At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.

 

This is our world...

Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. 

At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.

More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening. 

According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world.

Approximately half the world’s population now live in cities and towns. In 2005, one out of three urban dwellers (approximately 1 billion people) was living in slum conditions.

Read more here...

http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats

Vietnam in HD

 

Photo by Phillip Jones Griffiths/ Magnum 

Awesome documentary on the Vietnam War, great new footage and well told...enjoy.

It's not the war you know. It's the war they fought.
Two years after the release of its landmark Emmy-winning series WWII in HD, HISTORY shifts its focus to a new generation and one of the most controversial chapters in American history, the Vietnam War. Vietnam in HD will immerse viewers in the sights, the sounds and the stories of the Vietnam War as it has never before been seen. Thousands of hours of uncensored footage--much of it shot by soldiers in action--will detail every critical chapter of the conflict. The war will unfold onscreen through the gripping firsthand accounts of 13 brave men and women who were forever changed by their experience in Vietnam.

WATCH FULL DOCUMENTARY HERE...
http://documentaryheaven.com/vietnam-in-hd/ 


The documentary's official website is also worth checking out...
http://www.history.com/shows/vietnam-in-hd

Tweeter Street

Portraits of people who tweet, what they tweet, and where they tweet from....but really, it's an exploration of individuality and reminds us that the world is full of characters...really cool.

(CLICK TO ENLARGE PHOTOS)

 

SEE MORE HERE....
http://michaelhughesphoto.photoshelter.com/gallery/Tweeter-Street/G0000vUNNdNSD3lg/

A History of Violence

What may be the most important thing that has ever happened in human history is that violence has gone down, by dramatic degrees, and in many dimensions all over the world and in many spheres of behavior: genocide, war, human sacrifice, torture, slavery, and the treatment of racial minorities, women, children, and animals.

Harvard Psychologist Steven Pinker (You may know him from his TED talks) lectures on an interesting phenomenon obviously missed by all the police reality shows and sensationalized news stations...

 

READ MORE OR WATCH THE ENTIRE LECTURE HERE....

http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker

Craziest Facebook Stories of 2011

Usually I don't post stories like these ones; however, I couldn't resist this one...pretty crazy...

 

In November, a burglar signed into Facebook from a computer inside a home he broke into before sprinting from the scene. Unfortunately, he forgot to logout before he left.

In February, a mom was arrested for posting pictures of her baby and a bong on Facebook.

In February, an Egyptian man named his daughter Facebook.

In May, a study came out that said young people would rather lose their sense of smell instead of their social networks.
​ A McCann survey of 6,000 people aged 16 to 30 found that 53 percent of respondents would rather forfeit the ability to smell than lose access to social networking websites.

 

In April, after the Royal Wedding, the Pippa Middleton's Ass Appreciation Society was started. It now has over 240,000 fans.

According to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, Facebook use is now cited in one in five of every U.S. divorce cases.

READ MORE HERE...

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-craziest-facebook-stories-of-2011

Kim Jong-il, North Korean leader, dies

Kim Jong-il is understood to have suffered a heart attack on Saturday due to physical and mental over-work

Kim Jong-il, the "dear leader" still venerated by many in North Korea but reviled abroad, has died aged 69, state media announced on Monday morning.
The North Korean leader suffered a heart attack on Saturday due to physical and mental over-work, the official KCNA news agency reported. He was on his train, travelling to offer "field guidance" to workers, when he died.
KCNA urged the nation, people and military to rally behind his young son and heir apparent, telling them they must "faithfully revere" Kim Jong-un's leadership.
Kim had recovered from a reported stroke in 2008, and Monday's announcement was unexpected. But he had already begun grooming Kim Jong-un to take control of the "hermit state", appointing him a general last year and giving him several high profile roles.

Experts say there is increasing cynicism in North Korea about the regime, which exerts rigid political control but has proved incapable of meeting basic economic needs. But people in the streets of Pyongyang burst into tears as they learnt of Kim's death, Associated Press reported.
"It is the biggest loss for the party ... and it is our people and nation's biggest sadness," a tearful anchorwoman clad in black Korean traditional dress told viewers as she announced Kim's death.

READ MORE...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/19/kim-jong-il-north-korean-leader-dies

See PHOTOS and READ MORE HERE...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/world/asia/kim-jong-il-is-dead.html?_r=1&h

HERE IS A VIDEO OF THE FORMAL ANNOUNCEMENT ON NORTH KOREAN TV...

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/12/the-death-of-kim-jong-il-as-broadcast-to-his-people/250171/

In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011

See more photos here.

RIP, definitely admired his unpopular views...

Christopher Hitchens, a slashing polemicist in the tradition of Thomas Paine and George Orwell who trained his sights on targets as various as Henry Kissinger, the British monarchy and Mother Teresa, wrote a best-seller attacking religious belief, and dismayed his former comrades on the left by enthusiastically supporting the American-led war in Iraq, died Thursday at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He was 62.

