YAIC Weekly

By Jim Liu, YAIC Weekly
February 7, 2013

Psychologist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker at Harvard University thinks it is completely predictable that wars between countries might go the way of slave auctions, debtors’ prisons and other barbaric customs.There are some parts to the brain that impel us to carry out violence, such as the thirst for revenge, feelings of tribalism, or the quest for dominance. 

In Asia, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, abbreviated as DPRK, has recently done nuclear tests. The picture on the below is a nuclear test site and water cooling plant. It showed that DPRK started to warn countries not to interrupt them to start the war with South Korea. The enmity between DPRK and South Korea could trace back to the Korean War and therefore the revenge between DPRK and South Korea still have a long way to improve the situation.

In the Middle East, there were many uprisings two years ago. People in the Middle East are eager to get the right of freedom and the most important problem is the poverty gap.

The first uprising was in the Tunisia. A street vendor Mohamed Bouazzi committed the suicide because of the high unemployment rate of teenagers in Arab, rising food price and a lack of freedom which result in the series of uprisings. Most importantly, the country’s president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, has governed the Tunisia for 23 years in power. However, the Tunisia government did not take care of the potential threat. As a result, country’s people topple the government. 

Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Syria and Yemen successively start the demonstrations because the long regime, poor economy and a lack of freedom. 

When the street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia, this suicide ended up a series of events that would entirely change the Arab world forever and ever. 

Although the world seems that it was not peaceful at all, many countries’ people have empathy and reason that allow us to see violence as a problem to be solved. For this reason, we still try hard to reach the world peace.