, meaning they were just going from one empire (British) to another. I guess we were just being passed around, which is a funny image but makes me sad. I hate our dependence on America and our politicians from the past noticed this too but did NOTHING. Because that would mean probably pivoting to the USSR and we can’t have that!

Anyway Laurent replaces King as leader. He actually wins the largest majority government (at the time) and was called “Uncle Louis.” He wanted to centralize the federal system, he proposed a national health program and a social safety net which would give cheques to those 70 years and older. Newfoundland would become part of Canada under Laurent and this was not an easy feat due to Quebec wanting Labrador, which if you have never seen a map of Canada Labrador is very large. Quebec was able to be wooed on this so it doesn’t matter I guess. Newfoundland joined because it was bankrupt and Britain wanted Canada to have it, they were worried because the US was showing interest which is never a good thing.

Okay no let’s move on to French Revolution class! So this one was all about the moderate phase of the revolution which begins with the Tennis Court Oath. The second stage was the forming of the Bastille, where the governor and his sone were beheaded. Third stage was when the revolution spreads to the countryside, resulting in the Great Fear where peasants attack feudal privilege, there was also a “plot mentality” that spurred this as the peasants thought that the nobles and king would starve them, they also feared MArie-Antoinette’s brother invading. The last stage was the women’s march on Versailles, this is when working women, who were also incredibly drunk, made their way to Versailles to demand bread and the relocation of the royal family. Lafayette was there to mediate and brokers an agreement for the family’s relocation to Paris.

So what are the accomplishments? Well, first of all, the old regime was dismantled, this was done by abolishing feudalism and social privilege (august 4, 1789), and by nationalizing the Catholic Church. They also constructed the new regime with the declaration of the rights of man and citizen. This declaration was put forth first to guide the creation of the constitution (this was debated during the tennis court oath). The DRMC guaranteed the”natural, inalienable and sacred” rights of man, social distinctions based on utility, freedom of religion and expression, and sovereignty residing in the nation rather than the monarch. The DRMC was naive in that it thought that a rights-based political system would solve all their problems and article 6 left a crucial issue undecided: does the constitution create direct or a representative democracy? Universal rights applied to all mankind, not just the French; slaves would soon claim to be included.

Since March 7th is a Friday that means there was no Political Science class, but I did have my work placement. I am a bit worried about how much info I can give but what we did do was have a meeting where we learned about naming things, specifically when special places are named. Because I am Canadian and working in a Canadian place, all the names that are dealt with have to deal with settler given names and the original indigenous ones. The main issue we talked about was renaming things, as old names were incredibly offensive. Like one place was actually called the N-word, it was that bad. There are also other places that are named after terrible people, like one used to be names after the Vichy France guy, this was before be became a Nazi. There is a mountain that is being considered for a name change. Its current name is not offensive but it is not Indigenous, so the proposed new name is to revert back to what it was originally called.

The mountain is named after a WWI ship, and it was named that because there as at least one Canadian on the boat. It was the first to get destroyed in a battle and the government wanted to commemorate it for that singular soldier. The other students and I were tasked with debating whether we should give the mountain its original name back. The guy that was lecturing us about name changes also warned us that the process is incredibly controversial and usually brings out anger in people, such as veterans groups. He told us about an incident with a war museum where a veterans group protested the museum because it portrayed Canadian soldiers as less than stellar. I said if you don’t want to be seen as a war criminal then don’t commit war crimes.

Anyway, we all agreed that the Indigenous name should be what it’s called, but our intensities were different. Everyone made good points but I was a bit aggressive in that I explicitly stated that we should not bend the knee to racists, because whether people try to dress up their concern as anything else, if you dig deep enough you’ll find that the main motivating force for opposing the name change is anti-Indigenous racism. The Indigenous people have had to suffer so much at the hands of the government, the LEAST you could do is respect the original names given by the people you destroyed. I have never really spoken that harshly before but I got fairly comfortable here and wanted to make my stance crystal clear. Anyway that was the gist of the meeting and when it was over I headed home.

First I want to say that the posts will continue! Secondly, I am obviously still alive. That’s been evident due to the comments I have been leaving and low effort posts I have made.

The reason why I stopped posting the chronicles is because Semester 6 really kicked my ass. The classes weren’t even hard content wise but the way each was structured gave me very little wiggle room. The assignments piled up in a way that made it difficult to keep posting and crank out my work on time. Thankfully I was not the only one struggling this semester as other students have lamented about the same issues and even my Canadian history professor told us that this semester was kicking his ass. So at least I was not alone. I can only hope that I can use my experience through this semester to prepare for the next ones. I am taking very senior level courses (400 level if that means anything to you, I know every country is different) so I can only imagine that the work load is going to increase.

A good thing about that is most of my professors will be familiar, so they can’t get rid of me just yet! That’s also nice because it means they know my temperament and work style well enough to make accommodations if I need them, which I probably will. The amount of extensions I needed this semester would make you sign, because wow. I needed extensions for my extensions it was that bad. Im the kind of person that is not good at multitasking, my brain needs to do one thing at a time, which is terrible when assignments are set up in a way where there are only a few days before each due date. Research for a paper? Sure, I can find multiple sources in a day for different papers. Writing the paper? I need a day exclusive for each, I do not know why I am like this.

I am hoping that the spring/summer accelerated semester and the few months of break before Fall will help me a bit in fixing my bad habits. We will have to see, of course. Since Semester 6 is done I am just going to work on uploading the missed chronicles entries (remember all the info is taken from my written notes, where I also document the weird shit my professor and fellow students say so you won’t be missing anything!) and I will be doing my self-taught Russian lessons lol. I got a few books that have great reviews, plus I have the app that someone recommended to learn Cyrillic. Have any of you heard of the books “Russian through propaganda”? It’s made by a guy with a PhD and has video lessons, so thats nice. I know I will have to get a tutor at some point, but I need some time before that, just to get situated and comfortable, plus my anxiety is acting up (also money…). Maybe the Russian school in my city is still open. Hopefully it is. I’ll try to make my way down there this week to see since google is giving me NOTHING. Also I can finally watch those old Soviet films you suggested too.

So, thats the update. Look forward to more posts and maybe I will make some about semester 7 (spring/summer) since I only have two courses and one of them is online (pre-recorded). One of the courses is about the Celtic circle (or something like that) before the 1800s. The other course is another Topics in Polisci class but instead of East Asia it’s going to be about something else. How do I know? Because it’s a different professor and she seems to write papers about gender, so I am assuming the class will be related to that. I also already enrolled in my Fall 2025 and Winter 2026 courses so maybe I will make a post about them I the near future just to maybe get some reading material before they start. Anyway I am looking forward to these last few semesters and I hope you all do too, I know I ramble a lot so I am going to try and reel that back.

March 5th 2025,

So for Canadian Politics we just had a discussion and it was all about William Lyon Mackenzie King, who is an interesting figure. What is there to say? He was a typical Canadian politician, who did seances sometimes. He also wrote about Hitler in his diaries and was a confirmed bachelor who may or may not have had an affair with a married lady. Personally I don’t like him, I don’t like any of the Prime Ministers so far, sometimes they’ll do something pretty chill and then the next moment I am reminded why they suck.

