What Makes People Tick?

If you read anything at all today, read this. The story of these people deserves more attention than it has been getting up to now. More attention from the international media and from international aid organisations as well. This 25 July 2014 article from The Wall Street Journal opened my eyes to a side of the MH17 crash that I'd barely given any thought to up until now. Then the plane crashed. The cabin's second-row overhead compartment is in a tree across from the village hall—and suitcases and clothes are in backyards and gardens of square-windowed cottages.  Villagers dashed into their basements, fearing a bomb attack. Residents in a nearby village ran for the church, certain that the world was coming to an end. A colleague of Ms. Voloshina screamed after being nearly hit by the plane's cargo hold.        Days later, the 43-year-old mayor found the bottom half of a man's body in the shrubs next to her office. She has barely slept since then.  ...

Yale University's Avalon Project has a copy of the Hamas Covenant 1988  in their archives. The following is a direct quote. I encourage all readers to read the entire Covenant and to form your own opinion based on your personal interpretation of the document. Article Twenty-two:   For a long time, the enemies have been planning, skillfully and with precision, for the achievement of what they have attained. They took into consideration the causes affecting the current of events. They strived to amass great and substantive material wealth which they devoted to the realisation of their dream. With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard a...

Mosab Hassan Yousef is the son of Hamas founding member Sheikh Hassan Yousef. After realising that Hamas was a violent organisation that he did not want to be a part of, he left Hamas and eventually moved to the United States. Mr. Yousef is also the author of the book " Son of Hamas " published in 2010. Judging by the reviews on Goodreads, it looks to be a very interesting book. I have to admit that I'd not heard of this book nor of Mosab Hassan Yousef until about an hour ago when I was alerted to the video below. In this video , Mosab Hassan Yousef speaks to CNN about his decision to leave Hamas and explains candidly why he could no longer be a part of such a brutal regime. If you watch anything today, watch this video! "In the mosques Hamas taught us that without shedding innocent blood for the sake of the ideology we wont be able to build an Islamic state. They were preparing us from the age as young as five years old.   This is the ideology that Hamas w...

Vox.com presents an interesting article with 40 maps that show the start and spread of the internet. It looks like it all started in America, spreading from there to Europe and beyond. Reading this article made me wonder - didn't Dan Brown once write that the internet started at CERN? (Or some part of the technology that makes the internet possible anyway... Heck, it was a long, long time ago that I read his books...) "The internet increasingly pervades our lives, delivering information to us no matter where we are. It takes a complex system of cables, servers, towers, and other infrastructure, developed over decades, to allow us to stay in touch with our friends and family so effortlessly. Here are 40 maps that will help you better understand the internet — where it came from, how it works, and how it's used by people around the world." Source:  40 maps that explain the internet , Vox.com Maps 14 and 15 shows domain names around the world. The first map shows E...

Want to know what life is like in Israel? Watch this very touching video made by Dana bar-on who lives very close to the Gaza border. She brought tears to my eyes, which is why I'm sharing this video. Source: 10 minutes about living on the Gaza border ,YouTube

In een artikel van vandaag bericht De Telegraaf dat het Nederlandse ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken een half miljoen euro aan het Rode Kruis zal geven. Zoals hiernaast te lezen is voegt het Rode Kruis daar zelf 30,000 euro aan toe voor de hulpverlening in Israël. Bedankt, Rode Kruis Nederland. Bedankt dat jullie niet alleen de grote nood in Gaza zien maar ook de nood in Israël zien en proberen om daar te helpen. De situatie in Gaza is vreselijk. Dat ziet iedereen. Maar de verhalen die ik hoor van vrienden in Israël, de beelden die ik uit Israël zie - die zijn ook vreselijk. Daarom, bedankt dat jullie beide kanten zien. Nederland geeft half miljoen voor hulp Gaza   "In Israël werkt het Internationale Rode Kruis nauw samen met Magod David Adom (MDA) en in de Palestijnse gebieden met de Rode Halve Maan. Beide zijn zusterorganisaties van het Nederlandse Rode Kruis. Bij elke inslag of elk bombardement rukken zij met ambulances en hulpverleners uit om gewonden op te halen, te ...

I am getting SO sick and tired of simple webpages taking minutes to load because there are so many advertisements and moving images on the page. Today, it was CNN's website. All I'm trying to do is to read TEXT, just plain text. What happens?  First, a photo loads. Why? I'm not here to view the photo, I'm here to read the text.  Then the top bar, something about an edition I've chosen? Noooo... I didn't choose anything. Software did, by reading my IP address to determine where I'm from. Why? Is the article I'm trying to read different depending on the version? Is the American version different from the international version for instance?  Next are links to other articles. Again - not here to read those other articles, just here to read the article that the search engine just found for me... Which I'm still waiting for... Underneath the photo, the first lines of text appear. Scrolling is still impossible. Reading the rest of the art...