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48 epic dream hotels [pics]

A GOOD HOTEL CAN MAKE or break a trip. The worst hotel in the best place is still going to make retiring after a long day an unfortunate experience. The best hotel in the worst place, on the other hand, can be something of an oasis. Take the best hotels and put them in the best places, and you’ve got a private slice of the vacation you’ve always dreamed of.

Here are 48 absolutely epic dream hotels.

1. Ladera Resort, St. Lucia

Possibly the singular spot for your perfect Caribbean excursion, the Ladera Resort represents the intersection between design, luxury, and the ideal location. Amenities include a full spa, a host of excursion experiences, and the ability to swing straight from a bench into the pool. Equally sick: Jade Mountain Resort.

2. Manta Resort, Tanzania

Ever wanted to be able to go down the stairs of your resort room, hoist the blinds, and be stared down by schools of fish? Can you get over the fact that in doing so, you’ll be painfully aware that your accommodations are anchored offshore? If you answered yes to both of those questions (as I have), then the photos of the Manta Resort have probably inspired you to add Tanzania’s Pemba Island to the bucket list.

3. Äscher Cliff, Switzerland

More of an inn and restaurant than a luxury resort, this getaway built right into an Ebenalp cliff is the best spot to take a breather on your trek up the northern Alps. The views here will keep you charged as you continue your trip through the Swiss mountains.

4. Giraffe Manor, Kenya

These images are not photoshopped. At Giraffe Manor, located in a suburb of Nairobi, giraffes belonging to the resident breeding and conservation program will join you for breakfast.

5. Hotel Kakslauttanen, Finland

If you’ve never heard of this place, you’ve probably spent an enviably small amount of time on the internet. With its infamous glass igloos and log cabins, the Hotel Kakslauttanen offers an exclusive inside-while-outside winter experience. You know, so you can be immersed in the beauty of frozen forests and incredible winter auroras while simultaneously safe and comfortable inside your own private bubble of warmth.

6. Ubud Hanging Gardens, Bali

One part boutique hotel, one part epic infinity pool over the Ayung gorge, one part Payangan jungle, and one part architectural masterpiece combine to make one smooth cocktail of a resort. While the Ubud is known for its terraced tree villas, it’s really all about the award-winning pool. (Literally, this pool has won awards.)

7. Icehotel, Jukkasjärvi, Sweden

At the absolute top of my bucket list, the Icehotel is like living in an art installation. A very cold art installation. Though the ice accommodations are available for only one season a year (for what I hope are obvious reasons), the hotel also offers “warm accommodations” and a host of summer activities, including “art experiences with ice, and adventures in the surrounding wilderness under the midnight sun.”

8. Cocoa Island Resort, Maldives

Just a 40-minute speedboat ride from the archipelago’s main airport, Cocoa Island floats as a cluster of 33 over-water suites (straight out from those sweeping white sand beaches you’ve seen in every tropical island fantasy you’ve ever had). With two private diving reefs to explore, who’s got time for spa treatments?

9. Loisaba Star Beds, Kenya

Two sets of outdoor “star beds” can be found in the Kenyan wilderness — the “Kikobo” beds overlook the waterhole from which they take their name, and the “Koija” beds sit on stilts over the Ewaso N’giro river. Each “star bed” is partially sheltered and contains a “Mukokoteni” (a specialty handcrafted bed on wheels, for moving into and out of the shelter). Kenya is known for its wildlife, so you’re bound to see some amazing creatures in this outdoor getaway.

10. Burj Al Arab, Dubai

One of the tallest hotels in the world, the Burj Al Arab sits on a private, manmade island 1,000 feet offshore and is connected to the mainland by a private bridge. Inside the tower (designed to look like the sail of a ship) are 202 double-story rooms, the largest of which covers 8,400 square feet and is the 12th most expensive hotel suite in the world.

11. Treehotel, Sweden

The multi-styled Swedish Treehotel comprises such rooms as: the Cabin, the Mirrorcube, the Bird’s Nest, the Blue Cone, the UFO, the Tree Sauna, and the Dragonfly. Though perhaps a little literal in the naming of the rooms, the architecture and execution at the Treehotel are pretty next-level and make for a unique experience in the Swedish forest.