Let’s move on to French Revolution. The short term triggers for the revolution were failures from above (bad foreign policy, tax reform in limbo, and the debt crisis) and back luck (crop failure). All of this just built up resentment within the populace. There was also the hatred towards Marie Antoinette AKA “Madame Déficit” and “Austrian Wh*re”. They really hated her for being Austrian and that she likes to spend money, although it was stated a few times that this sole blame was unfounded. She wasn’t the only problem. The hatred was so deep that people spread false rumours about her, the big one being her saying “let them eat cake” which never happened. The gutter press also published pornography of her, portraying Louis XVI as a cuckold and Marie as some bisexual nymphomaniac. The bisexuality is important as they portrayed her sleeping around with both men and women to further desacralize her and the monarchy as a whole. She was Rousseau’s “political prostitute” that he lamented about.

Louis had a few options that he implemented to attempt to fix France’s financial issues. He tried to push financial reforms through Parlement but the nobles refuse the land tax. Next he implements indirect taxes (on salt) but this just burdens the poor more and does not generate enough revenue. Lastly he assembles the Estates General for the fast time since 1614. When this is called, Abbé Sieyès publishes his famous work detailing what the 3rd estate is: it is everything (demographically and economically) but politically it is nothing (their vote gets cancelled out by the 1st and 2nd estates every time). We were then shown a caricature of the Society of Orders, where the 1st and 2nd estates are sitting on the back of the 3rd. Class ended with the gathering of the Estates General.

For Political Science we had to do a writing exercise, the second of the semester, based on the reading assigned. We had to talk about what firebombs, lawsuits, and candlelight means for South Korean protests. This was also the theme of the lecture as well. The firebombs were related to protests post-Gwangju Massacre, which told the South Korean populace that being peaceful was not going to work, so they had to be violent to get the attention of foreign media. Post-dictatorship protest tactics changed towards using institutions, this means utilizing the lawsuit to gain publicity for the cause and reform laws. There was an issue with this era of protest due to the fact that it alienated/marginalized the citizenry as lawsuit tactics favoured protest leaders and professionals. The 21st century now has a new tactic in candlelight protests, vigils were common since forever but these are different since they utilize social networks which result in very large turnouts. The lecture ended with talking very briefly about the protests against Yoon Suk Yeol.

*before we get into it I wanted to apologize for such a late post. I know I have fallen terribly behind in these but the last few weeks really kicked my ass in terms of work load. Specifically I had to submit an annotated bibliography for my French Revolution class and I had my second political science midterm, it doesn’t sound like much but other things in life got in the way too. The semester is coming to a close so things are getting more heavy. I hope the semesters after this one will be easier on me.

March 3rd 2025,

My Canadian history class was actually cancelled today,which I guess was fine considering I had a French Revolution quiz that I was not prepared for, why? Because over the weekend I was stressed as hell doing stuff around the house, Sunday was the worst day as my grandma had me deep clean my office, which took forever and left me in pain, mainly a headache. That headache was bad enough that after I ate lunch I had to lie down and nap. Said nap lasted a lot longer than I anticipated (around 3 hours) and for the rest of the day I had a terrible stomachache. It was bad enough that I had to throw up twice. It sucked. This happens once every few months to be honest, where I eat something and the my stomach tries to kill me, it does this with familiar foods so its not an intolerance or anything.

So the quiz, I am almost 100% certain that this one will be my Mulligan. I think I got all the multiple choice questions correct but the short answer and essay are up in the air at this point. I forgot certain terms and character names (a guy from Candide) but I did recall their descriptions so hopefully that helped get me half marks. The next and final quiz I will do better on as it’s the only one that can make up for this loss. I probably didn’t bomb it that badly. After the quiz, which was 20 minutes, we got into the lecture material.

The bulk of it was focused on the change in language (rights talk), the rise of the novel, and the long term origins of the revolution. The novel bit might sound odd but at the time novels were seen as a lower form of art, but with The New Heloise fiction novels were taken more seriously and empathy became common place. The long term origins of the French Revolution are: new sociability (e.x. Salons), rising bourgeoisie in the 3rd estate, emerging public sphere that counters the authority of the court, literacy and publishing becoming more widespread, and reform projects that created hope.

Political Science saw the first in person lecture on South Korea. The first lecture was an online one where South Korea is described as a Phoenix because it was the first country to change its status from “developing” to “developed.” It initially had the same GDP as Ghana in the 1960s but has rapidly developed beyond that. Syngman Rhee was talked about along side the support he got from the US, but he wasn’t detailed that much. Park Chung-hee, Chun Doo-hwan, Roh Tae-woo, Kim Young-Sam, and Kim Dae-Jung were all mentioned as well. The rest of the online lecture covered the political institution of South Korea.

Now we can get into the in-person class. We began with detailing developmental states. South Korea was kind of a big deal that other countries attempted to replicate its successes. He then taught us about “embedded autonomy,” which is related to predatory states and developmental states. Predatory states extract at the expense of society, resources are exploited by the ruling class. Developmental states have bureaucracy that is embedded in a concrete set of social ties. Embedded autonomy means that the state is autonomous demo and embedded in society. I really do not know what this means but it is what it is.

The South Korean developmental state sees economic development as a survival strategy and imperative to nation building. It had (has?) oligopolistic capitalism where the chaebol are nurtured by the stat. I believe he explained the chaebol as being a large family owned business like Samsung. At this point I was laughing on the inside because I remembered a comrade calling South Korea the “Republic of Samsung.” Anyway, the ROK became very export oriented and there was an absence of a rural, landowning class. He then briefly reference the “4 Asian Tigers.”

Next he talked about the historical evolution of South Korea’s development. Because of the colonial lineage the influence of Japan is strong. Since the 1960s there has been government-business symbiosis. State-society synergy gives developmental citizenship, which means social protections through market participation. In 1997 Social Democratic policies were thrown out and South Korea was forced to adopt IMF policies which meant social programs were cut, neoliberalism was imposed but coincided with democratization. The 5 year economic developmental plans and the EPB (Economic Planning Board) created more technocrats than bureaucrats. These technocrat were recruited by the military and there was relative autonomy for these elites. Developmental citizenship ensured economic growth, new markets and jobs for citizens but had limited social rights and welfare. Class ended with the neoliberal restructuring of South Korea and its decline.

Honestly, now that we’ve got past China and the DPRK I am going to try to not go into too much detail regarding this class particularly, unless something super relevant to lemmygrad is stated. The reason why is not because anyone here has made me feel self conscious, but more so that these posts take so damn long to write and I am falling behind, so to mitigate that I will “declutter” them so I can get them out in a semi-timely manner while also giving relevant information and experiences.

February 28th 2025,

On February 27th I had a meeting with my work placement professor, one where I had to give him my updated resume. When I entered his office he made small talk and asked me about the project topic for my job. I asked him if this would be graded and he said no, he’s just curious. That may have been rude as hell but I only asked because I needed to know how much detail I should go into and if I should change my tone, at that point I was incredibly monotone. Why? Because I was bummed out by getting a 70% for my last meeting so it carried over. Anyway, I told him about the communist town and the research I found on it. I told him that my only issue was finding a location for my “plaque/sign” and he proceeded to open up google maps of the town, seeing if there was a neat place. It was fine.

