How “Seinfeld” and “The Simpsons” Changed TV Forever

 The debuts of “Seinfeld” and “The Simpsons,” like the debut of "Citizen Kane" or Bob Dylan's ‘electric’ performance at the Newport Folk Festival, expanded the boundaries of genre and medium. Television, comedy, and American culture have permanently changed.
 
 Read more here...

https://www.wilsonquarterly.com/quarterly/summer-2014-1989-and-the-making-of-our-modern-world/how-seinfeld-and-simpsons-changed-tv-forever/

Comforting Myths

"By the standards of the European industrial world, we are poor peasants, but when I embrace my grandfather I experience a sense of richness as though I am a note in the heartbeats of the very universe."

Read full article here...

 https://harpers.org/archive/2018/06/comforting-myths/

Why We Can't Save Her

Powerful video from the International Committee for the Red Cross...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm0TYebjyHQ

"Prison to college" programme builds brighter futures

We are in a university English class watching a lively debate about Macbeth. The enthusiasm of the visiting professor and the students is infectious.

We feel like we could be in any university across the United States. That is until the harsh crackle of a prison guard's walkie-talkie cuts the ambience and reminds us that 


http://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/americas/2015/02/college-programme-builds-brighter-futures-150205173823287.html

The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think

Exceptional article...I really hope we are in the last days of the War on Drugs.

Read full article here...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html

The Antidote to Apathy

Great talk...share it!

Local politics — schools, zoning, council elections — hit us where we live. So why don't more of us actually get involved? Is it apathy? Dave Meslin says no. He identifies 7 barriers that keep us from taking part in our communities, even when we truly care.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dave_meslin_the_antidote_to_apathy

UK, US spies hacked into webcam feeds of millions of Yahoo users

• Optic Nerve program collected Yahoo webcam images in bulk
• 1.8m users targeted by UK agency in six-month period alone
• Yahoo: 'A whole new level of violation of our users' privacy'
• Material included large quantity of sexually explicit images

READ MORE HERE...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo


This invasion of privacy is also happening in the US as well....the Washington Post writes last year...

 Powerful FBI surveillance software can covertly download files, photographs and stored e-mails, or even gather real-time images by activating cameras connected to computers, say court documents and people familiar with this technology.
Read More here....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/2013/12/06/352ba174-5397-11e3-9e2c-e1d01116fd98_story.html 

Time Magazine writes...

The NSA Is Spying on Your Webcam Sex

And some interesting comments...
Top comments...

"Who cares if GCHQ have been reading my emails. Meta data is no big deal. I have nothing to hide. It's not like they're peering into my home when I'm naked or anything."

"Oh."
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 If people don't even care about this, then that really is it. There is nothing we will not allow the security services to do. There is no limit we will give them. Abhorrent, and genuinely disgusting.
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So much for the advantages of liberal democracy and the open society. Forget the Stasi - this is a level of state intrusion that is beyond hyberbole.
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Are you reading this on your phone or tablet or laptop? See that little lens near the top of your screen? Say cheese!
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I 'm feeling more revolutionary by the day...
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"Speechless"

Ukraine's Bloodiest Day

Ukraine's bloodiest day: dozens dead as protesters regain territory from police

Corpses on Kiev's Independence Square as police deploy snipers and use live ammunition

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/20/ukraine-dead-protesters-police

Some incredible Photos... 

Bloody Battles in Kiev

 http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/02/bloody-battles-in-kiev/100684/

Kiev Truce Shattered, Dozens Killed

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/02/kiev-truce-shattered-dozens-killed/100685/

A Mexican militia, battling Michoacan drug cartel, has American roots

Interesting take on the spiraling violence in Michoacan...

Many were U.S. immigrants who came back, some voluntarily but most often not, to the desiccated job market in the state of Michoacan and found life under the Knights Templar drug cartel that controls the area almost unlivable. They took up arms because they were financially abused by the extortion rackets run by the Templars. Because they had family killed or wounded by their enemies. Because carrying a silver-plated handgun and collecting defeated narcos’ designer cellphones as war booty is more invigorating than packing cucumbers. Because they get to feel, for once, the sensation of being in charge.
 
