Non-Aligned

Thoughts on the death penalty

The death penalty has been used since ancient times. It is supported by the Bible and has been used for punishing major crimes, like murder, kidnapping, burglary and rape.

Reform of the death penalty was begun by European academics in the 1750’s, who claimed it was cruel, overrated as a deterrent and occasionally used in error. They suggest life imprisonment as a replacement measure.

The first results that these reform efforts produced began a century later. The first countries that More

Biographies

IGNATIEV, count Nikolai Pavlovich (1832 – 1908) was a Russian diplomat and statesman who had a great role in defining the Russian politics in Asia and the Balkans during the government of Alexander II. He was born in Saint Petersburg in a family close to the Imperial Palace. His diplomatic career started after the Crimean War. Two years later, in 1858, he was sent with a small escort on a dangerous mission in Hiva and Bouhara. His next diplomatic More

Non - Aligned vs the UN

The Non-Aligned movement is the organisation that proclaims not only peace and international stability, but also protection of human rigts and recognition of the independace of states. The movement’s basic concerns and principles were always closely related to the establishment of order and peaceful co-existance of states and peoples where stronger states do not interfere with the independant development and the domestic affairs of other states.

Currently, the Movement is engaged in a series of considerations and recommendations to the UN. The main reason for that is that the UN is beng dominated by representatives of stronger states and the NA countries highlight the opportunity that the UN might be actually suffering from lack of fairness and justness.

Acoording to the research made by the NA (and the UN records would definitely reveal the same truth), there might be significant concerns for abuse of power and bias among the UN members. The influences of the decision making process within the organisations are mainly the ones from the US and Western Europe (and these countries have sufficient international interest to interfere with other states'politics - for example when it comes to red diesel and other fuel extraction and production). Since these states lead almost the same politics and have common international interests, their representatives within the UN might misuse power since their domination over the other states is significant and observable. This is the reason why the NA are particularly concerned with the issue and why their political scheme is mainly directed to establish neutrality in international aspect by improving the representativeness of other UN members.

Rasing such concerns over the UN composition makes the NA countries a major factor in the fight agains injustice - by using political approaches and strong positions over the international environment, the NA are aiming to proclaim state independance and recognition of states.

Green Diesel: Cheap as Chips

Tax free fuel sounds too good to be true. But it is possible, if you are willing to do a bit of work to get hold of the fuel and you only use your car for short trips around town. Green diesel is another name for the fuel that has been produced from natural sources, most commonly vegetable oil. The first 2,500 litres per year are tax free, meaning that a car using 40 mile per gallon can rack up an impressive 22,000 miles without you paying a penny to the government. Not only are you saving the environment by using a cleaner fuel, but you’re saving money too; always a good thing in this era of financial panic.

So where do you get green diesel? It’s not easy to get hold of; I’ve yet to see it being added to the pumps at my local petrol station. Perhaps in the future car owners will be lining up outside chip shops or pubs serving bar food to take away the waste oil to power their vehicles. Oil straight out of the deep fat fryer would probably not do your engine the world of good, however. Tests have shown that you can put chip fat into a car and it will run fine, but it would probably be more efficient, and cause less damage to your car if you at least filtered it first. A stray chip could cause all sorts of damage to a delicate car engine!

Most vehicles that have been converted to run on green diesel actually run on two fuels, in the same way that many commercial ships now run on diesel and LNG. Cars converted to green diesel will use conventional fuels when the engine is starting up and for the last few miles before stopping as these are the times when the engine is most likely to be damaged. Plus it can be pretty difficult get an engine powered solely by vegetable oil to turn over on cold winter mornings.

Struggle for Human Rights and Fairness

The Non-Aligned countries organisation has proved itself to be something more than simply an organisation rejecting imperialism and its modern day implications. Actually, the organisation is a core institution that monitors the processes of economic conquering around the world as a consequence of which the new forms of imperialism appear.

The organisation’s independant parties have conducted large research programmes that have established some severe violations of the fundamental human rights and liberties global principles. Let’s take several African states as examples (their names are not to be mentioned however, a bit of research can provide the more interested users with the exact names and geographical locations of the countries and regions of question) - the diamond business in Africa is founded on cheaply paid labour that have no reasonable financial return. In other words, native people in Africa work almost for free for Western subcontractors who employ them in the diamond refining business - the Non-Aligned organisation sent reports several times along with some other organisations until relevant actions were taken by the responsible international institutions (however, the issue still remains as a major problem in some African regions).

This example highlights quite a disturbing fact - Western World (EU and the US plus their allies and developed partners) gain power and wealth by violating the basic human rights and freedoms. Such a miscarriage of justice is exactly what the Non-Aligned countries stand against and the example given above was no more that a simple reflection of the organisation’s core principles in fighting for fairness and against imperialism. There are, however, thousands of examples to reveal what NA countries are fighting against - starting from the cheap laptops that we buy (the materials for many of which have been produced by using child labour - like the plastic boxes that come from China) and ending with the expensive Diamonds on 5th Avenue in New York.