First of all, let me be clear: it is American and Western multinational oil, gas and mining corporations who started this problem and who are keeping it going. And as anyone who has been under colonial rule will attest, the destruction of resource-rich countries has been thorough, brutal, and seemingly without end. As I write this, the American Petroleum Institute and their crooked friends have managed to stall implementation of Section 1504 of the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform Act for the past 5 years (I’ve referred to Section 1504 in the two Isabel dos Santos articles which can be found here and here). In that short timespan, for example, the price of a barrel of oil has gone from about $100 a barrel to it’s current price of roughly $47 a barrel. This is an enormous loss of petrodollars for Africa.  I want your voices heard louder and clearer than the American Petroleum Institute’s. Together we can shame those who’ve been putting up legal “roadblocks,” for the past 5 years, preventing Africans from seeing where billions of foreign petrodollars have gone. And because so many of you not only have computers, but also cell phones (obviously, or you wouldn’t be reading this!), I think I know how to be more effective in communicating your message. The problem is that I don’t know what technological capabilities exist at your end since cell phones, with potentially different operating systems, all can work differently.

So, my question to you is this: Are you able to send me (very short) videos that you make? I’m not talking about videos you see on YouTube (although, if you can make a video and put it on YouTube, I can access that). These would be personal messages/videos that you make or have made. And when I say “very short,” I mean under 30 seconds or maybe one minute long, maximum. And I’m not asking you to do it right now, but is it possible?

Keep in mind that I have a 1) YouTube channel, 2) my main website that you’re reading this on now which accepts comments, 3) a Facebook Page, 4) a Twitter account, 5) an Instagram account (which I’ve never used, but it does exist) and 6)  a Tumblr account (also basically unused except for the posts that automatically go there from this website). That’s 6 different ways to communicate with Schatzie’s Earth Project. Earlier today, I asked my 4 teenagers about ways that they share videos they make. They said that the Facebook Messenger “app” is good for sharing videos and photos. Or it could be done through a “Vine” app, too. They are usually 6 or 7 seconds long.

Please let me know if this is possible, and if it’s easy enough for you to do. I’ll follow up with suggestions about what to say. If you want to try and do it, please go ahead. We can just consider it a “test,” and it can be as simple as a video of the sky…I don’t care. We’re just testing. This will be new for me, too.

In this modern age of free-flowing information and incredible technology, we can and should be linked together. There is a very good reason that people like Angola’s Isabel dos Santos is buying up cell phone companies and carriers throughout Africa. Such corrupt leaders know exactly what kind of power these devices yield.

And personal videos would be SO much more powerful than written letters, especially since hundreds of those were already sent to the SEC regarding Section 1504 and they didn’t seem to work.

Please let me know (in the comments section) if this video idea is possible. I know we can do it. Together.

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