“Everybody’s with us, all the people,” said Edgar Orozco, a 27-year-old American citizen who left his job at a Sacramento body shop nine months ago to join the fight after the Knights Templar killed his uncle and cousin. “We’re not going to disarm. Never.”

Read More here...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/a-mexican-militia-battling-michoacan-drug-cartel-has-american-roots/2014/01/18/30f96894-7f92-11e3-97d3-b9925ce2c57b_story.html

Also...

Vigilantes hold Mexico town, tenuously, after driving out cartel

http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-mexico-michoacan-violence-20140119,0,154127.story#axzz2qs0NL2d1

Mexican Vigilantes Prepare for All-Out War with Cartel

In my view....this is the only way to make any change in Mexico....the government and police stopped caring a long, long time ago. 

 Police being arrested by vigilantes in Michoacan. Jan/2014

 More than 100 men entered the Nueva Italia in western Michoacan state on Sunday morning and disarmed local police.

There were exchanges of fire with gang members before the vigilantes occupied the town.
The vigilante group was set up by residents who say the army and the police have failed to protect them.

 Videos...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4YEoEfOcsY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhj02q5KUw4 

And a good article as well...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/mexico/10569202/Mexican-vigilantes-force-drugs-cartel-out-of-town.html

UPDATE:

A Quandary for Mexico as Vigilantes Rise

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/16/world/americas/a-quandary-for-mexico-as-vigilantes-rise.html?ref=americas&_r=0

The Bewildered Kingdom

Can't stay on top forever... 

The issue for the Saudis is not merely Iran’s putative nuclear capability. A deal on Iran’s nuclear program would legitimize the regime’s regional influence in a way that has not occurred in decades, thereby serving its hegemonic objectives. The deeper threat or fear is that Iran’s ultimate target is leadership of Mecca, the cradle of Islam.

That is why the Saudi royals prefer to keep Iran chained with international sanctions. True, even under economic sanctions, Iran has intruded ever more deeply into Arab politics, but it was the US that opened the door by overthrowing Saddam’s Sunni-minority regime in Iraq, which ultimately brought an Iranian-backed Shia government to power.

READ MORE HERE...
 http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/mai-yamani-assesses-saudi-arabia-s-increasingly-assertive-regional-foreign-policy-since-the-start-of-the-arab-spring

Best Wire Photographer of 2013

Incredible photographer...Muhammed Muheisen... 
See images here...
http://lightbox.time.com/2013/12/10/muhammed-muheisen-time-picks-the-best-wire-photographer-of-2013/#1

AP Photographers Covering Syrian Conflict
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgJEr9feOiY&feature=share&list=PLpP3Ux9QU0k6XdmLU1NQD-YjP8EWHB321&index=4

Pulitzer Prize Winning Photos by Muhammed Muheisen
http://www.ap.org/states/tester/syriaap/index.html

Nelson Mandela Dies

Excerpt:

"Conducting his own defence in the Rivonia Trial in 1964, he said: "I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.

"It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

He escaped the death penalty but was sentenced to life in prison, a huge blow to the ANC that had to regroup to continue the struggle. But unrest grew in townships and international pressure on the apartheid regime slowly tightened."

READ MORE HERE...
www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/05/nelson-mandela-dies-aged-95-south-africa

The Rare Phenomenon of Revolution

I don't completely agree and I don't completely disagree with this article.  Friends of mine from Thailand and the Ukraine are currently experiencing these protests...and so they know better than I do.  Nonetheless, the article is quite compelling.

Stratfor Global Intelligence

Hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the streets of Kiev on Sunday in what appeared to be a rebirth of the Orange Revolution, which brought regime change to Ukraine nearly a decade ago. But by Monday the demonstrations shrank to less than 10,000 people. The protests continue to apply pressure on the Ukrainian government, and though they could escalate or compel Kiev to offer some political concessions, an all-out revolution does not appear to be in the offing.

That is not to question the dedication of those protesting in the cold Ukrainian winter. Rather, it is a testament to the fact that true revolutions -- overturning the existing political order and the lasting policy changes that follow -- are extremely difficult to carry out.

