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Monday Afternoon in Tibet saw the biggest protest the country has seen in almost 20 years.
Monks on the outskirts of Lhasa were heard yelling political slogans such as, ‘Long live the Dalai Lama’ and ‘Independence for Tibet’ in an act of defiance against the ruling Chinese Government.
Drepung Monastery
Designed to commemorate the 49th anniversary of the famous uprising in which the Dalai Lama fled into exile in India and tens of thousands (80,000 is the popular estimate) of Tibetans were killed by the Chinese military these protest will surely once again raise the question about Tibet’s sovereignty.
Civilian Tibetans and Buddhist Monks took to the streets to protest against 50 years of brutal Chinese rule enforced upon the deeply Buddhist region. Tibetans demanded their independence from Beijing and demanded their sacred right to practice their religion freely without government interference.
Drepung Monastery - Main Prayer Hall
Hundreds of monks took too the streets but where soon confronted with the strength and force of the Chinese military. In defiance of Beijing’s military muscle the monks have staged a sit-in but most major monasteries in Tibet remain circled by military personnel.
This protest took place at the sacred Drepung monastery – the largest of the three great and most significant monasteries in Tibet.
500 years before Christ's birth Sun-Tzu in his legendary military manuel, The Art of the War, stated
'There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.' - Art of War, Chapter 2, Paragraph 6.
Sun-Tzu
Sun-Tzu was no douby right then and is no doubt right now. However, little has changed after 2500 years of world history and still much of the world lives during times of war.
All member states of the United Nations adopted the governing body’s proposed Millennium Development Goals (MDG) in 2000. These eight goals have since come to encapsulate the world’s aims for helping developing countries develop in a sustainable and widely beneficial way.
The eight goals were adopted in 2000 and were designed as a part of 15 year plan. So seeing as we are now in 2008, the half way stage of the project, I decided to have a look at how the UN’s MDG’s are helping the world’s poor.
UN General Assembly
But first, here are the eight goals:
1. Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS malaria and other life threatening diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development
In every region of the world the amount of people living on less than $1 a day has significantly dropped. Except in West Asia where it has risen from 1.6% in 1990 to 3.8% in 2004. Childhood hunger has also dropped in every region, although not at a rate that the UN would have hoped.
In regards to the second development goal, achieving universal primary education, the UN is as of this moment failing. The amount of children attending school remains at similar levels to those of 1990. In the MDG Report the UN sates, ‘72 million children of primary school age were not in school in 2005; 57 per cent of them were girls.’ Although there has been definite improvements in the numbers of children attending school in Sub Saharan Africa.
a boy in Jakarta
Across the globe there are generally more women sitting in parliament than there were in 1990 and there is generally more women in paid work positions. Although the only region which has experienced substantial rises in these areas is Oceania – 28% of Oceania women were in paid work in 1990, compared with 38% in 2005.
In reference to the fourth MDG the UN states, ‘estimates for 2005 indicate that 10.1 million children died before their fifth birthday, mostly from preventable causes. Though infant and child mortality rates have declined globally, the pace of progress has been uneven across regions and countries.’
One of the UN’s greatest success stories is with the fifth MDG, improving maternal health. In Northern Africa in 2000 only 40% of child births were attended by a skilled healthcare professional but by 2005 that had risen to a staggering 75%. Similar improvements have taken place in Eastern Asia and Latin America.
In 2000 the UN proclaimed that it wanted to have halted and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015. This is a long from being achieved as the preventative measures designed to stop the transmission of the disease are failing to keep pace with the spread of the virus. Since 2000 the amount of people living with HIV/AIDS has actually risen considerably. There are currently 40 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS.
AIDS poster in Vietnam
There is no need to even discuss the seventh goal as forests continue to be logged each and every day across the globe and CO2 continues to be pumped into the Earth’s atmosphere at high levels. Environmental sustainability has not even improved in the developed world, let alone the developing world. There is no way the UN will reach this MDG. The world is loosing 7.5 million hectares of forest a year.
To view the whole report click on the link above
Dmitry Medvedev, the first deputy Prime Minister to current Russian President Vladimir Putin, looks likely to become Russia’s next Head of State.
Dmitry Medvedev - Russia's next President
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Raul Castro has officially taken over as the new Cuban Head of State following the resignation of his elder brother Fidel.
The Cuban National Assembly of Popular Power unanimously selected Raul as President of Cuba on February 24th after he was the only candidate to be nominated for the post
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Young Malcolm X
The idea of a black man running for President in the United States would have been nothing more than a dream to black people in 1965 – the year of Malcolm X’s death. It could soon become a reality
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The international community, led by Israel and the United States, has boycotted the region of Gaza since the coming of power of the Hamas organisation and by blocking trade, power supplies and humanitarian support the region has been in the midst of crisis for the last 12 months.
The people of Gaza would have to be some of the most resilient people alive. Living under constant war for the last 40 years, constantly enduring the violence and terror of the Israeli state and witnessing the incompetence and corruption of Palestinian politicians on a daily basis it is amazing to think that these people still maintain hope for an independent Palestine
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One in four newspaper jobs has disappeared in America since 2000.
Americans are increasingly turning to online sources for their news leaving the newspaper industry in the ‘land of the free’ in the worst shape it’s been in for many years
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Australian Parliament is so wonderfully entertaining. The language, the theatrics and the childlike bickering between MPs are features of Australian Parliament which are often not seen any other western country.
Australian politics seems so much more informal and juvenile compared to other western democracies and it is this informality and juvenility that I believe lends our parliamentary sittings a certain quality of charm
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It is the end of an era in the small but controversial Caribbean country of Cuba. Fidel Castro, after almost 50 years in charge, has officially announced his retirement as the nation’s President.
Fidel Castro - one of the world's longest serving heads of state
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Comment by Barlow Redfearn
on The lure of the bookshop
The Heart of Darkness