The Corporation

This is “the best Canadian documentary to date” (The Corporation). I thought it would be a good idea to show you guys this documentary because most of you study Business or Economics. I study Political Science and International Relations and I saw this documentary in one of my classes. It is a non-biased, eye-opening film and shows the ugly side of the business world nowadays, a world in which we all participate in one or other form. In my opinion, everyone should watch the full documentary, but for students, and most of all, business students, watching it should be a must.

This is the trailer of the film. I will leave you guys the link to watch the full version.

>>>WATCH FULL VERSION<<<

If any of you do watch the full version, please leave me a comment telling me what you thought about it.

Source:

The Corporation Film. Retrieved on May 29th from http://www.thecorporation.com/

Noam Chomsky

“Chomsky is a global phenomenon . . . perhaps the most widely read voice on
foreign policy on the planet.”—The New York Times Book Review

I was thinking about what should I post next. Enough funny stuff for the moment, and I wasn’t feeling like writing about Mexico, so I asked myself, “who do you admire?”, and Noam Chomsky popped into my mind immediately.

Noam Chomsky “is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as one of the fathers of modern linguistics. Since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political dissident, an anarchist, and a libertarian socialist intellectual.” (Wikipedia.org)

I am not really much into linguistics so I am more familiarized with his political writings. As an introduction to him, I will make a list of his most known works in the fields of politics and I will also share with you a video.

Another funny act

After the last post I thought I should change the topic, but I have to show you this funny guy.To give you a quick background, his name is Jon La Joie. He is from Montreal, Canada, and he does funny videos of all sorts. He started posting videos on his You Tube profile, and after a couple of years, he gained enough success that right now he is touring North America and Europe, where he performs his songs as well as his stand up comedy show. If you liked Flight of The Conchords, probably you will like Jon La Joie too. Here I leave you his best videos and the link to his You Tube profile. Enjoy!

A funny mock-up of rappers. a classic.

A different commercial

About the legendary video

Jon La Joie’s YouTube profile

MY FAVORITE TV SHOW

Back to the funny stuff, I will show you people a couple of videos from my favorite TV show. These guys are called Flight of the Conchords and are from New Zealand. They have a comic show on HBO and they perform live as well. It is a new and fresh kind of humour and I think it is hilarious.

If you liked it I would reccomend typing “Flight Of The Conchords” on YouTube. They have excerpts from the TV episodes and live shows.

Mexico’s other face

After posting the article on Mexico’s current situation, I found this article. It is written by an american journalist who is criticizing the media coverage of what is going on in MExico. It is interesting and also nice to not only hear ugly stuff about the place where I come from. Take a look.

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One Journalist’s View

By Linda Ellerbee

Sometimes I’ve been called a maverick because I don’t always agree with my colleagues, but then, only dead fish swim with the stream all the time. The stream here is Mexico ..

You would have to be living on another planet to avoid hearing how dangerous Mexico has become, and, yes, it’s true drug wars have escalated violence in Mexico, causing collateral damage, a phrase I hate. Collateral damage is a cheap way of saying that innocent people, some of them tourists, have been robbed, hurt or killed.

But that’s not the whole story. Neither is this. This is my story.
I’m a journalist who lives in New York City, but has spent considerable time in Mexico, specifically Puerto Vallarta, for the last four years. I’m in Vallarta now. And despite what I’m getting from the U.S. media, the 24-hour news networks in particular, I feel as safe here as I do at home in New York, possibly safer. I walk the streets of my Vallarta neighborhood alone day or night. And I don’t live in a gated community, or any other all-gringo neighborhood. I live in Mexico. Among Mexicans. I go where I want (which does not happen to include bars where prostitution and drugs are the basic products), and take no more precautions than I would at home in New York; which is to say I don’t wave money around, I don’t act the Ugly American, I do keep my eyes open, I’m aware of my surroundings, and I try not to behave like a fool.

Mexico: a ticking bomb

After the funny post, it’s time to move to more serious things.

I am from Mexico, and as we all know, the mexican society is right now in crisis. Aside from the so called “pork flu”, the economic crisis and the same old problems my country has always had, since a couple of years, the mexican society has experienced a transformation. From a relatively peaceful way of living, the lifes of many -not all- mexicans has drastically changed.

The drug industry, feeded especially by the millions of drug users accross our north border has grown incredibly over the last years. Drug lords have been fighitng against each other in unimaginable ways, they are also rampantly challenging the local and federal governements by assassinating politicians, policemen, army officers, soldiers, and basically anyone who is not willing to cooperate with them. Shootings have become something of everyday life, at least in the city where I live in and many other parts of Mexico situated in the northern states.

Drug trafficking is not only affecting negatively in the way of violence. The Mexican Army, together with the U.S. Border Security, have somewhat reduced the amount of drugs that cross the border to the United States (its final destination), and have caused these drugs to remain in Mexican territory. These drugs are then commercialized illegally among the mexican people, especially the poor.

The situation is far from easy to deal with. Corruption is widespread, intimitadation as well. Everybody wants this to stop, but nobody is really doing anything about it. Mexican politicians don’t seem to get along, and just to hear about the USA helping Mexico economically sounds like a bad joke.

It is very sad to see the place where I am from, a beautiful place, crumble down, especially being so far away in a place where everything is taken from granted.

Images retrieved from:

El País. Retrieved on May 12th from:http://www.elpais.com/recorte/20050128elpepiint_10/XLCO/Ies/20050128elpepiint_10.jpg

The New York Times. Addiction and Recovery in Mexico. Retrieved on May 12th from:http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/13/world/0914ADDICTS_3.html

Es Más. Golpe al narco en Jalisco: fotogalería. http://www.esmas.com/galeria/fotos/2006/12/2006222114511166843691.jpg

If you want to know more about the current situation in Mexico, I will leave this link from the New York Times, which does a good and sensitive coverage about it.    click here —>  http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/mexico/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=mexico&st=cse

MY FAVORITE BLOG

This is an article taken from my favorite blog so far, which is the FAIL blog. I really reccomend giving it a look because it is funny and it is a really entertaining website.

Funny stuff

Source: Fail blog.com. Retrieved on 22th, April 2009 from http://failblog.org/page/4/