12. Hotel Marques de Riscal, Spain

Designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry, this luxury hotel is situated in the heart of Spanish wine country in the medieval town of Elciego. The property is famed for its Basque-Riojan cuisine and also has a rooftop library lounge with views of the Spanish countryside.

13. Dedon Island Resort, Philippines

According to the resort’s website, the property’s creators conceptualized Dedon Island as a “kind of laboratory” for realizing experiments in outdoor design, organic farming, and sustainability.

14. Phinda Homestead, South Africa

Small-scale and utterly luxurious, the Phinda Homestead is a family-size lodge situated on a private game reserve

within the KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa. No one around but you, the lodge staff, and the wildlife.

15. Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi

Managed by the Kempinski Group of hotels and resorts, this seven-star property is the second most expensive hotel ever built. Might as well play the part and arrive via the private marina or helipad.

16. Conrad Maldives Hotel

With its glass-bottomed bungalows and underwater rooms, the Conrad Maldives Hotel has serious appel. To reach it, you have to take a 30-minute private seaplane, but on arrival you can enjoy any of their 101 carefully curated cheeses and 20,000 wines, while being surrounded by whale sharks, manta rays, dolphins, turtles, and “an excellent coral reef.”

17. Alpina Gstaad, Switzerland

The Swiss ski village of Gstaad is one of the top resort areas in the Alps, and the Alpina is pretty much the top-of-the-line accommodations for those who have the scratch. The views from your room’s balcony couldn’t get much better.

18. Hotel de Glace, Quebec, Canada

The first (and only) true ice hotel in North America, Hotel de Glace opened in 2001 and has been rebuilt every December since. With a three-month lifespan, the features of this hotel are different each year, but it’s famous for its recurring chapel, bar, and grand ice slide.

19. Gamirasu Cave Hotel, Turkey

This recently renovated hotel, used since the Byzantine era as a monastic retreat, had been a getaway just outside of Ürgüp, in the Cappadocia region, for centuries before it was converted into a hotel for the public, which pretty much guarantees its awesomeness.

20. Katikies Hotel, Greece

On Santorini (with its signature white-and-blue color scheme), the Katikies Hotel lends further credence to the idea that not only is putting a pool on an island surrounded by water not redundant, but you can do so just about anywhere in Greece and still achieve a killer view.

21. Rayavadee Resort, Thailand

The mac-daddy of Thailand resorts, this place looks like the deserted jungle island you’ve always dreamed of waking up on after a bumpy flight to somewhere boring. To top it all off, after your day of lounging in the luxury hydro-pool your pavilion is outfitted with, you can catch the sunset from this sandy beachside cave restaurant.

22. Hotel Au Vieux Panier, France

Situated in the heart of Marseille, each room at the Au Vieux Panier has been individually decorated by an artist or graphic designer of worldwide acclaim (and the rooms change every year). Not only is there a rooftop terrace where you can look out over the city center, but also a hotel library, perfect for a relaxing night in.

23. Ngorongoro Crater Lodge, Tanzania

The absolutely quintessential African safari resort, the Ngorongoro Crater Lodge acts as steward of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a wildlife reserve home to scores of rare and endangered species. It ranks #1 on TripAdvisor as “best stay in Tanzania.”

24. Panchoran Retreat, Bali

Carved out of the Balinese jungle by Irish designer Linda Garland in an ongoing project since the ‘70s, the Panchoran Retreat is a blend of art project, resort, and ecogarden. The retreat has been home to festivals, workshops, and generations of environmentalists conducting research year round.

Click below to see the second half of our list of epic dream hotels to visit before you die.

The post 48 epic dream hotels to visit before you die appeared first on Matador Network.

The joke of our slow extinction

Photo: A~~~

THE FIRST THUNDERCLAP ISSUED like a whip heading north. Above, the swift current of cloud created a kind of optical illusion as it pulled over the bluffs and, combined with the sonic boom, could almost convince me it was the cliff tipping over on me. I tried to take another picture of the glacier’s off-white slope against the grey sky but the battery was dead, even after I’d tried rubbing some static charge into it against the sleeve of my sweater.

Gotta go, I thought.

I’d been on plenty of bald slopes like this during my years treeplanting, up high enough you can feel the ozone before and after a lightning discharge, but it was no excuse to stick around. I knew how quickly summer storms could collapse on you. From the lip of the glacier I could even make out familiar clearcuts, wended into distant mountain ranges like brown lesions, where I’d weathered similar flash storms.

