I was in 8th grade when the 9/11 attacks occurred. I was 13 years old. My entire adolescence and adulthood have been shaped by the U.S. response to these attacks. However, I was not so young that I did not notice the changes taking place in this country. I grew up with the Arab stereotypes found in Disney’s Aladdin (which I now know is pronounced Ala’ El-Din) and Indiana Jones, so the villainization of Arabs and Muslims in the media was nothing new. But the terrorist attacks seemed to allow people to be more open and direct about their anti-Arab sentiments. At the same time, the U.S. government took the opportunity presented by the 9/11 attacks to break international law, violate human rights, and take away our civil liberties. For the past 10 years, whenever someone has been critical of the invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan, or have criticized the government for racial profiling or human rights abuses, they need only cry “Terrorism!” to justify any and all actions.

For the past 10 years, I have been far more afraid of my own government than I ever was of Osama bin Laden. For the past 10 years, I have mourned the U.S. response to 9/11 more than I have mourned 9/11 itself, for the U.S. response claimed far more lives, violated more human rights, and took away more civil liberties.

Some perspective: According to CNN, 2,973 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks. On the other hand, 919,967 people have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since the post-9/11 invasions, and most of them have been civilians. That is about 309 deaths for each 9/11 victim. But of course, when WE do it, it’s not terrorism, it’s Security!

I encourage all of you to read this article by Noam Chomsy, entitled “9/11–was there an alternative?” He reminds us of the so-called “First 9/11″ in 1973 in Chile, “when the US succeeded in its intensive efforts to overthrow the democratic government of Salvador Allende in Chile with a military coup that placed General Pinochet’s brutal regime in office.” This is the 9/11 history that we, as Americans, have not been taught, or purposely overlook. Chomsky and others also point out that the U.S. government did exactly what “the terrorists” wanted: we plunged our country into debt, taking away from social services like education and health care, and aided in the radicalization of Islam and gave credibility to the voices of extremists. The article is a bit long, so I’ll leave you with a couple block quotes:

A number of analysts have observed that although bin Laden was finally killed, he won some major successes in his war against the US. “He repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the US from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt them,” Eric Margolis writes. “‘Bleeding the US,’ in his words. The United States, first under George W Bush and then Barack Obama, rushed right into bin Laden’s trap … Grotesquely overblown military outlays and debt addiction … may be the most pernicious legacy of the man who thought he could defeat the United States” – particularly when the debt is being cynically exploited by the far right, with the collusion of the Democrat establishment, to undermine what remains of social programs, public education, unions, and, in general, remaining barriers to corporate tyranny.

…

The senior CIA analyst responsible for tracking Osama bin Laden from 1996, Michael Scheuer, wrote shortly after that “bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. [He] is out to drastically alter US and Western policies toward the Islamic world”, and largely succeeded: “US forces and policies are completing the radicalisation of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it is fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden’s only indispensable ally.” And arguably remains so, even after his death.

Finally, on the subject of terrorism, I leave you with this video by DAM, a Palestinian hip-hop group. Their song, “Meen Irhabi” (“Who’s the Terrorist?”) challenges imperialist and racist notions of terrorism and terrorists, versus the struggle to survive when your families, homes and cultures are being destroyed.

Peace and love,
Dooler

In other recent news, Obama caved to the Birthers and released his birth certificate. Donald Trump, however, isn’t satisfied, and wants his school records as well (then made some remarks about how Obama would be better off on a basketball court). Goldie Taylor gave a report on Rachel Maddow about the racist roots of demanding identification papers (that goes for HB 1070 too, Arizona!):

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This website has some other great videos, as well as some fact sheets here. Here is also a speech by Omar Barghouti, who I saw speak at a BDS conference in Montreal this past October. Omar Barghouti was scheduled for a book tour here in the United States, but was denied a visa. From Jewish Voice for Peace – “Barghouti – who has advanced academic degrees from US institutions, who lived here for 11 years, whose daughter attends school here- has been inexplicably denied a visa to come to the US in April for a long-planned tour to talk about his new book, Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights.”

The Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA has got some really great events lined up this week that are open to the public. Hampshire College was the first college in the United States to divest from the occupation of Palestine while I was still a student there, and their organizing skills are really top-notch. Their schedule for this week is as follows (hope to see you there!):

** MONDAY MARCH 07 2011 – Screening of SLINGSHOT HIP HOP (2008)

Part of the weekly Palestine Film Series, a screening of groundbreaking documentary SLINGSHOT HIP HOP. SLINGSHOT HIP HOP braids together the stories of young Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank and inside Israel as they discover Hip Hop and employ it as a tool to surmount divisions imposed by occupation and poverty. From internal checkpoints and Separation Walls to gender norms and generational differences, this is the story of young people crossing the borders that separate them.

http://www.slingshothiphop.com/trailer/

TIME: 7:00pm
ROOM: ASH Auditorium

** TUESDAY MARCH 08 2011 – Life Under Siege: Gaza Youth Breaks Out! live Skype event

“We are afraid of living, because every single step we take has to be considered and well-thought, there are limitations everywhere, we cannot move as we want, say what we want, do what we want, sometimes we even cant think what we want because the occupation has occupied our brains and hearts so terrible that it hurts and it makes us want to shed endless tears of frustration and rage!”

Released in January 2011, Gaza Youth Breaks Out! released a powerful, explosive manifesto calling for justice in Palestine. No Hamas, no Fatah, no P.A, no more U.S military support for Israel. Come hear three members talk about their experience as students in Gaza, the Palestinian revolution scheduled for March 15th, and international solidarity.

TIME: 3:00pm
ROOM: Franklin Patterson Hall 107

** WEDNESDAY MARCH 09 2011 – Palestine 101

What is the difference between Israel and Palestine? What is the occupation? What happened during the Second Intifiada? How did this conflict even begin? This will be a student and faculty panel discussion concerning the Israel/Palestinian conflict. This is a space to mainly provide a historical context and contemporary analysis of the conflict in which the rest of the time is spent as a question & answer forum. Bring your questions, bring your friends, and let’s talk!

Speakers include: Aaron Berman, professor of history and Arab and Jewish nationalisms. Mark Clinton, professor of political science at Holyoke Community College. Lyla Denburg, Hampshire student and SJP member.

TIME: 7:00pm
ROOM: ASH Auditorium

** THURSDAY MARCH 10 2011- Can Israel Be Called an Apartheid State?

Is Israel currently practicing apartheid? Are there roots of the occupation in apartheid practices? What are the, if any, connections between South Africa and Israel? Join Hampshire College’s Sayres Rudy and Kara Lynch alongside Max Ajl, Amherst College alum and Cornell graduate student, to talk critically about these questions and others related to this panel question.

Max Ajl has spent the past four years in between the besieged Gaza Strip and the United States. His blog, http://www.maxajl.com/, provides commentary on the state of Palestinian self-determination and the Middle East. Jewbonics was founded during the winter massacre in Gaza of 2008–2009. Max is an essayist, rabble-rouser, and PhD student in development sociology at Cornell.

Time: 7:00pm
ROOM: Franklin Patterson Hall Main Lecture Hall

** FRIDAY MARCH 11 2011 – REBEL DIAZ!

The last evening before Spring Break, come see a live performance from South Bronx hip hop duo REBEL DIAZ!

Fronted by MC’s Rodstarz and MC/Producer G1, Rebel Diaz shows us the true global power of Hip Hop. After first performing at an immigrant rights march in New York City in 2006 in front of a half million people, the bilingual duo has taken the international community by storm with their explosive live shows. With roots in Chicago and now based in the South Bronx, NY, Rebel Diaz has also piqued the interest of the academic community with their poignant social commentary and energetic performances. They have spent the last four years visiting dozens of colleges and universities, facilitating workshops, speaking on panels, and performing at national conferences. Building on this growing network of positive young people in Hip Hop, the group recently opened a community arts center in the South Bronx, the Rebel Diaz Arts Collective.

http://rebeldiaz.bandcamp.com/

TIME: 8:00pm
ROOM: The Red Barn
COST: $2 – $5 sliding scale

Co-sponsored by: Hampshire College President’s Office, Hampshire College Office of Diversity and Multicultural Education, and more!

In Solidarity,
Dooler

Yesterday I attended the March in Solidarity with the Egyptian People in Amherst, MA. My partner, Iman, and I were representing Solidarity Bridge, a youth group based in Palestine.

