I decided to collect interesting articles and post them into the blog roll instead of just sharing them on facebook so that everybody who may be interested can read them. This is only kind of a news ticker instead of an individual article that contributes to the flood of information we are exposed to. Some articles are German, most of them are English.

First there is an article about protests of McDonald's workers for higher wages, it's here,

then I found what Noam Chomsky has to say on class warfare, it's here.

An article about China lambasting US spying tactics, here.

I collected some articles about the protests in Brasil against the World Cup, one is here, another one here. There are also German ones here and here. This article about graffiti art expressing the problems related to the World Cup, here, is nice, too. There is an interesting German documentary about the doubtful event, here. I will boycott the games by the way, there are too many terrible things related to them, one being the deforestation of rain forest to build absurdly expensive stadiums for only four World Cup games and charge entrance fees that the normal Brasilian population could never afford. Bad!

Although I'm still not quite sure how serious this news site is, this German article about the weapon industry and how it benefits from the World Cup makes perfect sense, it's here.

I found this article about Americas relation to Nigeria interesting, here.

This is an article about global obesity, here.

By the way, there is an interesting article about cooking shows, here.

I liked this article about a woman who got rid of the general obsessional washing, here.

I also liked what Gregor Gysi had to say about the approach of the Federal German Bar regarding the US mass surveillance: "Die Bundesanwaltschaft leitet wegen der NSA-Ausspähaffäre offenbar kein Ermittlungsverfahren ein, weil sie keine Möglichkeit sähe, an belastbares Material über die Aktivitäten der NSA und des britischen Geheimdienstes GCHQ zu kommen. Das ist merkwürdig, weil wegen Diebstahls oder Mordes noch nie ein Ermittlungsverfahren mit der Begründung abgelehnt wurde, dass man nicht an Beweise herankäme. Ob dies gelingt oder nicht, stellt man erst im Ermittlungsverfahren fest. Wann hört die Hörigkeit der Bundesregierung, unserer Geheimdienste und anderer Behörden gegenüber der US-Administration endlich auf?" Gregor Gysi

Interesting to see what those responsible at the web summit in Stockholm had to say about why Edward Snowden and other whistleblower were blacklisted from the event, here.

And finally I liked those drawings and paintings about environmental and political issues, here.

I am collecting new articles already for the next news post.

Happy reading!

KIKI

… because they are great. But wait, I’m going to explain everything here.

Of course saying something was great is totally subjective, well, not totally, it depends how many people agree. The more people agree the more confident can you be saying something was great.

But it’s a good starting point and reminds me of some heavy discussions I had on facebook a year ago. I try to explain all now to solve some misunderstandings.

First of all I need to define some expressions. What’s the difference between saying „The Young Turks are great!“ and „Global warming is a fact!“? First one will always be subjective, the Young Turks may be as great as it get’s to everybody in the world. It’s still an opinion, something that can change and be different. You can always find pros and cons for or against it.

The second sentence on the other hand is a fact. What’s a fact actually? A fact is a circumstance that you can prove. There’s no pros and cons for or against it. To stick to Global Warming you can research the internet and find multiple scientific studies during the last couple of years that prove it. A good starting point is almost always Wikipedia. Wikipedia is amazing, because it became better and better over the years, it’s open to everybody and it self-corrects by us people and those who research. That makes it as objective as it gets. You will always find pros and cons or different opinions to controversial topics and people correct errors or wrong statements over time. That makes it pretty reliable because there is no company controlling everything but the whole world overlooking it, it’s incredible.

Anyway, Global Warming is a fact because you can prove it. Who says that all this is true? Especially as there are so many people in the world who don’t believe in Global Warming. Are they all wrong? Yes, they are! Isn’t that pretty arrogant? Not really because it’s not arrogant to tell the truth, it’s just uncomfortable to hear it when you believe in something else.

