By Linus Hoeller Title Image: Documents taken from www.nytimes.com Over one million Uighurs have been placed in high-security re-education facilities by Chinese authorities, the United Nations estimate. A Muslim minority of around ten million people in western China’s Xinjiang province, the Uighurs are the target of a systematic campaign by the central government to re-shape…
Category: Germany
We lead the best lives that humans have ever had. With all the doom and gloom going on in the world around us, seemingly unending wars being fought in the middle east and still all too many people suffering of extreme poverty and hunger in less economically developed countries, this is easy to forget. Yet it is true, and especially in light of seemingly unsolvable crises and problems, it is well worth slowing down and taking a look at the empirical evidence that exists, reminding ourselves that: yes, there are problems, but yes, our lives are actually pretty good.
Introduction Adolf Hitler’s “Machtergreifung”[1] on the 30th of January 1933 created the foundation for open anti-Semitic violence, which would eventually pave the way into what became known as the holocaust: the “systematic, state-organized persecution and murder of at least six million Jews … by Nazi-Germany”.[2] Antisemitism was nothing new when the NSDAP[3] gained power in…
Europe’s diplomats and heads of state are playing with an idea that, until a few years ago, seemed almost unthinkable: creating Europe’s very own nuclear force, a “Eurodeterrent” of sorts, with the main aim of becoming less dependent on the US while still being safe from Russia. Europe is in a difficult situation. On the…
The European Union can now cut ‘hate-inducing’ live broadcasts and delete sections from their online archive. The Guardian, the 9-million reader newspaper that published Snowden’s revelations on global surveillance, published an article titled ‘is it ethical to punch a Nazi?’ Anti-Trump protesters in Berkeley turned a peaceful demonstration into a riot, burning things and smashing…
Here’s a topic, for a change, that isn’t really new at all but all the more puzzling – Number Stations. Spy stations, or (admittedly less catchy) number stations, are shortwave radio stations operated by intelligence agencies, embassies and militaries around the world, broadcasting strings of seemingly random numbers, at seemingly random times, on seemingly random…
Major cities have always been a focal point between people of different origins, cultures and habits. Especially in the last century or so, with urbanization at a higher rate than ever before and the world being more and more connected, cities have not only grown significantly in size, but also in diversity. Democratic elections show…
The fall of the Berlin Wall following the mass demonstrations on November 9th, 1989 was one of the largest geopolitical events in recent history, which ultimately led to the reunification of Germany and the peaceful transition of power of the “communist” regimes in eastern Europe, which ultimately led to the fall of the Soviet Union…
The war against the self-proclaimed caliphate “Islamic State” has been dragging on for over two years and four months since it officially began on the 13th of June 2014. The war has and still is being fought out over two continents, in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Nigeria, Afghanistan and also Southeast Asia. A coalition of western…
On the day of German reunification (October 3rd), let’s take a moment to remember the reason that at least 872 people died and many more committed suicide. The Innerdeutsche Grenze, the GDR’s border to West Germany, and the Berlin Wall between the east and west sectors of Berlin were built mainly for one purpose: to…