From the facebook event page:

February 5th has been declared the international day of solidarity with Egyptian and Tunisian people as they continue to organize themselves to form an alternative to oppressive regimes they lived under before. It is imperative that these actions which have sparked movements all across the Arab world are not seen as singular but intricately connected. These pockets of resistance have found sparks in Yemen, Sudan, Jordan, etc. No…w, we must stand in solidarity with those who are fighting against occupations of their land, neo-colonialization, neo-liberalism, and regimes which do not represent the will of the people.

“Year after year we marched, protested and fought daily for a decent life, for dignity, for independence and for freedom. We saw our lands occupied, our people invaded and murdered, our thinkers and journalists imprisoned, our activists tortured and disappeared and our very ability to live and feed our families challenged. If it wasn’t for the despotism and iron fist rule, imposed on us by colonial dictators who receive orders from their imperial masters, the Zionist genocide in Palestine and Lebanon and the US pillaging of Iraq would not have been possible.”

About 300 people came out in the freezing rain for the march, which was sponsored by 13 groups in the area:

Western Mass Coalition for Palestine
Middle East Peace Coalition of Western Mass [MEPC]
Hampshire College Students for Justice in Palestine
SmithSTAND
Western Mass Darfur Coalition
The American Friends Service Committee
Amherst International Socialist Organization
UMass Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)
Amherst Amnesty International
Amherst Human Rights Commission
Western Mass Code Pink
Amherst College Students for Justice in Palestine
Palestinian Solidarity Bridge

I lived in Amherst for over two years while attending Hampshire College. During my time there, I never saw this kind of collaboration between different social justice groups. Student groups and community groups and individuals of all ages joined together to show their support for the Egyptian people and their revolution. As several people pointed out, we have a lot to learn from the Egyptians (and Tunisians) these days, as they’re showing us the true meaning of “people power.” There were a lot of powerful speakers at the rally yesterday, most of them students at the 5 Colleges (UMass Amherst, Hampshire, Amherst, Mt. Holyoke and Smith). I wish I had transcripts from some of the other speeches, but here is ours, at least:

Dooler: Before we speak, we’d like to have a minute of silence in honor of those who have been killed during the protests in Egypt.  (…)

Iman and I were living in Egypt for over a year, and only left Cairo a few months ago. At the time, the Egyptian people were living in fear. As an American, I would ask people casually in cafes what they thought about Mubarak. I almost always got this response: “We can’t talk about that here. There are people around.” A friend of mine tried to print a picture of a skeleton sitting in a throne for a human rights conference, obviously referring to Mubarak, but no one would print it for her. One person printed it without looking at it, and when she came to pick it up, he burned the copies in front of her. For years, people did not want to speak out against Mubarak for fear of what could happen to them under the Emergency Law, which has been in place since Sadat’s assassination 30 years ago. Under Emergency Law, the Egyptian government can arrest anyone without any charges and hold them for any length of time without trial. But now, the Egyptians are no longer afraid. By this fact alone, they’ve already claimed victory.

[...]

Khaled Said, at 28 years old, was a victim of Emergency Law and police brutality. This past June, police dragged Khaled out of an internet café in Alexandria. They wanted to search him under emergency law, and when Khaled asked for a reason or a warrant, they tortured him and beat him to death in the street. Police claimed that he died after trying to swallow a bag of marijuana, but witnesses and photos say otherwise. Pictures after his death show him bloody and bruised, with his jaw and teeth broken. Earlier, Khaled had posted a video online of police corruption, of police sharing drugs they had taken during a raid. When a friend of Khaled’s tried to speak out that Khaled was murdered in retaliation of the video he posted, he was attacked by nine plainclothes policemen with knives.

Iman: Mubarak’s corrupt government and police force do not only affect Egyptians, however. Palestinians who have fled from Gaza hoping to find safety in Egypt’s borders are systematically arrested and put into government prisons without trial. Egypt has been a very important ally to Israel. Mubarak contributes to the siege of Gaza and the occupation of Palestine by closing the Gaza border and by making deals with and selling gas to Israel. Egypt supplies around 40% of Israel’s gas consumption, and sells it to Israel at about one-tenth the market price. This is the gas used to fuel the Israeli tanks which are killing Palestinian citizens, including children.