Do I believe I knew everything? Of course not, but I know some things and I can prove that I’m right. But this sounds arrogant! Well, maybe, but there is a difference between the things you say and what people understand. It’s often about misunderstanding, the reason for arguments or even wars by the way. People just don’t understand each other correctly and it’s very difficult to say things so easy that everybody understands them the same way. This is a problem often described as relationship level in psychological terms.

What’s a relationship level? It’s the opposite of the content level in conversations. The content level consists of facts or claims, opinions or just random words. In the content level personal relationships, experiences or undertones are irrelevant, they don’t belong to the content level but to the relationship level.

One little example: Two men know each other for quite a long time, one is very passionate about environmental issues, the other less so and a bit annoyed by his friend. One day the eco guy comes up and says: „Do you actually know how bad Global Warming is?“. The careless guy could have answered: „No“ or „Yes“ or „Yes, but I don’t care!“ on a content level, but screams: „Leave me alone with your crazy ideologies!“. He completely leaves the content level, not even answering to the question, claiming the eco guy would believe in crazy things. He could have said: „I don’t know but I’m really not interested in it right now. And to be honest, I’m a bit annoyed by your stuff.“, to stick to the content level.

Anyway, what has all this to do with The Young Turks? The Young Turks is a news network on the internet, apparently the biggest in the world, but still only very little people know it, at least out of the US. It’s based in L.A. and was founded by Cenk Uygur. He is a Turkish American who came to the States when he was eight years old. He became a lawyer and worked as an attorney in Washington and New York. At some point he realized that there’s a lot of bad things going on in his country, especially involving money in politics. Another huge problem in the US in his mind is that public media is pretty bad, telling lies to the people and being financed by huge corporations and appropriate interests.

It’s in fact so bad that he decided to skip his law career and found a news channel on the internet. One that is based on telling the truth. That’s a bold claim for sure, but it’s not too hard if you focus on what makes great journalism, f.e. researching and basing reports and broadcasts on things you can prove, especially scientific studies. The easiest way to stay focussed is to keep ads away and only rely on donations like Wikipedia does or subscriptions. The Young Turks seem to be successful. By the way it’s pretty wise to try to never say something that is wrong, well, or apologize if you found out you did. One single lawsuit against The Young Turks could ruin their whole business model, making it even more likely they do a good job. And I’m convinced Cenk has just the right education to know how to play save.

The Young Turks have become pretty big over the years and there’s a lot of topics and shows that are live discussions regarding specific issues rather than only telling facts like on a news show. But it’s almost always that you can experience Cenk’s brilliancy in putting things straight. Knowing that he wouldn’t dare lying to you makes it even greater!

Check them out, they are well worth it www.tytnetwork.com and this is one example ...

KIKI

Before I post the latest news regarding important socio-political issues I will tell you today what sources I use and why. Most of them have proven over the years to be reliable. I‘m watching the television only seldom anymore, because the net is faster and you get better access to informations you really want. On TV I‘m watching Arte or 3sat.

I customized my facebook newsfeed the way that I‘m reading the latest from trusted sources directly. Those are in my case Amnesty International, Greenpeace and Greenpeace Germany, Campact, ver.di, attac, Wir haben es satt, Peta, for US informations I‘m relying on The Young Turks, an amazingly great News Channel on youtube, the sources they quote have proven to be reliable as well, the Baseline Scenario, for latest general news I use Huffington Post, BBC or the New York Times, in Germany n-tv, sounds weird but they always come up with breaking news first, a bit like Spiegel online but with far less ads and trash (n-tv happens to have a lot of ads, too, I've just blocked most of it out with a flash blocker), I read the Sueddeutsche, the taz, I also follow Emma magazine. With those sources I‘m pretty much set for trustworthy informations and it‘s often enough to spend the whole day only reading the latest news of those ones. The NachDenkSeiten are very good, too.

But it‘s not only about informations and consumption of those we need to think about all those informations and then develop our own opinion. I mean we don‘t have to but what‘s the point about being a human when you don‘t have an own opinion?

