Jared Diamond – How Societies Fail-And Sometimes Succeed – Long Now Foundation

Jared Diamon is a captivating and articulate speaker whose are ideas are a type of common sense that just makes sense, even without the countless hours of research. From the description:

Jared Diamond articulately spelled out how his best-selling book, COLLAPSE, took shape.

Unreported World – Somalia

A 2006 look at Somalia on the Al Jazeera English program, Unreported World. Somalia is one of the most interesting places on the map today, and certainly one of the most tumultuous. Somalia is particularily interesting because it is a country defined by the borders of neighbors and not by anytype of sovereignty, making it perhaps the only and definitely the largest territory that never adopted the Westphalian system. Al Qaeda seems to want to open a “third front” in Somalia, but the fighting there has been intermittent and the rampant lawlessness and lack of major geopolitical importance negates attention.

Africa Addio

Africa Addio is a controversial film shot in 1964 about the process of European decolonization in Africa. An edited version was released in the United States titled Africa Blood and Guts (sounds right), but a more direct translation is “Farewell Africa.” I personally feel that this Italian documentary is just as intriguing and well-shot as that other Italian documentary from the 1960’s, the Battle of Algiers.