It is time now for Gaza’s own revolution, for the people of Gaza need it more than most. Their oppression comes at the hands of not one government, but from many political powers and factions: Israel, Egypt, Hamas, Fatah, the United States – each contributing to the suffering of Palestinians in different ways. Inspired by the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere, the youth of Gaza are planning their own revolution on Friday, February 11th. We hope that you will join us in marching in solidarity with them on that same day, at 3pm.

We’re going to teach you a chant in Arabic now, which in English means, “Revolution until Victory.”

SOURA, SOURA, HATA AL-NASR (x4)

I was interviewed by amherstwire before the march. Other news coverage can be found here, here and here.

In Solidarity,

Dooler

My feelings about DADT being repealed are similar to my feelings about HRC (Human Rights Campaign) and their corporate partners. Just because American Airlines is a corporate partner doesn’t make it any easier for a trans or genderqueer person to travel and deal with airport security. Other HRC partners, such as Bank of America, BP and Nike, repeatedly and systematically violate environmental and/or human rights. Just because these corporations have partnered with the HRC does not make them champions of human rights (more on this in a future post). Essentially, we (queer folks) may not be accepted by our families, friends, government, places of worship, communities, etc, but at least we’re accepted by corporate America and the military!! Seems like we can be accepted only as long as we’re willing to part with our money or our lives.

As for DADT being repealed, will the military now provide benefits to same-sex partners? The federal definition of marriage is still between opposite-sex couples. This article from change.org is from April, 2010, but it clearly defines the benefits granted to heterosexual military families. Repealing DADT is not justice, nor is it a step towards justice. From an economic standpoint, Queers of Economic Justice said in this article, “Queers for Economic Justice staff and constituents have all met people in the LGBT movement who have said to us that the DADT repeal is an economic justice victory, since many poor and working-class LGBT people join the military to have access to better jobs, and because the military is the nation’s largest employer, QEJ should be joining in the victory dance.” The article continues:

But QEJ believes military service is not economic justice, and it is immoral that the military is the nation’s de facto jobs program for poor and working-class people. And since QEJ organizes LGBTQ homeless people in New York City, we wanted to remind the LGBT community and progressive anti-war allies that militarism and war profiteering do not serve the interests of LGBT people. Here’s how:

1. The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans reports that about one-third of all homeless people in the US are veterans, but about 1.5 million more veterans are at risk of homelessness “due to poverty, lack of support networks, and dismal living conditions in overcrowded or substandard housing.” They also report that 56% of homeless veterans are Black or Latino.
2. Some studies also show that one in four veterans becomes disabled as a result of physical violence or emotional trauma of war. There are currently 30,000 disabled veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
3. Rape and sexual violence are very common occurrences for women in the military, and the ACLU is currently suing the Pentagon to get the real numbers on reported incidences.
4. Half of the US budget in 2009 was made up of military spending, including current expenditures, veterans benefits and the portion of the national debt caused by military costs, according to the War Resisters’ League. That is more than the US spent on Health & Human Services, Social Security Administration, Housing and Urban Development and the Department Education combined. Wouldn’t more social safety net spending help the millions of queers who can barely make ends meet?

Along with QEJ, I “stand in solidarity with other LGBTQ people around the globe, and do not condone violence against them or their home countries so that ‘our gays’ have the ‘right’ to serve openly in the military.” As Martin Luther King, Jr said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” On a lighter note, I’ll leave you with one more quote, this time from a friend of mine on facebook:

my cousin in response to the repeal of DADT, “good. now ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ can refer to farting, like it did in ’92.”

In solidarity,

Dooler

I’m Dooler, and I’ll be taking over the activist blog for Ian. Since I’m new here, I’d like to introduce myself first. Hopefully this will give you some idea of what to expect from me. I am a 23 year old queer, white, middle-class person from Asheville, NC. My political views are constantly changing, but I’d say they’re somewhere along the lines of anarcho-socialist. I graduated from Hampshire College in 2009, spent a year in Egypt studying Arabic, and am now a grad student at SIT studying Social Justice in Intercultural Relations.

