Why We Can't Save Her

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

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

Want to feel unique? Believe in the Reptile people.

He who believes bin Laden is still alive will have something in common with she who believes the 1% are reptiles masquerading as humans: the need to feel unique. For someone with a conspiracy mentality, what matters most is their exclusive knowledge.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE....

https://aeon.co/ideas/want-to-feel-unique-believe-in-the-reptile-people

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

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/

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

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

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#

Edward Snowden is a whistleblower, not a spy – but do our leaders care?

"...a member of the House intelligence committee, wrote that Snowden "has provided intelligence to America's adversaries".
Pompeo correctly notes in his op-ed that "facts are important". Yet when asked for the evidence justifying the claim that Snowden gave intelligence to American adversaries, his spokesman, JP Freire, cited Snowden's leak of NSA documents. Those documents, however, were provided to the Guardian and the Washington Post, not al-Qaeda or North Korea."

Read more here...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/05/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-spy

Takin' It to the Streets

 

The world is getting angrier and with the prevalence of smartphones, Twitter and FB...Cities will continue to be the battleground between citizens and governments and corporations.  Interesting read.

 
Excerpt:
 
"thanks to the proliferation of smartphones, tablets, Twitter, Facebook and blogging, angry individuals now have much more power to engage in, and require their leaders to engage in, two-way conversations — and they have much greater ability to link up with others who share their views to hold flash protests. 

As Leon Aron, the Russian historian at the American Enterprise Institute, put it, “the turnaround time” between sense of grievance and action in today’s world is lightning fast and getting faster. 

The net result is this: Autocracy is less sustainable than ever. Democracies are more prevalent than ever — but they will also be more volatile than ever. Look for more people in the streets more often over more issues with more independent means to tell their stories at ever-louder decibels." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/opinion/sunday/takin-it-to-the-streets.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

The Growing Importance of the Arctic Council

 

See full Size Image Here.

According to the United States' National Snow and Ice Data Center, the amount of Arctic ice (usually at a minimum during September) was 3.61 million square kilometers (1.39 million square miles) in September 2012 -- close to 49 percent lower than the average amount of ice seen between 1979 and 2000. The melting of the ice facilitates natural resource exploration in the high north. U.S. Geological Survey estimates from 2008 suggest that 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and 30 percent of undiscovered natural gas reserves are located in the Arctic Circle.

Moreover, the retreating and thinning of the ice opens up new trade routes. In 2012, 46 ships transporting a total of 1.3 million tons reportedly used the Northern Sea Route, which runs along the northern coast of Russia; this represents a considerable increase from 2011, when 34 ships transported approximately 820,000 tons.

Read more: The Growing Importance of the Arctic Council | Stratfor

http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/growing-importance-arctic-council

French Oil Company Warns Against Drilling in the Arctic...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/09/26/total-arctic-drilling.html

The Story of Amanda Todd

 

A heartbreaking, yet amazing story of a Vancouver teen who is driven to suicide after experiencing years of bullying both on and offline.  Definitely, worth sharing...

The mother of a teenager who died Wednesday of suspected suicide wants her daughter’s anti-cyber-bullying video to be used to help other young people.

Fifteen-year-old Amanda Todd was found dead in a Port Coquitlam home at 6 p.m. Wednesday, five weeks after she posted a heartbreaking video on YouTube detailing how she was harassed online and bullied.
“I think the video should be shared and used as an anti-bullying tool. That is what my daughter would have wanted,” Carol Todd, Amanda’s mother, told The Vancouver Sun in a message on Twitter.

See full video and story here...
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Port+Coquitlam+teen+driven+death+cyberbullying+with+video/7375941/story.html

Or here... 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej7afkypUsc&feature=g-logo-xit 

Update...

The internet vigilantes: Anonymous hackers' group outs man, 32, 'who drove girl, 15, to suicide by spreading topless photos her...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2218532/Amanda-Todd-Anonymous-names-man-drove-teen-kill-spreading-nude-pictures.html?ICO=most_read_module

 

Three Videos to Warm the Soul III

These are the kind of advertisements I want to see on TV...

The Future is Ours

http://vimeo.com/44658040

Ending Homelessness

http://vimeo.com/37617886

Skateboarding in Tokyo...Gravis Footwear

http://vimeo.com/32287345

Here is a link to the Three Videos to Warm the Soul II...
http://ajarnmike.blogspot.ca/2012/03/three-videos-to-warm-soul-ii.html

Ecuador grants asylum to WikiLeaks' Assange

Do we live in democracies or police states?  In my view, it is certainly the latter and here's more evidence of it...

Ecuador has granted asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange because it believes he will be politically persecuted if extradited, Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño announced Thursday.

The UK, meanwhile, has said it is disappointed by the decision and will not grant safe passage out of the country to Assange, who has been holed up inside Ecuador's embassy in London for nearly two months...

Read more here...

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/16/world/americas/ecuador-assange/?hpt=hp_t2

Avatar in Alaska

 Here we go again, environmentalists and Native Americans versus profit-hungry mining corporations...Very informative and beautifully-shot documentary...

Watch full documentary here...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/alaska-gold/

How one man escaped from a North Korean prison camp

Absolutely fascinating story...

There was torture, starvation, betrayals and executions, but to Shin In Geun, Camp 14 – a prison for the political enemies of North Korea – was home. Then one day came the chance to flee…

Excerpt:

Nine years after watching his mother's hanging, Shin In Geun squirmed through the electric fence that surrounds Camp 14 and ran off through the snow into the North Korean wilderness. It was January 2, 2005. Before then, no one born in a North Korean political prison camp had ever escaped. As far as can be determined, Shin is still the only one to do it.