We then went through my resume and I told him about the consultation, what I learned, and how I applied it. I even shared my frustration about how resumes are supposed to be as simple and bare bones as possible yet all the premade templates online are all super fancy. He said it looked great and that I should just be more specific in my “interests” section, also that I should do volunteering as it looks good. The strength it took not to cringe, I think I still did. I am so anti-social (not in the diagnosed way) it’s almost insane. Talking and interacting with people is so difficult for me, it’s almost physically uncomfortable. I don’t know how to fix it and Cognitive behavioural therapy has not really helped much.

Anyway let’s move on to the 28th. It was a discussion day for my Canadian history class, but please stick around because it was actually quite interesting. This discussion was about western Canada and the emerging parties of the CCF and Social Credit. We had an “election” in the class because my professor wanted to see how many of us would vote for the listed parties: Cons, Libs, Reconstruction, Social Credit, and CCF. In the first round only 13 out of 20 students voted, I was one of the few that didn’t raise their hand. He wasn’t pleased with the turn out and proceeded to redo the election. This time only 19 voted, I was the odd one out. He was frustrated and called out to who didn’t vote. He calmed his tone and said he wouldn’t be mad and just wanted to know, he would even give us credit if we outed ourself.

Funny thing is, I was sitting right next to him so I was surprised he didn’t realize he didn’t count me, so I just said in an exacerbated tone “I didn’t.” He seemed thrilled and said “great! So why didn’t you vote?” I felt immediate, ice cold panic flood over me and he could definitely see it on my face. He apologized for putting me on the spot but still wanted to know why I, as someone living in the Great Depression, wouldn’t vote for any of these parties. My real reason was because the communist party was not on the ballot, they were actually outlawed during this time, but I couldn’t say that so instead I said the next best thing: “none of them go far enough.” He was excited by this answer and said “great reason!” and went on to lecture to the rest of the students as to why someone wouldn’t vote during this awful time.

He then asked the other students why they voted for who they chose. Only one person voted for the libs and they said it was because King had a degree in economics and was the leader of a well established party, they also wrote their book review on him so that factored into their decision. The cons only got one vote too and it’s because the guy is a contrarian (said so himself), he also stated that if he was an urban professional during this time then the ideas of “hard work pulling us through” appealed to him. One person voted for the CCF and her reasoning was because the cons had not done anything to help, social credit wouldn’t solve anything, and Tommy Douglas was a good leader, the CCF did impactful things and were politically charged and active.

My professor then talked about how the Regina Manifesto was drafted at the summer home of a rich member of the CCF and he found that ironic. I didn’t think so at all, I mean Engels was rich and yet he was Marx’s bestie and championed communism so… anyway the rest of the class voted for the Social Credit party and were not asked why. Fascism was brought up and my professor immediately looked at me, he then talked about how it was mainly a Quebec phenomenon. This had to be due to my book review and my paper topic because he had no knowledge on fascism in Canada before I entered his class.

Now on to French Revolution, although if you’ve been keeping up you probably already knew that. What to say about this class, well we started with the Diamond Necklace Affair which was very familiar to me because there was a Puppet History episode all about it. Then we talked about Marie Antoinette a little more and then the debt and tax crisis that France was going through coming up to the revolution. So the debt crisis was exacerbated by the fact that the French heavily supported the Americans in their independence from Britain, thus lots of money was lost. The tax crisis came from the failure of reforms that Louis attempted to implement but was rebuffed by the nobles. We then talked about the rise of public opinion which challenged Royal authority and gave the 3rd estate a voice. This voice would be used at the estate’s general.

My classes were over so I just went to my Canadian History professor’s office since I needed to talk to him about my paper. When I first entered his office he immediately apologized for putting me on the spot in class today, I said it was fine, and he asked if he should refrain from doing that. I told him he can keep calling on me because it’s the only way I will ever speak in class. The rest of the meeting was about how to go about my paper because thesis statements are really hard, and if it was okay to make reference to contemporary events in my introduction to set the scene. He was apprehensive but as long as I didn’t spend too much time on modern issues I should be fine, mentioning the Hunka Parliament incident is A-okay as long as I didn’t drone on about it. He encouraged me to email the library lady as she could help with finding me more sources, because doing the research would aid in me solidifying my thesis.

I then proceeded to talk about how there were a few historians that defended Hunka and that I was considering citing their analysis, not as a defence but to illustrate the problem. He seemed familiar with the arguments those people made because these Ukrainians wanted independence from the Soviets and saw the Nazis as their only way, I softly stated that it was a very voluntary unit so its not like Hunka or the others were conscripted into it. My professor did agree with me on everything, that there was no real excuse. I also mentioned Mackenzie King because he was the subject of a few of our lectures and my professor asked if I liked him, I said no because he was a weirdo especially about Hitler. He laughed and agreed, when I asked if that would be mentioned in our lectures he said no. We also talked about other issues like Christie Pitts, King’s sexuality (I asked because he was a “confirmed bachelor”), sensitivities I should be aware of, and the like.

He couldn’t help me much on the fascism front as he doesn’t know much about the topic, because of that he was very intrigued and happy with my book review. He also told me that he was really looking forward to my paper because it is the first time a student of his has ever written on fascism. That was insane to me and I told him to keep his expectations low, unfortunately he shut that down because he liked my book review too much to believe my paper could be bad. I then asked him for a favour and that he didn’t need to worry as it would require zero labour from him, I needed him to give me a date to hand in my first draft of my paper.

I reminded him of the advice he gave us in our first class, that because he deals with procrastination issues as well he will set up an arbitrary due date for a draft to give himself wiggle room for when the final date comes. I said this was great because I have ADHD problems, but I do not respect my own authority enough to stick to any date I give myself and I would need him to do it for me. So he looked at the calendar, asked me about other assignments I had going on, and chose a good one for me to hand in a draft for him to go over. This is not required for the class but I want to improve and this is how to do it.

After that I went home. Normally I would have my work placement class but it was cancelled for the week, I will be returning on March 7th.

February 26 2025,

Before I get into this day I will briefly mention what happened on the 25th. Since I no longer have my PoliSci research class I will have Tuesday’s and Thursday’s free, but even so I had a required meeting to attend. By meeting I actually mean a resume consultation. This was required for my work placement class as we have to redo our resumes after learning how to properly make one. This consultation is required to do before we hand in our new resumes, this is to ensure that we got the proper knowledge and tips. I made sure to take notes during my consultation and I think I did okay when I actually went to remake my resume. Anyway, let’s get into my classes.

Before my Canadian history class started, I was sitting outside the room and overheard the anti-communist classmate talking. He was talking to another student about how Stalin was a paranoid leader and that if you stopped clapping for him he’d have you executed. He also claimed that the USSR was the North Korea of Europe, this was obviously said as an insult. What an annoying thing to hear but I am not surprised since he has his google background as the anti-communist symbol. What a joke.

So this class was about the 1935 federal election. It was a battle between Bennett’s “New Deal” and “King or Chaos”. Bennett’s plan was called the “New Deal” because they wanted to make reference to FDR’s thing. Bennett introduced a legislative package during this time that instituted an 8 hour work day, minimum wage, and market regulation. All of these quickly passed, it was ruled “ultra vires” (I think thats what he said, there were no slides to accompany this) by the Privy Council because it violated provincial rights. Mackenzie King said it was like fascism, which is crazy! This is the same guy who wrote about Hitler’s “glowing eyes” in his diary. If you’re curious just look up “Mackenzie King and Hitler.” Wild shit.

