Global Humanist Shoptalk

In this second miniseries of Season 2, "Global Finance", we're wrestling with the strangeness of living in a world that aspires to a level of global integration our current systems can't support - and maybe don't want to. The internet age gives the impression of easy connectivity, but the reality is quite different for those trying to make and send money to a great many struggling nation-states. In this episode, we reflect on the fragility of money transfer systems for everyday clients.

REFERENCES

Adrian, Tobias. "Cross-Border Payments for the 21st Century", IMF Podcasts. 2023. https://www.imf.org/en/News/Podcasts/All-Podcasts/2023/01/19/tobias-adrian-cross-border-payments

Guiliano, Paola and Marta Ruiz-Arranz. "Remittances, Financial Development, and Growth", IMF Working Report. 2005. https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2005/wp05234.pdf

It's A Wonderful Life. 1946.

Migration Data Portal. "Remittances". 2023. https://www.migrationdataportal.org/themes/remittances

Rice, Tara et al. "On the global retreat of correspondent banks", BIS Quarterly Review, 2020. https://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt2003g.htm

Teixeira da Silva Filho, Tito Nicias. "Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Fintech Hype Meets Reality in the Remittances Market", IMF Working Paper, 2022. https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/WP/2022/English/wpiea2022233-print-pdf.ashx

Treanor, Jill and Dominic Rushe. "HSBC pays record $1.9bn fine to settle US money-laundering accusations", The Guardian. 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/dec/11/hsbc-bank-us-money-laundering

Woodman, Spencer. "HSBC moved vast sums of dirty money after paying record laundering fine", International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, 2020. https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/hsbc-moved-vast-sums-of-dirty-money-after-paying-record-laundering-fine/

In this second miniseries of Season 2, "Global Finance", we're wrestling with the strangeness of living in a world that aspires to a level of global integration our current systems can't support - and maybe don't want to. In this first episode, we "think slow" about the arbitrary and dehumanizing activity of putting a political price tag on life at all.

REFERENCES

Costanza, Robert. “The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital”, Nature, 1997. https://www.nature.com/articles/387253a0

Costanza, Robert et al. “Changes in the global value of ecosystem services”, Global Environmental Change. 2014. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378014000685

Climate Change Business Journal. 2020. https://ebionline.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/EBJ_Infrastructure_SelectPages.pdf

Credit Suisse Research Institute. "Global Wealth Report", 2022. https://www.credit-suisse.com/about-us-news/en/articles/media-releases/global-wealth-report-2022---record-wealth-growth-in-2021-tapered-202209.html

Gonzalez, Sarah and Kenny Malone. "How much is a human life worth?", NPR. 2020. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/835571843

Laughlin, Greg. "Too cheap to meter". 2009. https://oklo.org/2009/03/12/too-cheap-to-meter/

Newitz, Annalee. "How Much Money Would an Earth-Like Exoplanet Really Be Worth to Us", Gizmodo. 2014. https://gizmodo.com/how-much-money-would-an-earth-like-exoplanet-really-be-1674561982

Williams, Oliver. "World's Wealth Hits Half a Quadrillion Dollars", Forbes Magazine. 2021. https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2021/06/10/worlds-wealth-hits-half-a-quadrillion-dollars/

In this first miniseries of Season 2, we're looking at "Petronationalism". Oil imperialism has done a number on our world. In four snapshots we reflect on the ways that this fossil fuel market has negatively impacted the shape of many cultures. When we talk about reducing oil dependency, we often speak in environmental terms--but what if what's good for "the planet" is also good for us sociopolitically?

REFERENCES

Aldroubi, Mina & Sinan Mahmoud. "The three kings of Iraq: How a short-lived monarchy changed the country forever", The National MENA. 2021.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/iraq/2021/08/23/the-three-kings-of-iraq-how-a-short-lived-monarchy-changed-the-country-forever/

Barnes, Trevor. "The Secret Cold War: The C.I.A. and American Foreign Policy in Europe, 1946-1956. Part I", The Historical Journal. June 1981.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2638793

James, Brendan & Noah Kulwin. Blowback, Season One: Iraq (podcast).

https://blowback.show/Season-1

Chavez, César. "Passing a law does not solve the problem".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8uCEYw3M44]

Earle, Edward M. "The Turkish Petroleum Company--A Study in Oleaginous Diplomacy", Political Science Quarterly. 1924.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2142190

Gallegos, Raúl. Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela. Potomac Books, 2016.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1dwsswf

Hajbi, Maher. "Will Morocco hit the oil jackpot?", The African Report. 2022.

https://www.theafricareport.com/199829/will-morocco-hit-the-oil-jackpot/

"El Libertador", Throughline. 2019.

https://www.npr.org/2019/05/14/723260665/el-libertador

Mirabella, Valentina. "The Qatar Oil Concession Ushers in a New Era for British Relations with Doha", Qatar Digital Library. 2014.

https://www.qdl.qa/en/qatar-oil-concession-ushers-new-era-british-relations-doha

Zedalis, Rex, "Facts Regarding Iraqi Oil and Gas Reserves and Their Legal Status Prior to Self-Governance", The Legal Dimensions of Oil and Gas in Iraq. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/legal-dimensions-of-oil-and-gas-in-iraq/facts-regarding-iraqi-oil-and-gas-reserves-and-their-legal-status-prior-to-selfgovernance/56B33DC5145CD1BB0FC0B3E14AB67F8B

In this first miniseries of Season 2, "Petronationalism", we're exploring the myths underpinning modern nation-states, and the arbitrary divisions drawn between corporate and government exercise when it comes to oil imperialism. There are certainly differences between Communism and Capitalism... but do they always show up in the way oil-seeking nation-states have exploited the modern world?

REFERENCES

Clark, M L. "Oil imperialism and the struggle for human control over our futures", OnlySky Media, 2022.

https://onlysky.media/mclark/oil-imperialism-human-agency/

Dietrich, Christopher R.W. "Suez and the United States: Oil, Lifelines, and “All of Mankind” in the Cold War", The Suez Canal: Past Lessons and Future Challenges. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-15670-0_4

Engels, Frederick. "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific", Marx/Engels Selected Works, Volume 3. Progress Publishers, 1970. [Republished online: 2003.]

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

Epstein, Lee and Mitu Gulati. "A Century of Business in the Supreme Court, 1920-2020", Minnesota Law Review. 2022.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4178504

Grünbacher, Armin. "Cold-War Economics: The Use of Marshall Plan Counterpart Funds in Germany, 1948-1960", Central European History. 2012.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41819487?read-now=1&seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents

Marx, Karl. "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte", Works of Marx & Engels. Progress Publishers, 1937. [Republished online: 1999.]

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/

Totenberg, Nina. "When Did Companies Become People? Excavating The Legal Evolution", NPR. 2014.

https://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-become-people-excavating-the-legal-evolution

In this first miniseries of Season 2, we're exploring "Petronationalism". Why have petroleum products played such a significant role in the development of nation-states? There's a story of imperialism here with strong consequences for our ongoing crisis shaped by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but also something deeper. For all that we treat "corporations" and "states" as distinct entities, in practice the former, economic organization is sometimes difficult to distinguish from the political state that gives it sanction.

REFERENCES

"The Day the Oil Came", The National. 2018.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/uae/heritage/special-report-the-day-the-oil-came-to-abu-dhabi-1.716597

Funakoshi, Minami Funakoshi, and Kannaki Deka. "Tracking sanctions against Russia". Reuters, 2022.

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/UKRAINE-CRISIS/SANCTIONS/byvrjenzmve/

"How Biden’s Sanctions Against Russia Fall Short", Ones and Tooze. 2022.

https://foreignpolicy.com/podcasts/ones-and-tooze/how-bidens-sanctions-against-russia-fall-short/

"How was the UAE founded?", Euronews. 2018.

https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/07/how-was-the-uae-founded

"Max Steineke’s discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia with Kellen Gunderson", TravelingGeologist. 2016.

https://www.travelinggeologist.com/2016/08/travelinggeologists-from-history-max-steinekes-discovery-of-oil-in-saudi-arabia-with-kellen-gunderson/

"May 26, 1908: Mideast Oil Discovered — There Will Be Blood", Wired Magazine Online. 2008.

https://www.wired.com/2008/05/dayintech-0526/

"Oil and petroleum products explained", EIA. 2023.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/use-of-oil.php

"Oil Market and Russian Supply", IEA. 2022.

https://www.iea.org/reports/russian-supplies-to-global-energy-markets/oil-market-and-russian-supply-2

"Oil, ‘Modernity’ and Law: Revisiting the Abu Dhabi Arbitration in the Age of the Climate Crisis", Third World Approaches to International Law Review. 2022.

https://twailr.com/oil-modernity-and-law-revisiting-the-abu-dhabi-arbitration-in-the-age-of-the-climate-crisis/

In this first miniseries of Season 2, we're talking about "Petronationalism". After wrestling with the myths imposed on nation-states in Episode 1, especially around World War I, we turn our attention to myth-making within specific countries over much longer time spans, and the way these histories complicate our understanding of what a nation even is.

REFERENCES

Anderson, Gordon L. "The Idea of the Nation-State Is an Obstacle to Peace", International Journal on World Peace. 2006.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20753518

Graeber, David and David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. MacMillan, 2021.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374157357/thedawnofeverything

Laski, H.J. The Foundations of Sovereignty, and Other Essays. Harcourt, Brace and Company, 2021.

https://www.lawbookexchange.com/pages/books/36612/harold-j-laski/the-foundations-of-sovereignty-and-other-essays

Scott, James C. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale University Press, 2017.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1bvnfk9

Sicard, Germaine (trans. Matthew Landry). The Origins of Corporations: The Mills of Toulouse in the Middle Ages. Yale University Press, 2015.

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2015/08/11/the-worlds-first-corporations/

NB: The original French title, from a 1952 dissertation republished in 1955, is “Aux origines des Sociétés anonymes, les moulins de Toulouse au Moyen-Age. That "Anonymous Societies" part is what we translate as "corporations", but the former term is more fitting.

Wengrow, David. What Makes Civilization? The Ancient Near East and the Future of the West. Oxford University Press, 2018.

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/what-makes-civilization-9780199699421?cc=us&lang=en&

In this first miniseries of Season 2, "Petronationalism", we look at the making of nations: our myths around a "balance of power" for sovereign states, and the way they've coloured our understanding of 20th century history. If we're going to make sense of power struggles in the world today, we need to rethink some of our fundamental ideas about the nation-state.

REFERENCES

Axworthy, Michael and Patrick Milton. "The Myth of Westphalia: Understanding Its True Legacy Could Help the Middle East", Foreign Affairs. 2016.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/myth-westphalia

---. "A Westphalian Peace for the Middle East: Why an Old Framework Could Work", Foreign Affairs. 2016.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/europe/2016-10-10/westphalian-peace-middle-east

Beaulac, Stephane. "The Power of the Westphalian Myth in International Law", Paz de Westphalia/Peace of Westphalia (1648-2008), Sao Paulo: University Press. 2013. [Republished online: 2017.]

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2965241

Kupriyanov, Alexei. "Westphalian Myth: History and Criticism", Analysis and Forecasting, IMEMO Journal. 2019.

https://www.afjournal.ru/en/index.php?page_id=138

Mertz, Jonathan. "A Tale of Tale of Two Westphalia: The Narrative Evolution of a Historiographical Mythos from Nationalist History to Political Theory, 1808-1948". Major Paper, University of Windsor. 2018.

https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1043&context=major-papers

In this Season One closer, we explore the history of the light bulb, and what aligning ingenuity with literal illumination has done for us as a culture (for better, and for worse). When we consider how best to uplift fellow humans today, what lessons can the light bulb and its histories teach us about how not to measure success?

In this episode (and in the wake of a few years of toppled statues and related historical markers), we reflect on our use of public spaces to establish a specific ethos for our cultures. What do we venerate with our memorials and monuments? And what other choices exist, that we might not even realize we could make instead?