“In whatever kind of a ‘race’ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist,” Mr. Hitchens wrote in Vanity Fair, for which he was a contributing editor.
He took pains to emphasize that he had not revised his position on atheism, articulated in his best-selling 2007 book, “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” although he did express amused appreciation at the hope, among some concerned Christians, that he might undergo a late-life conversion.
He also professed to have no regrets for a lifetime of heavy smoking and drinking. “Writing is what’s important to me, and anything that helps me do that — or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument and conversation — is worth it to me,”

A young Christopher Hitchens circa 1968, picketing at a non-union factory in his native England.

READ MORE HERE...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/arts/christopher-hitchens-is-dead-at-62-obituary.html?pagewanted=all

ALSO WORTH CHECKING OUT...

Christopher Hitchens on The Daily Show: Sparring with Jon Stewart Over the Years...

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/11/Christopher-Hitchens-on-iThe-Daily-Showi-Sparring-with-Jon-Stewart-Over-the-Years

Time's Person of the Year-The Protester

 

Hopefully they will be the Person of the Year next year as well.

Excerpt:

"Massive and effective street protest" was a global oxymoron until — suddenly, shockingly — starting exactly a year ago, it became the defining trope of our times. And the protester once again became a maker of history.
Prelude to the Revolutions
It began in Tunisia, where the dictator's power grabbing and high living crossed a line of shamelessness, and a commonplace bit of government callousness against an ordinary citizen — a 26-year-old street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi — became the final straw. Bouazizi lived in the charmless Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, 125 miles south of Tunis. On a Friday morning almost exactly a year ago, he set out for work, selling produce from a cart. Police had hassled Bouazizi routinely for years, his family says, fining him, making him jump through bureaucratic hoops. On Dec. 17, 2010, a cop started giving him grief yet again. She confiscated his scale and allegedly slapped him. He walked straight to the provincial-capital building to complain and got no response. At the gate, he drenched himself in paint thinner and lit a match. (See pictures of Sidi Bouzid.)
"My son set himself on fire for dignity," Mannoubia Bouazizi told me when I visited her.
"In Tunisia," added her 16-year-old daughter Basma, "dignity is more important than bread."

Read more here...
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101745_2102132,00.html

Fighting 1% Wars

 U.S Marine Cpl. Lance Morrow patrols in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

America’s wars are remote.  They’re remote from us geographically, remote from us emotionally (unless you’re serving in the military or have a close relative or friend who serves), and remote from our major media outlets, which have given us no compelling narrative about them, except that they’re being fought by “America’s heroes” against foreign terrorists and evil-doers.  They’re even being fought, in significant part, by remote control -- by robotic drones “piloted” by ground-based operators from a secret network of bases located hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from the danger of the battlefield.
Their remoteness, which breeds detachment if not complacency at home, is no accident.  Indeed, it’s a product of the fact that Afghanistan and Iraq were wars of choice, not wars of necessity.  It’s a product of the fact that we’ve chosen to create a “warrior” or “war fighter” caste in this country, which we send with few concerns and fewer qualms to prosecute Washington’s foreign wars of choice.

The results have been predictable, as in predictably bad.  The troops suffer.  Iraqi and Afghan innocents suffer even more.  And yet we don’t suffer, at least not in ways that are easily noticeable, because of that very remoteness.  

READ MORE HERE:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175477/tomgram%3A_william_astore%2C_the_remoteness_of_1%25_wars/

Sea of Change

'Sea Change' is a study of the tides round the coast of Britain. The views in each diptych are taken from identical positions at low tide and high tide, usually 6 or 18 hours apart.

I am interested in showing how landscape changes over time through natural processes and cycles. The camera that observes low and high tide side by side enables us to observe simultaneously two moments in time, two states of nature.


See more of Michael Marten's remarkable work here...
http://www.lensculture.com/marten.html

DEA Launders Profits of Mexican Drug Cartels

U.S. Agents Launder Mexican Profits of Drug Cartels

Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico's fight against drug cartels according to current and former federal law enforcement officials.  They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents.  The officials said that while the D.E.A. conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years.

READ MORE HERE...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/world/americas/us-drug-agents-launder-profits-of-mexican-cartels.html?src=me&ref=general

ALSO HERE IS 10 MINUTE DOCUMENTARY ENTITLED "FUELING THE MEXICO'S DRUG TRADE."

D.E.A. Squads Extend Reach of Drug War

The D.E.A. now has five commando-style squads it has been quietly deploying for the past several years to Western Hemisphere nations — including Haiti, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Belize — that are battling drug cartels, according to documents and interviews with law enforcement officials.
The program — called FAST, for Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team — was created during the George W. Bush administration to investigate Taliban-linked drug traffickers in Afghanistan. Beginning in 2008 and continuing under President Obama, it has expanded far beyond the war zone.
“You have got to have special skills and equipment to be able to operate effectively and safely in environments like this,” said Michael A. Braun, a former head of operations for the drug agency who helped design the program. “The D.E.A. is working shoulder-to-shoulder in harm’s way with host-nation counterparts.”

READ MORE HERE...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/world/americas/united-states-drug-enforcement-agency-squads-extend-reach-of-drug-war.html?ref=americas

AND DON'T MISS THESE KULTURA BLOG POSTS...

U.S. SUPPLIES GUNS TO MEXICAN CARTELS FOR OVER A DECADE

IS THE CIA SUPPORTING THE SINALOA CARTEL Part 1