I took one last look at the glacier — even from this distance I could make out its diminishing perimeter, the pressed scree that a century earlier had been buried six feet at this time of year. Growing up in the Slocan Valley in southeastern British Columbia I’d always had peaks and mountain ranges as a backdrop, each with daring and heroic names like Asgard, Loki, Macbeth, and Devil’s Couch. But it’d taken me nearly two decades of living in the same place to explore some of them.

Below, I could make out the small township of New Denver, hedged to Slocan Lake, where I’d set out earlier that morning by kayak. It was a dying city, emptied by high costs of living and an influx of rich homeowners who spent less than two months a year in the area. I felt a grip of regret, and wondered if the glacier that shared its name would suffer the same gradual attrition — a wearing away until there was nothing left. The ice field was like a white flower, sinking back to its source.

There was another interruption of thunder. The small bowl of the glacier funneled the impact like an instrument, and I felt it in my legs and stomach and picked up my pace. Halfway down, following the creek back to the tent, the rain started to accelerate and turned to hail by the time I reached the floor of the narrow valley.

It was all blow-down, Engelmann spruce twisted from their roots like bottlecaps, and when I finally ran the gauntlet of branches and split trunks my clothes were soaked. I dove into the tent, frantic to get out of the weather. My shoulders and the back of my neck stung where the ice had pelted me. Another shock of thunder rippled from above and I could see the walls of the tent shake. A small darkness closed across the sky and was almost palpable, as if someone had slammed a lampshade down on the sun.

I forced my breathing to slow and closed my eyes.

The siege of hail slowed with my pulse to a consistent tapping. I wanted to laugh. My whole body shook with exhaustion. I wrapped my sleeping bag over my shoulders and shivered and peered out of the tent’s flaps once more and saw the glacier winking at me from the summit. There’s a kind of exhilaration in stepping over the liminal barriers of what the body is capable of, in what my childhood hero and poet Gary Snyder had once referred to as a “practice of the wild.”

This practice is an exercise in both gratitude and humility. And out of this a relationship develops, one between human and her environment, which is mutually contingent. That is, a person cannot exist without their environment, just as their environment cannot exist without them — it is the most original and ancient form of symbiosis. And it’s a dying way.

Occasionally it’s still felt by those whose vocation takes them into the wild places. Loggers, treeplanters, trappers, bush pilots. It exists now like an endangered species in First Nation cultures in the area, like the Salish and Sinixt. As I huddled in the shadow of the glacier, I bit back on the clarity of my sadness. It was full of anger, not just at big issues like global warming and the proposed Enbridge pipeline and the previous genocides of cultures who held these ancient values. It was easy to be angry about those things, things I couldn’t be held accountable for, but felt like I needed to be.

I was also angry at myself. That it had taken me so long to come here. At my own negligence to the practice of the wild.

I opened the tent and stepped out into the slash and inhaled as deep as I could manage. The rain had dispersed, but I could hear the small round sounds of water drops falling from the boughs of spruce, their slap on the broad leaves of thimble-berry bushes.

Somewhere through the trees, its voice echoing from the edge of a kettle lake below the bluffs, a loon’s laugh called to me. I put my hands together and called back, trying to signal him that it was safe. There was a long silence, the slow stamp of after-rain on leaves and underbrush. Then another laugh.

It was a joke, I thought. The glacier, me, and this slow extinction. All of it seemed absurd. I had no idea how long the ice and snow above me would last, or how long the loon would keep watch over the valley. But for the moment I felt like I was home, the way only someone who has been absent from it for a long time really can. I felt my own life, my own struggles — university, relationships, traveling — all inextricably tied up in the contemplation of the creek beside the tent, meandering from its source.

I laughed again, shaking with the effort, and my voice was somehow alien and I felt the life around me shrink from it. I laughed harder. I laughed because there was nothing else to do.

The post The joke of our slow extinction appeared first on Matador Network.

Have you read these books?

WE STARTED passing this around Matador Editorial today: 100 books of which the BBC believes most people have only read 6.

Feels a bit simplistic, to be honest, like there should be more points for Joyce’s Ulysses than Alice in Wonderland. Also, you should get more points if you read a book in its original language — for example, an extra 5 points for 100 Years of Solitude in Spanish.

Here’s the list. How did you do?