King or Chaos basically preached “the best policy is no policy” and let Bennett dig his own grave, which is just the theme of Canadian politics, even today. King made no promises during his campaign, except the incredibly vague “balance the budget”, and still won by a landslide. Canadian elections use first past the post so the ratio of seats is incredibly weird: the Cons got 30%, which gave them 39 seats in the house; the Libs got 44%, which gave them 173 seats. Some conservatives blamed the Reconstruction party for the loss but they only got 8.7% which resulted in 1 MP. Social Credit got 17%. King’s success can be attributed to luck mostly, it was best to lose the 1930 election and win when the economy was slowly recovering. King manages provincial benefits the same way Bennett did but doesn’t face the same ire he did. My professor then said that Orthodox economics could not solve the Great Depression, only WWII would do that.

In 1935, while Bennett was still PM, the Reciprocal Trade Agreement was being negotiated with FDR, but was signed after King became PM. This agreement benefited the US much more but King liked the optics. Signing this looked good. When finished class by briefly going over agreements made in 1937 and 1938., nothing crazy, only that tension was rising.

French Revolution class was interesting because before it started one of my classmates was going around with a box of chocolates, giving them away for his birthday. I chose a coffee crisp! It was good. The actual lecture was about the impact Enlightenment ideas had, the main being religious tolerance. Another was art, this was the most interesting part of the lecture, probably because we got to look at a bunch of paintings. We first looked at Rococo art, the example shown was of the Swing. Bourgeois Drama came afterwards and was the preferred form of art by Philosophes like Diderot. Enlightenment thinkers anted to moralize art, it’s sentimental, the example image was Son Punished. Neo-classicism was shown as well which was called “Rousseauian” due to it reflecting republican lessons. She showed us two paintings, Oath of the Horatii and The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of his Sons. Both paintings show off gender in that women are portrayed as overly emotional while men are rational. The Oath painting portrays the Roman salute and I think thats where it originated. Did the Roman salute even exist in Ancient Rome? I heard it didn’t. Ever since Elon did it there was some discourse on twitter, while many called it out for what it was some other people showed photos of what looked like Middle Eastern fighters (couldn’t tell you the groups) doing the salute as well. So that was something.

Anyway sorry for the tangent, class ended with analyzing paintings of Marie Antoinette. The first portrait was a traditional one called En Grand Habit de Cour, it showcases riches and national symbols (fleur de Lis), her hand was also placed on a. Globe o symbolize France’s vast empire. The next painting we looked at was Marie Antoinette en Chamise, which was considered incredibly scandalous as the dress she wore, while fancy by our standards, was like pyjamas. It was also painted by a woman, which is interesting. She then showed us the Queen’s hamlet, where she and her friends would cosplay as farm hands and feed goats, it was quite strange. The last painting was Marie Antoinette and Her Children which was a way to rehabilitate her image as a grieving but hands on mother. This was due to not giving an heir for 7 years, which made people go crazy. Apparently there was something wrong with Louis, he had some procedure done and was able to sire children. What procedure? I have no clue, she didn’t say.

For political science we got into the civil society of the DPRK. Before I get into the lecture I had some thoughts: after reading several articles for this class and my other polisci one (the one I dropped) I am having a hard time wrapping my head around Civil Society. For the most part it just seems like an avenue to facilitate regime change in Socialist and Socialist “sympathetic” countries, it’s why China has them heavily regulated. I know in Japan they helped out with disaster relief and what not, which is great but are there other example where civil society was actually fine? I am most likely misunderstanding what it means, it’s just the examples I have seen have not been super great. Let’s move on.

My professor began the class by admitting that he really struggled to find sources on Civil Society in the DPRK and the course we had to read was almost 20 years old, but it was better than others as they relied on interviews from refugees. He says that is not good because it severely limits the point of view and can be heavily skewed. Studying Civil Society in the DPRK is difficult due to academic integrity being compromised, you cannot access North Korean archives unless you are writing a positive perspective, and you cannot publish in the west unless it is negative. With that out of the way we begin with defining civil society and public sphere. Civil society = specific forms of mobilization and citizen participation related to the state, public sphere = social sites where people communicate with one another about issues of public importance; there is no overlap between state authority and the public sphere. Deliberations between civil society and the public sphere present challenged to the state. According to Marx, bourgeois society is an arena of class oppression and illusory emancipation, it is an unequal exchange of ideas. So e was critical of civil society and stated that society must be dominated by the dictatorship of the proletariat, which would result in no civil society being present. I guess I was on the same page as Marx?

In fascism, civil society exists as an organ of the state. But what about the Authoritarian public sphere? Well my professor says it is an oxymoron. The venue is tightly controlled and monitored by the regime as the public sphere can be an avenue for resistance. The sphere under this type of regime is used to propagate and legitimize its rule as all powerful and inevitable. It is also a product of direct disciplining power of a regime seeking to limit communication. It also prevents citizens from articulating ideas, the example he gave was preference falsification, as in disguising one’s perspective and outwardly expressing a more publicly acceptable viewpoint. With the public sphere controlled there is difficulty when voicing conflicting ideas as you must express the demands and views of the state.

Next we covered authoritarian rule and how it relates to civil society. This section began with the dictator’s dilemma, I am sure you know what that is but basically dictators repress their population, but that repression can lead to resentment which the dictator fears so they spend more resources than necessary. Repression is used along side bribes, like when Communist Party membership was given out in China. Next he covered Dominance and Hegemony by Gramsci, this section was a little weird because of how disjointed it was so forgive me for this: dominance = physical force; hegemony = voluntary subordination, expressed through rule vs govern. Authoritarian rule is expressed through repression, cooptation, and legitimation.

Repression is expensive so there must be voluntary subordination; every regime combines all three to solidify their rule. The regime controls boundaries through state infrastructure by shaping world views and systems of meaning. Civil society is consultative, which he also called an oxymoron. What it means is that the state allows civil society to exist at it reduces the dictator’s dilemma, it also allows local elections to gather information on how to fix local issues on a national level. Some guy named Teets made up the consultative thing based on China. My professor made it a point to say that authoritarian regimes can be democratic, the example he gave was Putin’s regime.

Next is the authoritarian public sphere in the DPRK. It is different from the Soviet satellite states, many thought and hoped it would collapse alongside the USSR, but it stood strong. The 90s famine killed millions, was turned into the arduous march as if it was guerrilla warfare and was framed as being related to foreign powers rather than a result of the regime. There was an economic crisis in the 70s but the DPRK still survived. The state infrastructure is all encompassing and an indoctrination machine. A student then asked is the DPRK was able to survive because of China’s help, my professor said that elites related to China were purged in the 50s, and the guerrillas were established in their place in the 60s, so the DPRK was actually quite nervous about support from both China and the USSR. The DPRK wanted some sort of mutual relationship. China and USSR support didn’t totally stop as the North was needed as a buffer from both South Korea and the USA, so support was limited. He concluded that the DPRK’s self-reliance was the most important to its survival but it stifles development.

Juche replaced communism from the 50s and is an ideology based on leadership, the supreme leader. It is used to subjectivize the population. He then mentions that there was no peace treaty after the Korean War, only an armistice agreement made with the UN so the peninsula, especially the North, is still under a war situation. Because of this war terminology is used everywhere, society is militarized (e.g. the Arduous March). There are shadow markets, information dynamics, and corruption. In the end we are unlikely to see a civil society emerge in the DPRK in the near future.

So that ends my lectures on the DPRK, next will be about South Korea. I will say, my professor’s tone throughout these few lectures has been fairly even and not aggressive at all compared to his lectures on Japan.

Afterwards I went to office hours as I was supposed to present to him four sources on my proposed topic for my research paper which is to analyze the National Security Act and how it is detrimental to unification with the North. He found my sources fine and said he would try to find more for me but it’s a bit hard. This led to me asking him about if the National Security Act is even mentioned in the North at all because all I knew was that Kim Jong Un removed reunification from the constitution (or something). He old me one of the reasons he did was fears over being fully absorbed by the South and their influences so now Kim Jong Un considers both Koreas as separate entities. He also told me that that is exactly what South Korea wants, to fully absorb the North rather than have some sort of peaceful unification, it would involve some sort of military conquering. I then mentioned the garbage situation, where the North retaliated against the South, he laughed and seemed embarrassed. He told me the South did that to try and provoke the North, thus finding justification for the Martial Law. I wanted to ask him more but there was another student waiting so I left.

February 24th 2025,

So for today we got into Great Depression stuff, mainly regarding RB Bennett and the new political parties that emerged in Canada. We discussed the details of the depression itself during the video lectures. This all sounds boring but communism was mentioned! So both Bennett and King were really bad during the depression, at least during the first half. King lost the 1930 election because he just didn’t take the crisis seriously, and actively rebuffed giving aid to the provinces. Bennett also had a similar issue in that, federally, he was very resistant to giving money away, but on a personal level he would send people a few dollars when they wrote to him about their woes. Take that as you will.

The most interesting part of the lecture was about the new parties that emerged during this period. The three highlighted were the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), the Social Credit Party (SCP), and the Reconstruction Party. First we talked about the CCF, which was the precursor to the NDP (New Democratic Party) and seemed to have strong socialist ideals in the beginning. They were formed by labour and independent MPs, Woodworth was the leader and another notable member was the famous Tommy Douglas (Saskatchewan Premier and the father of Healthcare in Canada). The big four things they advocated for: socialized banks, healthcare, farm security, and public transport. They also had this thing called “The Regina Manifesto” and it’s exactly what you’d think. They explicitly advocated for the abolition of capitalism. This manifesto scared the shit out of the ruling classes in Canada (these words were not used by my professor) and he asked us why. A student piped up that the Regina Manifesto was a threat to Canadian democracy, I wish I spoke up about how it was an affront to Canada’s capitalist system and the government was historically very attached to it.

During this time people truly felt that capitalism had failed (in my opinion, it did) so communism seemed like a better system. For example, in the UK Soviet spies found great success in recruitment. My professor then said that people were infatuated with what the USSR had going on because Stalin had fabricated the successes of the 5 Year Plan. The USSR was not as good as what was portrayed by effective Soviet propaganda. Okay, so I wasn’t there in the USSR during the thirties but I have to question this animosity. Maybe it wasn’t that great but I have to defend my muse!

Next was the reconstruction party and this one was a bit odd. It was led by a guy named H. H. Stevens, who was previously a conservative but didn’t like big business, so he made a party that would be the champion of small businesses. His main issue was big business draining the economy, and he wanted to investigate chain stores. The reconstruction party wanted to reform capitalism to favour its supporters.

Last we have the Social Credit Party which was led by William “Bible Belt Bill” Aberhart. This party critiqued finance capitalism. It ran on trying to solve the issues of the “A + B theory.” if you don’t know, the A + B theory is a theory that explains economic failure. “A” is wages, and “B” is the cost of production, add both of them together gets the cost of goods. The problem is that customers only make wages which means they don’t have enough money to afford the production costs that goes into the final price of goods. Does that make sense? Theres a Wikipedia article that could probably explain it better. Anyway, the Social Credit Party wanted to solve this issue by having the government give people money, a 25$ dividend to make up for the lack of funds. They won 56 seats in the Alberta election. So people were really interested.

That was the end of class so I moved on to my French Revolution class. This was a discussion about the movie Dangerous Liaisons, which we had to watch before today. Have you seen this movie? It was a weird experience for me, I was not expecting to see a guy kiss a woman’s breasts in the middle of a hallway in the first five minutes of this film based on the 18th century. It wasn’t bad by any means but, wow, that man and that woman were sadistic as hell. The reason why we watched this movie is because it’s based off the book that was publish in 1782, this gives us insight into the attitudes of the time and how people reacted to this book. We also had to debate whether the author, Laclo, is critiquing noble society or celebrating it. Considering both characters have a shitty ending to their stories I believe he was maybe critiquing, or removed. It is hard to analyze this from a 21st century perspective.

Finally we have PoliSci, the lecture is based on the article “The structural transformation of the North Korean economic planning system” by P. Ward. So this class was about the political economy in the DPRK. He began by briefly describing the Chollima Movement, in that he translated what it meant. All I could think of was that banger of a song. It’s a special horse that can travel 1000 Li (Chinese mile) in a day. After that we got into the actual lecture material, starting with the completion of Economic development in the DPRK. The immediate goals post-decolonization was to lay the groundwork for a socialist system and restore previous industries post-war. Just a reminder that North Korea was the heavy industry area of the peninsula while the South was for agriculture. They slowly nationalize and collectivize. Land reform in 1946, collectivization of agriculture in 1958, nationalization of major factories in 1946, and the collectivization of small and medium businesses in 1958 all led to the completion of socialist reform of production.

Economic plans started in 1947 and the prioritization of heavy industry happened in 1953 (exploitation of agriculture). This priority given was relaxed for a bit but was reimposed after the Cuban Missile crisis. I wonder why. The key features of the DPRK’s economy are: state ownership, political dictatorship, mono-hierarchical system, imperative planning, a subordinate role for the monetary system, and SELF RELIANCE (which means limiting foreign trade and investment). At the macro level it is unified and has detailed planning, the party plans , details, and intervenes in every corner of society; at the micro level we have the Taean worker system (1960) which was collective management of enterprise, it is called that because at the Taean factory Kim Il Sung gave guidance to the factory and gave management powers to the workers/party rather than to individual managers. At the mass level we see the Chollima Movement in 1958, which was inspired (?) by the Great Leap Forward and was a stakhanovite labour mobilization movement.

So next we get into the economic strategy before the end of the Cold War. There were changes made regarding foreign policy in the early 70s, this was a relaxation of political and economic unity mainly due to Nixon’s visit to China (which shocked Japan and South Korea). Trade expanded to the west, importing machines and plants on large loans; western imports surpassed those that came from fellow socialist countries. This was the DPRK’s first attempt to open up but the oil shocks came and it was in debt (the DPRK is not an oil producer), mineral prices plummeted and the North had to, I think, default (I could not understand what he was saying here so if they didn’t default on their debt let me know). The law of equity joint venture in 1984 was mentioned but not really detailed, only that it was resembling China’s opening.

