I just started reading Ted Nace’s, Gangs of America. Right now he’s covering the history and rise of corporate power around the time of the Civil War and I thought the below quote worth posting…

“We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood… It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working up the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.”

Abraham Lincoln, 1864

I was sent this video of Wade Davis at TED, an event that takes place in Monterey every year, and thought it worth posting as it directly relates to globalization. The below blurb from Google video sums up what it’s all about.

With stunning photos and stories, National Geographic Explorer Wade Davis celebrates the diversity of the world’s indigenous cultures, now disappearing from the planet at an alarming rate. He argues passionately that we should be concerned not only for preserving the biosphere, but also the “ethnosphere” — “the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by the human imagination.”

I recently finished John Perkin’s book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. The book covers his work as economic planner for an international consulting firm where he helped wealthy corporations exploit developing nations as an “economic hit man” to advance the cause of corporate hegemony in which the divisions between the corporate world and the state are almost non-existent. The book is classified as fiction but is assumed to be his real life experiences.

Though there are many valuable lessons to be gleaned from the book, Perkin’s writes as if he is the victim of the consulting firm he works for, that they turned him into their pawn, and that they manipulated him into doing their bidding with promises of money and status. It’s very dramatic and definitely a good read for anyone interested the relationship between multinational corporations and the U.S. government, but it’s hard to sympathies with Perkin’s who knowingly aided in creating greater divisions between the rich and poor in developing countries time and time again.

I saw the movie They Live for the first time a few months ago and watched it again today. For those of you unfamiliar it stars the wrestler of early WWF fame, Rowdy Roddy Piper and includes one of the longest and most ridiculous fight scenes I’ve ever seen in modern film. Despite the bad writing and acting the plot line is great. Roddy’s character finds a pair of sunglasses that allow him to see the world as it truly is: one in which people are being bombarded by media and government messages. As it turns out these creepy low-budget aliens are in charge of a massive campaign to keep humans subdued and Roddy goes on a quest, nay rampage, to stop them.

This is the movie Shepard Fairey got inspiration for his OBEY project from and is a lazy Saturday or Sunday afternoon must see.

Just finished reading Naomi Klien’s best seller No Logo which I would recommend to anyone concerned with the current state of capitalism, corporate domination and advertising glut. Apparently she has a new book out called The Shock Doctrine which is supposed to be just as good. There is a short trailer up on her site that is pretty intriguing and definitely worth a look.

I just got back from a very enlightening lunch with Ben Davis from Words Pictures Ideas. We talked about his experience creating the Buy Less Crap campaign as well as other socially minded projects he’s currently working on, and of course about my Corporate Revolt thesis. When discussing the Buy Less campaign he was saying that if you can convince people to be “Red,” to buy “Red” products, you should be able to convince people to connect with something innately human in themselves like doing good and giving to those less fortunate, which was what the project was all about. He also talked about the importance of having a solid public relations plan when embarking on a project like this and offered up some great ideas and advice concerning my project.

Ben struck me as a truly genuine individual with a passion for life and a conviction for the work he’s doing and I’ll be excited to see the final incarnation of some of the things he’s currently working on.

Check out a brief transcript (PDF) of a conversation about the Buy Less Crap campaign.

Just finished watching the 1983 documentary entitled Anarchism in America. The film defines the roots of the movement and the public opinion of it in the early 80’s. At the heart of Anarchism is a belief that weather as groups or as individuals, people (not the state) should directly run society and have ultimate control of their own destiny and at its roots it challenges all forms of social and political domination.

One view point put forth in the documentary was that today people are responding to a desire to control their own lives. They don’t want to be told what to do and how to think, but want to find ways to care for their material and emotional needs within small groups on a small scale where their can be a real democracy and a sense that they are controlling their own destiny. This poses the question, why should the decisions that affect our lives be made in a remote, centralized seat of government? Shouldn’t people administer their own lives and not relegate responsibility to somebody else?

There are some great interviews with Karl Hess and Murry Bookchin but the one that really struck me was an interview with Ralph Borsodi’s predecessor Mildred Lomis, who was an early advocate of the Homesteading Movement. The movement asserts that the only viable social organization is a society of homesteaders who are self sustaining and can live without the interference of government in small communities which produce everything they needed to exist themselves. They interviewed her on her collective’s farm (imagine lots of open green space, cows, chickens and incredible peacefulness) where she said that the principles of homesteading that are important are in one word, “responsibility” and that we must be responsible for our own existence and the community in which we live.

Being from a Mennonite background I found the parallels between some of Mennonite theology and anarchism / homesteading surprisingly similar. All advocate community and localized democracy in their own right and Mennonites have a great track record of peaceful resistance to the state.

I’m getting close to finished with Naomi Klein’s No Logo. The last section of the book called “No Logo” covers modern day culture jammers, one of which is New York’s own Rodriguez de Gerada. His messages are designed to mesh with their targets, borrowing visual legitimacy from advertising itself. Naomi writes that many of his “edits” have been so successfully integrated that the altered billboards look like originals, though with a message that takes viewers by surprise.

Gerada says that, “(Today’s) technology allows us to use Madison Avenue’s aesthetics against itself. That is the most important aspect of this new wave of people using this guerrilla tactic, because that’s what the MTV generation has become accustomed to - everything’s flashy, everything’s bright and clean. If you spend time to make it cleaner it will not be dismissed.”

This section struck me as it’s precisely what I am attempting to do.

I know this is old news but I read about it again and thought it worth a post and most certainly a tip of the hat to the first city outside of the communist world to put into effect a near-complete ban on outdoor advertising. The latest Adbusters has a great article on the ban as well as some photography of this Brazilian city of over 11 million without ads. It’s inspiring.