My goals for the blog are to tie environmental issues in with politics, immigration, racism, and class inequalities. None of these issues exist in a vacuum, so I will frequently use environmental issues as a lens through which to view and understand other issues. For example, there are many environmental groups out there that act as a cover for more racist, anti-immigration groups. For more information on this, check out this video from the Center for New Community:

Another project I’m working on is a community events calendar. Right now it is a work in progress and includes a variety of Brattleboro events, but my goal for the calendar is to connect various activist groups in southern Vermont. This will hopefully open opportunities for different groups to work together, once again getting at the interconnectedness of environmental and social justice issues. Please email me at doolerfc@gmail.com and let me know about upcoming events and actions. The more we work together, the more we can accomplish! Here’s what it looks like now:

I’m doing my best now to prepare the Activist Resource Center. I want it to be a community space, so come on in or email me and tell me your ideas of what that space should be!

In solidarity,
Dooler

Following up on my last post, I would like to introduce to you some of what I think are the best sources for understanding the late 2008 US ‘Financial Crisis’.

Putting a name on the ‘Financial Crisis’: The Quiet Coup

First up is Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, and his excellent essay “The Quiet Coup” from the May 2009 issue of The Atlantic magazine. Coming from someone so firmly ensconced in the global financial establishment I read the essay as a revelation. Here is an excerpt:

Becoming a Banana Republic

In its depth and suddenness, the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets …

…global investors, afraid that the country or its financial sector wouldn’t be able to pay off mountainous debt, suddenly stopped lending. Just as in emerging-market crises, the weakness in the banking system has quickly rippled out into the rest of the economy, causing a severe economic contraction and hardship for millions of people.

But there’s a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business interests—financiers, in the case of the U.S.—played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them.

Top investment bankers and government officials like to lay the blame for the current crisis on the lowering of U.S. interest rates after the dotcom bust or, even better—in a “buck stops somewhere else” sort of way—on the flow of savings out of China. Some on the right like to complain about Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, or even about longer-standing efforts to promote broader homeownership. And, of course, it is axiomatic to everyone that the regulators responsible for “safety and soundness” were fast asleep at the wheel.

But these various policies—lightweight regulation, cheap money, the unwritten Chinese-American economic alliance, the promotion of homeownership—had something in common. Even though some are traditionally associated with Democrats and some with Republicans, they all benefited the financial sector.

Read the entire essay here.

Johnson went on to write a book (with James Kwak) entitled 13 Bankers: Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown that goes much further in explaining the historical events leading up to these takeover of the United States’ government by a ‘financial oligarchy’.

You can read the book’s introduction here.

The Amazon.com page for the book is here.

If you want to know why it’s called 13 Bankers, click here.

I have to admit I haven’t read the book myself yet. When I ran into Vermont’s independent U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders at this year’s Strolling of the Heifers festival and congratulated him on ensuring that the Federal Reserve audit provision remained in the Congressional ‘Financial Reform’ legislation that was signed into law this year, I asked him if he had heard of the book. He told me he was in the middle of reading it and would be quizzing me on it’s contents next time we ran into each other. Good on ya, Bernie!

I have been reading Simon Johnson and James Kwak’s blog “The Baseline Scenario” for quite awhile – I would recommend their “Financial Crisis for Beginners” page as a good place to start if you’re visiting it for the first time.

Confronting the Cause: Using the ‘F’ Word

Next up is William Black. William Black was the litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board during the Savings and Loan ‘crisis’ of the late 80s and early 90s. His appearance on PBS’s Bill Moyers Journal (about, official site) on April 3, 2009 is, at the risk of repeating myself, revelatory.

From the show:

BILL MOYERS: I was taken with your candor at the conference here in New York to hear you say that this crisis we’re going through, this economic and financial meltdown is driven by fraud. What’s your definition of fraud?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Fraud is deceit. And the essence of fraud is, “I create trust in you, and then I betray that trust, and get you to give me something of value.” And as a result, there’s no more effective acid against trust than fraud, especially fraud by top elites, and that’s what we have.

BILL MOYERS: In your book, you make it clear that calculated dishonesty by people in charge is at the heart of most large corporate failures and scandals, including, of course, the S&L, but is that true? Is that what you’re saying here, that it was in the boardrooms and the CEO offices where this fraud began?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely.

