Brazilian artist in the frame assassinating the Pope, the Queen and George Bush

Former U.S. President George W. Bush and Britain's Queen Elizabeth II are also among the artist's drawings
The charcoal drawings by Gil Vicente became a focus of controversy when they went on display at the opening of the Sao Paulo Art Biennial on Saturday.

The former US President George W Bush is shown kneeling on the ground with his wrists bound behind him as Vicente pushes a pistol into his temple.

The series, called Inimigos (Enemies), is meant to highlight alleged crimes for which the leaders have been directly or indirectly responsible by imagining that they are being made to pay the price.
Read more here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/8027019/Brazilian-artist-in-the-frame-assassinating-the-Pope-the-Queen-and-George-Bush.html

See More of Gil Vincente's drawings here:
http://new.taringa.net/posts/arte/7143052/Controversial_-Gil-Vicente-_y-su-arte-del-asesinato_.html

6,557 Miles To Nowhere

Another exceptional article by Chuck Klosterman...

Death is part of life. Generally, it’s the shortest part of life, usually occurring near the end. However, this is not necessarily true for rock stars; sometimes rock stars don’t start living until they die. I want to understand why that is. I want to find out why the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing. I want to find out why plane crashes and drug overdoses and shotgun suicides turn longhaired guitar players into messianic prophets. I want to walk the blood-soaked streets of rock’n’roll and chat with the survivors as they writhe in the gutter. This is my quest. Now, to do this, I will need a rental car...

Read more at:

http://www.spin.com/articles/6557-miles-nowhere

Ingrid Betancourt Details Kidnapping In New Book

A remarkable story of perseverance in the face of hell.
Ingrid Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian national, was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in February 2002 while campaigning for president and was held captive for six years. She is now the author of "Even Silence Has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle"
Excerpt:

"And so, she says, the book "is not chronological, it is emotional." But certain dates are seared in her brain. Like the day when she discovered, from reading a scrap of newspaper wrapped around a cabbage, that her beloved father, Gabriel Betancourt, had died, a year after her capture. Before she left on the trip that led to her capture, she had asked him – he was ill – to hold on, if anything happened to her.
And of course there was the pain of separation from her mother, Yolanda, who called into a radio station nearly every day to broadcast messages to her, and from her two children, Lorenzo and Melanie, who were 13 and 16 when she was abducted."
Read more:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/22/ingrid-betancourt-details_n_735673.html

Mao's Great Leap Forward 'killed 45 million in four years'

Makes me think what other horror stories await when North Korea and Burma allow journalists to scour their archives.

Mr Dikötter is the only author to have delved into the Chinese archives since they were reopened four years ago. He argued that this devastating period of history – which has until now remained hidden – has international resonance. "It ranks alongside the gulags and the Holocaust as one of the three greatest events of the 20th century.... It was like [the Cambodian communist dictator] Pol Pot's genocide multiplied 20 times over," he said.

Read more here:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/maos-great-leap-forward-killed-45-million-in-four-years-2081630.html

Mexico's drug war: in the city of death

An interesting look inside Mexico's Drug War.

It was just another massacre in a country plagued by violence. But this time it was carried out by prison inmates – who'd been let out specially.

Excerpt:

"A dead father and husband. A dead uncle and brother. Three wounded family members. A baby on the way. Funeral and medical bills. It adds up, says Carmen, 37, the eight-months pregnant head of the family and mother of Hector. "I just don't know what we'll do." Hector, who took two bullets, moves slowly and stiffly, a colostomy bag beneath his T-shirt.

Asked if he will play trumpet again Hector shakes his head. "Music, music is . . ." his voice trails off. His mother finishes the sentence. "Music is not really an option any more."

Read full article here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/16/mexico-drugs-war-massacre-in-torreon

Guns, Germs and Steel

A simply astounding documentary series! Informative, thought provoking and extremely relevant to today's society...


Based on Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, Guns, Germs and Steel traces humanity’s journey over the last 13,000 years – from the dawn of farming at the end of the last Ice Age to the realities of life in the twenty-first century. Inspired by a question put to him on the island of Papua New Guinea more than thirty years ago, Diamond embarks on a world-wide quest to understand the roots of global inequality.
Why were Europeans the ones to conquer so much of our planet? Why didn’t the Chinese, or the Inca, become masters of the globe instead? Why did cities first evolve in the Middle East? Why did farming never emerge in Australia? And why are the tropics now the capital of global poverty?
Watch Full documentary here:
http://www.documentarywire.com/guns-germs-and-steel/

Documentary Slams Thai Monarchy

(Click on Image to read the book)

Based largely on Paul Handley's censored book: The King Never Smiles, this documentary delves into the question of censorship and shady politics in Thailand.

Watch full documentary here:

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/ABC_Foreign_Correspondent_video_report_on_Thailand,_13_April_2010

CONTROVERSIAL CARTOONS

SEE MORE CARTOONS HERE:
http://www.cagle.com/

Millions Die Due to Witheld Medical Treatment

Mark Hyman, M.D. is a practicing physician, founder of The UltraWellness Center, a four-time New York Times bestselling author, and an international leader in the field of Functional Medicine.

Article excerpt:

"We're targeting the wrong things--we need to treat the cause, not the effects. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, and high blood sugar are NOT the cause of heart disease or diabetes. The real culprit is what we eat, how much we exercise, stress, and environmental toxins."

Read more here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/millions-die-due-to-withh_b_705114.html

Why You Can't Work at Work

With its constant commotion, unnecessary meetings, and infuriating wastes of time, the modern workplace makes us all work longer, less focused hours. Jason Fried explains how we can change all of this.

Excerpt from video:

Question: What is your take on the typical workplace?

Jason Fried: Yeah, my feeling is that the modern workplace is structured completely wrong. It’s really optimized for interruptions. And interruptions are the enemy of work. They are the enemy of productivity, they are the enemy of creativity, they are the enemy of everything. But that’s what the modern workplace is all about, it’s interruptions. Everyone’s calling meetings all the time, everyone’s screaming people’s names across the thing, there’s phones ringing all the time. People are walking around. It’s all about interruptions. And people go to work today, and then they end up doing most of their real work after work, or on the weekends. So...

Read and watch more here:


http://bigthink.com/ideas/18522