The revolutions across Central and Eastern Europe in 1989 serve as a benchmark of contemporary revolution. These revolutions overturned the communist governments from East Germany to Poland to Bulgaria in a span of six months. But they were a product of pent-up political repression that had been building for decades. When the moment finally came, the revolutions were supported by the majority of the population of each state and brought out nearly all segments of society onto the streets. And except in Romania, the people's desire to overturn the system was met without resistance or violence -- an admission by each regime of the system's fundamental obsolescence.

These were revolutions in their purest sense. Societies rejected rigid political systems imposed on them by an illegitimate, external power. It is not often that the global system undergoes such a dramatic change. When it does, the effects are profound. 1989, for example, marked a historic turning point: the beginning of the end of the Cold War era.

But since then, the term "revolution" has been applied liberally in describing large demonstrations of general discontent. Certainly, many citizens have tried to revolt against their rulers, but successful revolutions were few and far between, even when proponents and the media have labeled them as such.

Iran's Green Revolution in 2009 exemplifies the "revolution" misnomer. More than 100,000 people flooded the streets of Tehran to dispute the re-election victory of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But these protests were dominated by younger, urban and generally more affluent citizens; they did not really appeal to the broader segments of Iranian society. They lasted for a few months and elicited public outcry when security forces dealt harshly with the demonstrators, but eventually they tapered off, having never fundamentally threatened the existence of the Iranian political system. This was no 1989 revolution, nor was it the 1979 Iranian revolution against the Shah that united and galvanized the overwhelming majority of Iranian citizens.

There are several other instances in which demonstrations did not foment a revolution. During the so-called Arab Spring, tens to hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in several countries, but few of them led to actual regime change. With the exception of Libya and to a lesser extent Syria, the broader structure of the regimes that ruled the Arab world remain in place -- only certain leaders and personalities have been replaced. Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak may be gone, but Egypt continues to be ruled by the military. Syria is in the throes of a civil war, but Syrian President Bashar al Assad is still the strongest of many warlords in what is an extreme imbalance of the existing political order.

Other countries such as Thailand are currently seeing large protests that show no signs of abating and occasionally lead to disruptive violence. But in Thailand, protest culture, constitutional changes and military coups are particularly tumultuous manifestations of partisan politics. The society is mostly stable. The combination of regional, socio-economic and ideological divisions could lead to revolution eventually, but that is by no means a foregone conclusion, given the flexibility of the existing constitutional monarchy.

And even those countries that have had "successful" revolutions, such as Ukraine in 2004, have shown that the new regimes may be short lived. Five years after Yanukovich was ousted in the Orange Revolution, he was democratically elected into power in a rejection of the policies pursued by the previous government. Unlike the definitive shift away from the Soviet Union and communism of Central European countries in 1989, Ukraine has instead vacillated uncomfortably between the West and Russia, a strategic but vulnerable position that is extremely difficult to overcome through demonstrations by a polarized society.

As Ukraine and Thailand have shown, democracies are inherently unstable, presenting major opportunities for social unrest that on the surface looks chaotic. In reality, they are either tightly controlled within existing political factions or are absorbed by them. Revolutions are successful when fundamental shifts to the underlying political structure are already in place. In 1989, the Soviet Union stopped being able to control and support its peripheral states. It is in those circumstances that social movements are able to topple already wobbly governments.
Revolutions are not things of the past, and they will occur in the future. Countless demonstrations will be held around the world with varying levels of conviction, but revolutions are rare geopolitical phenomena.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE (requires an email but you get updates via email all the time and some free articles)....http://www.stratfor.com/sample/geopolitical-diary/rare-phenomenon-revolution

The Last Great Escape

The best documentary I've seen on North Korea in a long time.  ANyway, this doc tells the story of two North Koreans who escaped from Prison camps in North Korea and uses animation to enhance the story...check it out...

(PS:  This doc plays in Canada...hopefully works everywhere...)

The Last Great Escape

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2013-2014/the-last-great-escape

Also this is another doc with a great INSIDE Look into CAMP 14...

Camp 14: Total Control Zone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb1iwo4txE4

More on North Korea here.

http://ajarnmike.blogspot.ca/search/label/North%20Korea

Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

Good read...