BILL MOYERS: How did they do it? What do you mean?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, the way that you do it is to make really bad loans, because they pay better. Then you grow extremely rapidly, in other words, you’re a Ponzi-like scheme. And the third thing you do is we call it leverage. That just means borrowing a lot of money, and the combination creates a situation where you have guaranteed record profits in the early years. That makes you rich, through the bonuses that modern executive compensation has produced. It also makes it inevitable that there’s going to be a disaster down the road.

BILL MOYERS: So you’re suggesting, saying that CEOs of some of these banks and mortgage firms in order to increase their own personal income, deliberately set out to make bad loans?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes.

The entire transcript is available here.

William Black’s February 25, 2009 piece from The Huffington Post entitled “The Two Documents Everyone Should Read to Better Understand the Crisis” is an essential read.

Black uses one of those documents as the starting point for this June 11, 2009 presentation at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture Center in Los Angeles. It is long (over an hour and a half in total). If you’d like to skip the introductions, Black starts his presentation at about six and half minutes in.

Well, that’s the view on the ‘Financial Crisis’ from “the economist” and “the criminologist”. Next post, I’ll get to the views from the activist, the journalist, and the professor. Thanks for reading!

Paulson’s 3-page proposal (see it here) soon became the “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008”, a 300 plus page bill that was originally rejected by the US House of Representatives on September 24, 2008. I can remember the reaction by the New York Times when the bill was defeated. EVERY story on Page 1 of the newspaper that day was about the bill’s failure to pass. In this article – “Talks Implode During a Day of Chaos; Fate of Bailout Plan Remains Unresolved”, we get a great quote from our former president, “dubya” :

“If money isn’t loosened up, this sucker could go down,” President Bush declared Thursday as he watched the $700 billion bailout package fall apart before his eyes, according to one person in the room.

Well, something eventually “went down” – the bill was attached to existing legislation before the Senate, where it passed a vote on October 1st and was subsequently approved by the house on October 3rd. You can find it online at the Government Printing Office’s website (where it’s listed as “Public Law 110 – 343 – Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000”) here.

But it was that day that Hank Paulson showed up in Congress, essentially waving his proposal and declaring “the end of the world as we know it” were Congress not to write the $700 Billion check to the banks that remains etched in my brain – and was the catalyst for my struggle to answer the question: How does the ‘American Financial System’ actually work?

I’ve learned a lot since then – and would like to share with you some things that might help you “wrap your head around” both the ‘Financial Crisis’ specifically and the American Financial System in general.

First up is the wonderful animated short entitled “The Crisis of Credit Visualized”

If you prefer, you can watch it on YouTube here.

It was created by Jonathan Jarvis and is a brilliant explanation of some of the meta-factors that led up to the financial crisis. He’s got a good explanation of how he came to create it on his website here.

On that page Jarvis lists links to two NPR “This American Life” episodes which provided source material for him: “The Giant Pool of Money” and “Another Frightening Show About the Economy” . If you follow the links, you can download either episode from iTunes for 99 cents. I can’t recommend these two shows highly enough. They’re definitely worth the 2 bucks it will cost to listen to them.

Those two episodes spawned a new ongoing NPR show entitled “Planet Money” (the show’s blog is here). I don’t find “Planet Money” as consistently rewarding as the two “This American Life” episodes, but they often provide the type of insight on financial matters that made “The Giant Pool of Money” so brilliant. Simply by asking the types of questions that don’t get asked by traditional “financial reporters”, the the folks from NPR were able to draw out the underlying assumptions and/or unspoken realities of the financial world from their interview subjects.

The next video I’d like to share is a more recent “animated” short. This one is part of a series produced by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA). British, their institution traces its founding to a coffeeshop in 1754. You can watch their Executive Director explain the organization here.

Entitled “The Crises of Capitalism”, it is an illustrated bit of a lecture by “radical sociologist” (RSA’s words) David Harvey, who’s taught Marx (Karl) for many years and currently teaches in the Phd program at the City University of New York. There is a great lecture of his entitled “A Brief History of Neoliberalism” available on You Tube (the first part is here). It’s in 5 parts (about 45 minutes total). Recorded before the most recent ‘Financial Crisis’, I highly recommend it as it provides a good historical background to the current situation. He’s written a book with the same title – the Amazon.com page is here.

