Comments | rainlightautumn: Important things.

rainlightautumn

Important things.

Feb 21, 2011 17:06

So, when I'm not battling Workman's Comp and the doctors involved therein, working, or doing that school thing, I'm avidly following the sweeping wave of uprisings in the eastern part of the world.

These are incredibly important events which affect us in our daily lives--if you're being selfish, consider the oil prices. If you can look beyond ( Read more... )

current events, important shit, real life

Comments 4

shanfiction73 February 21 2011, 22:39:49 UTC

It is amazing what can happen when a lot of unhappy people find a trigger point and decide to take action. Even more amazing that we can "watch" it happen through news reports. And terribly terribly sad and frustrating that so few people who have the freedom to express their viewpoints recognize the struggles that others have to go through to enjoy even a fraction of that freedom.

In your list of people to be worried for, please don't forget China, Burma, North Korea and Chechnya. Very few of these countries have made progress with their human rights in the past decades, and our vision to their struggles is much less clear.

rainlightautumn March 5 2011, 02:38:56 UTC

Agh, all three times I have attempted to respond, LJ has deleted my words! I will defeat the system this time ( ... )

shanfiction73 March 5 2011, 05:35:37 UTC

I lol'd at your comment about discussing things "superficially over chai" but it was a sad-sighing-lol. I attended a liberal-arts school in the mid-west for my college and as part of the curriculum and culture we were continually exposed to human rights issues, discussions about political structures, urged to join Teach America etc etc. Many kids couldn't have cared less about these issues, except when talking at the local coffee house. And I admit that I was one of them. I was aware of some issues, supported local “help the poor” programs and various world charities and I knew more about current political events than many of the people around me, but I was still focused on my own world and my own life, which was insular and filled with a bunch of mid-west white kids who were trying to become chemists and engineers ( ... )

shanfiction73 March 5 2011, 05:36:01 UTC

Another reason I try to pay attention to the areas that don’t get a lot of press is because they tend to be the places that blow up unexpectedly - afterwards people are standing there saying “who knew that Argentina was in crisis?” and people who paid attention are saying “yeah, the military dictatorship has been kidnapping people to stifle activism and control the country through a climate of terror” (Argentina and Chile circa 1982). Chechnya is kind of like that - they had their time in the news, but now they’ve been eclipsed by other bad news, so the focus is off. But it seems to be smoldering to me and it would only take a few incidents to set it off again. Uganda, Belarus and (surprisingly) Hungary are other places I am watching now… because they are instituting restrictive laws on what can and cannot be published or aired (TV or radio). Even with the advent of the internet I still worry when countries do this kind of thing. China is able to control all internet and media connection with the rest of the world, so surely Hungary ( ... )