He was 23 years old and knew no one outside the fence.

Within a month, he had walked into China. Within two years, he was living in South Korea. Four years later, he was living in Southern California.

Stunted by malnutrition, he is short and slight -- five feet six inches, about 120 pounds. His arms are bowed from childhood labor. His lower back and buttocks are scarred with burns from the torturer's fire. The skin over his pubis bears a puncture scar from the hook used to hold him in place over the fire. His ankles are scarred by shackles, from which he was hung upside down in solitary confinement. His right middle finger is cut off at the first knuckle, a guard's punishment for dropping a sewing machine in a camp garment factory. His shins, from ankle to knee on both legs, are mutilated and scarred by burns from the electrified barbed-wire fence that failed to keep him inside Camp 14.

READ MORE HERE...
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/born-in-the-gulag-why-a-north-korean-boy-sent-his-own-mother-to-her-death/255110/

Here are some drawings of the harsh life in North Korean Prisons...
http://ajarnmike.blogspot.ca/2012/06/north-korea-prison-camp-drawings.html

Check out some amazing photographs of North Korea here...
http://ajarnmike.blogspot.ca/2012/04/north-korea-unveiled.html

How Google Collects Data About You and the Internet

When do we get barcodes on our foreheads?

Excerpt: 

Google’s unstoppable data collection machine

There are many different aspects of Google’s data collection. The IP addresses requests are made from are logged, cookies are used for settings and tracking purposes, and if you are logged into your Google account, what you do on Google-owned sites can often be coupled to you personally, not just your computer.

In short, if you use Google services, Google will know what you’re searching for, what websites you visit, what news and blog posts you read, and more. As Google adds more services and its presence gets increasingly widespread, the so-called Googlization (a term coined by John Batelle and Alex Salkever in 2003) of almost everything continues.

The information you give to any single one of Google’s services wouldn’t be much to huff about. The really interesting dilemma comes when you use multiple Google services, and these days, who doesn’t?
Try using the Internet for a week without touching a single one of Google’s services. This means no YouTube, no Gmail, no Google Docs, no clicking on Feedburner links, no Google search, and so on. Strictly, you’d even have to skip services that Google partner with, so, sorry, no Twitter either.

This increasing Googlization is probably why some people won’t want to use Google’s Chrome OS, which will be strongly coupled with multiple Google services and most likely give Google an unprecedented amount of data about your habits.

READ MORE HERE....
http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/01/08/how-google-collects-data-about-you-and-the-internet/

Across the World, Leaders Brace for Discontent and Upheaval

DAVOS, Switzerland — Protesters in Moscow and Cairo fill public squares to demand representative government. Yet on the streets of Madrid and New York — or of Athens, which gave us the very word for democracy — discontent is almost as rampant. 

The only consistent messages seem to be that leaders around the world are failing to deliver on their citizens’ expectations and that Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools allow crowds to coalesce at will to let them know it. This is not a comforting picture for the 40 heads of state or leaders of governments who are attending the World Economic Forum here, including such disparate leaders as Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany’s multiparty democracy or Meles Zenawi, the prime minister of the authoritarian state of Ethiopia.

“I think that what we have learned in the last few years since the financial crisis and since the Arab Spring is that brittle states with limited political and economic capital are particularly susceptible to the combination of severe economic downturn and the communications revolution,” said Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting firm in New York. 

READ MORE HERE...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/world/europe/across-the-world-leaders-brace-for-discontent-and-upheaval.html?ref=world

Seeds of Dystopia

Global Risks Report 2012 Finds Income Inequality To Be A Threat To Economies Worldwide 

Growing income disparity threatens political backlash
* WEF sees risk of globalisation unravelling
* Report says fiscal crises at centre of economic woes 

LONDON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - A backlash against rising inequality -- evident from the Occupy movement to the Arab Spring -- risks derailing the advance of globalisation and represents a key threat to economies worldwide, according to the World Economic Forum.
Severe income disparity and precarious government finances rank as the biggest economic threats facing the world, according to the group's 2012 Global Risks report released on Wednesday...

Rising youth unemployment, a crisis of retirement among pensioners dependent on debt-burdened states and a widening wealth gap have sown the "seeds of dystopia", according to the report, based on a survey of 469 experts and industry leaders.
For the first time in generations, people no longer believe their children will grow up to have a better standard of living.  

"It needs immediate political attention, otherwise the political rhetoric that responds to this social unease will involve nationalism, protectionism and rolling back the globalisation process," said WEF managing director Lee Howell.

Read more here...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/global-risks-report-2012_n_1198537.html?ir=Canada%20Business&ref=canada-business

 

And here is an example of that income inequality...

300 Chinese Foxconn Workers 'Threaten Mass Suicide' At XBox Plant.

According to the reports the employees had asked bosses for a raise but in response were told to either quit with compensation or keep their jobs at their usual salary.
Most workers apparently decided to leave, but the company did not hand over the money as promised.
According to the China Jasmine Revolution website, the workers were only dissuaded a day later when the mayor of Wuhan talked them out of committing suicide.
Foxconn factories in China have been the scene of several suicides by workers in the past, including 14 in 2010 alone at its Shenzhen plant, after complaints of low pay and poor conditions.

Read More here...
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/01/10/300-chinese-foxconn-workers-threaten-mass-suicide_n_1196345.html

Lastly, this is an excellent documentary about the influence of Wal Mart and how it destroyed America's economy...very well done PBS.

Is Wal Mart Good For America?

Watch full documentary here...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/view/

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