An American Drug Lord in Acapulco

How a high school jock from Texas rose to the top of one of Mexico's most powerful and ruthless cartels

Excerpt:   ....a few weeks later, one of Barbie's assistants was pulled over by the police on the way to a carwash in Mexico City. Two officers jumped out of their black truck, guns drawn. "Freeze, motherfucker!" they screamed. They demanded to know where Barbie was. "Where is that son of a bitch?" one officer said. "Don't bullshit, or I'll cut off your balls and feed them to you."

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE....
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/an-american-drug-lord-in-acapulco-20110825

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/

Landing New York | B777 Cockpit View 4K

Incredible cockpit view of a jet landing at JFK...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ckRAPgWwQY

The Body Modifiers

Humans have been altering their bodies permanently for thousands of years. Tattoos, piercings, and scarification have been practiced to demonstrate tribal allegiances, to show a life history, to say a constant prayer, to give a warning, or simply to act as an amazing work of art.....

SEE FULL AMAZING GALLERY HERE...
http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/02/body-modifiers/385122/

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

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

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

Iowa Radio Station Grants Mom's Christmas Wishes Two Years after Death

The wife and mother of four wanted three requests fulfilled when her husband found a life partner.

Tragic yet amazing...
 
 Listen to radio broadcast here...

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/12/23/radio-station-grants-mothers-christmas-wishes-two-years-after-death/

The Craigslist Killers

Very good read, enjoy!

More than 100 men replied to an advert on Craigslist offering work on a farm. Some of them were shot dead. The killers thought no one would miss their victims but, as Hanna Rosin reports, their story reveals a surprising truth about the emotional lives of men in a time of recession and family breakdown

READ MORE HERE...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/10/craigslist-killers-murder-story-family-breakdown

READ MORE ABOUT "LONELY HEARTS KILLERS" HERE...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonely_hearts_killer

10 Questions for Woody Allen

Great interview because the questions were from the public and not the mainstream media!

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

Hitler lived until 1962? That's my story, claims Argentinian writer

Did Hitler live and die in this Argentinian Hotel?

Excerpt:

"Arguing that American intelligence officials turned a blind eye to Hitler's escape in return for access to Nazi war technology, Gerrard Williams and Simon Dunstan set out the case for a scenario almost too horrible to contemplate: that the Führer and Eva Braun made a home in the foothills of the Andes and had two daughters.
Hitler, they claim, escaped punishment and lived out his life in tranquillity in Patagonia until his death in 1962 at the age of 73.

READ MORE HERE...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/27/hitler-lived-1962-argentina-plagiarism 

ALSO Check out this fascinating documentary...

Hitler's Escape 

More interesting info...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2478100/Theory-Adolf-Hitler-fled-Argentina-lived-age-73.html 

Best Cities and Countries for Travelers and Expats 2014

Cuzco, Peru.

Best Cities to Visit 2014
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/travel-tips-and-articles/lonely-planets-best-in-travel-2014-top-10-cities

Best Countries to Visit 2014
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/travel-tips-and-articles/lonely-planets-best-in-travel-2014-top-10-countries

Best Countries to Visit on a Budget 2014
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/travel-tips-and-articles/lonely-planets-best-value-travel-destinations-for-2014

And this is really Cool...

Best Countries for Expats...According to HSBC...
http://www.expatexplorer.hsbc.com/#/countries

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

How to Explain Japan in 7 Words or Less

Very interesting...Can you explain your country in 7 words?

http://www.japan-talk.com/jt/new/7-most-important-Japanese-words

Also interesting...

Tokyo Girl DJs
http://www.japan-talk.com/jt/new/tokyo-DJ-girl-style 

Japan Loves Uniforms!
http://www.japan-talk.com/jt/new/japan-loves-uniforms

The Chinese city living in fear of Giant Killer Hornets

The world's biggest hornet is wreaking havoc in northwestern China, where 42 people have died after being swarmed and stung in Shaanxi Province, according to the Chinese news agency Xinhua.

Some 1,600 others have been injured since the outbreak of the Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia) began in July, the regional health authority reported, and attacks continue even as local authorities take action, including destroying hundreds of hives and improving medical treatment for victims

Read more here...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/04/killer-hornets-chinese-city-living-in-fear

and here...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131004-giant-hornet-insects-attacks-china-animals-science/