The illustrator is Andrew Park, who has illustrated a number of other RSA lectures You can find all of them on YouTube here. I especially enjoyed the one where he illustrated Daniel Pink’s talk entitled “Drive”.

I hope you enjoyed these crisis/crises videos – I think they both provide a very clear view of the ‘big picture’ of the (Anglo-)American Financial System. Next week I’ll share more videos and links that hopefully will help broaden your perspective of this “Financial Crisis’ and its aftermath.

In thinking about what sort of things I should share with you, the reader, I’ve decided to focus on those things on the web that have resonated the most with what I’ve envisioned Save the Corporations from Themselves has always been about.

After saying that, I realize this first entry may elicit the question: “What does that have to do Save the Corporations from Themselves?” Well, this inaugural post is sort of an introduction to what I’m foreseeing as the basic format of this blog – sharing a few videos I’ve found on the web, connected by a common theme with some commentary and links added.

Why videos?

First, because there’s a plethora of really awesome video on the web (and most of it’s been posted to YouTube, and will embed in one’s blog and playback well most of the time) and some really great stuff that I assume everyone has seen or heard of – folks have neither seen nor heard of before. So instead of jotting down a web address on a piece of paper to direct someone to something “they’ve gotta see” online I can direct them here.

And secondly, because I’m a visual thinker – and sometimes a well-made web video can elucidate concepts (for me, anyway) much clearer than reading a bunch of text. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a voracious reader (web, print newspapers, magazines, books) but sometimes one can run across a web video that is so well-produced, you’re thankful that someone (or a group of people) took the time to make and share it.

Here’s the first example of that sort of video: An animated short created by a Munich-based designer, Melih Bilgil:

It’s also up on Vimeo over here.

His website is www.lonja.de .

I couldn’t find any info on Mehih Bilgil besides what’s on his website – I figured someone would have interviewed him since his video has more than 500K views on Vimeo and another 2M on YouTube. I did find a short piece on the video by Claire Suddath on Time magazine’s website, where she writes:

The video stops at the year 1990, right when things on the Internet started to get interesting. What about chatrooms? Instant messaging? Whatever happened to America Online’s “You’ve got mail!” guy? And most importantly, when did the Internet evolve from something used largely by universities and the military into a portal for porn? Bilgil fails to include an animated diagram of that.”

Bilgil fails? No, he just keeps the scope of his short video limited from 1957 to 1990. And he succeeds at giving us a concise, understandable overview of the developments that paved the way for the modern internet – not bad for an 8-minute video.

So what about the modern internet? The biggest thing today is “social media”.

Here is a online video from last year called “Social Media Revolution” It’s subsequently been updated (in May of this year) but I wanted to share this “original” version with you (although it seems to be a commisioned version of a video entitled “Did You Know?” that also exists in mutiple versions, i.e. 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, etc. – which in turn was based on “Shift Happens” created by Karl Fisch)

It’s got more than a bit of the internet marketing air of fluff about it, and much of the data is now out of date (for example, Facebook has now surpassed 500 Million users, it’s been reported). Still, it does illustrate the explosive growth of Web 2.0 quite well.

It was posted on YouTube by Erik Qualman, the author of Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business, published last year by Wiley. He blogs at his website socialnomics.net.

Thinking about the figure cited in the video: “78% of consumers trust peer recommendations – Only 14% trust advertisements” – I was amused to read this review (listed as the “most helpful” customer review – “ 88 of 96 people found the following review helpful”) of Socialnomics on amazon.com:

‘Socialnomics’ Sounds Explosive, But Is a Dud, January 3, 2010

By David M. Freedman

This book is full of superficial anecdotes and miniscule case studies, platitudes and generalizations, unsupported opinions, idle speculation, specious claims, inconsistent style, imprecise language, typos, and bad punctuation.

Ouch.

Well, the whole series of “Did You Know?” videos do seem to be an attempt to be profound through a “shock & awe” campaign of relentless statistical info. It reminds me of the hit-or-miss everything and the kitchen sink spoof comedy style of Police Squad! or Airplane!

Anyway, thanks for visiting the Save the Corporations from Themselves blog. Feel free to click around our website – and feel free to leave comments about the blog post, or the site in general. And “stay tuned” for more interesting web videos next week!

All the best,

Ian