Changes in the domestic economy were made, like introducing the complex enterprise system to encourage investment. This system vertically and horizontally integrates multiple enterprises, that are related production and management-wise, into a single management unit. In 1984 the. 8-3 People’s Consumer Goods Creation Movement happened which gave more peripheral production decisions to enterprises. It is decentralized and similar to China’s dual management system. There is also the self-accounting system that was introduced as well. These reforms began to slow down in the late 80s.

Now we move on to the economic development in the post-Socialist Era (as in, post collapse of multiple Socialist states). In the late 80s and 90s there were a series of economic plan failures, a famine, and the Arduous March. Two pillars of the DPRK’s planning system collapsed: the unified and detailed planning system and Taean Work system. Trade routes changed and the relaxing of political and economic unity. My professor stated that the DPRK’s self-reliance principle led to them having no money to invest and reinvest. The economic system was nearly inoperable due to the issue of black markets. Who is running these black markets? I have no idea! Anyway, the famine (caused by a flood) just exacerbated these issues. Reforms were made by decentralizing trade and the farm system (went from 60 households to 20) and through the July 1st Economic Management Improvement Measures in 2002. These measures increased prices and wages, rationlized exchange rates, and expanded corporate management autonomy.

2012 saw the “Economic Management System in Our Style”, which expanded the autonomy of the agricultural sector and trade. In agriculture they have autonomy over harvests, and distribution is adjusted (I believe 70% goes to the state and the other 30% can be sold or something like that). The Taean work system was abolished in 2019 and replaced by the Socialist Enterprise Responsibility System. The DPRK faces limitations and problems. Internally they face issues of succession, externally they have to deal with the blockade by the UN and US (put in place due to them having long range missiles); and economically they have limited acceptance of marketization, investment resources (they’re isolated), and economy and nuclear weapons parallel lines. North Korea is trudging along rather than working through.

If you’re wondering why this is not labelled a day, it’s because reading week is a week long break that allows students to catch up on work and, theoretically, rest. Usually I wouldn’t even bother with a post for these, as I don’t believe I have ever written one in the past, but this time is a special case. This reading week I did get caught up on stuff, one of which was watching an online lecture for my East Asian Politics class. It is special because this was the first lecture for our North Korea unit. Yes, we talked about the DPRK in the last lecture but that was just Korean history in general. This lecture was about the Political Institution of the DPRK. Now I know that sounds boring but it’s really not. I came out of the lecture quite confused and I hope people here can help.

Side note: the DPRK is referred to as “North Korea” throughout all my lectures so it will be called that in these posts. If it is called “the DPRK” know that that is my own addition.

For every lecture we have to read an article before class, as the lecture material is based on whatever was assigned. This lecture was on this article: “The Evolution of the North Korean Socio-Political System 1945-1994” by Balázs Szalontai.

We began with setting the stage, is North Korea just a regular authoritarian regime? It has survived despite the blockade and growing tensions over its ICBMs and nuclear technology. It is a state that has mixed socialism, nationalism, and Confucianism. The ruling elites in the DPRK are different from China’s, China emphasizes the party as a leading role in society and the state. Fascism sees society as an organic core and the state as being the dominant position within society. The DPRK is different from fascism and China in that it emphasizes the leader over the party and state. The leader is like a god (yes, that was said in the lecture).

This pivots into decolonization and Kim Il Sung’s rise to power. August 8th 1945, the Soviet Union declares war on Japan, Manchukuo and others retreat. August 21st, the USSR was already occupying half of North Korea, by August 25th Pyongyang was theirs. The 38th parallel was drawn, with the Soviets occupying the north and the US military government occupying the South. Both powers agree to divide the peninsula along this arbitrary line, but did not have actual plans on the future of the peninsula as both had very different attitudes. The US considered Korea part of the Japanese empire and utilized the Japanese government to ensure the status quo remained in the South. The USSR viewed Korea as a colony that needed liberating rather than an enemy in war. They reached out to Koreans who resisted Japan and grassroots organizations that sprung up in regions to establish a new nation. The Soviets wanted a soviet friendly ally, not a satellite (unlike in Eastern Europe).

People’s Committees were created and both Nationalists and Socialists were encouraged to join. They were voluntary organizations in every region, of equal proportion. Post-liberation of 1945, the North Korean communists begin to establish a government under the guidance of the USSR. Many of the Soviets that were in the North were Korean themselves, most of the were members of the 88th Brigade (Northeast anti-Japanese united army). These Korean members were assigned as deputy commanders, advisors, regional defence officials, police and security commands of cities and provinces, and provided translation services. This was done to strengthen influence and maintain order. Kim Il Sung was part of the 88th brigade and was also a deputy commander.

So those organizations mentioned earlier would form the Joseon Worker’s Committee. This committee was separate from the Chinese and it became foundational to expanding political influence in North Korea. The foundation of the North Korean Workers’ Party was created 1945-6. It integrated other parties and social groups into a united front organization. On august 28th 1946, the North Korean Communist Party and New People’s Party merged together to form the NKWP. In 1948 the peninsula was divided by two different governments, the Republic of Korea was established on August 15th while the DPRK formed September 9th. This frustrated integration efforts.

Next we get to the purges. First was the purge of the Southern Faction of 1953. The Korean Workers’ Party was originally a coalition of communist groups. In 1953 the general secretary of the South was exiled and would join the workers party of the North. South Korean members were arrested and purged as thy were suspected of being US spies. Kim Il Sung was criticized for the failure of the Korean War so he needed a scapegoat, thus the Southern faction was blamed. In 1956 the Soviet and China factions would also be purged to get rid of rivalry and preserve the personality cult around Kim Il Sung. During the Sino-Soviet conflict the KWP refused to de-Stalinize (I think?) and Kim Il Sung opposed collective leadership or coexistence between capitalists and socialists. During the conflict the KMP remained neutral and as a result they created Juche ideology in 1946. It means subject ideology. The goal now was self determination.

Reorganization of the party happens with the Party Central Committee Chairman being replaced with the Central Committee General Secretary. Kim Il Sung would become the General Secretary in 1966. During the 15th General assembly the unique Juche ideology would be emphasized, and this unique ideology system is the ideology of the leader. In 1967 the Kapsan Operation Committee (co-founded by Kim Il Sung) was purged and destroyed. Kim Il Sung’s anti-Japanese guerrilla war was seen as the sole legitimate struggle. Kim Jong Il would succeed Kim Il Sung in 1994, this succession process took twenty years as it started in the 70s. This gave Kim Jong Il time to stabilize his rule both in the party and society.

This is the part that had me fucked up: the Sǒngbun System. The solidification of rule was not just informed by the purges, but also by this population classification system. The Sǒngbun System came into effect in august of 1957 after the collectivization of agriculture and the nationalization of small private enterprises. This system was not to promote change, but to preserve structural inequality and hierarchy. It is based on political, social, and economic background of individuals. It is also based on your ancestors, if they messed up that also applies to you. There are three groups: core, wavering, and hostile. Then these three classes are divided further between special class, core class, basic masses, complex class, and hostile class. The special class is Kim Il Sung’s relatives and surviving guerrillas; the core class is loyal cadres of war and martyrs; the basic masses are ordinary workers, peasants, regular party members and lower ranked officials; the complex class consists of former intellectuals, small businessmen, and relatives of South Koreans; the hostile class is capitalists, former landowners, pro-Japanese and pro-USA collaborators, first party members, and ex-convicts.