The post The BBC thinks you’ve only read 6 of these books…have you? appeared first on Matador Network.

Streets of Afghanistan published

WE ARE SO PROUD to announce the official launch of Matador Ambassador Shannon Galpin’s book, Streets of Afghanistan.

Shannon, a women’s rights activist who runs the organization Mountain2Mountain, spent four years putting together a collection of photographs that encapsulates “the beauty and the heartbreak” of this diverse country. Her book is available for purchase online, and in select bookshops. Congratulations, Shannon, on making this project a reality!

Watch this behind-the-scenes film to learn more about what went into the making of Streets of Afghanistan, and pick up your copy today.

The post Published! Streets of Afghanistan, by Matador Ambassador Shannon Galpin appeared first on Matador Network.

#inspiredby contest deadline: 3/24

LUFTHANSA is looking for travelers who want to fly to Istanbul with a professional film crew to film their own #inpsiredby video. The brand will cover flights, accommodation, plus 500 EUR pocket money. Applications are due March 24th. Apply at Facebook.

Your video should be 45-60 seconds in length and filmed in landscape format.
The video should be in one of the following formats: mov, avi, mp4, mpeg.
Videos can be submitted in English or German.
Tell what interests you most about Istanbul. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been there before or not, it’s just important to explain why you want to go there.
It should be easy to recognize you and your voice in the video.
When using images or video sequences in your film, or filming people other than yourself, please ensure you have all appropriate rights to do so.
Your application can be in normal speech, a song, poetry — just show how creative you can be!

This contest is sponsored by our partners at Lufthansa.

Feature image credit: j0sh via Compfight cc

The post Win an opportunity to travel / film with the #inspiredby contest appeared first on Matador Network.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day from Dublin!

EDITOR’S NOTE: Last year, Matador’s Scott Sporleder and Candice Walsh traveled to Ireland where, in addition to meeting the President and taking part in a St. Paddy’s Day parade through downtown Dublin, they road tripped the country and came back with the following stories:

What St. Patrick’s Day looks like in Dublin
I went to Ireland to find my roots and discovered I’m Canadian
The ultimate Ireland road trip, in pictures

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

The post Happy St. Patrick’s Day from Dublin! appeared first on Matador Network.

5 ESL challenges in China

Photo: Peter Morgan

I SEE A NEW FACE at the expat bar every weekend, undoubtably drawn to this frozen corner of Heilongjiang Province by the promise of a lifestyle change, adventure, and a unique cultural experience — along with a free apartment, money, and a 15-hour workweek.

I don’t want to be the one to burst their bubble while they’re holding their drink, still high off jetlag and excitement, but these are five of the headaches that await them on their TEFL journey.

1. Workplace inequality

China is indeed a communist country, but you’d better believe your private language center is a purely capitalist venture. And you — the unmistakable, foreign-looking face — are their flagship product. You will be pampered with an amazingly modern apartment, a hefty salary, and light hours. It’s pretty awesome, if I’m honest.

This begs the question, though: Can you deal with the fact that your Chinese counterpart is making pennies for working twice as many hours as you? Can you stomach the wine you’re drinking over Christmas dinner, knowing your assistant is stuck at work, covering your half of the lesson? Many schools have the attitude that their Chinese employees are disposable. You’ll have more luck shooting baijiu without cringing than fighting the glaring inequality at your school.

2. Terrible textbooks

Part of running a business is making costs as low as possible in an effort to maximize profit. Your school is no different, which means some of your textbooks will be riddled with horrific errors and probably will have not even been written by a native speaker.

Not only must you convince your Chinese assistant that “May I play your ball?” is, in fact, not correct, but you will also constantly struggle with the uselessness of some sentences you’re required to teach. These can range from the creepy “You want it, you say it, you get it,” to the whoever-wrote-this-textbook-was-high level of ridiculousness: “He must be in the lemon house.” Just bring ibuprofen and you’ll be okay.

3. The parents

One of the most irritating things that plague the majority of language centers is the ridiculous amount of influence parents have. For one, you can’t fail the kids. We actually have to give the children an 8/10 or higher on the oral exams, even if they clearly don’t belong in that class. Their child is flawless; so the reason they’re not doing well must be the school’s fault. The solution? Give an arbitrary score that makes it impossible to fail. The parents are happy being lied to, and the school doesn’t lose any money. The only downside is feeling like your last three months of teaching were pointless.

