Slave Auctions caught on tape in Libya.

Migrants from West Africa leaving their countries for Europe in hope of finding work and an education. In order to make to Europe, they have to cross through the Libyan desert many of them are captured and put into the market.  In a vice documentary, pregnant women said that when the cameras weren't rolling they kicked and beaten. In other videos, men were beaten with whips and others were burned.   These migrants are soon auctioned off and sold. Young girls were sold as a sex slave and many men and women were killed for their organs. In a recent video that surfaced a man is addressing an unseen crowd where he says " Big strong boys for farm work".  Being auctioned off are 3 men and they are sold for $1200 $400 a piece. In a later segment from, the video an unseen man ask " what happened to the ones from Niger" he is told that they were sold off. The video surfaced after CNN was sent the footage from a contact. CNN travels to the Libyan capital Tripoli where 1 to 2 slave auctions happen at least every month. CNN also travels to town in Libya in which an auction is taking place they record footage using secret cameras. They are ushered into a warehouse where an auction is taking place.  One by One men are brought out as the bidding begins the prices range from $400 to $550 to $700 being the highest. The reporter from CNN tries to speak to the man behind the auction but he refuses. Migrants who aren't put into auction are sent to detention centers in Libya.  All of them say that they were held against their will. One man details how he was tortured in by beatings, electric shocks, and being starved and how the entire ordeal was filmed and posted online.  CNN has turned over the footage to Libyan authorities but slave auctions are still taking place today.

How can someone turn a blind eye during war ?

                  How can someone decide to become a bystander and not do anything when something horrible is happening in front of them? Or maybe its easy for us to judge these kinds of people like Ruth (Goeth's girlfriend), since we aren't going through the same situation that is happing to Ruth. But how much can someone see before they change from a bystander to an up stander. We see that Schindler saw the same things that Ruth saw but he was able to change to a up stander maybe because he made money off the Jews or because he was a rich man, and Ruth depended on Goeth , Financially and any other way possible, so if she was more scared because if she tried something she could be killed or treated like one of the many Jews she saw everyday. But even after she was in no danger she continued to reject the idea that Goeth was a bad person and that he was no worse than anyone else, why would she do this? Was she trying to protect herself in a way showing that she wasn't a bystander because Goeth wasn't a bad man ?

Thoughts on my research on video games and violence/aggression/ stress

While I was researching on the topic of video games and violence/aggression/ stress, I was surprised to see how every researcher interprets data on the consumption of video games. There are people who say that video games do cause these negative effects and at the same time there are people who say that video games don´t cause any of the negative effects or video games help reduce the tendency to have these negative effects.

I think it just depends on who is playing video games that these negative effects will appear.  I think it is the easiest answer to the questions, ¨Do video games cause aggression¨, ¨Do video games cause stress?, and ¨do video games cause violence?¨.

Holocaust: the Latent Killer

Many might think that just surviving the Holocaust would ensure that your life would be smooth sailing from there, however, this is not true. Many survivors suffered from psychological afflictions after such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and survivor's guilt. In fact, Holocaust survivors were three times more likely than non-holocaust survivors in psychiatric care to have attempted suicide. Even if they hadn't attempted it, no one can argue that the stress associated with having lived through that and having to deal with it could not be detrimental to health. I guess the debate then arises of whether these deaths can be added to the official Holocaust count. It can be argued that without the Holocaust these deaths wouldn't have happened. It also could be said that because they didn't happen during the Holocaust they should not be a part of the official death count. Do you think people should include these deaths as part of the number or not?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16085786

Do Schindler's Good Deeds Outweigh His Bad

We recently finished watching the movie “Schindler’s List” and most of us liked and appreciated the main character Oskar Schindler. We all liked him for the good he did and because we understood why he did the things he did but we didn’t take much time to think about or discuss the bad things he did. Just because he was taking advantage of the jews in a nicer way than most other Germans, doesn’t change the fact that he was still taking advantage of them and making a huge profit using slave labor. This was something Mr. Stewart briefly mentioned after we watched the film and I was wondering what other people thought. Where is the line for when the bad will outweigh the good? And does that line apply to all situation or is this one an exception? How much of it is he responsible for since most Germans were taking advantage of the Jews and slave labor anyway? He seemed to have done his best to do good in the most efficient way possible at the time but there were other ways he could’ve helped without dealing with the Nazis and taking advantage of slave labor. Although my personal opinion is that the good things he did and the lives he saved far outweigh the bad things he had to do to achieve that.

After Helen meets with Monika

After Meeting with Monika, both ladies went on to share their stories with the whole world in the documentary inheritance. Helen was reluctant at first because she was the daughter of the mn who abused her and killed others when he was still alive an running the Krakow-Płaszow concentration camp. Monika had grown up being told that he father was a great man who dies fighting for his country on the battlefield. It wasn´t until her mother told her that she would die like her father that she found out the truth from her grandmother the man he actually was. Later in life wanting to learn more about her father she decided to watch Schindler's list in which she learned a whole lot of information regarding her father. Having been shown all this information she became mad at Spielberg for telling her through the film what her father had done. The film and a holocaust survivor documentary helped reminded her of Helen who she had been told about a few times growing up but never met and her house. After they meet  Helen goes on to say,¨Monika, she accepted the fact that her father was a killer, but she still wanted to defend him. She said to me that, "They all were doing it." I said, "But he was the one that gave all the orders." So, it's just like she still protected…"They all were doing it." It just, like, annoyed me, you know? It's hard for me to be with her because she reminds me a lot of, you know…she's tall, she has certain features. And I hated him so. But she is a victim. And I think it's important because she is willing to tell the story in Germany. She told me people don't want to know, they want to go on with their lives. And I think it's very important because there's a lot of children of perpetrators, and I think she's a brave person to go on talking about it because it's difficult.¨

How "the good guy with a gun" stops "the bad guy with a gun"

Spoiler: they don't.

At least not enough to justify increasing the number of privately owned guns in America. A 2014 report released by the FBI examined 160 mass shooting incidents in the US. Only 5 in 160 shooters were stopped (meaning they were killed/wounded) by an armed individual not affiliated with law enforcement.

In comparison, 21 of 160 incidents were stopped by an unarmed individual "safely and successfully restrained" the shooter.

Studies have also suggest that the presence of a gun can encourage people to engage in confrontational behaviors that can escalate a situation (Zimmerman and Martin). This pose some very serious concern as to why Americans are so keen on increasing (and not just maintaining) the amount of gun that are privately owned.



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