Descendent of the complex and hostile classes are faced with major restriction and discrimination in education, housing, and employment. This was then compared to the Joseon dynasty due to the emphasis on hierarchy. It has to be said that this Sǒngbun system is different from Confucian tradition, the caste system, and race-based system. It is different because it can be arbitrarily changed by the state and is secretly managed, meaning that nobody knows their own status. If you are in a lower class then you cannot participate in voluntary or mandatory organizations. The Sǒngbun system was completed in 1970, along side the purges and Juche ideology; all these factors contributed to the stabilizing of the succession process. But I guess after the collapse of the USSR there is a bit of destabilization.

So Kim Jong Il’s succession began in the 70s and was elected as such in 1974. The 10 principles were mentioned but not listed, it was described as absolute loyalty and obedience to Kim Il Sung. After he died the party was weakened for a bit, but Kim Jong Il comes in with his military first policy. So at this point my professor starts to talk about party congress and how it had not been held for 36 years until 2016. The Central Committee General Meeting is supposed to be held every 6 months but was cancelled because Kim Jong Il did not trust the party, he only trusted the people’s army. Marxist-Leninism was the leading ideology, but an emphasis on Juche post-USSR collapse. Now the DPRK advocates a military first policy, so the military is the main force of Socialist construction.

Because of this the Central party was replaced with the National Defence Commission as the centre of state affairs. The Military commander is superior to the political commissioner of the military and manager of the organs, and enterprises were superior to the party secretary. Is this confusing? It is for me! Anyway there was a process of decentralization of state affairs, mainly in the lower levels units, this was due to the reorganization of the system. The economic line saw market expansion, utilization, relations with the South, and expansion of trade was tolerated and managed.

When Kim Jong Un becomes the first secretary and strengthens the party. At the 7th party convention in 2026 the party Chairman is reestablished as the alternative for the party 1st secretary. So now Kim Jong Un is the chairman and is seen as returning to the Kim Il Sung Era. The grand strategy for regime security is in response to internal and external challenges. Kim Jong Il’s rule was seen as practical and fairly flexible, while Kim Jong Un’s rule was and is dogmatic, hardlined, and rigid.

So that was the lecture. But I have one more thing to talk about. Since I have been struggling this semester and the work load has piled up too much, I decided to drop my research course. It is not because it is difficult, because I was getting the hang of things with both the guidance from Star and my professor. The next assignment due was the literature review which I was stressed about but not too much, but there is just too much work from my other classes plus the weirdness that comes from my work placement, that I had to make a choice: risk the grades of all my classes or drop this one to lighten the load and stay stable. I had to drop it or else I would’ve gone crazy. Will I get a refund? No, that time has swiftly passed, but I’m not pressed about that. I will still graduate next year, relatively on time (I was unable to take three courses in the spring so I have to take another spring semester in 2026, just an extra 2-3 months longer than I initially thought).

I will just have to take a methods course during my Masters, which is fine since I got a decent taste and I have those books that Star recommended. The only thing I worry about regarding my masters is my supervisor, 2 out of the 3 at the Uni I have to go to, that are related to my topic, had really REALLY bad takes on the Hunka situation (Nazi collaborator who was applauded in the Canadian Parliament), and the last one I have little info on. I am willing to bite the bullet and stomach being one of their students, but man this place sucks. If I could guarantee full funding from an out of province/country university then I would take it but I have no idea if I can do that. We’ll see, I do have a year to figure it out.

February 14th 2025,

Today wasn’t a great one for me. So both my classes were cancelled, which is fine honestly. I still had work placement. I just spent my typical class time making sure my presentation for my work class was solid.

The presentation had to be preliminary research (background research) on our chosen topic. i wish I could be more specific but I will give a taste of what mine is about: in the early 1900s there was a group of communists that were voted into prominence, which was a first for Canada. They were ELECTED by the people, and brought in tax reforms and did some symbolic stuff like renaming streets. I never knew this happened so i wanted to do my project on it and erect a “monument” dedicated to it. My job isn’t to place actual monuments, but something similar, informational and historical placements if that makes sense. One day I hope to be more specific but right now I still have to be vague. You all understand.

Eventually it was time for me to leave for my job, which was only a small train ride away thankfully. I got there early and waited. We were then gathered into the meeting room to do our presentations. We could’ve made a slide show but it was not required nor expected. Thankfully no one did a slide show. I say “thankfully” as I did not want to be the odd one out. Unfortunately, I still ended up being that. Here’s how:

My other colleagues went first and while they all had different topics they were all similar in the fact that they had very specific buildings that they wanted to do a monument for. As they went on with their amazing research (seriously I was impressed and happy for them since they were so passionate) I got a horrible sinking feeling that I did my research wrong. They had very specific topics while mine was a little more vague, it was specific in that it was about a government body, but not specific enough to have a set in stone location. So when it got to me I panicked immediately.

First I asked if every other person had taken the Public History course at our university, they said yes. So I admitted that I had not but my supervisor said that it was fine. This did not convince me. I brought out my preliminary research notes and when I tried to speak the tears came and I couldn’t stop it. Usually when I do presentations I do have a wobbly voice, but I have never cried before. This time was different. The tears rushed out and I said I didn’t know why I was freaking out (even though I did) and the girl beside me tried comforting me saying “its okay, public speaking is really hard.” She was super sweet about it and in my heart I was thankful that they didn’t judge me but it was so bad.

The first half of my presentation was filled with tears and constant pauses as I had to wipe my tears, they blocked my vision. I was curled in on myself and was so ashamed at not only how embarrassing this was, but that I misunderstood the assignment. As I got through it I did stop crying and sat up straighter, especially because everyone was engaging with what I was saying, my supervisor also was nodding along and giving what I assumed were cues to keep going. In the end I was okay and we all did well.

When we exited the meeting room I did apologize to my supervisor for crying, and he of course said it was fine and that he knows this is hard. I admitted to him that I was like that because I thought I did everything wrong because the others had specific projects while mine was not. But he said that I did it right and that I was going to be fine. I think so too. Now I just have to spend my time trying to find a location related to my elected officials. The unfortunate thing as well is that my topic is in a completely different city/town from my own, my colleagues have the ability to physically go to theirs but I just don’t.

Anyway, I ended up walking out with another colleague and he complimented my presentation and the amount of research I did. I also complimented him back as I thought his was great too. It was nice.

I just hope that my supervisor doesn’t tell my professor about me crying as I might get penalized for this. I worry because the last tie I had a meeting with said professor, the one where I gave him my report, he graded me a 70. WHAT?! He said my report was great but still graded me so low??? It was probably due to my supervisor saying I seemed unprepared, but my professor even stated he knew I wasn’t unprepared I was just “reticent.” I am truly pissed that he graded me so low it is what it is I guess.

Now it’s reading week and I am trying to figure out how to manage my time to get work done while also relaxing.

