Year in Review: Top World Events

The Year in Review: 2008

These are the stories which I found to be most interesting/ important in the nation and the world at large. They will be predominantly American stories, as you would expect…being as I’m an American. I may or may not add much to them, but you can look them up as needed. First, I want to start with the notable passings from this past year:

Notable passings: Heath Ledger, Paul Newman, Sydney Pollack, Michael Crichton, George Carlin, Isaac Hayes, Bernie Mac, Tim Russert, Charlton Heston, Eartha Kitt

It was a sad year for people passing away indeed. I’m especially sad about the passings of George Carlin and Bernie Mac. Both were among my favorite entertainers.

Moving on, here are the ten stories, listed in reverse order, that I found most important this year.

Top World Events of 2008

10. The Phoenix Lander on Mars: The Phoenix lander detected snow falling on Mars as reported by NASA on September 29, 2008. The Phoenix has also determined, due to soil analysis, that water did indeed flow on Mars’ surface at one time. Very exciting and interesting stuff. I’m not sure what studying Mars will do for us, but its still really really interesting to find things out about our red neighbor.

9. Natural Disasers: Earthquake in China (May 12), Myanmar Cyclone (May 2); American Hurricanes. The Earthquake hit the Sichuan province, the most populous province in China, and just absolutely decimated it. Loads of deaths and displaced people. The Cyclone in Burma the week before was even worse…with an estimated hundreds of thousands of people dead. The little villages on the coast and up the river valley had no warning, and many, many villages were wiped off the face of the countryside. Just brutal. On a much lesser scale, a few big hurricanes lined up and battered the Texas coastline this hurricane season. Luckily, there were no huge problems or death tolls. Haiti got pretty friggin hammered, though.

8. Mumbai Attacks: 80 dead in coordinated attacks throughout city’s financial district. For three days over Thanksgiving weekend, India's financial center and movie capital, a metropolis of 12 million, was held hostage by what officials insist was a band of 10 armed men — a figure Mumbaikars found impossible to believe. The poshest hotels and some of the most prominent watering holes for tourists and the rich became charnel houses in massacres that threatened to undermine India's astonishing economic growth. Local politicians and security officials pointed fingers at neighbor and nemesis Pakistan, being inclined to overlook the fact that assaults on Indian cities earlier in the year may have been perpetrated by members of India's own huge, much put-upon Muslim minority.

7. Fidel Castro Steps Down: After more than half-a-century of ultimate jefe-dom, an ailing Fidel in February suddenly relinquished the presidency to his younger brother Raul, whom many hope will be a moderate reformer. Although Fidel himself remains an influence — not least because he is still the leader of the ruling Communist Party — he is increasingly ill. Many are hoping that this may signal a beginning of the end of the over half century long feud with the U.S. Either way, times are changing in Cuba.

6. Prop 8 passes in California: This has been a growing trend throughout many states in the U.S., the outlawing of gay marriage in states. It was pretty shocking to see such a liberal state like California pass this amendment to their constitution. The amendment is now being challenged in the courts (just like the previous bill that passed a few years ago and was struck down in the courts), but I can’t see any way it would get overturned except with an amendment to repeal the amendment. We’ll see. Homosexuals are pretty pissed out here, so we’ll see where this goes.

5. Iraq War Continues: Yes, this is still going on, but it was a pretty productive year in Iraq. The government is getting pretty well solidified. The surge worked, and violence decreased a ton. Deaths are down, and many provinces and town are being turned over to Iraqi military control. It appears we’re going to be out of there by 2011, so the end is on the horizon. It’s still pretty unpopular, but the economy’s woes have really taken much of the glare off Iraq, as well as the media’s refusal to report anything good in Iraq. You don’t hear it talked about much more. I guess that’s a good thing.

4. Russo-Georgian War (August 2008) – In August 2008, there was a war in Georgia over the autonomy of the provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russian tanks rolled into Georgia and blasted everything in sight. They took over a port town and got within miles of the capital. Europe and America kept urging Russia to pull back, but really showed no interest in getting too involved. Can’t really blame them. But this all appeared to me as Russia testing the West, to see how much they could get away with before we got involved and put our foot down. We’ll have to keep an eye on them in the near future, as they may try to stir things up in the area again.

3. Oil and Gas Prices: Oil fell from a record $147.27 in July to $43.71 today (as of 12/17/08), its lowest level since May 2005. That is a drop of over 69% in a mere 5 months. Insanity. It’s been a ridiculously volatile market…almost as volatile as the stock market. Gas prices have followed the oil prices, with prices reaching $4.50 a gallon at its peak (over $5.00 in some of the most expensive areas). Gas prices have dropped below $2 now, which has been nice. The high gas prices gave an excuse for the hippies to come out and start pushing hybrids on everyone and looking down at people who didn’t dive them. I kept my truck (to the tune of $75 per tank).

2. Economic Crash: I’m honestly not completely sure what the hell happened here. But basically banks were unable to cover their loans and went into debt and needed a bailout from the government. Lots of this was due to the housing market bubble bursting, and the sub prime mortgages that got lots of people into houses that couldn’t afford them. This led to a very reactionary stock market, where people decided they HAD to sell now, and company’s stock prices fell through the floor. This hurt the value of companies that relied on stock prices as a value of their company, and people lost their jobs. Which led to more people selling stocks. On top of this, the government has allocated nearly 1 trillion dollars to bailing out various companies. The economy is in the shitter, mostly. But it should turn around soon enough.

1. Barack Obama becomes first African American President of the United States: “Finally, change has come to America.” And with that quote, Barack Obama announced that he had won the presidential election, becoming the first African American president in our country’s history. This was a historic election on many fronts: first female on a Republican ticket, first female with a chance to get the presidential nomination, and, yes, the first African American presidential nominee and winner. I’ll go ahead and leave my personal feelings about how unprepared Obama is, since this is about the history behind the election, not the intelligence. However, it will be interesting to see if The One can live up to the lofty expectations he set up for himself.

It was an interesting year, although not a particularly happy one in the world. However, solidity is around the corner, both for our military and our economy. For a much happier look on the year that was, please tune back in Wednesday for my final Year in Review installment: my personal events.