Things I've learned after opening my eyes to what's going on in the world - Part 5

I always try to have a balance on my blog between career and relationship posts, pop culture posts, and now and then a post on serious issues. Which is why I regularly share the most interesting, shocking, fascinating and important things I've read about in the newspaper on here. Here's my latest edition:

* an article stated the true idea, that violence creates violence, and amok creates amok, it's like a virus, it also said that 60% of persons running amok announce their plans beforehand

* an intersting interview with a security officer in Israel was about how Israel protects themselves in a state of constant terror (which we in Germany are fearing to soon have right here, too), measures they take are: cyberequipment of the police, surveillance of social media, if someone is thought to plan a terrorist attac they talk with him or her as well as their parents to send the message 'we are watching you', listening to phone calls, saving license plate numbers, and cameras everywhere

* there was a fatastic essay by Elisabeth Raether which stated that we, the liberals, are the new elite, which is why the ironic thing is that the poor are voting for Trump while the eductaed elite are voting for Hillary, we liberals have the power now and we speak out for black people, trans people etc. but we leave behind the ordinary people (the white straight men), the same tendency can be seen in Europe, many poor folks voted for Brexit because only the wealthy have the privilege to actually travel Europe and see how awesome it is

* 65 million people are currenty fleeing and/or refugees, more than at anytime past WWII

* there is now a new camera technique, which we call in Germany "Lichtfeldtechnik", it means that you use lots of cameras from all angles, so that you can edit and focus etc. after the actual shooting and the camera man therefore becomes redundant

* the space probe Osiris Rex is exploring the asteroid Benno right now, the ultimate goal would be to find rocket fuel on Benno, so that it could be a gas station for long flights, f.e. to Mars

* an intersting portait on Snowden stated that he was originally pretty conservative, first he was a follower of Bush, later of Obama, but he was always dissappointed, his theory is that the more you look, the less you see, f.e. there were signs leading to the Boston bomber, but noone saw it because there was just too much information, he also thinks that the drone war creates nothing but hate and terror

* i've read a fascinating article on Silicon Valley: in the past it was a middleclass area, but then the tech elite arrived and the housing costs increased so much that the former middleclass is now homeless and starving, president Reagen's trickle down theory according to which the wealth of the rich will trickle down to the poor did not come true, later president Bush gave the rich tax giveaways so that they became even richter, the price of a house increased from 700 000$ to 2.5 million $ and the rent for a 1 room apartment is now 4000$, many are homeless and now the city council forbade sleeping in a car so that people have to sleep on the street, the problem is that the tech companies have two classes of employees: those who are employed directly by the company earn 151 600$ per year but those who are employed by subcontracters (f.e. cooks,security personal etc. who are often black folks) earn only 19 900$ per year, the homeless live in tent cities like refugees where drugs are a huge problem, the ironic thing is that the organizations who help them depend on donations from the tech companies who are the cause of the problem

* in Germany every party except the CDU is for direct democracy, when people hear direct democracy they think of Brexit but there are several German states like Bavaria and European countries like Switzerland where it works

* there are now memory hackers who can erase memories, this is used to treat fears f.e. the hacker shows a person who is afraid of spiders a spider, then gives them a beta blocker which hinders the emotion fear, someday this might be used to erase the love someone had for a dead person to also erase the grief like in sci fi movies, there are 2 types of memories: non-declarative memory (skills like driving a bycicle) and declarative memories (learned knowledge, and autobiographical memories)

If you like to learn more, you can als check out part 1, 2, 3 and 4 of this series.

Things I've learned after opening my eyes to what's going on in the world - Part 3

As you may know, I reguarily read the newspaper and now and then I share here the most interesting things I've learned about the world in the last couple of months. This is part 3 of the series, but I would love if you check out part 1 and 2, too.

*of course the main topic in German media is still the refugee crisis and I learned some new facts and ideas about it lately

1. apparently a lot of refugees try to kill themselves or hurt themselves in order to not be deported back to their home country; however they could just not open the door - German police has no right to break into where they live if they have to be deported; still many do more drastic things f.e. they destroy all their documents because without them they can't send them back, some even chemically burn their fingertips so that nooone can identify them
2. fleeing is mostly Survival of the Fittest, that's why so many healthy men succeed; Germany puts out the message: to come here will be icredibly hard but if you manage to survive, you might as well find a way to stay; the author of the article argued that we should tell possible refugees right away when and when not they have a right of asylum --- but I think he undererstimates the desparation of most refugees: hope for a better life is stronger than rationality, people aren't rational, they're emotional
3. there was a fantastic article by Marc Brost and Mark Schieritz which stated that in the beginning everyone was poor, then some people became rich and now the poor come to the rich; they argued that we (the Western wolrd) sold cars in China, got ressources from Africa, placed our old ships at Indian coasts and dumped our trash into the oceans, that's why we became rich; but now globalization turns around and we need to learn to share; we used to think that poor countries become richer simply by trading with the rich countries, but the world doesn't work that way, we destroyed our ecology and it won't be able to hold anymore rich countries; also they argue that even in Germany there are many poor people and of course they don't buy expensive fair trade products, therefore poverty creates more poverty --- economic refugees are a consequense of capitalism and globalization, now we have to pay the price for those two concepts and our system is about to fail