February 13th 2025,

Back to research class and today sucked. Okay, it wasn’t that bad but I had a hard time because I did not read the article. This was sort of on purpose, not because I did not want to read it, but because I was busy doing an assignment for my work placement class.

This was not a good decision on my end because when class started he separated us into groups, my nightmare, and told us to do the analyzing work for him. And to feel free to shame those who didn’t read the article. Fuck me i guess.

So each group had to do a certain cluster of questions that were based on a specific theme of analysis. By that I mean one group had to figure out the research question while another had to figure out the argument. I was in the argument group.

My fellow students were talking about the article while i just sat there reading, trying to answer the questions even though I hadn’t read it yet. Command F helps. I was definitely the weakest link/the member everyone dreads having. To be honest, even if I had read the article I probably would’ve said anything anyway.

The article we had to read was “Mosques and Markets” and “Black Flags in the Bazaar: The Making of Modern Islamist Proto-states” by Aisha Ahmed. Apparently my professor was there during the book launch. The main idea of this book was to take aim at traditional International Relations analysis, she had issues with the existing literature on Islamist issues, she believes that the idea that Islam is more inherently violent than envy other religion is bullshit. She also found it odd that nobody had made the connection between big businesses and Islamist groups.

February 12th 2025,

Today I had my Canadian history midterm and I think I passed. I talked about the format and while I don’t think I can give too many details, as I was writing the last bit of my third concept (3 out of four) my professor called out “FIVE MINUTES LEFT” and I panicked. I had to scramble to complete that one and move on to complete the fourth one because no way in hell was I risking losing five marks because my ass was too slow. I actually;lay don’t believe I was slow, just thorough. Usually I check the clocks during exams but there was no clock near me so I couldn’t check and this professor didn’t call out when there was 30 or twenty minutes left. So I had to really rush my section talking about a strike, which was the one I was looking forward to writing the most but fuck me I guess. It’s should be fine though, I wrote down all the important bits he wanted except it’s way less elegant. I’m sure my professor will be able to tell I was rushing because my handwriting took a nose dive, although it’s still better than all my professors!

For French Revolution class we talked about Voltaire’s Candide, which I did not read before class. Why? Because I was studying. I’ll read it over the weekend so I am prepared for the next quiz. Also I am sure it’s a good read. I would like to know your opinions on it! Silvers are welcome.

Because of my midterm destroying my hand, writing notes for my classes was tough and it was the worst for East Asian Politics.the reason why is because my professor’s slide aren’t super detailed and you need to write down what he is saying to get the full picture. Which is fine! I am fine with this and it encourages attendance, it’s just tough when my hand was hurting so bad.

But today was important because we were introduced to the Korea section! Today was dedicated to background information of Korea before and when the separation happened. He began with this: the Korean Peninsula is surrounded by super powers, and divided in two. He then talked about how, when he first moved to Canada, people would always ask him if he was from North or South Korea and this question made him angry. Nowadays people don’t ask him that anymore which is most likely due to the Korean wave. South Korea was the first country to officially industrialize in the non-west since WWII. He told us that normally he’d only cover South Korea but, considering the current state of the world, he is now covering both.

Korean history begins around 5 century BCE, but could be 2-3 as well. But we started with the Choson Dynasty 1392. They had relations with both China and Japan, but after the Hideyoshi invasion Choson closed its doors on both and that left them open tot he west. The Joseon dynasty was on the decline after the Imo inscident, Gapsin Coup (although it didn’t succeed), a peasant revolution (leads to the first Sino-Japanese war), and the Russo-Japanese war where Japan wanted control over Korea but is resisted by China and Russia, the result was a Japan-Korea treaty where Korea would be a protectorate of Japan.

Then we talked about Japanese colonialism, since it’s obviously important to Korea’s history. I know Taft was involved with this as Japan allowed the US to have the Philippines as a protectorate while Japan was given free rein to colonize Korea. The fact that this can just be decided like that without consultation from the Koreans is insane but not surprising. There was also an annex treaty. Japan would militarily rule over Korea from 1910-1919, then that rule would change to cultural 1919-1931, and then to a fascist military rule from 1931-1945.

There was uneven and distorted development. Korea was used as an agricultural hub for cultivating rice specifically for Japan, military industrialization would follow soon after. Korea had rapid industrialization because of Japanese empire building. The North was used for electricity and military manufacturing and the South was used for agriculture. 10% of industrial facilities were owned by Korea, while the other 90% was owned by Japan. He then also mentioned forced labour and sexual slavery committed against the Koreans by Japan. Japan has still not apologized for this.

Next we moved on to Korean independence movements during colonial rule. The first was the 1919 march 1st movement led by Sam Il, his movement influenced May 1st in China. It was a movement for self determination. In 1931 the provisional government organized the Korean Patriotic Corps. Kim Il-Sung led an independence militia against Japan, we won battles but exaggerated the greatness of the victories. I think my professor said that the KMT supported the Provisional government but I may have misheard him.

Japan surrenders in 1945 and the 38th parallel would be created, an arbitrary border that has no real geographic differences. He made it a point that North and South Korea are not geographically different, there aren’t, like, mountains separating them. A student asked if the USSR or the US liberated Korea because he was confused as to why the US would draw this border, another student piped up saying that the US wanted to establish control over Seoul against the Soviets so thats why. My professor kind of laughed since the question was answered for him but he decided to add some historical context.

The Soviets invaded Manchuria, which broke an agreement with Japan, and this shocked both the US and Japan. The US can tolerate an absolute monarchy and Zaibatsu, but communism? Noooo (that’s how he said it and we laughed). So both Japan and US sort of scrambled to get into cahoots with each other. He also showed how the first nuke was dropped on august 6th, then the soviets invaded on the 8th, and then Nagasaki (which was not needed) was dropped on the 9th. Did I get that timeline right?

Lastly we talked about the Korean War. The article we had to read covered two views on the war: traditional and revisionist. The traditional view focuses on who initiated the war, as in who was to blame. The answer from them is Kim Il-Sung, he invaded with the Soviets and China, thus this was not a civil war but an international war between the communists and capitalists.

The revisionists, on the other hand, focus less on decision makers and more on the origins of the war. According to them it was a product of class struggles that developed during Japan’s colonial rule. There was a strong leftist tradition in all of Korea, there were ready conflicts with landlords and capitalists. This war was just a continuation of conflict from 1945. This was a civil war based on class struggle. Revisionists focused a lot on secret US archives for their evidence but then the Soviet archives were opened and showed that Kim Il-Sung organized everything, he approached Stalin and Mao to aid in occupying the South as with their help it would only take a few weeks (a few months at worst). The war was initiated to occupy and unify. The US hesitated to invade in the first place apparently. Then an armistice was signed.

The legacy of the war was the impact on US politics (the replaced presidents), Japan’s economy was revitalized (by the US), Kim Il-Sung’s rule was solidified in the DPRK (he purged any soviets, Chinese, and socialist/communist South Koreans). The war also delayed democratization in South Korea, they now suffer from anti-communism and anti-North sentiment. It also established the Cold War.

Then I went home.

I am lowkey tempted to tag a certain user as he is very involved on information about the DPRK but I don’t want to bother him. Maybe he’ll come across it naturally. Anyway, shoutout to you-know-who! Love your TikTok’s and YouTube videos!