As a filmmaker there is a lot that interests me and a lot of places I go to explore those interests. Here is a collection of articles, podcasts, personal updates and more that caught my eye. Hopefully they spark an interest in you too. Specifically, a sustainable future, latin issues, music and food.
I am excited to announce that I am working on amazing documentary featuring Mamie Van Doren, an icon of an era with incredible stories to tell. I'll be working out of LA , enjoying a familiar landscape of production and palm trees. Find out more about the doc here in this article by Variety.
Neoliberal free market agendas claim to champion individual freedom and economic empowerment, but these promises often mask deeper systemic flaws. By externalizing costs, redistributing responsibility, and fostering an illusion of consumer empowerment, this framework burdens individuals—both workers and consumers—while absolving businesses of accountability. This paper critiques the neoliberal free market paradigm, arguing that it undermines true freedom by prioritizing profit over collective well-being.
Great Podcast highlighting how US intervention is directly responsible for migration in the Americas.
Post-growth cities are urban areas that have shifted their focus from traditional economic growth models, which emphasize continuous increases in gross domestic product (GDP) and physical expansion, to more sustainable, resilient, and quality-of-life-oriented goals. This concept challenges the conventional wisdom that cities must constantly grow in size and wealth to be considered successful. Instead, post-growth cities prioritize:
The imperial mode of living, entrenched in the infrastructure of global powers like the United States and other Global North nations, thrives on an exploitative dynamic. This approach necessitates an "elsewhere" – regions designated for exploitation and bearing the aftermath of disasters (Brand and Wissen, 2021). Cloaked in the language of growth and progress, this inherently imbalanced mode is underpinned by a colonial power matrix, emerging from a superiority complex and enforced through centralized power structures (Mignolo, 2011). This epistemology, neglecting a critical examination of objectivity, inadvertently limits inter-epistemic dialogues, endorsing a singular, imperial truth.
Border Management Solutions
Creating a roadmap for transitioning to degrowth economies in the Global North and fostering decolonial cultures in Latin America requires a nuanced approach that addresses historical inequalities and promotes equitable resource distribution. The following outline suggests steps to achieve these goals, emphasizing the redistribution of wealth and resources to the Global South and the empowerment of local communities to develop decolonial practices.
ISDS stands for Investor-State Dispute Settlement. It is a mechanism often included in international investment agreements, like bilateral investment treaties (BITs) or free trade agreements (FTAs), that allows foreign investors to bring claims directly against the host country before an arbitral tribunal if they believe their rights under the agreement have been violated.
The Global Fragility Act (GFA) is a piece of legislation aimed at improving the capacity of the U.S. government to identify and address the root causes of violent conflict in countries around the world. The act seeks to streamline efforts, ensure coordination among various U.S. agencies, and prioritize preventive measures over reactive ones. In some ways this can be seen as a mechanism of US imperialism continued. In that way it is similar to the Monroe doctrine, yet this has more global application versus hemispheric. Using wording steeped in modernity's classic tropes of paternal benevolence, development and peace it allows for the defence of the US agenda in unstable countries.
Walter Mignolo, a prominent scholar in the field of decolonial studies, defines “decolonial thinking” as a form of epistemic resistance and critique against the underlying assumptions and logics of coloniality, which continue to pervade various aspects of global societies even after the formal end of colonialism.
The term “liquid modernity,” introduced by Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, paints a picture of our contemporary world where traditional structures and norms are constantly in flux. Here’s a breakdown:
After a few months at sea documenting Neptune's Navy and their whaling activism I am back on land. It was a wild journey, full of amazing marine life and big waves. Seeing these massive mammals in real life is inspiring and reminded me of just how incredible our oceans are. It also taught me just how vulnerable our oceans are to exploitation. Without an international force policing the sea its easy for various countries to take advantage of the wildlife that exists beneath the big blue. Do you think it would be possible to create a force for this cause big enough to prevent the immense exploitation taking place? Would it be possible to do without infringing on certain cultural traditions help by certain countries? These were some of the questions I found myself pondering as we sailed about and find myself still pondering now that I am back.