You’ll also receive some questionable criticism from parents who shouldn’t even be given the time of day, but the school is on their hands and knees in front of them so you’ll hear it anyway. My favorite is when a mother told me I was teaching the book incorrectly. Her English consisted of “hello” and “thank you.” I’ve recently changed my strategy from protesting and reminding my boss that the parents don’t speak English to just nodding, saying “okay,” and continuing to do things my way.

4. Little emperors

China’s one-child policy has created a phenomenon so prevalent that it now has capital letters and its own Wikipedia article: Little Emperor Syndrome. Children of urban families, who now have exponentially more purchasing power than even just a few years ago, are showered with affection and material goods from parents, grandparents, and pretty much everyone around them. Parents will even take their jackets off for them and hand them their water during break time, from kindergarten to my oldest class of 13-year-olds. They get used to it.

While I’ve found children in China to be far more respectful to teachers than their American counterparts, you will definitely still have a few that expect their every whim to be fulfilled. They’ll demand to play a game when you’re in the middle of explaining the past perfect tense, and they’ll demand a different game if that game is boring. Some seem a bit shocked when they finally discover they’re not going to be getting the same amount of attention their parents give them. Treat every child equally early on, set strict rules in class, and hopefully you won’t have too many tantrums.

5. Chinese office culture

The primary source of frustration will almost certainly come from the management of your school, and the office politics that ripple out from their decisions. Something future teachers must understand is that business runs on a different clock in China. Rid yourself of the Western idea of having your calendar a month in advance, or even being given 24-hour notice (even if it’s in your contract) for some activity your school has pulled out of thin air for you to do. Throw “organization” out the window.

Not too long ago, our headmaster had the bright idea to allow renovations in the middle of the autumn term, making several parents furious, some even withdrawing their children from the school. Our boss told us we would be moving into a public school for two weeks (technically illegal, but the headmaster has connections). One of the other foreign teachers laughed and said, “Oh, so you mean two months?” Sure enough, we were there with chalkboards and no teaching materials for a bit longer than 60 days.

You really just have to take a deep breath, roll with the punches, and accept that this is how things work here, or it’ll be very difficult for you to thrive in this country.

The post 5 challenges you’ll face as an English teacher in China appeared first on Matador Network.

How to piss off someone from Pittsburgh

Photo: Melissa Dooley

Every now and then, some advertising campaign thinks it’s funny to use Pittsburgh as the butt of a joke: a travel agency who pretends that’s the worst place on earth you could end up, with the kind of nose-wrinkling condescension that says, “Nobody would EVER voluntarily go there.”

For anyone who’s actually lived and loved in da ‘burgh, though…we know the truth.

Assume everybody loves the Steelers.

There are 99 reasons to move to the Steel City, and the Steelers ain’t necessarily one. Pittsburgh has a booming artistic community, several top-notch universities, and a tech industry to rival the Bay Area. Sure, there’s black and gold memorabilia in most shop windows, and you can buy a Terrible Towel in the airport…but assume every Pittsburgher is a sports fan and you deny the rich cultural landscape that makes up the rest of the city.

Assume nobody loves the Steelers.

I mean, come on. It’s the STEELERS.

Laugh at our yinzer accents.

Most places have a regional dialect or accent, no matter what language they speak. Pittsburgh is no exception. Native Pittsburghers and people who have lived here for a long time can have a very particular accent, often scattered with extremely specific slang.

More like this: 7 signs you were born and raised in Pittsburgh

This is most commonly characterized by using “yinz” for the second person plural — like “y’all” down in Georgia — and can include the use of words like “redd up” (short for “ready up,” meaning to tidy) and “gumband” (rubber band). The yinzer accent reflects blue-collar steel worker roots, and it can be a source of fierce pride. Mocking it is for jerks.

Ignore the view of downtown when you’re coming through the Fort Pitt Tunnel.

I never fail to get excited by the skyline when I drive in from the airport, with the impressively castle-y PPG building and all the floating restaurant business down by Station Square. I will make anyone in the car with me shut up and pay proper attention to this impressive sight. If you are not impressed, you can get out of the car. Yes, on the bridge.

Say “the bridge” without specifying which one.