*another huge topic in Germany, as anywhere on Earth at the moment, is the Syrian war

1. Russia attacked everyone who's against the regime, even in areas where there are no ISIS fighters at all
2. on the up side, autonomous zones in which people work together, organize themselves and share everything have formed in Syria and this is truly revolutionary

Carne Ross 

*a former diplomat named Carne Ross proclaimed in an interview that the sanctions agains Saddam Hussein most of all hurt the Iraqi people, because of them there was hunger, insufficient medical equipment and not enough water

Brandon Bryant

*also, there was a very interesting story about Brandon Bryant, a US drone pilot: he spoke up against using drones and stated that only 2% of the 5000 deaths of drone attacs were high vaue targets, and for it he was excommunicated from his church, his girlfriend and friends walked away, his credit card was cancelled and the FBI was after him; then the German parliament invited him to speak and now he seeks asylum in Berlin

Things I've learned after opening my eyes to what's going on in the world - Part 2

Once again here's a summary of the most mind-blowing things I've learned from reading the newspaper on a regular basis over the last couple of months.

*in Germany in these days the major topic is of course the refugee crisis & there have been quite a few interesting articles from different points of view

1. the left politician Gregor Gysi explained that there have always been migration periods and that this is a good thing, because as of now more Germans die every year than are born and without immigration the German people will die out.
2. the right author Thilo Sarazin wants to catch every refugee boat which tries to get to Europe, bring the refugees back to where they came from and destroy the boat, also he wants to refuse asylum to anyone from the Balkans. - I have to clarify that I absolute do not share his opinion, I think it's outrageous, but you have to know what your enemies think.
3. one article correctly explained that the key to a unified Europe are its open borders, if we close the borders (as happened between Austria and Germany) Europe WILL fail.
4. we have to realize that if refugees left everything behind (their home, their house, their job, even their family) and risked their lives getting to Germany than there is never, never a reason to doubt wether they had a good enough reason to leave their country.
5. Switzerland accepted 37% refugees from Serbia and 40% from Kosovo, Finland accepted 43% from Kosovo and Germany accepted less than 1% from these countries. - Now I understand that of course the total number of refugees arriving in Germany is a lot bigger than in Switzerland and Finland but still the difference between 40% and 1% is significant.
6. in Germany a refugee from Syria will almost always get asylum, while a refugee from Kosovo will almost never get asylum, because they say in Syria there's a "real" war, while in Kosovo people are "only" abused by their governement and endangered by gangs. so now being Syrian is worth A LOT, people buy illegal Syrian passports because suddenly everyone wants to be Syrian. - Remember, that Syria is the country where your only two choices are a ruthless dictator and the islamist terrorists. This is crazy!

Gregor Gysi

*also, there was an excellent article about hate

1. nowadays there's a lot of hate in the German society (both from right and from left), people even started yelling anti-Semitic slogans - i was so shocked that this is still a thing here!
2. the article stated that hate shows a very specific behavioural pattern in the brain which is different from anger & fear but similar to love. they both have their origin in the same brain region (the putamen & the insular lobe). also they both live from loyality. hate is connected to anger like love is connected to lust: anger and lust can't be postponed but hate and love are patient.
3. people who hate are driven by something which is stronger than their desire to live peacefully: vulnerability.
4. the article ends by declaring: you have to take your feelings seriously but you also have to realize that they tell more about you than about the world you live in.

Thilo Sarazin

*in Benin (in West-Africa) children are sold for 70€, for a piece of cothing or for a bottle of Schnaps.

*a guy who lives in Dyarbakir (in South-East-Turkey) says: in this area there are three powers: the governemnt, the guerilla and the islamists. one of them will take your son away one day, after you put so much effort into raising him. this bloodshed has to stop!

*why is it that revolutions are so often followed by terror? after the French revolution there was the terror, then Napoleon; after the revolution in Ruanda there was the genocide; after the revolution in Lybia, there was islamism.