What Makes People Tick?

Earlier this month, a Turkish young woman was brutally murdered after resisting assault and rape by a stranger. A 20-year old university student on her way home to her family, Özgecan Aslan was aware of the dangers all women face in a world in which men live - she carried pepper spray and she knew to fight back to defend herself - yet also determined to get an education and live her life without fear of other human beings. The burned body of Aslan, who had been missing for two days, was discovered on Feb. 13 in a riverbed in Tarsus in the southern province of Mersin. Ahmet Suphi Altındöken, the 26-year-old bus driver, confessed in a testimony to the prosecutor that he stabbed Aslan to death before cutting off her hands and burning her body. The court arrested Altındöken, while his 50-year-old father, Necmettin Altındöken, and 20-year-old friend, Fatih Gökçe, have also been arrested on charges of being accomplices to the murder.    Turkish women changing names to escape v...

The first official report about the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 came out today. Thirty-plus pages of maybes and more questions, thankfully some clarity too however not nearly as much of it as I'd hoped for. The report seems to only confirm all the speculation going on in the days after the downing of the Malaysian Airlines passenger carrier. The aeroplane didn't suffer any kind of failure, the pilots and crew didn't screw up or do anything wrong. Something external, something outside and slightly in front of the aeroplane, exploded and impacted with MH17, causing it to break apart in mid-air. The cockpit, as I understand it, pretty much went straight down, the rest of the plane, the part with engines and momentum, disintegrated and came down in pieces spread out over a larger area.  Chilling reports from villagers on the ground  confirm this, their stories of body parts landing in their gardens and on their streets are as horrifying as the loss of human ...

Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister Frans Timmermans spoke to the United Nations Security Council about the 'downing' of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 carrying a total of 298 innocent men, women and children, 193 of whom were Dutch. Parts of Mr. Timmermans' speech were shown on Dutch television news ( NOS Nieuws ) such as the statement I transcribed below in order to share it with readers of this blog. Minister Timmermans' speech can be viewed here on YouTube . Any transcription errors are mine. "Just for one minute, I'm not addressing you as representatives of your countries... But as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers.  Just imagine that you first get the news that your husband was killed. And then within two or three days you see images of some thug removing a wedding band from their hands. Just imagine that this could be your spouse.   To my dying day I will not understand that it took so much time for the rescue workers to be allowed to do their ...

BBC News reports earlier today that Dutch experts have been given limited access to some of the bodies of the victims of the rocket attack against Malaysian Airlines flight #MH17. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, whose country lost 193 people, said all political and economic options were on the table if access to the crash site remained unsatisfactory.  "We want our people back," he told parliament in The Hague. Source: MH17 plane crash: Dutch experts examine bodies , BBC News