Dude, the city has three rivers and something like 450 bridges. You can’t give me directions to somewhere by telling me to go over a bridge unless you tell me exactly which one. The Hot Metal Bridge is in a very different place from the Liberty Bridge. Also, you know that half of the smaller streets in the back neighbourhoods still don’t have street signs, right? Give very good directions, please.

Make fun of our dinosaurs.

Andrew Carnegie funded some crazy useful archaeological research. That’s why we have dinosaur skeletons everywhere. If you had a life-size T-Rex outside your art museum or inside your airport, you’d be proud of it too. We also have more library branches than almost any other city of comparable size, thanks to Andrew Carnegie’s lust for learning.

Call Pittsburgh part of the Midwest.

Look, son, Ohio is part of the Midwest. They have the flat nasal accents and the somewhat red-state values to prove it. Pittsburgh is part of the Northeastern states and is a lot closer to New York than Nebraska in behavioural patterns, the artistic community, and tech influences. Pittsburghers also really hate it when you say Cleveland and Pittsburgh are basically the same city. I mean, HATE.

Ask why we need to put coleslaw and french fries on a sandwich.

I think the real question is, why doesn’t everybody? If you could do what Primanti Brothers does, and have your entire meal in one conveniently portable bundle, you’d already be doing it right now. Besides, that study that said eating too much salt is bad for you turned out to be based on faulty research. Now pass the “O” fries. [image error]

The post How to piss off someone from Pittsburgh appeared first on Matador Network.

29 powerful images of protest

WITH ALL THE UPHEAVAL and rebellion going on in the world today, we see a lot of photos when something crazy happens.

Sometimes, the images are so powerful and mesmerizing that they stick with you afterward and make you understand what’s happening in that conflict on a much deeper level.

In this gallery, we’ve collated photos from protests and demonstrations worldwide that you won’t forget anytime soon.

1

Athens, Greece
The fascist political party Golden Dawn started to rise to power in Greece, and last year anti-fascist and anarchist protests sprang up across the country in response, particularly in Athens. Molotov cocktails and police brutality were common fare.


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2

Euromaidan, Ukraine
Violent demonstrations erupted in Kiev, Ukraine, in November 2013 as protesters called for the resignation of the president. In this photo, priests form a wall between protesters and police.


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3

KKK, Georgia, USA
This photo of a small child touching his reflection in a policeman's shield during a Ku Klux Klan demonstration in Georgia in 1992 became famous. The child's first name is Josh, but nobody knows what happened to him.


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Intermission





11 images to remind us of the need for activism around the world





30 apocalyptic images from the protests in Kiev, Ukraine





30 shocking images from the Ukraine protests show how protestors are battling the police












4

Occupy Seattle, USA
During the Occupy protests in 2011, 84-year-old protester Dorli Rainey was pepper-sprayed in the face by police. This photo shows other protesters helping her to safety. A pregnant 19-year-old was also sprayed on the same night.


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5

Athens, Greece
An anti-fascist protester is attacked by a policeman amid clouds of teargas during an anarchist protest in Athens.


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6

Athens, Greece
The protesters fight back by shooting Molotov cocktails at police and members of Golden Dawn.


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7

Elsipogtog First Nation, New Brunswick
First Nations protesters blocking a fracking company's access to native land in northeast Canada were met by excessive force on the part of the RCMP...but they eventually won, and the fracking company was turned away permanently.

(Photo: Ossie Michelin)





8

Occupy Gezi, Istanbul, Turkey
In May 2013, anti-development protesters occupied Gezi Park in Istanbul, Turkey. This protester quickly became famous for playing accordion to keep morale of the occupiers up.

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9

Occupy Gezi, Istanbul, Turkey
This Sufi dancer wearing a gas mask was one of the most powerful images to come out of Gezi Park; he danced in different colored robes on different days, but always wore a mask. His identity is unknown.


(via)





Intermission





33 iconic photos of people standing up to injustice





Protesting Feliciano: Images from a human rights march in Brazil





40 images of Peru we can’t stop looking at












10

Occupy Gezi, Istanbul, Turkey
The Woman in the Red Dress became a symbolic photo for the Gezi protesters: the beauty of the dress contrasted strongly with the brutality of the police firing pepper spray directly into her face.


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11

Occupy Oakland, USA
As part of the larger Occupy Wall Street movement, Occupy Oakland created "Move In Day." Participants aimed to inhabit and renovate a long-abandoned building, making it into a community center. The police were not amused.


