Wake Up! The World Is Burning

Text by Soj.

Soj is an outstanding writer and political analyst. You are free to use excerpts and whole texts and works by her found on her website.

While I certainly understand the constant focus on Iraq (and to a lesser extent, Afghanistan), many other parts of the world are burning.

Does anyone care? I do. And I hope you do too.


Here is my brief summary:

Asia

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China - I'm sure you know quite well about the 50 plus year military occupation of Tibet. But it is China's far western Xinjiang Province that concerns me the most.

The population there is rapidly increasing, with imported Han labor pushing out and repressing the native Uighur people, who happen to be Muslim. And some of them are quite angry about it.

Xinjiang is where most of China's oil reserves are, as well as lot of their coal. It's also on the border with gas/oil giant Kazakhstan, where a new oil pipeline between the two countries is now operational.

Why should you care?

The Uighurs are not happy. Some consider Xinjiang to be part of a larger territory that belongs to them which they call East Turkistan.

www.floggingthesimian.com.../288&PHPSESSID=3b7b1bac6df48cc149fa924a7210a8fa" target="_blank" class="postlink">Flogging The Simian

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[edit on 16-4-2006 by Overwatch]

Very interesting post. But don`t forget the IRA in northern Ireland. Although there is a peacedeal in effect there is still alot of secterian violence and the IRA is still involved in criminal activity like the raiding of a bank in northern ireland and the stealing of 25 mil. If they aren`t given what they want they could spark up again.

The West is in theory a democracy (how functional it is another thing). So in theory the people of the West should be able to influence-dictate the way our government deals with the issues abroad we are involved in. Therefore it makes sense to pay most attention to educating the masses about these issues.

The West is not global and there are many, many issues and crimes being conducted by these outside powers. But unless something they do alarms us enough to merit our intervention then surely there is not much of an issue or debate for our people to engage in? (Know about yes, but engage in no). There are plenty of other issues we are involved in and can engage in. Personally I hate it when our media and government distracts us about issues in Africa when the same attention could broaden our knowledge about issues say Iraq. In both cases there are plenty of people who desperately need charity money, but only in some cases do we have any chance of engaging our people through what we call our democracy.

"...we didnt start the fire..."

- Billy Joel

we only supply people with money that will be able to pay us back - the nature of a business transaction.