Now comes the most problematic step, based on this opinion we need to act. We don‘t need to act of course, but what‘s the point about being a human being when you are not acting according to what you really think. The worst thing about this is, most of the time it‘s uncomfortable to act. But it‘s also uncomfortable to go to work every morning, brush your teeth twice a day, do the laundry, dishwash and much more. To change something and make the world a better one, f.e. to reduce carbon consumption, to really do something against global warming, to establish better working conditions for workers in factories, to improve conditions of animals in industrial farming, it‘s no longer enough to just disagree with all that, we need to act and change our habits, vote for a different party f.e., one that promises to make it differently. We need to go without plastic bags in the supermarket to dam even more plastic junk to pollute our oceans. We need to change to a renewable power company if we want the energy turnaround, we need to consume less of everything, switch off lights when we don't need it, use less water, buy fewer electronic devices and thousand of things more that make a change and help keep our world the way we use to take it for granted.

It‘s not super hard to change one‘s habits and act, really not and it's a bit like with all things that we hate first when you think of them, they turn out to be fun when you actually try them out. Try it, it‘s worth it ...

Next time I will show you a cool shop in Berlin that decided to do it the sustainable way, Wertvoll in Prenzlauer Berg for example, and some people who work hard to make a change like "Wir haben es satt". I will also post some of the latest important issues.

See you next Tuesday

KIKI

ps: I will write a dedicated article sometime in the future about my darling Evil, these two reports reached me this week, bad news of conditions in facilities in China once again and a lawsuit filed by workers of US retail stores complaining of Apple's policies to search bags of hourly workers, which takes a significant amount of their time and is neither paid nor rewarded overtime. Too bad ...

Tuesday will be my day for socially and socio-politically relevant issues. I will be writing about things that go on the world or in Germany and could be better in my opinion to make it an overall more social, environmentally friendly and compassionate society, something I am missing so much in every day news or that I have experienced when fighting for labour rights or keeping my eyes open when walking the streets or listening to people.

My focus will be on alternatives, though, on companies that already do different without slave-driving workers, organisations who do the right thing for decades or people in my life that live a considerate life for a long time. I will show that it‘s never to late to think and start living differently, but that it needs a little effort, sometimes we even need to say good-bye to some comfortable habits.

Things we see or read in the news, be it nuclear industry, oil drilling and polution of our nature, food control and animal husbandry, global warming, excessive consumption in every way or even the recent events in Turkey connected with demonstrations against ecological destruction, all this has been around for a long time. Instead of moaning and showing how bad things are, and the world is pretty bad for sure, I will present alternatives that already exist.

I made up the word Tubürger (Do-citizen) during my very active days on facebook at the beginning of this year. My main point with the Tubürger was that it needs a little more than just being angry, one step further is necessary to actually change something. I want to show that it‘s possible and often quite easy to really make a positive change and this way have a little impact on overall society and its possible transformation. Some small changes will have a positive affect, you can‘t deny that. Some examples out of a long list of things the Tubürger does may be ... to use public transport or ride the bike instead of going by car, especially going by car on your own. You may say no to plastic bags wherever you can. Thousands of images have shown that our oceans already overflow with plastics of all kinds. You may as well change your electricity provider to some renewable energies. You may take the train instead of the plane. You may eat less meat or buy organic food instead of genetically modified one. You may use less power at home by switching lights off when not needed ...

At some point I will translate the list of the Tubürger into English and we may add more positive habits and things that make a difference together.

My work with Common Works and Lebenskleidung has been so refreshing, too, because it's good to see once more that people around are already living or doing their business in a compassionate and environmentally friendly way, just naturally, in the case of Lebenskleidung by trading with organic materials exclusively.

From next week on I will start to take a closer look at companies like those two or traditional organisations and write about their work and philosophy believing in a positive change of our world.

Keeping you posted

KIKI