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12

Occupy Oakland, USA
Protesters used homemade shields to stand their ground against police lobbing tear gas and smoke bombs.

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13

Pepper spray cop, USA
During Occupy protests in 2011, students at UC Davis staged a demonstration on campus and Lt. John Pike became notorious for blithely walking along a row of protesters, pepper-spraying them in the face.


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14

Vancouver riots, Canada
After the Canucks lost to the Boston Bruins at the 2011 Stanley Cup, Vancouver hockey fans took to the streets to riot...and this couple was left in the aftermath.


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15

Tahrir Square, Egypt
The square has become the de facto site for protests in Cairo. The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 started there, when millions of protesters took to the streets demanding the resignation of the president.


(Photo: Reddit user latenightcabdriving)





Intermission





21 weird statues from around the world





How to report on protests: Getting involved vs. staying impartial





50 images of New Zealand we can’t stop looking at












16

Crying cop, Philippines
A riot cop sent to block protesters in the Philippines began to cry and was comforted by protesters as the demonstration grew more violent on both sides.


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17

Battle in Seattle, USA
The 1999 World Trade Organization negotiations were interrupted by enormous protests; police and protesters clashed extensively, and crowds were eventually dispersed with stun batons, tear gas, and rubber bullets.


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18

Battle in Seattle, USA
The largest demonstration in the US up to that point, 40,000 protesters surrounded the convention center.


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19

Idle No More, Canada
An ongoing protest movement that arose in 2012 among the First Nations, Metis, and Inuit people of Canada as a reaction to treaty violations by the government, Idle No More also gained momentum as a global indigenous movement.


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20

Prague Spring
In 1968, Communist leader Alexander Dubček led a movement in then-Czechoslovakia to remove Soviet authority; instead, the country split in two and the Soviet Union occupied them both for many years.


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21

Abbasiya, Cairo, Egypt
As part of the ongoing Arab Spring, thousands or protesters marched into Abbasiya, a neighbourhood of Cairo. They were chased by police throwing rocks, and some were arrested and heavily beaten while being detained.

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22

Euromaidan, Ukraine
Ukrainian protesters square off against riot police in a light snowstorm during the Euromaidan protests in early 2014.


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23

Bogota, Colombia
A student protesting education reform tries to kiss a riot officer in Bogota in 2011.


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24

Turkey
The Occupy Gezi protests spread across all of Turkey and caused heated fighting between police and protesters in the streets of the nation.


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25

Palestine
The clashes between Palestinian militants and the occupying Israeli Army are heavily weighted in terms of firepower towards the much stronger and richer Israelis; these Palestinian children are running across the road to get to school.


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26

Pussy Riot, Russia
As part of the anonymous Russian punk protest group prone to guerilla tactics, two members of Pussy Riot were arrested and held without bail in 2012 for "hooliganism."

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27

Million Hoodie March, USA
In 2012, an unarmed 17-year-old African-American boy named Trayvon Martin was coming back from a convenience store with some candy, while wearing a hoodie, and was shot and killed by a self-appointed neighbourhood watchman, George Zimmerman. Thousands rallied for justice.

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28

Caracas, Venezuela
In early 2014, protests in Venezuela were sparked when a couple was killed during a carjacking while their five-year-old daughter looked on; soon, public demonstrations of thousands protested the lack of basic goods and an increase in political violence.


(via)





29

UN Rio+20, Brazil
In 2012, a Brazilian indigenous man protested a summit on sustainable development as his traditional land was handed over to extraction companies for mining.


(via)

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Pigeons are a nuisance [vid]

This video of bird catchers in Spain really upsets me. The pigeons are tricked with food, sent into shock beneath a catapulted net, and later asphyxiated using carbon dioxide gas. I dislike pigeons just as much as any New Yorker, but I don’t think I could bring myself to hurt, or torture the poor birds.

Then it got me wondering — what are NYC’s pigeon-control methods? The results shocked me even more. In my hometown, some people go as far as to catch pigeons in cages or nets, and illegally transport them outside of the city to restaurants, or shooting ranges to be used for sport. So the dirty, nasty, poop-happy birds we despise so much, could actually end up on our dinner plates.

Nobody likes pigeons, but are they really so terrible that we must resort to hillbilly methods of extraction? [image error]

The post Is this really the best way to get rid of pigeons? appeared first on Matador Network.