Is Japan providing a glimpse of all our futures? Many of the shifts there are occurring in other advanced nations, too. Across urban Asia, Europe and America, people are marrying later or not at all, birth rates are falling, single-occupant households are on the rise and, in countries where economic recession is worst, young people are living at home....

Japan's 20-somethings are the age group to watch. Most are still too young to have concrete future plans, but projections for them are already laid out. According to the government's population institute, women in their early 20s today have a one-in-four chance of never marrying. Their chances of remaining childless are even higher: almost 40%.

READ MORE HERE...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-japan-stopped-having-sex

US fears back-door routes into the net because it's building them too

 Hayden described the phenomenon of compromised computer hardware – namely, chips that have hidden "back doors" inserted into them at the design or manufacturing stage – as "the problem from hell". And, he went on, "frankly, it's not a problem that can be solved"

...a back door that would allow secret remote access over the internet. And – here's the really scary bit – the secret entrance couldn't even be closed by switching off the computer's hard disk or reinstalling its operating system.

The reason this is so scary is because virtually every bit of kit that runs the internet – the machine on which you compose your emails, the tablet or smartphone with which you browse the net, the routers that pass on the data packets that comprise your email or your web search, everything – is a computer. So the thought that all this stuff might covertly be compromised in ways that are impossible to detect is terrifying. It's this fear that underpins American (and British) reservations about network products made by the Chinese company Huawei – the suspicions (vehemently denied by Huawei, of course) that the kit has secret back doors installed in it to facilitate the Chinese's cyber-army's penetration of western networks."

READ MORE HERE...
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/13/us-scared-back-door-routes-computers-snowden-nsa

US and UK spy agencies defeat privacy and security on the internet

Another example of governments and corporations working hand in hand to subdue the common man.  We shouldn't be scared of them, they should be scared of us...Indeed, the system needs to change!

Excerpt:

US and British intelligence agencies have successfully cracked much of the online encryption relied upon by hundreds of millions of people to protect the privacy of their personal data, online transactions and emails, according to top-secret documents revealed by former contractor Edward Snowden.

Those methods include covert measures to ensure NSA control over setting of international encryption standards, the use of supercomputers to break encryption with "brute force", and – the most closely guarded secret of all – collaboration with technology companies and internet service providers themselves.

Hotmail, Google, Yahoo and Facebook all hacked by US and UK spy agencies...
READ MORE HERE...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security 

Welcome to Post-Constitution America

What if your country begins to change and no one notices?

Excerpt:
 
Consider, for instance, the rise of the warrior cop, of increasingly up-armored police departments across the country often filled with former military personnel encouraged to use the sort of rough tactics they once wielded in combat zones. Supporting them are the kinds of weaponry that once would have been inconceivable in police departments, including armored vehicles, typically bought with Department of Homeland Security grants. 

Recently, the director of the FBI informed a Senate committee that the Bureau was deploying its first drones over the United States. Meanwhile, Customs and Border Protection, part of the Department of Homeland Security and already flying an expanding fleet of Predator drones, the very ones used in America’s war zones, is eager to arm them with “non-lethal” weaponry to “immobilize targets of interest.”

Read more...
http://www.thenation.com/article/175589/welcome-post-constitution-america#

Argentina's Slum Priests Focus on Helping rather than Converting

Truly inspiring...

Excerpt:

He has scuffed work boots and dirty nails and hears confession from dealers and hit men. When residents spot his trashed 4x4 bumping down dirt roads, they call out his nickname: "Charly!"
He spends most of his time addressing practical rather than spiritual problems. That means navigating governmental bureaucracy, helping immigrants obtain state identification cards and finding beds to get addicts off the street.

"If we don't get people a home, it's insane to think about other kinds of lives for them," Olivero said.
So far this day he had talked to the directors of two state hospitals, attended a brainstorming session with other slum priests and handed out fliers about a religious festival for the neighborhood's large community of Paraguayan immigrants.

As he left to prepare for that evening's wake for the addict, he suddenly remembered something.
"Oh," he said, bringing his hands to his head. "I have a wedding tonight!"

READ MORE HERE...
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-argentina-slum-priests-20130806-dto,0,4329979.htmlstory