Posted on 05/27/09 at 07:18 PM

Every once in a while, I stumble across a bunch of links all at once that don’t quite have the coherence to link together in one story, but each offer a compelling perspective. Here are the links that caught my eye this week with brief summaries of the stories:

• Life Inc: How the world became a corporation and how to take it back – I first became aware of Douglas Rushkoff last month after he published two of the best articles on the financial crisis I’ve read (here and here). Now he has a new book out on corporatism that lucidly illuminates the ruthless role of corporations in our economy as they extract maximum value while giving as little as possible in return. The article above includes brilliant excerpts from chapter 8 and chapter 9 of his book.
• Onward, Christian Soldiers – GQ magazine got their hands on cover sheets from Donald Rumsfeld’s reports to Bush featuring bible verses superimposed on images of war machinery. I don’t use the term lightly, but these images are sickeningly sacrilegious. In the lower left hand corner you can see the dates of each report. They were used during the first days and months of the Iraq invasion. These images go along way to cement the invasion in people’s minds as the face of US Christianity.
• Winning Hearts and Minds II: Drones and Human Terrain Teams – Gene Stotlzfus, former director of Christian Peacemaker Teams, draws on his experience from Vietnam to Pakistan as he looks at the reality of the “battler for hearts and minds”, the use of drones at a new US military tactic called “Human Terrain Teams” which are teams made up of “anthropologists, other social scientists, linguists and analysts”. Very informative.
• Amazonian Indigenous Protest Provokes Peruvian Government Reprisals – in one of the the most undercovered stories of the last two month, more then 30,000 indigenous people from 65 tribes have been blockading roads in a nonviolent protest against laws this will open up their lands for oil and gas exploration. The lawas are partly a result of the free trade agreement between Peru and the U.S.
• The Icelandic Volcano Erupts: A New Era of People Power in the Streets? – Rebecca Solnit tells the other story of another nation-wide nonviolent uprising you may have missed. The Saucepan revolution saw citizens gather around their parliament building banging pots to voice their displeasure with a neo-liberal government that led them into a massive economic crash. Five days later, the ruling coalition gave way under the pressure.
• Tiny Art Director – On a much lighter note, check out this endearing illustrated dialogue between an artist and his daughter who serves as his artistic director. The 4 year old gives the instructions, the father draws them. And then comes the The Critique. A sample: “Daddy it’s not supposed to be like that! He has dog legs! I’m so mad at you! I’m going to erase those legs! Daddy why did you do those legs??? [collapses in tears]” in response to this image: