Camp 14: Total Control Zone

One of the best documentaries I've ever seen...absolutely stunning.
Watch Full Documentary here...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihUOHARC_Og

Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses

The nation cannot move forward in any meaningful way without coming to terms, legally and morally, with the abhorrent acts that were authorized, given a false patina of legality, and committed by American men and women from the highest levels of government on down.

Americans have known about many of these acts for years, but the 524-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report erases any lingering doubt about their depravity and illegality: In addition to new revelations of sadistic tactics like “rectal feeding,” scores of detainees were waterboarded, hung by their wrists, confined in coffins, sleep-deprived, threatened with death or brutally beaten. In November 2002, one detainee who was chained to a concrete floor died of “suspected hypothermia.”

Read more here...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/opinion/prosecute-torturers-and-their-bosses.html

Canada at War Cartoons

The Rise of ISIS

Excellent documentary about ISIS and the motivation to form the group...certainly key in understanding the quagmire we are stepping into...


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/rise-of-isis/

Reza Aslan Schools CNN and Fox News

Awesome! Way to go Reza!

CNN Interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ibKWVTFSak

Fox News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt1cOnNrY5s

Piers Morgan Interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYluVdT50Ro

Dear North America, You're Not as Great as You Think
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/angelina-chapin/reza-aslan-bill-maher_b_5941718.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

Sunday reading from around the World

How much would you pay for a World Cup? Which country has the highest minimum wage and  a $50 million mistake....Read about all these here...

www.worldcrunch.com/default/belgians-would-pay-for-2014-world-cup-win/soccer-sports-football-red-devils-fifa-world-cup-team/c0s16027/#.U4IDRyhcWSp

The Gift of American Power

Often I'm inundated with left-wing liberal media, so it's refreshing to get a different point a view even if I don't entirely agree with it....great article by Robert D. Kaplan

The United States is not a traditional empire because it has no colonies, but its military -- and the diplomatic power that accompanies it -- is deployed in an imperial-like fashion worldwide. The U.S. Navy calls itself a global force for good. That claim would pass the most stringent editorial fact-checking process. Without that very naked American ambition, which allows the Navy and the Air Force to patrol the global commons, the world is reduced to the sum of its parts: a Japan and China, and a China and India, dangerously at odds and on the brink of war; a Middle East in far wider war and chaos; a Europe neutralized and emasculated by Russian Revanchism; and an Africa in even greater disarray. It is not that regional powers cannot act rationally on their own; it is only that without a global hegemon of sorts, local balance-of-power interactions become more fraught with risk and are, therefore, more dangerous.

READ MORE HERE....
http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2014/05/15/the_gift_of_american_power.html

Chinese experts 'in discussions' over building high-speed Beijing-US railway

Hey...they built the Great Wall.......nevertheless, this would be a major engineering feat...not to mention---life-changing...

'China-Russia-Canada-America line' would run for 13,000km across Siberia and pass under Bering Strait through 200km tunnel

Read more here...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/08/chinese-experts-discussions-high-speed-beijing-american-railway

Also...

China poised to overtake US as world's largest economy, research shows

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/apr/30/china-overtake-us-worlds-largest-economy

The Murder and the Money Trail

Hard to find journalism this good anymore....

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2013-2014/the-murder-and-the-money-trail

25 Best Travel Movies of All Time

Some excellent films if you love to travel....
http://expertvagabond.com/best-travel-movies/

Days of Night/Nights of Day

Elena Chernyshova truly captures a remote Russian mining city...Norilsk.  I love when art meets documentary photography...enjoy. (full screen recommended)

SEE PHOTOS HERE...
https://www.lensculture.com/articles/elena-chernyshova-days-of-night-nights-of-day

New Discovery Puts Humans in South America 22,000 Years Ago

Fascinating article...

Researchers here say they have unearthed stone tools proving that humans reached what is now northeast Brazil as early as 22,000 years ago. 

Their discovery adds to the growing body of research upending a prevailing belief of 20th-century archaeology in the United States known as the Clovis model, which holds that people first arrived in the Americas from Asia about 13,000 years ago.

“If they’re right, and there’s a great possibility that they are, that will change everything we know about the settlement of the Americas...

Read more and see video here...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/world/americas/discoveries-challenge-beliefs-on-humans-arrival-in-the-americas.html?_r=0

See more interesting articles here...
http://ajarnmike.blogspot.ca/search/label/Native%20Americans

Do Foreign Jokes Work in English?

 

People tell a joke in their own language and then translate it into English....Is the joke lost in translation, check it out...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/19/best-jokes-young-people-around-world

 

War, street and Travel Pics 2014

In Syria, Three Years of War
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/03/in-syria-three-years-of-war/100701/

2014 Sony World Photography Awards

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/03/winners-of-the-2014-sony-world-photography-awards-part-i/100700/

And a really good documentary on street photography...(easy to download it)...here's the trailer... 

Everybody Street

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwjal7Dk2As

Carnival 2014 Around the World

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/03/carnival-2014-around-the-world/100691/

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."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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"

El Chapo’s Arrest Unlikely to Break Mexican Cartel

“Sinaloa has managed to expand in such a way that the business can run itself,” said Samuel Logan, an expert on transnational crime at Southern Pulse, an investment and risk assessment firm. “The entire Mexican state could fall, and the drug trade will continue, as long as there is a demand.”

Comparing the cartel to McDonald’s, Mr. Logan said, “If the C.E.O. of McDonald’s was arrested today, you could still buy a hamburger in Tokyo tomorrow.”

READ MORE HERE...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/26/world/americas/arrest-unlikely-to-break-cartel.html?src=me&_r=0 

More stories on the Drug War here....
http://ajarnmike.blogspot.ca/search/label/drug%20war

Captured: Joaqin "El Chapo" Guzmán, Mexico's No 1 drug lord

Early on Saturday, dozens of soldiers and police officers descended on a hotel-condominium tower in Mazatlán, Mexico, a beach resort known as much as a hangout for drug traffickers as for its seafood and surf.

The forces were following yet another tip about the whereabouts of the trafficker Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, who, to the utter frustration of American and Mexican pursuers, had eluded such raids for 13 years since escaping from prison in a...

READ MORE HERE...
 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/mexico/10655962/Captured-Joaqin-El-Chapo-Guzman-Mexicos-No-1-drug-lord.html


Another great article...

Mexican Kingpin El Chapo Guzman Hid In Secret Tunnels And Sewers Before Being Captured

 

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

The Beer Fridge

I know exactly how this guy feels...I watched the last Canadian Olympic Gold Medal game on my laptop in Mexico....All I remember is seeing Crosby going for the net and all of the sudden the Internet stopped...One minute later it came back on and the whole stadium was cheering...talk about a bitter-sweet  moment...nonetheless, I was ecstatic!

The Beer Fridge Project Indonesia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iXYTwuuLxs

Interview with Morgan...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8d_0ZmzAu4

The Beer Fridge-Scan Your Passport
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gper3YkzMg

Korea Execution Is Tied to Clash Over Businesses

Radio Free Asia, in a report last week that cited anonymous North Korean sources, reported that Mr. Kim saw North Korean soldiers malnourished during his recent visits to islands near the disputed western sea border...

Read more here...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/world/asia/north-korea-purge.html?hp&_r=0

also...

A Need Now to Prepare for North Korea's Collapse