OK, thanks for this post Fireliter and the caveats to no offence meant to anybody
This need in mankind to explain our existence and the tiresome arguments it engenders is to say the least, complex. Each side tells it from its own perspective and provides its supposedly corroborative evidence.
I dont want to play that game - why does there have to be an explanation - none of them are provable - whats wrong with 'we just are and always have been'
For all any of us can know with certainty, this whole earth/galaxy could be a speck of dirt about to be dusted from the cosmic coffee table
Lets hope that China are worried enough that people will boycot the Olympics in Beijing - that may get them to do something - we are all so cozy in our lives - I dread to think what tonight will be like for those folks -
We can change the world - Re-arrange the world It's dying - if you believe in justice It's dying - and if you believe in freedom It's dying - let a man live it's own life It's dying - rules and regulations, who needs them Open up the door We can change the world
"I could not, as my father's daughter, remain indifferent to all that was going on"
Aung San Suu Kyi, 1988
In March 1999 she suffered a major personal tragedy when her husband died of cancer.
The military authorities offered to allow her to travel to the UK to see him on his deathbed, but she felt compelled to refuse for fear she would not be allowed back into the country.
Aung San Suu Kyi has often said that detention has made her even more resolute to dedicate the rest of her life to represent the average Burmese citizen.
The UN envoy Razali Ismail has said privately that she is one of the most impressive people he has ever met.
Overseas life
Much of Aung San Suu Kyi's appeal within Burma lies in the fact she is the daughter of the country's independence hero General Aung San.
He was assassinated during the transition period in July 1947, just six months before independence.
Aung San Suu Kyi was only two years old at the time.
In 1960 she went to India with her mother Daw Khin Kyi, who had been appointed Burma's ambassador to Delhi.
Four years later she went to Oxford University in the UK, where she studied philosophy, politics and economics. There she met her future husband.
After stints of living and working in Japan and Bhutan, she settled down to be an English don's housewife and raise their two children, Alexander and Kim.
Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 But Burma was never far away from her thoughts.
When she arrived back in Rangoon in 1988 - initially to look after her critically ill mother - Burma was in the midst of major political upheaval.
Thousands of students, office workers and monks took to the streets demanding democratic reform.
"I could not, as my father's daughter remain indifferent to all that was going on," she said in a speech in Rangoon on 26 August 1988.
Aung San Suu Kyi was soon propelled into leading the revolt against then-dictator General Ne Win.
Inspired by the non-violent campaigns of US civil rights leader Martin Luther King and India's Mahatma Gandhi, she organised rallies and travelled around the country, calling for peaceful democratic reform and free elections.
But the demonstrations were brutally suppressed by the army, who seized power in a coup on 18 September 1988.
The military government called national elections in May 1990.
Aung San Suu Kyi's NLD convincingly won the polls, despite the fact that she herself was under house arrest and disqualified from standing.
But the junta refused to hand over control, and has remained in power ever since.
She is an AMAZING Woman Skimpy and yep, I can see REM dedicating a song to her !!
this is googled;
Aung San Suu Kyi
Like the South African leader Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi has become an international symbol of heroic and peaceful resistance in the face of oppression.
For the Burmese people, Aung San Suu Kyi, 62, represents their best and perhaps sole hope that one day there will be an end to the country's military repression.
As a pro-democracy campaigner and leader of the opposition National League for Democracy party ( NLD), she has spent more than 11 of the past 18 years in some form of detention under Burma's military regime.
In 1991 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to bring democracy to Burma.
At the presentation, the Chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, Francis Sejested, called her "an outstanding example of the power of the powerless".
After a period of time overseas, Aung San Suu Kyi went back to Burma in 1988.
House arrest
Soon after she returned, she was put under house arrest in Rangoon for six years, until she was released in July 1995.
She was again put under house arrest in September 2000, when she tried to travel to the city of Mandalay in defiance of travel restrictions.
She was released unconditionally in May 2002, but just over a year later she was put in prison following a clash between her supporters and a government-backed mob.
Following a gynaecological operation in September 2003, she was allowed to return home - but again under effective house arrest.
During these periods of confinement, Aung San Suu Kyi has busied herself studying and exercising.
She has meditated, worked on her French and Japanese language skills, and relaxed by playing Bach on the piano.
In more recent years, she has also been able to meet other NLD officials, and selected visiting diplomats like the United Nations special envoy Razali Ismail.
But during her early years of detention, Aung San Suu Kyi was often in solitary confinement - and was not even allowed to see her two sons or her husband, the British academic Michael Aris.
I know people who have had abortions and they do live with the decision for the rest of their lives, often torturing themselves for having decided this course of action. If there had been another choice they woud have taken that instead.
It isnt my business or anybody elses to add to the pain they already feel.
Hi Mindful - I dont worry about posting things like this as the rule is, if somebody doesnt like it they dont have to involve themselves and at the end of the day the situation in Burma/Mayanmar is at last being spoken of the world over -
As you say, the plight of people the whole world over is so very unsettling and sad. I does leave us feeling helpless but it made me feel a bit better to bring peoples attention to the various petitions available online. Very little of this situation is getting out of the country by the traditional methods such as TV or other forms of journalism and the authorities there have failed, thankfully, to completely remove internet access.
I just got this little snippet from Reuters;
Today’s deaths brought the toll in two days of street violence to at least 16, but bodies are reportedly still being found in side streets of Rangoon. Eyewitnesses said the Japanese journalist was shot at point-blank range as he photographed a riot police baton charge on a group of mostly women.
A crowd, holding banners in an anti-government protest, follows thousands of monks as they enter the Shwedagon Pagoda before marching to the city centre of Yangon September 25, 2007. REUTERS/Stringer Aung Hla Tun, Reuters
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Myanmar security forces sealed off Yangon's Shwedagon Pagoda on Wednesday, fired tear gas and arrested up to 200 monks trying to get into the shrine, cracking down on the biggest anti-junta protests in nearly 20 years.
But despite a heavy deployment of troop and riot police at key points across the city, 500 monks marched towards the downtown Sule Pagoda area, the end-point of a week of peaceful protests, witnesses said.
Others joined them along the way, swelling their ranks.
Witnesses and monk sources said some of the deeply revered Buddhist clergy were beaten and manhandled by riot police taking them away from the Shwedagon Pagoda, starting point of the past week's monk-led protests against 45 years of military rule.
Witnesses said they heard no gunshots, but they said security forces burnt plastic pipes to make acrid smoke which filled the air around the pagoda.
The atmosphere at the gilded Shwedagon shrine was "very tense," one witness said, with onlookers angry at the use of violence against the maroon-clad monks.
But the numbers of monks there were far fewer than on Monday or Tuesday after troops and riot police took up positions outside at least six big activist monasteries.
There was also a heavy security presence at the Sule Pagoda, a clear sign the generals were trying to prevent more mass marches.
Hundreds of soldiers waited in a park behind Sule Pagoda, the scene of some of the worst bloodshed when troops opened fire on protesters in 1988, the former Burma's last major uprising.
Then, as many as 3,000 people are thought to have been killed. Now, there are fears around the world of a repetition and Western governments have appealed to the generals to show restraint in the face of protests which had been peaceful.
"This is a test of wills between the only two institutions in the country that have enough power to mobilize nationally," said Bradley Babson, a retired World Bank official who worked in the former Burma.
"Between those two institutions, one of them will crack," he said. "If they take overt violence against the monks, they risk igniting the population against them."
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RE: whats you hypothesis on how it all began.